Miguel eyed him coldly. ‘Love has given you the gift of tongues. But the Señorita prefers good manners. She is an aristocrat.’
Grant laughed back to American, suddenly wondering if Miguel was a Zero man. ‘European aristocrats come at a dime apiece in the States. The only thing that talks is money and I’ve yet to meet any high-class dame who couldn’t do with a few more dollars. Or hotel clerks either, for that part,’ he added, slapping another fifty pesetas on the desk. ‘For you, boy. And fix that business good.’
*
‘The young Saharagui lady is seated, señor.’
His call came shortly after nine. He had changed into a charcoal-grey light-weight suit, gold silk knit tie and slip-on black shoes and he felt buoyed up by an unusual sense of exhilaration as he entered the long, rather gloomy dining-room. She had changed into a shimmering blue-green sheath of silk which emphasized both the deeply black sheen of piling hair and the tawny smoothness of her skin. Lips and pointing ovoid nails had been painted to match in a shade of magenta which ought to have clashed but which didn’t, and which, instead, played tricks with the hazel of her eyes and the even whiteness of her teeth as she smiled a greeting and the waiter directed him to her table.
Grant was taken aback, but bowed and sat down. ‘You are very kind, señorita.’
She shook her head. ‘The desk clerk is my friend. You must wish very much to know me if you pay so many pesetas and I have always wanted to meet a rich American: so now we are both happy.’
‘Most rich Americans still imagine that Spanish ladies are unapproachable! Why are you being so generous?’
She looked at him curiously. ‘You may be rich, Dr. Gunten, but you don’t know very much about ladies or you would not ask such questions. It is enough that it pleases me to have company and I am amused to find that you value me at over two and a half thousand pesetas. It is the first time, you see, that anyone has ever put a figure on my head, so I decided to see more of the man who has paid so much for the chance of picking me up. And, incidentally, how much would that be in dollars?’
Grant looked up from the menu. ‘Just over forty.’
She fanned herself gently with the menu-card. ‘It sounds better in pesetas, but clearly you don’t know Gran Canaria, señor. For that money you could have wonderful times with several young ladies not far from here. What is so special about myself? Or have you so much money that a few hundred pesetas are not important?’
Grant hated being kept on the defensive. ‘I checked in only a few days ago,’ he snapped, ‘and since then I’ve been sleeping for most of the time.’
‘And alone, one must suppose,’ she drawled, her throaty voice teasing him with every syllable, ‘so now it is reasonable for you to want a mistress.’
‘I am not looking for a mistress,’ said Grant abruptly. ‘But you interested me.’
She laughed again, a deep contralto chuckle which was almost noiseless, but which quivered her breasts and cheeks as she leaned back and teased him. ‘You are a little charming, señor. But not very tactful. I expect to interest men, and especially men of your age.’
He rose to the bait in spite of himself. ‘And what is my age?’
She became serious. ‘No real man-of-the-world would have asked that question.’
‘Would I be showing more inexperience if I asked why?’ asked Grant abruptly. Nothing had gone right since this Berber had walked into the hotel.
She shook her head. ‘We shall speak of that later. But for the moment you will order dinner. And it must be expensive, beginning with thin slices of smoked salmon.’ She studied the menu, rubbing the lacquered tip of her index fingernail against the dimple on her chin as she spoke. ‘Then a small plate of turtle soup. Consommé and iced with a thick Châteaubriand Flambé to follow, garnished with boiled chickory and creamed potatoes.’
‘Wine?’ Grant’s voice was dead-pan.
She hesitated. ‘For my salmon a Diamonté Logroño. With the soup a glass of fresh lemon and for my steak a half-bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape. You see,’ she added gently, ‘since you have so many pesetas I can forget the cost and I want to give you the pleasure of feeding me well. I would also like a cigarette,’ she added.
Grant shook his head. ‘Order your favourite brand. Personally I smoke a pipe.’
She looked surprised. ‘You are American. Why not a cigar or cigarettes? The pipe is for English people and Germans.’
