The Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

  Luis thought hard, while Christian riffled through his morning mail and Krafft wound his watch, Come on, come on, Luis thought, there must be some damned thing you can do . . . The more he searched his memory, the more he realised that his life amounted to fifteen or twenty lost jobs, a bit of snooping in the Civil War, a year wandering around with a donkey, and two years browsing the random pickings of English literature. Did it have the makings of a spy? Even a trainee spy? 'I don't know whether you'd call it a talent,' he began. Christian and Krafft looked politely interested. 'People seem to like me,' he said.

  They examined him for a moment, as if he were about to prove it by, for instance, waggling his ears.

  'I don't mean they like me very much' he explained. 'I mean I seem to get on with people quite easily. That can be useful when you want to, you know, make friends.'

  'Ah,' Christian said.

  'Not that I form any deep attachments as a result. 'It's not a weakness, you see, it's just a . . . a . : .'

  'A facility,' Krafft suggested.

  'Right.'

  'And very nice too,' Christian said. 'Is that the lot? Very well. You will spend this morning with Franz, forming a deep attachment with the Morse code. Goodbye.'

  'Goodbye,' Luis said; but he paused on his way out. 'Nobody around here ever says "Heil Hitler",' he remarked.

  Christian looked up at him, peering through shaggy eyebrows. 'That's not a weakness either,' he said. 'It's just a facility.'

  For the next three hours Luis sat in a room in a remote corner of the embassy and tapped a Morse buzzer. Franz (whose other name was Werth) was dressed in plus-fours and a fawn cardigan. He still looked pudgy and diffident but he kept Luis working hard. Whenever Luis stretched or yawned, Franz made him run three times around the room. By eleven o'clock he had a rough-and-ready grasp of most of the alphabet, and they paused for coffee.

  'You've done this before,' Luis said.

  'True.' Franz dipped a biscuit and nibbled the soggy bit.

  'And you've taught other agents? People who went to England?'

  Franz blinked a good deal and licked a crumb off his lower lip. 'Well, you're not the first, are you?' he said. 'The war's been going on for two years, nearly.'

  Luis played with the Morse key until Franz shuddered delicately and took it away from him. 'What sort of luck have the others had?' he asked.

  'What do you mean by "luck"?'

  'I suppose I mean . . .'Luis cracked a few knuckles. A fly buzzed overhead and he followed its course until his head would turn no more. 'Damn. You know very well what I mean. How many got caught?'

  'No idea.' Franz tidied the coffee things away and put the Morse buzzers back in place. 'I'm not told that sort of information, it's not necessary.'

  'I suppose it would be foolish to pretend that nobody gets caught.'

  'Foolish and dangerous. All wars are much the same, you know. I believe that during the '14--'18 war about half of all spies were captured as soon as they entered the enemy country.'

  'About half,' Luis whispered. He sat hunched over the table, fingers gently bound, his smooth, sad face staring at nothing.

  'And half were not,' Franz added brightly. He gave the key a brisk, preliminary work-out. 'At least, not immediately. Now then, remember to keep the wrist poised but not stiff ...'

  By midday Luis was sending and receiving very simple messages. His wrist ached and his ears were sick of the probing, peg-legged buzz, but Franz went on and on. Patiently and slowly he tapped out yet another little stream of easy words: How big is new gun?

  Luis slumped and stared at the writing on his message-pad. His mind refused to suggest an answer. 'It's no good,' he said. 'I'm too bloody hungry.'

  'Fine,' Franz told him. 'Send that.'

  Grimly, Luis took hold of the buzzer and pecked out his reply-

  'Broody"?' Franz enquired. 'What is this word "broody?" Please repeat.'

  Luis clenched his teeth and thumped the buzzer again. , Franz scanned what he had written and nodded. 'Ah, Woody,'.he said, 'I see, you are bloody hangry. Is that right? Are you hungry?'

  'Yes,' Luis said furiously. 'And no.'

  'Please repeat.'

  Yet again Luis laboriously spelled out his last, desperate signal. Franz studied the message and smiled. 'I expect you are ready for lunch,' he said. Luis grunted.

  As they walked along corridors to the embassy dining-room, Franz said: 'There's a lesson to be learned from all that, you know.'

