The Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

  She went to the front desk and asked for her letter, crumpled it in her fist, and took it up to her room. She got some matches. The letter was squeezed into a hard ball. That would never burn. She opened it out. The handwriting was bold and fluent. Did that reveal the man, or conceal him? Luis had seemed childishly honest at times. So what? Absolutely honest children could also be the most sadistic, fascist little bastards . . . 'Oh, the hell with everything!' she said angrily, and ripped open the envelope. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

  Dear Mrs Conroy:

  All week I have been looking forward to writing this letter, and now that I find some spare time at last, there is almost nothing I can tell you which is new. This is because the British censorship is very strict, so I cannot even mention the weather here, or describe London, or tell you about my business dealings, in case the censor decides that it might give the Axis powers some useful information.

  So I shall merely say that I am well and working hard. I don't see how those facts can make any difference to anyone, except perhaps to you!

  I miss Madrid very much, and I miss you a very great deal. It is hard for me to make friends here. In any case, I am not sure that I want to. This is a poor letter. There is so much that I should be able to say, and cannot.

  Yours sincerely, Luis Cabrillo.

  Julie read it quickly, twice, and put it away. She was relieved and disappointed. It is hard for me to make friends here . . . Tough shit, Luis; you should've thought of that before you took the lousy job. She imagined him tramping around Westminster and Whitehall and Leicester Square, snooping on everyone, trusting no one, going home to a lonely bed, with a headful of crappy secrets and a gutful of lousy rations. Half a gutful more likely. You dumb joker, Luis, she thought. You sold out, didn't you? How in God's name could anyone so smart be so stupid)

  The rest of the day was a waste of time. Her shoulder throbbed. She couldn't sit or lie comfortably. Her monthly cheque still hadn't arrived. The skies clouded over in the afternoon and kept a grey padded lid on the city. She wandered around her room, sometimes fiddling with the dials of a radio in search of the BBC; but the dry static of the Spanish plateau crackled endlessly, and all she could find was meaningless European gabble, or shrunken accordion-music. When dusk came she gave up, took a long hot bath, and stunned the ache in her shoulder with a litre of wine. Even so, sleep came slowly. Luis's letter had been no help to her. He'd gone away; he should have stayed away.

  Next morning her shoulder moved a little more easily. In a burst of decisiveness, she telephoned the U.S. Embassy and made an appointment to see George Langham.

  She met him at noon. By twelve-twenty she was out in the street again, angry and depressed. Langham had been blunt: the embassy would not attempt to persuade the British authorities to let her enter that country. 'We don't let them pressure us about our immigration procedures,' he said, 'and they feel the same way about theirs. Those people are fighting for their lives, you know. Shiploads of food are getting torpedoed in the Atlantic every day. Everything's rationed over there. Everything.'

  'I don't care, I can live on fresh air, I'll do without my rations, I just want to be there.'

  'Look, Mrs Conroy, the last thing the British need right now is tourists.' Langham compressed his lips while he looked at her. 'Take my advice and find yourself another boyfriend.'

  Julie reddened. 'What the hell is that supposed to mean?'

  He made a sour face. 'We're not complete stuffed shirts here in the embassy, Mrs Conroy. We know all about Mr Cabrillo.' Flabby, wet-lipped little George Langham was revealing a surprising toughness; even a hint of hostility. 'As far as this embassy is concerned, Mr Cabrillo was no joke when he was here in Madrid. In Britain, he can only be very bad news to anyone who contacts him.'

  'I don't want to go to Britain to contact him.'

  Langham looked away. He didn't believe her, but he wasn't going to argue about it.

  'You're saying: go home and play with your dolls, little girl,' Julie said angrily. 'Leave the fighting to the grownups. What the hell are the grown-ups of America doing right now?'

  'Be your age, Mrs Conroy. Everything's changed since Hitler went into Russia.' Langham stood. The meeting was over. 'Didn't you read what Senator Truman just said? He said we should stand aside and let the Russians and Germans cut each other's throats. Now why does he say that? Because he knows a hundred million Americans already think it, that's why.'

  'Then they're all crazy.'

