The Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

  'You said yourself that Mullen's a dummy,' Freddy observed. 'I think somebody must have screwed his head on the wrong way round. Does he want Luis and me to go around Madrid in lederhosen, singing the Horst Wessel song and giving flowers to German officers?' Christian sighed and closed his eyes. 'Well, why not?' Freddy demanded. 'That would show everyone whose side we were on, wouldn't it?'

  Christian heaved himself up. 'This is a secret service,' he said. 'Captain Mullen won't stand for publicity of any kind.'

  'I can't stop her shouting at Germans,' Luis said.

  'You should never have allowed the situation to arise in the first place,' Christian told him sharply. 'How the devil can I run this department when you turn a simple tennis-match into a brawl?'

  'We didn't approach you tonight, colonel,' Freddy pointed out. 'You made the first move.'

  'You could have stopped her.'

  'Bosh! Look: once you'd insulted her I had to defend her. Right? In any case, what's the panic about? Personally, I think that little dust-up was the best thing that could have happened for everyone.'

  'Fischer may have concussion.'

  'Excellent,' Luis said. 'The British will never suspect us now.'

  They argued the point for another ten minutes, while the cat walked amongst them and rubbed itself on their legs. In the end Christian seemed suddenly to get bored. He told them they could go.

  Perhaps the cat is not so stupid,' Luis said as they went out. "After all, it does succeed in entering the room.'

  Christian yawned. 'One day,' he said, 'it will rattle that 'doorknob and I shall open the door and boot it straight through the window.'

  Luis and Freddy shared a taxi back to their apartments. 'What d'you think all that was about?' Freddy asked.

  Wasn't it about Julie and the tennis?' Luis was surprised at his question.

  Christian isn't that stupid. And neither is Mullen. It's all rather odd.'

  'Oh sweet Jesus,' Luis said miserably. 'Why did you have to tell me that? I was just beginning to relax.'

  'Oh, never relax,' Freddy told him seriously. 'It rots your socks

  Chapter 27

  Next morning they continued training as if nothing had happened. The first lesson was in converting British weights, measures and currency to metric and German units. Luis felt tired; he missed the couple of hours sleep he had lost. Freddy, looking as refreshed as ever, helped

  Richard Fischer to coach him.

  'All right, Luis: you pay for a threepenny bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate with a ten-bob note. How much change d'you get?'

  'A bob is a shilling,' Fischer reminded.

  'Ten bob . . . Three pence . . .' Luis yawned. 'Sixteen pence equal one shilling, so ...'

  'No, no,' Fischer said. 'You're thinking of ounces. Sixteen ouces make one pound.'

  'I thought that was twenty shillings,' Luis said.

  'One pound weight,' Fischer explained.

  'Oh yes. Pound weight.' Luis wrote 16=1, and stared at it hard. 'That's right, I remember now. And a hundred of them is called ... a hundredweight.'

  'Actually, a hundred and twelve, Luis,' said Freddy. 'One hundredweight equals a hundred and twelve pounds.'

  'That doesn't make any sense.'

  'Well, it does if you remember that fourteen pounds equal one stone and two stone make one quarter,' Fischer told him. 'The sequence is sixteen, fourteen, twenty-eight, one hundred and twelve.'

  Luis wrote it all down. 'Bloody hell,' he said.

  'No, you're thinking of liquid measure,' Freddy said. ' That's bloody hell. Four gills one pint, two pints one quart, four quarts one gallon, except in America, where their measures are ever so slightly smaller.'

  'Why?'

  Freddy shrugged. 'So they can imagine they drink more, I suppose.'

  'I shall forget about America,' Luis decided.

  'Oh no.' Fischer winced: he still had a dull headache and a slight singing in the ears. 'That could lead to serious inaccuracy, for instance in fuel-consumption figures--'

  'All right, all right . . . Now I've forgotten what I was buying.'

  'Tell you what,' Freddy said. 'Let's make it a yard and a half of pork sausage, at two-pence-farthing a foot.'

  'A foot.' Luis looked at his own feet. 'A foot is what?'

  'Twelve inches,' said Fischer automatically.

  'Or think of it this way,' Freddy suggested. 'Three-and-a-~.i feet give you one metre.'

  'What would I want with such a great length of pork sausage?' Luis asked.