  'Yes? What?'

  'If an agent wants to eat, he must first send his signals. And not broody hangry signals, either.'

  After lunch, Otto took charge of Luis. They went to the embassy doctor and Luis was given a long and thorough medical examination. The man weighed and measured him, tested his eye sight and hearing, checked his temperature and the state of his teeth, established that he was free from infectious disease, took samples of blood and urine, X-rayed his lungs and recorded his blood pressure. That much Luis understood. Other tests, involving a lot of cold steel equipment placed against various parts of his body, lasted a further twenty minutes and meant nothing to him. Finally, while he was still naked, a photographer arrived, set up a tripod and took a dozen pictures. 'Hold your chin up and give me a nice smile,' the photographer said.

  'I also croon and tap-dance a little,' Luis said.

  'You can put your clothes on now,' Otto told him.

  'What's the point of all this? I'm not applying for a life-insurance policy. Quite the opposite.''

  'We find it helps to know the state of your health.' Otto picked up the doctor's little rubber hammer and began tapping himself, on the knee, the ankle, the shin. 'You could be dying from something incurable, couldn't you? And obviously that would have influenced your motives. It might have affected your performance, too.'

  'I've got Quixote's Disease,' Luis said. 'That's usually fatal.'

  Otto glanced at the doctor, who shook his head and went on putting away his equipment.

  'It's all in your own interest, anyway,' Otto said. 'Suppose you needed spectacles, or a hearing aid? You don't want to go searching for medical treatment in England, do you?' He rapped himself on the skull, first cautiously, then more resolutely.

  'One tooth requires a small filling,' the doctor said. 'Dr Graumann will do it tomorrow at three.'

  'There you are,, you see? We have just saved you from torture at the hands of some brutal British dentist.' Otto located his breastbone and tested it.

  'Why the photographs?' Luis asked.

  'In case we have to get you some special clothing in an emergency. Military uniform, clerical dress, that sort of thing. The tailor likes to know what you look like.'

  'Next time I'll comb my pubic hair.'

  'You can wear a spotted bow in it, for all we care. Results are what matter here.' Otto struck himself wristily on the point of his left elbow, and exclaimed loudly. 'By God, that hurts!' he told the doctor.

  'Pain is nature's way of telling us to stop hitting ourselves with other people's hammers,' the doctor said. He removed the hammer.

  Luis finished tying his laces. 'I take it, then, that I'm not in a state of decay,' he said.

  'From the age of twenty-five we are all in a state of irreversible decay,' the doctor said. 'Welcome to the club.'

  As Otto walked Luis to another part of the embassy, he said, 'There's no such thing as Quixote's Disease, is there?'

  'All Spaniards suffer from it,' Luis told him sombrely.

  Otto knew it was a leg-pull but he couldn't leave it alone. 'What are the symptoms?' he asked.

  'Hot blood. Steaming hot blood.'

  'Ah. That probably explains all the smouldering eyes one sees.'

  'Yes. Smouldering eyes and burning lips and blistering tongues and smoking shoulderblades and even, at the height of the summer, occasional warm feet.'

  'Sounds uncomfortable.'

  'We have an old saying,' Luis said wisely. ' "Scratch a Spaniard, and start a fire".'

&n
bsp; Otto found that vastly amusing. He laughed and chuckled all the way to another office. He paused with his hand on the door. 'What happens when you scratch a German?' he asked.

  'Start a war?' Luis suggested.

  Otto grunted. 'Just don't try that on Colonel Christian.' He took Luis inside.

  For two hours, a lanky, sandy-haired ex-journalist called Richard Fischer coached Luis in secret writing.

  They practised with a variety of invisible inks on a variety of papers. Sometimes Luis wrote on the back of a sheet of notepaper, sometimes between the lines of a typed letter. Fischer showed him how to unseal all the joins of an ordinary envelope so that its inside surface could be used for secret writing, and then how to reseal the envelope, and then how to slit it open without damaging the message. They studied different printed papers-- insurance policies, bank statements, furniture catalogues, theatre programmes-- while Fischer pointed out advantages and disadvantages: plenty of white space here; glossy surface there, bad for certain inks; this stuffs like blotting-paper, quite useless; that's better but far too small, of course . . . At the end he picked out a British Post Office form, dense with information about revised overseas parcel rates. 'On the whole, I think I'd use this,' he decided.