  'Don't sit here and tell me that, Mrs Conroy. Go back home and tell them . You're itching for a fight, aren't you? Well, they'll give you one.'

  She killed the rest of the day, just walking about Madrid. Langham's final suggestion kept annoying her, largely because she knew he was right. The obvious, sensible thing to do was to go back to her family in Indiana. Back to her father, who operated a Coca-Cola distributorship; his idea of war began and ended with Pepsi-Cola, Dr Pepper and 7-Up. Back to her mother, who was secretary of the Republican Ladies' Circle; whenever Julie argued politics, her mother kept a fixed smile until she could play her ace: 'You can't change human nature, deary.' There was an elder sister, married to a real-estate agent, and a younger brother, studying to be an optician. There was also a gang of aunts and uncles and cousins, all lifetime subscribers to Readers Digest and dedicated opponents of divorce, gambling and Socialism, which (as everyone knew) came out of places like New York City. Harry Conroy had come out of New York City: he didn't wear a tie, he never went to church, he said Readers Digest was pre-shrunk junk for happy hicks, and when Julie announced they were going to get married, everyone just knew it was bound to 'end in disaster and unhappiness all round. And as it happened, everyone was damn right. Which was why Julie, wandering along the Alcala and the Gran Via and then getting hopelessly lost in the Old City and just walking and walking with her shadow always in front of her until she ended up looking across an avenue at the hulking mass of the Prado, her feet aching and her mind dazed -- Julie Conroy knew that, above all, she didn't want to go back to bloody Indiana. On the other hand, what the hell else was there?

  Mercury normally transmitted messages, from his house on Clapham Common in South London to the Abwehr monitoring station in Holland, at 3 a.m. Otto Krafft set his alarm clock for 3.30 a.m. and by the time he had shaved and dressed, Mercury's report was waiting for him in the teleprinter room. Otto Krafft decoded it in less than five minutes. The transcript was on Colonel Christian's desk when he came in from breakfast at 8 a.m., lying alongside Eldorado's report. Christian read it at a glance. In two dozen words, Mercury had confirmed everything.

  Christian felt a surge of excitement. He smiled, and stretched his strong arms and legs until their muscles would give no more. It was time now to share the good news. He lifted the phone and asked for Captain Mullen.

  When Otto mentioned Mercury's signal to the others, Richard Fischer said he was not surprised. 'I've been checking Eldorado's information about bomber airfields in eastern England." Fischer said. 'It fits the pattern of British raids on northern Europe.'

  'Airfields are hard to hide,' Wolfgang Adler said.

  'Could you plot every Spanish airfield within two hundred miles of Madrid, in less than a week?' Fischer asked. 'And without a car?'

  But Wolfgang refused to be enthusiastic.

  'I don't rate Mercury highly,' he said. 'He's a frightened little bureaucratic asslicker, working for his pension. He hates responsibility and he's got no more initiative than the janitor's cat.'

  'How's your ankle, Wolfgang?' Otto asked.

  'It's got nothing to do with my ankle. I don't like Eldorado and I never did, but that doesn't influence my judgement. In my opinion, Eldorado's unreliable and Mercury's a feather-weight.'

  'So what do you suggest?' Dr Hartmann asked. 'That we ignore their reports?'

  Wolfgang was silent.

  'You know your trouble,' Richard Fischer told him. 'You think everybody cheats.'

  'Well, spies are
professional cheats,' Wolfgang replied, 'and some of them don't know when to stop.'

  'Perhaps that explains Eldorado's amazing output,' Otto said. 'We've just received another report from him. Twelve pages, this time. The colonel's reading it now.'

  'Good heavens!' Fischer exclaimed. 'Twelve pages?'

  'And not a single spelling mistake,' Otto said.

  Wolfgang sniffed.

  'You might as well face it, friend,' Fischer told him. 'We're stuck with a success.'

  Wolfgang Adler was not telling the truth when he said that his attitude towards Eldorado had nothing to do with his ankle.

