Len Deighton - Harry Palmer 02 - Horse Under Water

by Horse Under Water(Lit)

  Joe began to tell me the arrangements he had made. The nearest town to the Wreck is Albufeira, here...' Joe hadn't changed much from the tall, muscular, Intelligence Corps lieutenant who came to Lisbon as my assistant hi 1942. '.... This is a list of all the wrecks that have happened between Sagres and Huelva and...' Scores of young Intelligence Officers came to Lisbon hi '41 and '42, ah1 anxious to spend one strenuous week bringing the Axis to its knees. Mostly they fell prey to the simplest little security traps we set or they got into arguments with Germans in cafe's. We hooked their new boys and they hooked ours, and old timers (anyone who had spent more than three months there) exchanged sardonic smiles with their enemy opposite number over thimbles of black coffee. '-----using an Italian civilian frogman with whom I have worked before. He is perhaps the best frogman hi Europe today, If you stop overnight hi the town I have marked I'll phone him to meet you there. Code word: conversation. I'll be going by another route.'

  'Joe,' I said. Through the window I could just see Mount Hacho on the North African mainland across the clear air and sunny water of the Straits. 'What have you been told about this operation?'

  Joe slowly brought a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, took one and offered them.

  'No thanks,' I said. He lit his own and then put away his matches. His hands moved very slowly but I knew his mind was working like lightning.

  He said, 'You know the Wren with the rather large...'

  'I know the one,' I said.

  'She's the cipher clerk,' Joe said. 'I was chatting her up the other day when I noticed a clip-board with carbons of all the messages I've sent from here to London over the last two months. They all had BXJ in the corner. I'd never heard of that priority before, so I asked her what it was.' He dragged on the cigarette. 'They are sending all our signals traffic to somebody in London for analysis.' Joe looked at me quizzically.

  'Who?' I said.

  'She's only the clerk,' Joe said, 'it's the signals officer that redirects them, but she...' He tailed off.

  'Go on.'

  'She's not sure.'

  'So she's not sure.'

  'But she thinks it goes to somebody c/o the House of Commons.'

  I signalled for some more coffee and the Spanish waitress brought us a big jug. 'Have some coffee,' I said, 'and relax; it'll all work out.'

  He gave me a shy Li'l Abner smile. 'I wanted to tell you,' he said, 'but it sounds so unlikely.' We went down to Andalusian Cars in City Mill Lane to pick up a grey Vauxhall Victor for me and a Simca for Joe. He started out for Albufeira and would be there before evening. I had some things to attend to in Gibraltar and my journey would be in two hops.

  It was still the same squalid town that I remembered from wartime. Huge barrack-like bars with everything breakable long since removed or broken. Accordion music and drunken singing, red-necked military policemen bullying fat soldiers, thin-lipped army wives weaving among the avaricious Indian shopkeepers on the sun-bright pavement. The secret of enjoying Gibraltar, a ship's doctor had once told me, is not to get off the boat.

  8 I hit it

  Wednesday morning

  The end of Gibraltar's High Street is Spain. Grey-suited frontier guards nodded, looked for transistor radios and watches, then nodded again. I drove through a couple of hundred yards of dead ground, then through the second control post. The road winds back through Algeciras, and looking across Algeciras Bay one sees the whole of Gib. lying there like a wedge of stale cheese; from the heights where the apes stare down to the airport, to the south where the Ponta de Europa drops away to the sea.

  After Algeciras the road began to climb. At first it was dry as burnt toast, but soon white steamy cloud twined through the wheels or sat in heaps on the quiet road. To the left a cliff top was as jagged as a picnic tin. The road descended and followed the beaches northward. It was 3 p.m. The sky was as blue as the Wilton diptych and the warm ah- drew the smog from my lungs.

