The Monte Cristo Cover-Up

by Johannes Mario Simmel

  Snow-white garments hung on countless clotheslines. Black iron lattices glistened in front of high Moorish windows. Weirdly shaped trees grew from broken stairways. And again and again a break in the walls revealed a glimpse of the river close by.

  The elegant young gentleman entered a butcher's shop. He bought a promising cut of veal. In the shop next door he acquired a bottle of madeira, some bottles of red-wine, olive oil, flour, eggs, sugar and plenty of herbs of various kinds. At last, in the market place, glowing with a thousand hues, he finished up with a pound of onions and a couple of fine heads of lettuce.

  He lifted his hat to the market woman and took his departure with a bow and a winning smile.

  Turning into the dark, narrow Rua do Poco des Negros he entered the courtyard of a house half in ruins.

  He was immediately greeted by the sanitary arrangements of this dilapidated structure in the form of numbers of weather-beaten wooden sheds standing on narrow balconies. A network of the pipes serving these places spread out on the

  walls behind. Thomas Lieven thought it looked like the pedigree of a proof of Aryan descent.

  In a sunny corner of the courtyard sat a blind old man, plucking at the strings of a guitar and singing in a weak, high-pitched voice:

  Fate is even as my shadow.

  Never leaves me be. Still to me she brings but sorrow,

  One for the other born were we.

  Thomas put some money in the singer's hat and spoke to him in Portuguese.

  "Could you tell me, please, where Reynaldo, the painter, lives?"

  "Second entrance. Reynaldo lives right at the top, under the roof."

  "Much obliged," said Thomas Lieven, again courteously raising his Homburg, though the blind man, of course, could not see him do it.

  Inside the second entrance the stairs were dark. But the higher Thomas climbed the lighter it grew. He heard many voices. The place smelled of olive oil and poverty. On the top floor he found only two doors. One led up to the attic. On the other the name reynaldo pereira was daubed in huge red letters.

  Thomas knocked. No answer. He knocked louder. Still nothing stirred. He turned the handle of the door. It opened, creaking.

  Thomas Lieven walked through a dark antechamber into a large studio. The room was full of light. Through a vast window dazzling sunshine fell upon dozens of somewhat indecipherable pictures, upon a table overloaded with tins and tubes of paint, brushes and bottles", upon full ash trays and upon a man of about fifty lying on a couch, fully dressed and fast asleep.

  His hair was thick and black. Dark stubble covered his pale, sunken cheeks. He snored loudly and rhythmically. On the floor near the couch lay an empty bottle of brandy.

  "Pereira!" The unshaven man snored still louder and threw himself on his side. "All right then," Thomas Lieven muttered to himself. "Then we might just as well start getting lunch ready..."

  An hour later the painter Reynaldo Pereira awoke. There

  were three reasons why he did so. For one, the sun was shining right in his face. For another, there were clattering noises in the kitchen. And thirdly a strong smell of onion soup was invading the room.

  He called huskily: "That you, Juanita?" Still half stupefied, he scrambled to his feet, hitched up his belt, pushed in his shirt and staggered to the kitchen door. "Juanita, my darling, my dearest, have you come back?"

  He opened the door. A man he had never seen before was standing at the stove cooking, with an old apron around his waist.

  "Good morning," said the stranger with a pleasant smile. "Glad to see you up at last"

  The painter suddenly began to quiver all over. He groped to a chair and let himself fall heavily on it. He groaned: "That accursed brandy! It's got me at last..."

  Thomas Lieven filled a glass with red wine. He handed it to the trembling man on the chair and laid a fatherly hand on his shoulder.

  "Don't worry, Reynaldo, you haven't got D.T.s yet. I'm quite real. My name is Jean Leblanc. Here, take a sip of this. It'll do your hangover good. Then we can have a decent meal."

  The painter drank, wiped his lips and demanded hoarsely: "What are you doing in my kitchen?"

  "Onion soup, veal in madeira sauce ..."

  "Have you gone crazy?"

  "... and for the last course I thought we might have pancakes. I know you're hungry. And you're going to need a steady hand."