Grant decided to be truthful. ‘Medical opinion believes that cigarettes cause cancer of the lung so I haven’t used them for several years.’
‘Why not?’ Her voice was very soft. ‘Are you afraid to die? Is death not written on the destiny of all living creatures? What is so different about a cancer of the lung? It kills you. But so do snakes, and motor-cars, and bullets and knives. More men have died from war than lung cancer. You are also a coward as well as being inexperienced?’
Grant flushed. The woman irritated with every sentence. ‘I am not afraid to die.’
She laughed cynically. ‘When men say that they are lying. Every wise man is frightened to die. Death is the doorway to a great unknown. But in any case what sort of doctor are you?’
‘General surgeon,’ said Grant, ‘someone with a little knowledge of everything.’
‘Except women,’ she smiled. ‘And except how to live. And except what comes after death. Or possibly even except how to die. So,’ she added, ‘let us see what you are: a general surgeon who knows a little about everything but who does not know how to prevent lung cancer from cigarettes; an American who is tired and looking for women; a wandering doctor with too much money but who is so lonely that he must buy friendship; a man in the early forties who bribes hotel staff to open the road to romance. It is not a pretty picture is it? Just a man who thinks too much about himself, who wants to take love and give money, who is frightened to have the pleasure of a cigarette in case it spells death. Don’t you know that Spaniards are happy because they understand death and that that wisdom helps them to live? You speak Spanish. Where did you learn the language without learning about the people?’
Grant forced himself to be polite. ‘I am only a naturalized American. Born in Leipzig, so German is my native tongue, but I have had a lot of vacations in the Caribbean.’
She laughed aloud. ‘Why do you say only a naturalized American? It sounds as though you were ashamed of being a German. In fact,’ she added abruptly, ‘you are not amusing and this is my first evening in Las Palmas for months. I didn’t ask you here to listen about death or lung cancer or why you are “only” an American. I want to be amused.’
‘And where did you come from?’ Grant’s voice was cold with anger.
She ran the edge of her long menu-card above her upper lip and below her nostrils, staring at him wickedly with half her face hidden. ‘Guess.’
‘Impossible. You are a Spaniard. How can I know if you are from San Sebastian or Lanzarotte?’
She laid down the menu. ‘Show me how clever you are. Where do I come from? What is my nationality?’
Smiling slightly he decided to get some of his own back. ‘Way down South we have many very beautiful women. But some have a shot of helio or pink in the whites of their eyes and it comes from diluted negro blood. And then again some of them have these pouting lips which also come from a coloured grand-daddy, but like you they all use fancy lipstick to tone down the sheen which says they’re mixed blood.’
The girl smiled broadly. ‘Mixed blood! Every blood in the world is mixed. What is there to talk about in a little negro blood? One day after another thousand years or so there may be no one without some negro blood to make their eyes pink or their lips thick. My negro blood comes from a Sudanese slave three generations back. Tell me more.’
Grant smiled. ‘Right now that was a most useful clue you handed out. Sudanese slave three generations back suggests Africa, and you have a habit of staring at me over the top of the menu, or else from between your fingers, so I’ll guess that you yourse
lf use a yashmak. In fact you’ve got a kind of yashmak thing fixed even to that dress.’
The girl nodded. ‘You are doing quite well. Continue.’
‘But you can’t be a Marocaine because an unmarried, high-caste Moroccan woman wouldn’t be allowed to go on holiday without a chaperone. Your table manners and personality show breeding. Therefore high caste. Then again you said your voyage was tiresome. That couldn’t apply to an inter-island trip, so my guess is that you crossed over from the Sahara. Maybe Ifni.’ He was guarding every syllable now and watching her reaction like a hawk. There was a wariness which was new and a slight blenching of her knuckles as she lifted a fork to her mouth. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he ended abruptly, ‘I’ll settle for Ifni. Never been there. But read a little.’
‘And my nationality?’
He gestured helplessly. ‘An Ifnian. Or an Ifniot. Or an Ifniess. How in heck should I know what you call it? Some place Spanish beside Morocco. A Saharagui.’