  Sucking nourishment from the Seville highway, Los Palacios is a huge, gangling village that would be a town if it could afford the paving stones. Great loops of underpowered electric bulbs stared fish-eyed into the twilight as I drove in. One had a new Seat 1400 outside it. [Seat: A Fiat produced in Spain under licence.] The name EL DESEMBARCO was painted in gaunt letters, deep set into the dark doorway. I put my foot softly on to the brake. A big diesel lorry hooted behind me as I pulled off the roadway. The lorry parked too and the driver and his mate went inside. I locked up and followed.

  There were about thirty customers hi one huge barn-like room. Smoked hams and bottles were strung across the walls, and large mirrors with gold advertisements hung from the wall and gave curious sloping dimensions to the reflected drinkers. A glittering Espresso machine roared and pounded. On the black matt counter-top bills were chalked and computed by boys with damp white faces who darted between the gigantic barrels, stopping only to wring out their aprons hi gestures of despair, and shout plaintive entreaties to the kitchen in high waiters' Spanish that cut through the clouds of smoke and talk.

  I girded up my conversation.

  'Deme un vaso de cerveza,' and the waiter brought me a bottle of beer, a glass and a small oval plate of freshly boiled shrimps, moist and delicious. I asked him about rooms. He slipped his white apron over his head and hung it on a hook under the Jayne Mansfield calendar. I hate to think what it might have been advertising. The boy led me out through the rear door. To my right I saw the flare of the kitchen and caught the piquant smell of Spanish olive oil. It was almost dark.

  There was a sandy courtyard at the back, partly covered with bamboo from which hung rusting neon lights. Down one side of the courtyard a glassed-in stone corridor gave access to small, cell-like rooms. I negotiated a pram and a Lambretta motor scooter and entered my room. It contained an iron bedstead with crisp clean sheets, a table and a cupboard for a chamber-pot.

  'Veinte y cinco - precios jos si v gusta,' said the waiter. A fixed price of twenty-five pesetas seemed O.K. to me. I dumped my overnight bag, gave a Gauloise to the waiter, lit both our cigarettes and went back to the noisy restaurant.

  The waiters were serving wine, coffee, sherry, and beer as fast-as they could go - putting a squirt of soda into a glass from a distance of two feet, slamming down little plates of smoked ham, salt biscuits or shrimps, arguing with the drunks while adroitly serving the sober. The big tent of sound throbbed against the rafters and hammered down again.

  All through the fish soup and omelette I waited for my contact. I asked who owned the new car outside. The boss owned it. I had more Tio Pepes and watched the lorry driver who had hooted me doing a card trick. At 10.30 I wandered out front Three men in overalls sat on the unpaved ground drinking from a flagon of red wine, two children without shoes were throwing stones at the big diesel truck and some men were arguing quietly about the market value of a used motor-cycle tyre.

  I unlocked the door of the car and reached under the dashboard for the.38 Smith & Wesson hammerless 6-shot. The grips were powerful magnets. I pulled it away from the car body, folded it into the car documents, locked up and walked back to my room.

  My overnight bag still had my used match lying on it, but before going to sleep I opened the little cupboard and put my gun under the chamber-pot

  9 I sit on it

  The sun was scorching the courtyard in which I took Thursday's breakfast Potted geraniums surrounded the well, and pink convolvulus climbed along the bamboo roofing. Half concealed by the limp washing, a large pockmarked Coca-Cola advert was bleached faint pink by the sun, and the church tower from which nine dull clanks came was toylike in the distance.

  'A friend of Mr Macintosh, is it not, yes?'

  Standing beyond my tin pot of coffee was a squat muscular man, about five feet six. His head was wide, his hair dark and waved. His face was tanned enough to emphasize the whiteness of his smile. He carried his arms in front of his body and continually plucked at his shirt cuffs. He flicked his fingers across a large area of green silk pock
et-handkerchief and tapped three fingers of his right hand against his forehead with an audible tap.

  'I have the message for you which your friend request I should deliver in person.'

  His manner of speaking had a strange, jerky rhythm and his voice seldom became lower at the end of each sentence, which led one to expect a few more words to appear any moment 'Conversion,' he said. I knew that the real code word was 'conversation'.