  The truth was that his ankle was mending slowly and painfully. The doctors suspected permanent damage to the joint, and they had warned him that he might never be able to ski again. The injury to his wrist was also giving him trouble: numbness in the fingers, and a nagging ache that often refused to let him sleep. He hid his pain from the others, and as a result it more and more occupied his mind: the pain, and his sense of grievance against the man who had caused it. Wolfgang Adler had always suspected that life would cheat him. It had happened once already. He was bitter about that. He was a man who found it easy to be bitter.

  As long as he could remember, Wolfgang had resented his circumstances. His parents had been a dull couple-- father an architect, mother a teacher -- and growing up in die suburbs of Cologne never satisfied him. School was boring. He was a clever boy and he didn't try to hide his contempt for less clever children, so they soon left him alone. That suited Wolfgang: he found all their games slow and irksome. Girls had much the same effect. By the age of seventeen he was a gloomy little prig.

  Then he discovered flying. It happened because, at the dine, he believed that mathematics was the only thing worth his attention, and the University of Vienna the only place worth studying it. When the University required an inter-view, his father astonished everyone. He sent Wolfgang to Vienna by air.

  The experience shattered all Wolfgang's armourplated adolescent disdain. The pilot was a showman who entertained his passengers by banking steeply soon after take-off, and by skimming like a skier along the hills and valleys of the clouds. Wolfgang got permission to sit beside him in the cockpit. As he watched the lucky genius in command of this astonishing machine, alone and untroubled, high in the vastness of the sky, he surrendered to a strange, new feeling. It was envy. He wanted to be a pilot so much that it hurt.

  Next year he went to London University and studied engineering, simply and solely in order to help him get into the Luftwaffe. He graduated, and the Luftwaffe accepted aim for training. He was happy at last. He was flying and he was good at it. He was the first on his course to go solo, and He was flying solo when he got the terrible pain in his ear.

  It hurt so much that he made a bad landing, and he pretended to be slightly airsick so that he could go away and hide. The pain faded after an hour, leaving him tired and afraid. Next day it happened again and he thought he knew the cause: change of pressure caused by sudden loss of height. He went up and tried it once more, just to be sure. This time it hurt so much that he screamed.

  The medical officer explained everything, but Wolfgang was too depressed and disgusted to listen or even to speak. His stupid, shitty ear had betrayed him: nothing else mattered. What was the point of having a damn ear if it didn't work? He felt like cutting the idiot thing off. He felt like cutting his throat while he was at it.

  In this frame of mind he got an order to see the station commander. He went expecting polite sympathy and a firm goodbye. The station commander said nothing about his ear; instead, he invited him to apply for the Abwehr. He made the work sound challenging, unpredictable and risky. Glad of any distraction, Wolfgang agreed. The Abwehr was quite pleased to have him; nevertheless there was always something missing, a lack which left him emotionally lopsided. His natural enthusiasm had burned itself out. He was still ambitious, but his ambition was scarred by resentment. He had been cheated out of flying and he would always be dissatisfied with second-best. And now, thanks to Luis Cabrillo, it looked as if he would even be cheated out of second-best. The rank unfairness hurt him more than the pain, He carried his grudge with every step he limped.

  Chapter 36

  The next week passed slowly for Julie. Her shoulder improved enough to let her go swimming again, and she trudged up and down the pool. She bought a bigger radio and received much louder static. Either the BBC was jammed or she was looking in the wrong place. She bought a Spanish newspaper and, pocket-dictionary in hand, began doggedly translating the lead story, a speech by Foreign Minister Suner: 'The Falange now takes up arms in the European crusade against Asiatic barbarism . . .'There was a map showing the latest German advances. The Spanish contingent had better hurry, Julie thought, or there won't be any Asiastic barbarism left to conquer. Suner went on to Victory by the axis over Russia will convince the USA that her entry into the war would be useless. Britain will then accept peace as her only salvation . . .' She skipped to the next story. The French Vichy Government had broken off relations with Russia. Hungary had declared war on Russia. So had Rumania, Slovakia and Finland. Jesus! she thought, any more join in and they'll have to take turns to fight.