  'Not much space,' Luis said. The margins were cramped, the lines were crowded. 'It would have to be a very short message. "Dear Hitler, Nothing new this end, Love, Luis." That sort of thing.'

  'What do you bet that I couldn't get the British Army's Order of Battle on there?' Fischer asked. He was as bland as a bigamist.

  Luis found a fifty-peseta note in his back pocket, uncrumpled it and spread it on the table. 'I am sure that I shall soon regret this,' he said.

  'Watch.' Fischer took a scent-spray filled with a faintly green liquid and pumped a fine and gentle mist all over the Post Office form. He placed the form in a patch of sunshine. As the mist dried, a message came into being, all over the form. It was clearly readable because it was in red and because the lines of writing ran at right angles to the lines of print. 'British Order of Battle,' he said.

  'That's clever.'

  'Now watch this.' Fischer took another spray, full of a smoky yellow liquid, and coated the form again. This time, bright green writing appeared between the rows of red words.

  'French Order of Battle,' Fischer said.

  'Formidable! Is there more?'

  'No. Wait a minute: yes.' Fischer turned the form over and held it up to the light. The secret writing showed through, reversed. 'Hebrew Order of Battle,' he announced. Still holding it to the light he turned it upside down. 'Chinese Order of Battle,' he said. He handed the form to Luis.

  'That's quite brilliant,' Luis said. 'And the great thing about it is that, once you have defeated the British, French, Hebrew and Chinese armies, you can still find out what it costs to send a parcel to New Zealand.'

  Fischer shrugged modestly. 'You know how thorough we Germans are.'

  'Mind you, I'm a bit surprised to learn that agents still communicate with invisible ink. This is 1941, after all.'

  'Don't underestimate secret writing,' Fischer warned. 'It's survived because it does a good job. Have you any idea how much mail goes between Britain and the neutrals? Tons and tons of it. Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland, Turkey, Russia, America. The British cannot possibly test every piece of mail. What am I saying? They can't test even one per cent of it! Provided your information isn't red-hot urgent, there's no better way to send it,.especially if it's long and complicated.'

  Luis nodded, studying the British Order of Battle. 'This would make a long radio signal,' he said.

  'Very long. I reckon that by the time you reached there . . .'(Fischer's finger snapped against the form)'. . .British counter-intelligence would be closing in with their butterfly-nets at the ready . . . Now then: time for more practice. Let's find you something tough . . . Summary of bomb damage to Coventry: there, that's pretty juicy stuff.'

  Luis dipped his pen in the clear liquid and carefully wrote his invisible report. 'How can I be sure I haven't made a mistake?' he asked.

  'That's easy,' Fischer told him. 'Each time you make an invisible mistake, we pay you with invisible money.'

  'Ah.' Luis copied out a column of casualty figures. 'I think I shall become infallible.'

  'Good idea,' Fischer said. 'There's not much future in the alternative, I can tell you that.'

  At four o'clock Luis was taken to Colonel Christian's office. The colonel had changed his rumpled brown suit for a rumpled blue suit, but he was just as restless as before. He held a steel-shafted putter and he was hunting a golf ball around the room.

  Luis sat on the sofa and poured himself a cup of tea.

  'Pressure, pressure, pressure,' Christian murmured to himself. 'Think, think, think. Make it happen. Win.' He stroked the ball and watched it miss a potted plant. 'Damn.' He strode after it. 'I hear you halt the British almost as much as I do,' he said flatly.

  Luis sipped his tea. 'I don't hate the British,' he said.

  'Lucky you.' Christian found his ball and hunched over it. 'If you had answered differently, I would have flung you through that large, expensive window and into the street, never to return.' He putted again and tramped on. 'Hatred is about as much use as bile in this job. You'd be amazed at the people I get volunteering to be spies. "Why?" I ask them. "I hate the enemy." Or: "I want to sacrifice myself for the Fatherland." Or: "My father-in-law was a big hero and won several medals." Crash, tinkle-tinkle, straight out the window. Idiots.' He chipped the ball over a foot-rest and watched it ricochet off a small table.