  "What for?"

  'To forge a passport for me after lunch," replied Thomas amiably.

  Reynaldo jumped up. He seized a heavy frying pan. "Get out of here, you spy, or I'll smash your skull for you!"

  "No, no," said Thomas. "Wait a minute. I have a letter for you here." He wiped his hands on the apron, fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket and produced an envelope which he handed to Reynaldo. The other tore it open, drew out a sheet of paper and glared at it. After a while he glanced up. "Where did you meet Luis Tamiro?"

  "Our paths crossed last night in the Casino at Estoril. Fat little Luis told me than an old friend of mine was in a jam at Madrid. They'd taken his passport away. So he needed a new

  one. And fast. Luis Tamiro said you were the right man for the job, a real artist, top-notcher, with years of experience."

  Reynaldo shook his head. "Sorry. Can't possibly do it. I told Juanita so too. She's my wife, you know . .."

  "... and she's left you because you're up against it. Luis told me all that. Don't give her another thought. A woman who leaves a man in the lurch when he's up against it isn't worth a damn. You'll soon see how she'll come rushing back the moment she hears you've got money again."

  "Money from whom?"

  "From me, among others."

  Reynaldo scratched the stubble on his cheeks and shook his head. He spoke in the tone of a teacher addressing an idiotic child. "Listen. This is wartime. A passport can only be imitated if you have the right watermarked paper. And in each case you can only get hold of that in the country supposed to be issuing the passport..."

  "I know all that."

  'Then I suppose you also know that in wartime that sort of' paper is no longer imported. Consequently, one can no longer imitate passports. One has to forge them. And how do we do that?"

  Thomas tasted the madeira sauce. "Probably as a rule," he said, "by making people drunk or knocking them on the head and then pinching their passports and altering them."

  "Exactly! And I just don't do that sort of thing, you know. I haven't got it in me. If I no longer have the materials to do a straightforward forgery job I don't do one at all. I'm a pacifist, I might tell you!"

  "So am I. Look over there on your windowsill. I've brought a present for you."

  Reynaldo rose and reeled heavily over to the window. "What's this?"

  'Tour out-of-date Costa Rica passports, full up with entries. You can have three if you'll alter one for me."

  The forger picked up one of the passports, drew a long breath and gave Thomas an awestruck, admiring glance. "How did you get hold of these?"

  "I found them. Last night."

  "You found four Costa Rica passports last night?"

  "No."

  "What then?"

  "I didn't find four Costa Rica passports last night. I found

  forty-seven," said Thomas Lieven, taking the hot onion soup off the stove. "Luncheon is served, Reynaldo."

  He was thinking, what a bit of luck that my lovely young consul happened to have kept so many lovely old passports!

  He was also thinking. So here I am in Senhor Pereira's studio in the Rua do Poco des Negros, where I shall be able to learn how to forge passports like an expert. And only a short time ago I was the youngest private banker in London. Good God Almighty! And I shall never, never, never be able to tell the story in the club!

  MENU

  Fried Onion Soup

  Veal Fillets in (^Madeira Sauce

  Pancakes Flam bees

  4 SEPTEMBER 1940

  This mean inspired a passport forger to his best job.

  Fried
Onion Soup

  Plenty of onions are cut into thin rings and fried in butter or oil till golden brown. Slightly more boiling water than the quantity of soup required is added and let on the boil for fifteen minutes. Season to taste. Stock may be used instead of water. While boiling cut thin slices of bread and place them in the soup after removing it from the stove. Cover thickly with grated cheese. Place in hot oven until cheese is lightly browned. Portions for each person should be prepared in separate casseroles.

  Veal Fillets in Madeira Sauce

  Cut good thick slices of filleted veal, beat lightly and fry quickly on each side. The interior should remain pink. Salt only after cooking. Chop half an onion with five almonds and handful of mushrooms and toss lightly in butter. Add a large glass of madeira and simmer slowly for fifteen minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Pour this sauce over the veal, which should be served with fried potatoes and a green salad.