  Listen, chum, if you can get a yard and a half of genuine pork bangers, you grab 'em,' Freddy advised. 'I'll scoff 'em, if you don't. Britain's gift to western civilisation, the noble banger.'

  When they left Fischer and went to the restaurant for a coffee break, Luis felt as tired as if he had worked a full day. The steady buzz of conversation seemed to wrap him in a seamless cloak. He propped his head on his fist and let his eyes watch Freddy writing a letter. That too was soothing: the pen danced smoothly across the page, trailing line after line of neatly manufactured words. Freddy wrote well; he did everything well; he was a brilliant all-rounder. That was what made him such a reassuring person to have on one's side. Luis found it impossible to imagine anything very unpleasant happening to him as long as Freddy was around.

  How would you pass a secret note to an accomplice in a crowded restaurant?' Freddy asked.

  Luis came awake with a start. 'Make it look like the bill?' he suggested.

  'A long note,' Freddy said. 'And please don't suggest eating a long meal.' Give up.'

  Freddy leaned back and linked his hands behind his head. 'Move your chair forward and slouch a bit. Now let your hands hang between your knees, under the tablecloth.'

  Luis did as he was told. Freddy's foot nudged one hand.

  He felt around the foot and found an envelope tucked down the side of the shoe. 'Got it,' he said.

  'Good. Now this is the difficult bit. Can you eat it, without moving your hands?' Luis stiffened, and stared.

  'Never mind, we'll practise that next week. For now, just fold it and stuff it up your sleeve, as far as it'll go. successful?' Freddy stood up. 'Keep it hidden. Shall we go?'

  They set off for Dr Hartmann and a refresher lesson in radio maintenance. 'Who taught you that trick?' Luis asked.

  'W. C. Fields. Only he did it with the ace of diamonds.'

  Dr Hartmann was eager to start work. He had rigged up a gadget which made the electric light flash off and on at brief but irregular intervals; this, he said, would simulate difficult conditions in the field and thus make today's exercise in emergency repairs as realistic as possible.

  'Tell you what,' Freddy suggested. 'I'll stand in the corridor and toss hand-grenades through the fanlight, while Luis hides all the screwdrivers. That should be even more realistic.'

  Dr Hartmann conceded a short and wintry smile, and closed the curtains. The training exercise began.

  After five minutes the telephone rang. Dr Hartmann answered it, his face changing expression jerkily as the light found him and lost him and found him again.

  'A change in the schedule,' he announced. 'You are to report to the sub-basement immediately.'

  For a moment Freddy remained bent over the dismantled transmitter, his hands full of parts. Carefully he put them down. 'What a bore,' he said. 'Just as I was expanding the frontiers of science.'

  Otto Krafft met them when the lift opened at the sub-basement level. 'Follow me,' he said. They walked along a corridor. Luis was puzzled: he couldn't remember having come this way before, yet it looked oddly familiar. The odd-ness was that he had no idea where it led. They turned a corner, and Otto opened a steel door. He held it while Luis and Freddy went inside. Franz Werth, in freshly laundered white overalls, was sitting in a steel chair behind a steel table. The whole room was steel. Suddenly Luis understood the strange familiarity of the corridor. The only other time he had used it, he had walked in the opposite direction, away from this room. It seemed a very
long time ago.

  Freddy breathed on a wall and watched his misted breath ride to nothing. 'I suppose it makes for easy dusting,' he remarked.

  This is the Joke Department,' Luis said. 'Nothing is what it seems.'

  Please do not talk,' Otto announced.

  He stood by the door and stared at the opposite wall. Franz sat at the table and maintained a plump and gentle smile. A minute passed. Luis stopped walking up and down, and stood with his arms crossed, watching Freddy do little

  tricks with a coin: tossing it and catching it on the back of his hand. Another minute passed. Luis began to get bored, and he entertained himself with thoughts of Julie Conroy,

  her satisfying face, her splendid body, her altogether admirable relish for lovemaking . . . He was almost too successful: the prospect made him inhale sharply, and Otto glanced at him. But then the door opened and Colonel Christian came in, followed by Richard Fischer and Wolfgang Adler, who was still using a stick. Otto swung the door shut. The firm, well-made chunk echoed briefly off the walls. Christian walked over to the desk, while the other men stood beside Otto

  Luis and Freddy waited and watched. Christian seemed to be considering something; he rippled his fingertips on the table-top. then breathed in deeply through his nose, and cleared his throat. 'This man Ryan,' he said to Franz, 'is a British spy. Shoot him.'