  'I wouldn't be amazed at that,' Luis said. 'We had a war too. I remember seeing the Requetes go into action. They were a sort of Basque militia, you know. Fought for Franco. They always wore brilliant scarlet berets and they always stood up to get a better shot, so the Republicans killed them with enormous rapidity.'

  Christian grunted. He putted past the fireplace, and walked on.

  'I once asked them why they wore such bright red berets, and they said it demonstrated how brave they were. So I asked them why they didn't dig trenches and take cover, and they said they refused to dignify the enemy by hiding from him. Bravery and dignity. More lethal than poison gas.'

  'But you are brave,' Christian said. He twiddled his putter and frowned at the ball.

  'I don't know. I'm not sure that courage really exists. I think it's a necessary myth.'

  'Like God.' Christian played his shot. The ball stopped a long way short of its target. He glared at it.

  'I thought I met a brave man once,' Luis said. 'Now I think he was probably just obstinate. I thought I was quite brave, once, but now I know I was just showing off.'

  'I admire the British, you know.' Christian said. 'We Germans have never really wanted to destroy Britain. You might remember that when you're over there.'

  Luis made an acknowledging grunt. Christian found his ball trapped behind an escritoire, and hooked it out. 'The British are remarkably inventive, for one thing. They invented lawn tennis, and several kinds of football, and even golf. Remarkably inventive people. What would you say is their most powerful weapon?'

  Luis knew enough of Colonel Christian's fast mental footwork to feel sure that 'inventiveness' was not the right answer. 'Tell you in six months,' he said.

  'It's obvious, man. Stark staring obvious.' The ball had rolled onto the carpet and was now perched on a tuft. Christian got into position and waggled the club about while he glanced at his reflection in a large, gilded mirror which covered half of one wall. Luis slumped deeper into the sofa and rested his teacup against his chest. It was a pleasant way to end an industrious day. conversing with one's boss. Christian stopped waggling, brought his bristling eyebrows together, pressed his chin hard down, took one last sideways glance at his reflection, breathed deeply, raised the club until it just missed a chandelier, and whacked the ball as hard as he could. Luis heard the whoosh of the putter-head racing through the air and he ducked behind the arm of the sofa
. The thwack was meaty and the ball streaked away, but Christian had hooked his shot. It missed the mirror and smashed into a door, making it shiver. Christian fell to the floor as the ball whizzed furiously about the room, attacking two walls and the fireplace before thudding against an armchair and trickling to a halt.

  Very carefully, Luis raised his saucer, which was half-full of spilt tea, and put it on the tray. 'Is that game over now?' he asked. 'And did you win?'

  'We nearly had them in 1917, you know.' Christian's voice was soft, a little wistful, almost affectionate. He had rolled onto his back and was lying with his hands linked behind his head. 'It was so close. Another dozen torpedoes in the right place and Germany would have won that war.'

  'You mean the submarines? U-boats?'

  'We nearly starved them into surrender. They were actually running out of food in 1917. If only we could have sunk a few more ships . . . Just think: none of the shame of 1918 would have happened. No disgrace, no betrayal. No occupation by foreign troops, no mutilated frontiers, no massive reparations, no confiscated industries, no inflation, no economic chaos, no civil disorder . . .' Christian smiled at the ceiling.

  'No Hitler?' Luis suggested.

  The colonel swivelled his eyes and gave him a hard look.

  'Well, it's a logical conclusion,' Luis argued. 'After all, if Germany--'

  'To get back to the sea,' Christian said firmly. 'The sea is Britain's greatest weapon. It saved her after the fall of France. The sea is also Britain's greatest weakness. Remember that.'

  'All right.'

  'Now look in the piano.'

  Luis heaved up the top of the baby grand and found, lying on the strings, the maps of Britain which he had been shown the day before. 'Oh yes,' he said. 'I remember this stuff.'

  'Well, now you can disremember it.' Christian got up, took the maps, and peeled them off, sheet by sheet. 'Coastal approaches, submarine access, parachute areas: that's all nonsense. Rail network; nonsense. Distribution of Abwehr agents: nonsense. Location of British military bases: utter nonsense. Abwehr radio network: pure fantasy. Forget them all.' He,threw the maps behind the sofa.