  Pancakes Flam bees

  The pancakes are fried in the normal way, but they must not be too thin. They should be the same size as the plate on which they are served. The pancakes are left open and covered thickly with sugar. At table plenty of good quality rum is poured over them and kindled. While still alight the pancakes are rolled up and sprinkled with lemon juice.

  [8]

  The four passports lay open on the big worktable under the window. They contained photographs of four different citizens of Costa Rica. One was fat and old, one young and slim, one had spectacles and one had a mustache.

  Next to the four passports lay four photographs of Major Debras of the French secret service, who was impatiently awaiting help in Madrid, Little Luis Tamiro had slipped the photographs into Thomas Lieven's brief case in the casino at Estoril.

  Lunch was over.

  Reynaldo Pereira, in his white working smock, resembled a renowned surgeon, a Harley Street specialist in passport forgery, concentrating soberly on the preparations for a difficult operation.

  He said quietly: "You know the man in Madrid personally, awaiting help in Madrid. Little Luis Tamiro had slipped the four passports. Read the descriptions of the bearers. Tell me which of them most nearly resembles your friend. For I shall naturally choose the passport I have to alter least."

  "Well, I should think this is the one most like him." Thomas pointed to the second from the left. The name of the bearer of that passport had been Rafaelo Puntareras.

  The passport had been issued on February 8, 1934. Its validity had expired on February 7, 1939. It contained many stamped visas and frontier entries. Only a few pages remained blank. It was probably for this reason that Puntareras, who was a commercial traveler, had preferred to have a new passport issued by his consul, Pedro Rodrigues, since deceased, instead of continuing to use the old one.

  Thomas said: "The description of the bearer suits my friend, except that he has brown hair and blue eyes."

  "Then we shall have to alter those two details, exchange the photographs, continue the mark of the stamp over the photo-

  graph of your friend, change the dates of issue and expiry and also those on the various visa and frontier stamps, which would otherwise be too early."

  "What about the name Puntareras?"

  "Will your friend be staying long in Lisbon?"

  "No. Hell be flying on to Dakar almost at once."

  "Then we needn't change the name."

  "But he'll require a transit visa for Lisbon and an entry permit for Dakar."

  "So what? I've got a whole drawerful of stamps. Probably the biggest collection in Europe. No, no, that won't be much bother."

  "Well, what do you consider would be?"

  "A passport in which everything had to be altered and the new photograph had been stamped. For a job like that I should need a good two days."

  "And for Senor Puntareras?"

  "You'll have to allow for my private worries, my mental instability and my unhappy marriage—but, damn it, in seven hours at most Til have the job ready."

  In a relaxed mood, humming softly to himself, Reynaldo Pereira began his work. He took up a conical metal prong with a wooden handle, a sort of shoemaker's awl, and inserted it gently between the first and second layers mounting Pun-tareras's passport photograph. Then he started cautiously rolling up the edge with a tiny penknife.

  "We always take the photo off first," said the artist, "so as to avoid inadvertently damaging the rubber stamp." He belched slightly. "Really marvelous, that onion soup of yours!"

  Thomas sat motionless by the window. He made no reply to the expert, in case it might disturb the necessary concentration.

  Three quarters of an hour later Reynaldo had rolled up the edges of both mounts of the photograph. Then he cautiously removed the metal tubing with the awl.

  Next he switched on an electric hot plate, put an old book cover on it and the passport on top of the cover.

  "It has to be thoroughly warmed for ten minutes," said the expert "We call that resuscitating the passport. The paper becomes softer and more elastic. It absorbs liquid more easily and is in every respect more amenable to treatment."

  After taking time off for a cigarette Pereira set to work on the passport again. With a pair of tweezers he raised, about a millimeter, one corner of Puntareras' photograph which the

  stamp had not touched. Then he dipped an extremely fine-haired brush into a strong-smelling liquid contained in a small bottle.

  "Only the finest badger or red marten fur, size zero, is any good," the maestro said.

  He proceeded to dab the liquid delicately between the photograph and the passport page, holding the former away from the latter with the tweezers. Gradually the paste between them dissolved. After five minutes he had removed the photograph and taken it to the other side of the room, where he placed it on a book cover. "That's to make sure I don't inadvertently damage it."