She belched and spat out a fragment of tough skin on to her plate. The action was so natural that it almost shocked him into saying more. Who else but an Arab would have behaved like that? ‘Very good indeed, señor, I am from the Sahara. Just across the water where Africa points towards the Americas. I am a Berber and my family were ruling their people on the desert centuries before your country had been discovered. I am more high caste than any woman in Boston and at home I do wear the yashmak as naturally as you wear shoes. My father bought and sold his own slaves. His brothers died fighting against the Spanish Foreign Legion and even now my uncle has more power over his people than the Queen of England. I live with death and that makes me know what life is worth, so if I wish to smoke I shall do so without thinking about lung cancer. I live for today, knowing that Allah will take care of me tomorrow. And I am afraid of no living creature. When I live in my brother’s tents I belong to Africa but when I come to the Canaries I allow myself to change, just a little, and amuse myself with the silly things which people call civilization. I am my own mistress. And I cannot be bought for forty dollars or forty thousand dollars. The men I love fight for their women and they don’t pay servants in hotels to act as pimps, so I shall dine with you and then you will leave me and go back to your pipe and your dollars and your fears about death.’
Grant looked at her, astonished. Her eyes were sparkling with temper and she had spoken with a bite far removed from the formality of normal Spanish. ‘I’m sorry to have offended you.’
She smiled. ‘I am not offended. I might have been if you had ignored me. In your own way you have tried to pay a compliment. But we “feel” different languages and have different measurements of value in what matters.’
‘What does matter?’ asked Grant curiously.
The girl responded to his changed mood and her manner became more gentle. ‘Courage, wisdom and resignation. You had courage but no wisdom when you bribed the clerk to arrange an introduction so now you must be resigned to failure.’
‘Why did I bribe him?’ protested Grant, furious with her logic. ‘I know no one in Las Palmas. Who could have introduced us?’
The girl looked at him, astonished. ‘Any clever man would have managed to attract my attention and arranged to overcome the conventions in a more mannerly fashion than you did. I tell you again that courage alone is not enough. There must also be wisdom to be sure of success.’
‘And what do you mean by success?’ asked Grant sourly.
‘Success in this case could mean only one thing: that I agreed to sleep with you. For what other reason does a man approach a woman?’
Grant hesitated. ‘Surely he can want a dancing partner or someone to share the fun of sight-seeing in a new place.’
‘For me this is not new,’ said the girl shortly. ‘And for normal people the pleasures of day pass on to the pleasures of night.’
‘I had always thought that the people of the Sahara were very moral.’ Coffee and liqueurs had been ordered and Miss Turquoise was puffing at her sixth cigarette since the beginning of the meal.
She raised her eyebrows expressively, ‘What is moral? I cheat no man and I keep my promises. I hurt no friend and forgive no enemy. I do with my body what I please and I allow my mind to experience anything which satisfies its hunger. If I do wrong I shall answer to Allah. And Allah,’ she added caustically, ‘would be the last person to criticize a man and woman who loved one another.’
‘Love or lust?’ asked Grant coldly. ‘They are different, you know.’
She leaned forward and blew a thin cloud of smoke across his face. ‘For the body there is only lust and when a man says he loves a woman he only means that his lust is so great that he is frightened he loses her. Love is selfishness. Lust is natural.’
Grant lifted his glass of golden Chartreuse. ‘To Miss Turquoise,’ he smiled, ‘the most unhappy woman in Africa.’
‘I am not surprised that you know my name but why do you say that?’
It was his first bull’s-eye. ‘Because I’m a doctor. Because I know a little about how people’s minds work. Because every word you have spoken shows you are as lonely as I am, that you are looking for love as much as the next person and that somewhere along the line you have been hurt through and through.’ He bowed formally. ‘I shall be here for only a short time,’ he added as he turned to go. ‘But if you are ever interested to know me better maybe we could start off again when we are not so tired.’
‘Dr. Gunten.’