  Luis half-suppressed a snort of amusement. Franz brought his right hand from under the table. It held the same black pistol with the same fat silencer. His arm extended. He shut one eye. The gun made a feathery phphutt and the impact made a thud like a rubber stamp. Freddy Ryan collapsed to his knees as if seized with a compulsion to pray, and at once fell forward, his arms flopping, his face skidding on the steel floor.

  You know, somebody's going to get hurt if you keep on doing that,' Luis said.

  Nobody moved.

  'Two things,' Christian said. 'One: this was not done at Captain Mullen's command, this was my decision entirely. Two: your mission to England will take place as planned. Make sure,' he said to Otto.

  Luis felt a stoniness begin to settle on his guts. He moved aside to let Otto kneel and heave Freddy Ryan onto his back. There were odd drops and" dribbles of blood on the floor. The centre of the shirt wore a rich red splash, like a wine-spill , which kept soaking outwards. Using only the tips of his thumb and index finger, Otto lifted the tie so that he could see the bullet-hole. He nodded and dropped the tie. Only then did Luis move to see Freddy Ryan's face. The eyes were halfshut and the mouth was gaping; he looked outwitted. That was unacceptable, it was insulting, it was obscene; Freddy never looked like that, not the real Freddy, never in his life; he was incapable of ... Luis straightened, and stared at Colonel Christian. 'You have really killed him,' he said. He was shaking with rage.

  'Of course we have,' Christian said sharply. 'He was a British spy, he had to be killed.'

  'But for God's sake!' The room seemed frozen, while Luis was in turmoil. 'You didn't even let him speak!'

  'Why should I let him speak? He was spying on us for the British. We found evidence last night when we searched his apartment. I myself double-checked the evidence this morning. The only thing left to do was to kill him. Which I decided you ought to see. Now please get back to your training with . . .'

  'Dr Hartmann,' Otto said.

  'No,' said Luis, 'I don't believe it.' Part of him wanted to cry, and part of him wanted to fight someone; anyone. 'Somebody's made a mistake, this is all wrong.'

  'Ryan made a mistake,' Christian said flatly, 'and now everything is all right. Get back to your training.'

  'After this?' Luis cried. 'After this?'

  'After this . . .' Christian snapped his fingers at Ryan's body. '. . . it is twice as important to make sure that you succeed. You must try harder than he did, or one day you will look as foolish as he does now.'

  'You sonofabitch,' Luis said weakly. 'I'm glad you realise it,' Christian told him. 'That considerably improves your chances of survival.'

  Chapter 28

  Midway through the buffet luncheon in Colonel Christian's room, Luis knew why he felt so good. At first, when he had gone back to Dr Hartmann to finish the lesson in emergency radio repairs, he had felt nothing; it was as if the shock had swept him clean of all emotion, left him scoured and purified; nothing could touch him. That feeling lasted while he methodically reassembled the Abwehr transmitter, comforted by routine. Then, when he tested the set and it worked, perfectly, he was startled by a little surge of pleasure. Otto came in at 12.30 and told him to wash his hands: the Colonel was giving a little luncheon party to discuss Luis's mission.

  All the tutors were present; there was wine, and an atmosphere as of a graduation ceremony. Luis was treated with friendly respect. He found himself being gently circulated so that everybody chatted to him but nobody monopolised him. They discussed his progress (which they found encouraging) and his prospects (which they regarded as favourable).

  From time to time the embassy waiters attended to his glass or to his plate; once every ten or fifteen minutes Christian drifted across and mentioned some interesting snippet of war news: the triumph of the Luftwaffe in Crete, the amusing likelihood that Vichy France would declare war on Britain if Churchill tried to occupy Syria, the way the German navy was sinking Atlantic convoys faster than Admiral Raeder could count them, which admittedly was not very fast; indeed, said Christian, Raeder's mental arithmetic was probably the biggest obstacle the U-boat captains faced . . . He crowded his shaggy eyebrows together with mock-intensity; people chuckled; Luis found himself smiling. He felt good, and he knew why. Death was intolerable, unthinkable, and so he had turned his back on it; rather than weep, he chose to smile. Christian drifted away again. Wolfgang Adler limped over, said something nice about Luis's aptitude for codes and ciphers,and asked his opinion on current British writers of humorous fiction: Waugh or Wodehouse, for instance, which was better?