  He reached inside his short pin-stripe jacket and produced a hide wallet as lumpy as a razor blade, and from it slid a business card. He replaced the wallet, smoothed his dark shirt, ran fingers slowly down his silver tie. His hands were short-fingered, powerful, and curiously pale. He offered me the card from his carefully manicured hand. I read it.

  S. Giorgio Olivettini Underwater Surveyor MILAN

  VENICE

  I shook the card a couple of times and he sat down.

  'You had breakfast?'

  'Thank you, I have already consumed breakfast, you permit?'

  Senor Olivettini had produced a small packet of cigars. I nodded and shook my head at appropriate intervals and he lit one up and put the rest back into his pocket 'Conversation,' he said suddenly, and gave a vast smile. He seemed to be my passenger to Albufeira.

  I went into my room, put the gun into my trouser pocket, picked up my bag and fixed the bill. Senor Olivettini was waiting by the Victor polishing his two-tone shoes with a bright yellow duster.

  For about thirty kilometres I drove in silence and Senor Olivettini smoked and contentedly filed and buffed his nails.

  My pistol had worked its way under my thigh. It was an uncomfortable thing to sit on. I let the car lose speed.

  'You have planned to stop?' said Senor Olivettini.

  'Yes, I am sitting on my gun,' I said. Senor Olivettini smiled politely. 'I know,' he said.

  10 Sort of boat

  This was Giorgio Olivettini, the man who had thrown Gibraltar into a panic during the war when as an Italian naval frogman he had operated across Algeciras Bay from a secret base in an old ship. [See Appendix 4.] 'We are to take cargo from a U-boat, huh?' Giorgio asked.

  'Not a U-boat,' I corrected gently.

  'Oh yes,' said Giorgio confidently. 'Your Mr Joe Macintosh send me Kelvin Hughes echo-charts of the wreck. She is a U-boat.'

  'You're sure?' I asked.

  'The MS 29 is a fine echo-recorder system. I work with her before. I tell you, is a big big U-boat You will see.'

  I certainly hoped it would all become clearer to me.

  'Yes,' I said, 'I will see.' Ahead I could see the roofs of Ayamonte, hi the Sector de Sevilla entrusted to Brigada MCVIL.

  The River Guadiana forms the frontier between Spain and Portugal. Splashed along its Spanish bank is the little white cubist town of Ayamonte.

  I let the car roll down a cobbled side street until the slow-moving river lay hi front I turned and drove along the quayside, negotiating the litter of nets, broken packing-cases and rusty oil-drums. Senor Olivettini produced a U.N. passport and we both went into the tired old building that houses the officials. They looked at our passports and stamped them. On the wall was a vignetted photo of a dark-shirted officer. It was signed hi a big looping signature and dated a year before the outbreak of the civil war. One man looked inside the car and I was worried about the pistol. That was just the sort of thing that would cause Dawlish to do his nut. The guard said something to Giorgio and hitched his automatic rifle higher on his shoulder. Giorgio spoke rapidly in Spanish and the brittle face of the guard splintered into loud laughter. By the time I reached the car the guard was inhaling on one of Giorgio's cheroots.

  I drove down the sloping jetty on to a splintered boat. The weight of the car strained the ropes on the hand-made bollard and the water sagged under the burden. The boat grumbled across the oily grey water as the little white buildings floated slowly away. Getting the car on to the land of Portugal is a job for at least twelve helpers, all shouting 'Back, left-hand down, a bit more,' etc., in fluent Portuguese. I told Giorgio to get out and make sure they had the narrow planks correctly placed under the wheels. I wasn't keen to learn the Portuguese for 'too far'. The car wasn't square on the boat, and as the rear wheels rolled on to them, one of the planks shot away like a bullet. I let the clutch right in and punched the acceleration. The car leapt forward and hurtled up the steep corrugated ramp like ten thimbles across a washboard. I waited for Giorgio. He walked up the ramp smacking imaginary dust from his impeccable trousers. He looked into the window of the car, his hands nervously engaged in twisting his gold rings. He smiled briefly, took his small, new briefcase from under his arm and put it into the car. I hadn't noticed him remove it.