He was still not accustomed to his new name and hesitated before turning back to the table where she was idly tracing designs on the cover with a pointed fingernail.
‘Yes?’
‘Tomorrow I shall be busy, but if it pleases me we shall make a car trip to Atalaya on the following afternoon and dine together in the evening.’
He nodded agreeably. ‘With no love or lust to complicate matters.’
She smiled slowly. ‘Sometimes life is better when it is complicated and something tells me that for ourselves the complications have just begun.’
Chapter Eight – ‘Nothing must happen to him in our hotel’
A note delivered with Grant’s morning tea read like a royal command.
You may attend me after luncheon tomorrow and take me to the mountains. But I prefer open cars and will expect either a Mercedes or a Porsche. The chauffeur will be my chaperone.
It was unsigned. But he had no doubt about the spidery writing. Even the ink was turquoise green.
His second message arrived half an hour later as he was entering the breakfast-room. A bunch of ten red roses delivered by Interflora. There was no card, but ADSAD’s code system using flowers was unbeatable.
‘Roses’ meant danger.
‘Red’ for the red warning of immediate urgency.
‘Ten’ that someone would be on the air at ten hours with a signal on ADSAD’s short-wave transmitter, operating this time from Lanzarotte, only an hour’s flying time away. His heavy baggage had arrived by sea on the previous day and included the two-way radio disguised as an electro-cardiograph.
He glanced at his watch and tipped the grinning porter. ‘Put them in water in my room,’ he drawled. There was still plenty of time to organize. He was wearing his new suit with a flat oblong packet firmly sewn to the underside of his lapel and connected to an RAF badge. It was too heavy to be comfortable and a shade bulky. But he had decided to try it out. And there was a spare upstairs attached to his tropical kit where it bulged even more.
The Parker 61, of course, was perfect. And no one was likely to notice that the heels of his shoes were almost a quarter of an inch higher than usual.
The hotel felt vaguely sinister. There were several new faces, amongst them a notorious left-wing Greek politician eating with a girl who looked like a drum-majorette. And either could have fitted in to the Force X background of imagination! He felt that the waiter was eyeing him curiously and that Miguel, the desk clerk, had ignored a civil ‘Good morning’.
Back in his room he locked
the door, checked the place for gimmicks and pulled his cabin trunk into the dressing-room where a large window high in the wall faced north-north-east. The heart machine was heavier than usual but the radio had been incorporated with masterly skill, a microphone showing only as a mesh grill on the casing. Headphones had been disguised as plugs which fitted snug beside his eardrums and the all-important aerial was little different from a standard lead. It was impossible to alter wavelength, and the apparatus was virtually automatic. Five seconds to go! ‘Hello.’ His voice was pitched to a whisper. ‘Gunten calling. Red roses received. Over.’
Response was immediate. ‘ADSAD. Identify yourself. Give pet-name Maya Koren’s dog. Over.’
He hesitated. He had almost forgotten Maya during the pressure of recent days. ‘Perry,’ he said. ‘After Perry Mason.’
‘And your own mother’s middle name?’
‘Algie.’
‘Okay. Message reads: Regret delay in thinking of the obvious but your London flat was also searched yesterday afternoon and an advanced type acoustic device discovered in an electric-light fitting, the apparatus operated by a sounding-board fashioned from larchwood panel above your fire-piece. Works only when sufficient pitch of decibels reached. Recorder fitted behind the chimney where fire-bricks made to swivel and give easy access leaving no traces. Tape absent, of course, but must now act on assumption that entire conversation in London has been transmitted to other people. Which presupposes that destination and purpose mission are now fully understood by opposition.
‘All necessary measures will be taken to have help available at short notice if required. Meanwhile use your own discretion as to best approach, but objective remains unchanged. Message ends. Any questions? Over.’
‘None.’ Grant’s reaction was automatic. ‘Advise ADSAD message received and understood. Over.’ He unclipped the aerial from above the open window and repacked, his mind cross-checking every reference and trying to pin-point a time schedule which might now be vital.
Miss Turquoise Page 8