  It was all very comfortable, very reassuring, slightly flattering, and completely unreal. Luis felt part of his mind clamouring to scream obscenities at them at all, to smash chairs and rip down loaded tablecloths and erupt into a whirling, flailing frenzy of attack: anything, as long as it shattered this gentle, well-mannered burble which was pressing him down like a great, soft, padded lid. But after a minute Otto wandered by and mentioned that they shared a common interest in the cinema; what did Luis think of the director Alfred Hitchcock . . .?

  Lunch ended at two o'clock, and Franz Werth took Luis away for an hour's Morse-code, practice.

  Ten minutes into the lesson, a man walked briskly along the corridor outside Franz's room. Luis stopped transmitting. As the footsteps came to the door, his heart panicked and tried to out race itself. He looked at Franz: but Franz just smiled, questioningly. He turned and stared at the door. The footsteps went on, fading. Luis was hunched like a question mark; there was sweat on his face and in his armpits.

  'You have nothing to be afraid of,' said Franz.

  'It sounded like him,' Luis whispered. 'I thought ... I thought it was Freddy.' His voice was stretched thin.

  'Your technique is now quite excellent,' Franz said, 'so I think we can concentrate on improving the speed.'

  Luis shoved the Morse key aside. 'What did you do with him?'

  'Let us try a fresh--'

  'Where is he? I want to see him. Freddy was . . .Jesus Christ Almighty!' Luis hammered both fists on the table as grief and fury swept away his flimsy defences. 'He was my friend! Don't you understand? You killed my friend!' Please, please . . .' Franz hurried around the table, chubby face unhappy, neat little hands reaching out to restrain. As soon as the fingers touched him, Luis felt a jolt of revulsion. He struggled to stand but one foot was hooked behind the chair leg. Franz gripped him. He kept making soothing sounds in a curiously fluted voice: 'Sit back now . . . rest . . . please, please ... do rest . . .' There was something wrong with Luis's lungs, he couldn't get enough air, his face felt waxy, his legs were enormously heavy and
remote. Then he was uncontrollably sick.

  Franz got the wastepaper bin underneath him in time to catch the worst of it, but Luis and the table and the floor were still a mess. Franz sat him in a corner and gave him the bin to hold, while he telephoned somebody, A nurse came with towels and warm water. A doctor came, with strong fingers and a stethoscope which slid over and around Luis's naked chest as if tracking some sly enemy who kept trying to hide in a new place. A porter came, with mops and buckets. Franz had opened a window; now he stood beside it, looking concerned. Finally, Otto Krafft came and, as soon as Luis could walk, led him away to a very quiet bedroom.

  Luis lay down and watched the dim dapples of reflected sunlight tremble on the ceiling. He felt gutted. You never cease to surprise me, Mr Cabrillo,' Otto said. 'During your Civil War you must have seen many executions and some a lot less efficient than today's.' Luis thought about that for a while. Undeniably, clubs, bayonets and garrottes were less efficient than Franz's big black pistol. Phphutt-thud. Instant destruction. Probably quite painless. But that was what made it so wrong; it was unacceptable that Freddy Ryan, a splendid man, a gifted, handsome, funny, clever, lively person, could be wiped out so easily. A man with so much to give to life deserved to be able to fight against death, not just be switched off like an electric light. It was all grotesquely lopsided. 'You didn't even give him a chance to say anything,' he said.

  'Come; you know what he would have said. He had to be killed; you must see that.'

  Otto waited. Luis searched for an escape. Nothing offered itself, but he could not tell Otto that he was right. 'I don't believe Freddy was a British spy,' he muttered.

  'The evidence we have absolutely damns him. The humane, as well as the efficient, thing was to kill him at once. He knew that.'

  'I don't suppose you will show me the evidence.

  'No.'

  'It was such a lousy, rotten way to die.' Luis heard the catch in his own voice, and swallowed a couple of times. 'It was such a piece of shit,' he said.

  'Again, I am surprised at you,' Otto told him calmly. 'Surely it must be obvious that, if you had gone to England with Ryan, he would have betrayed you to the British.'