  'Valuable,' he said.

  Portugal is a semi-tropical land; cared-for, cultivated, and geometrical. This is not Spain, with leather-hatted civil guards brandishing their nicely oiled automatic rifles every few scorched yards. It's a subtle land, without sign of Salazar on poster or postage stamp.

  'What about equipment?' I said. 'If you are going to look at this submarine do you think you can operate in forty metres?'

  'The first, Mr Macintosh is bringing for me; the second, yes, I can operate in forty metres. I will use compressed air, it is simple. I am a great expert in the underwater working. Sixty metres I could do.'

  *

  The westbound Estrada Principal Numero 125 out of Louie continues the descent the road has been making since S. Braz. A small police-truck hooted twice and sped past us. The road south from this junction leads only to the fishing town of Albufeira; we turned left and headed past the canning factory.

  Albufeira is a town built on a ramp. The streets slope steeply uphill and the sound of low gears engaging is constantly heard. The houses that lie along the top of the ramp have their white backs inset into the top of eighty-foot cliffs.

  Number 12 Praca Miguel Bombarda is one of the few houses that have private steps leading down to the beach. From the large patio at the rear of the house one can see a couple of hundred yards to the west, and the other way perhaps two miles to Cape Santa Maria, where at night the lighthouse flashes. From the front of the house the little low window - set as deep as a cupboard into the thick stone wall - looks across a triangle of cobbled space at a bent tree and an upright lamp-post. As I parked the car under the tree Joe Macintosh looked out of the door. The church bell was striking 9 p.m. Thursday.

  The night air pressed its damp nose to the window pane. Ocean sand and water were thrashing together hi endless permutations, and somewhere in the depths beyond was the sunken wreck that had brought us here.

  11 Help

  On Friday morning an old black Citroen came down from the embassy in Lisbon. Driving it was a clean-cut fair haired lad, wearing knee-length shorts and a cream Aertex shirt. He knocked at the door. I answered.

  'Lieutenant Clive Singleton. Assistant Naval Attache, British Embassy, Lisbon.'

  'O.K.,' I said, 'no need to use a loud hailer, I'm only eighteen inches away. What's biting them?'

  'My information is for the ears of your Commandant.'

  'I've got news for you, Errol Flynn, I'm my own Commandant. Now weigh anchor and cast off.' I began to close the door.

  'Look here, sir, here,' he said through the crack, his big blue eyes wet with anxiety. 'It's about the...' He paused and hissed the word 'sub'. By now the door was so nearly closed that he was playing it like a woodwind. 'You must retrieve the log book.'

  'Come in.'

  I let him into the tiled hallway. Enough light filtered through the two thicknesses of lace curtain for me to take stock of him. About twenty-six, lank fair hair, wiry figure, five foot eleven, leather sandals, blue Austin Reed socks, a black document case with a crest on it. This boy was blue-blazer-with-a-badge-on-it material.

  'O.K.,' I said, 'you're in - what's your message?'

  He spoke very rapidly. 'I'm seconded to work with you, sir, on account of my skin-diving experience. I've brought my equipment in the car....'


  'I can see you have,' I said. Sitting in the car was a young blonde.

  'Yes sir.' He ran his hand through his hair and smiled nervously. 'Charlotte Lucas-Mountford - Admiral Lucas-Mountford's daughter.' I said nothing. 'London told us that we should send someone with underwater experience and someone to look after the household. Charlotte speaks fluent Portuguese and I have the...'

  I closed the door and slowed him to a standstill with my eyes. I took a long time lighting a cigarette and I didn't offer them.

  'Sit down, sonny,' I said, 'sit down and dust off your mind. You think you're on a ripping little fun-jaunt, don't you?'

  'I'm a Clearance Diver, sir, R.N. certificate. You'll need an underwater expert for this job.'