  An American journalist called Evans took her out to dinner. He was a friend of Harry's, in Madrid to try for an interview with Franco. 'It wouldn't surprise anyone if he joined the Axis,' Evans said.

  'I still can't believe those sons-of-bitches are really going to win,'Julie said.

  'Well, it certainly looks like the end of the war,' Evans remarked. 'If I were you, I'd get the hell out of Europe while I could.'

  She told him about wanting to go to Britain. He thought out the problem. 'I came across a guy in Lisbon who might be able to help,' he said. 'I was going to do a story around him, but. . . Seems he has a line in passports, visas, entry papers, that sort of thing. I mean, it's all strictly illegal.

  Julie shrugged. "Okay. The only address I have is a hospital.' He wrote it out for her and added the name: Antonio da Silva. 'Whatever he sells you, don't give him more than fifty dollars, tops.' Julie got fairly drunk that night. Evans had offered to call New York and find out where her cheque was; stubbornly, rapidly, she told him that was Harry's problem. Evans could tell her nothing of Harry's whereabouts. She felt lost: had no liking for Spain; Britain didn't need her; and she didn't want America. It was half-past three in the morning

  when she awoke, alone and crying. For several long and

  wretched seconds she did not know where she was. Then the dim, familiar outlines of her room gradually took shape.

  She got up, still crying, washed her face, and cried some more into the hotel's bulky towel, until the fit had exhausted itself. She dragged a blanket off the bed, wrapped herself in it and wrote to Luis Cabrillo.

  It was a long letter, full of self-pity and anger and tenderness and self-mocking. She wrote without pause, almost without thought: the words were waiting piled up inside her. When she had stuffed the pages into an envelope and addressed it care of Banco Espirito Santo, Lisbon, she went back to bed and fell asleep at once.

  They were clearing away the breakfast things when she came down, feeling stretched and wary because of her hangover. It created an over-inflated, insecure sensation, like going down in a fast lift. She had an irrational conviction that she was going to drop Luis's letter unless she constantly remembered to hold it.

  The assistant manager hurried towards her. 'Senora Conroy! Something for you!' His smile made his moustache bristle with pride. 'From New York, Senora!'

  'Hey, that's great.' Julie took the letter and sat in the nearest chair. The letter was from Harry's agency; their return address was on the envelope. She slit the flap. There was no cheque inside, only a short letter. It informed her, as a matter of courtesy, that Mr Conroy was no longer employed by them.

  Julie got Evans on the phone. 'My guess is he's gone freelance,' Evans said. 'Harry often talked about doing that, you know.'

  'And w
hat about me?'

  'Well, I can lend you a few bucks if--'

  'No, no, no. I've got a few bucks. But he's supposed to support me, for Christ's sake! What the hell does he think he's doing?'

  Pause. Evans sighed. 'You know old Harry,' he said.

  'Yeah. That was where I made my big mistake.'

  She drank a cup of coffee and went back upstairs. She took the lift; it went like a rocket and made her feel like a melting snowman. In her room, she did some rough reckoning and let out a groan. What she'd told Evans was right: she had a few bucks. Enough to pay the hotel, get to Lisbon, and buy an airline ticket, one-way, to New York. She glared at the magnificent Madrid sunshine, flooding through her window. The entire goddam world was ganging up to drive her back to goddam Indiana, led by Harry goddam Conroy! Luis's letter was on the bed. No point in sending that now. She tore it up and began packing.

  Chapter 37

  Only one thing spoiled Colonel Christian's general happiness in July of 1941, and that was Wolfgang Adler's coldness.

  The war was going extremely well and Eldorado was doing even better: twice a week, sometimes three times a week, Otto Krafft opened new reports which were stuffed with valuable information about British military abilities and intentions. The Madrid weather was sunny and invigorating. Captain Mullen had stopped nagging him for I action, Berlin was congratulatory, and Christian's bowels had resumed normal service. Everyone was cheerful and enthusiastic except Wolfgang Adler. He was not antagonistic he was just silent. He limped into meetings, sat with his damaged hand tucked inside his jacket and said nothing. ' But his stony expression plainly disapproved of what he heard.