  He returned to the table, closed his eyes, loosened his fingers and obviously began to concentrate on the next step.

  Then the maestro said: "My first contact will consist of quite an easy change. I am going to take out a dot."

  He placed the document under a large, stationary microscope. He moistened a fresh fine-haired brush with a colorless liquid.

  Then he simultaneously moistened a full stop in the printed list of personal details and pressed the knob of a stop watch.

  He waited until the printed dot was almost entirely erased, then he soaked up the remainder of the liquid at lightning speed with a piece of blotting paper cut at an acute angle.

  "Three seconds. Now we've got a basic figure. Calculating on that, we can tackle the upstroke of a letter."

  He removed all the upstrokes on one page by dabbing them as a number of dots. Then he turned to the thicker down-strokes, eliminating them by applying the mysterious liquid from both sides to the middle. "In the trade we call that working in to the core."

  After two hours of "working in to the core" and using the dot method, all the unusable data had disappeared, including the dates in the visa and frontier stamps which were too early and the dates of issue and expiry.

  The maestro then relaxed for half an hour. He danced about a little, in order to loosen up his muscles.

  Thomas made coffee. Before Pereira drank his he broke the shell of an egg and dropped the white on a flat plate. "So that the air can get at it over a good large area. In our jargon, it must have 'stood.'"

  After ten minutes he filled in, with the viscous, quick-drying white of egg, the furrows and depressions left in the paper, despite the care he had taken, by the bleaching agent. He

  worked with close attention, so as to ensure that perfectly smooth surfaces would be restored. He then sprayed them with an invisible fixative.

  Next he fetched the photograph of the commercial traveler Puntareras, which he had extracted, wrapped it in extremely thin tissue paper and gummed the paper to the back of the photograph to prevent it slipping. He then, with an agate pencil, drew on the paper the contours of that of the stamp which had to
uched the photograph.

  Next, he cut one of the four photographs of Major D6bras in such a way that it very slightly exceeded that of Puntareras in area. He laid a strip of carbon paper, almost the same color as the stamp-dye, over the photograph. He then removed the tissue paper from the old photograph, superimposed the tissue paper on the carbon paper he had placed over the photograph of Debras and gummed it again. Then once more he drew, with the agate pencil, the contours thus obtained.

  He then carefully removed the coverings. The photograph of Debras now showed the stamp.

  Rapidly, so as to prevent effacement of his work, the maestro applied fixative to it.

  He proceeded to perforate the photograph of Debras with sharp tweezers at points which had already been precisely determined and fastened it with gum arabic and two shoelace eyelets to the passport, turning down their edges with another pair of tweezers.

  Next, with India ink, he wrote fresh numbers in at all the points he had bleached, observing: "We always, if it's at all possible, substitute numbers resembling the old ones in shape, changing a three, for example, into an eight, or a one into a four."

  After six and a half hours of strenuous labor Pereira stamped the passport with a Portuguese transit visa and a Dakar entry permit, filling in the necessary figures.

  "Ready!**

  Thomas clapped his hands delightedly. The maestro bowed with dignity. "Anything in this line. Always happy to oblige!"

  Thomas shook his hand. "I shan't be here to profit from your unique gifts in the future. But keep your spirits up, Rey-naldo. I'm going to send you an attractive customer. I'm sure you'll get on marvelously well together ..."

  High up across the top floor of the big newspaper office in the Praga Dom Pedro IV the latest illuminated tape was running. Thousands of pairs of eyes gazed upward, with tense anxiety, at the flickering letters. Portuguese citizens and emigrants crowded the splendid square with its pavement in black and white mosaic or sat in the gardens of the cafes surrounding it. They all stared up at the moving letters, reading:

  UNITED PRESS Madrid—Persistent rumors of secret negotiations between Germany and Spain. Germany allegedly demands free passage for troops in order to attack Gibraltar and close the Mediterranean. Franco determined to remain neutral. British ambassador's energetic warning to Spain. Anti-British demonstrations in Barcelona and Seville . . .