‘Exactly. More killing. More cities in ruins. More reasons for the Russians to eat us alive once they get to Berlin. That little cripple has a lot of questions to answer. They all do.’
The military attaché nodded. He’d folded his pad and returned it to the drawer. He understands, Stefan thought. He’s been through it himself and he’s probably drawn the same conclusions himself, though war tastes sweeter if you’re winning.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ Stefan ventured. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘What happened to your face?’
‘I got burned. I was a pilot on one of our aircraft carriers. HMS Illustrious. You may have heard of it.’
‘Fairey Swordfish. Big old biplanes. You flew one of those?’
‘I did.’
‘At Taranto?’
‘Indeed. Best night of my life. Pitch-black and half the Italian fleet in flames. You could feel the heat from fifteen hundred feet. Marvellous.’
‘And you crashed?’
‘No. We got back intact. Only lost two aircraft. No …’ his fingers crabbed briefly over the wreckage of his face, ‘… this was a training accident some time afterwards. Got the approach wrong. Way too high. Banged it down far too hard, broke the undercarriage, ruptured the fuel feeds. They got me out, God knows how.’
‘And the others?’
‘The others survived, too. Not burned, thankfully, not like silly me. But they got a discharge nonetheless so it wasn’t all bad news.’
‘They were glad to be out of it?’
‘Delighted. There were plans to fly the Swordfish against your pocket battleships. Short cut to an early grave, in my opinion. The Italians we could deal with. They didn’t really want to fight. You lot were a different proposition.’
‘Should I be flattered?’
‘Absolutely not. You’ve caused nothing but trouble. The thirties were going so well, or so we all thought.’
‘So where did you learn your German?’
‘Oxford, for my sins. Know it at all? Dreaming spires? Pissed students? No women? Thank God the war came along, even if bad things happened.’
The face again. Touching it. Rueful, this time.
Stefan nodded. So far he hadn’t mentioned what had developed back in O Barquero. One intimacy deserved another.
‘There was a woman in the village who looked after me. Her name is Eva.’
‘And?’
‘We fell in love.’
‘I see. Lucky old you. Is this why you’ve come? You’re after some kind of trade?’
‘Yes.’ Stefan paused. ‘I’ve been very frank,’ he said. ‘And I hope helpful.’
‘There’s more?’
‘There is.’
‘In what respect?’
‘I mentioned the SS officer I killed. We were taking these people south. They came with a great deal of baggage, crates and crates of the stuff. The Germans seem to have recovered most of it from the wreck.’
‘You’re telling me you know what was inside those crates?’
‘I’m telling you that I might be able to shed some light on these people. You keep few secrets aboard a submarine.’
It was a lie but – to Stefan at least – it sounded plausible. Anything to get him to the next stage, he thought. Passage to England and the chance to talk about the half-brother he never had.
The attaché wanted to know the price Stefan was putting on all this information. What did he really want?
‘I need to make contact with Eva. I can’t go back to that village. Neither can I stay here.’
The attaché looked amused. ‘You most certainly can’t. There are Germans everywhere.’ He fluttered his claw of a hand towards the window. ‘They’ve become an industry in this town. Anyone with intelligence about Allied shipping, the Germans pay them money, often good money, sometimes ludicrous money. And you know what happens? The locals make it up, pocket the money, and bugger off. Wonderful. You couldn’t invent it.’
‘The Germans know this?’
‘Of course they do. They have quotas from Berlin, targets to meet, so they just pass all this stuff on. It’s a gigantic fiddle and everyone knows it unless you’re stuck behind a desk in Berlin trying to win the bloody war. That’s why Lisbon’s such a lovely posting. No one wants to leave. Ever.’
‘Except me.’
‘Except you.’ The military attaché nodded. There was a calendar hanging on a nail behind his head. He peered round to consult it. Then he was back again. ‘We have three flights a week to England. We also have a permanent booking on a limited number of seats. To be frank, some elements of what you’ve told me are beyond my pay grade and my betters would be upset if they didn’t get a chance to meet you themselves.’
‘And they’re in England?’
‘They are.’ He slipped a drawer open and extracted a file. After a moment or two, his head came up. ‘Today is Tuesday,’ he said. ‘We’ll try and get you on the flying boat tomorrow morning.’
‘As simple as that?’
‘As simple as that. I advise you to take something half-decent to eat. You’ll be staying with us tonight. I’ll arrange for the kitchen to make you a little picnic. Hard-boiled eggs OK? Something in the fruit line?’
Stefan was touched. He offered a nod of thanks. These people attend to the smallest print, he thought. Erwin? This wrecked face across the desk? They’re all the same. They think everything through. To the last detail. He mentioned Eva again.
‘I need to know there’s a future for us. Ideally in England.’
‘I’m afraid I can give you no guarantees. I’m sure she’s a lovely woman. What if she doesn’t want to go?’
‘Then that would be her decision and of course I’d respect it. I just need to know that you can get her out.’
‘We can get anyone out. That’s what this place is for.’
‘Then you’ll try?’
The military attaché studied him, then checked his watch before getting to his feet and extending his hand.
‘We will, Herr Kapitän.’ The grimace again. The smile. ‘And that’s a guarantee.’
*
Ciudad Juarez was a day’s drive across Mexico. Gómez and Yolanda arrived in the early evening as the sun was setting over the black swell of the high sierra. Perched on the banks of the Rio Grande, the city had recently exploded thanks to the nearby border. This close to the States, money was pouring in from every source – most of them illegal, according to Diego – and the result was a frenzy of building. Diego had likened it to a cowboy town, everyone out to make a fortune, and motoring slowly towards the centre of the city Gómez could believe it. The downtown was painted in neon, a gaudy come-on for everything a man could ever desire, and for once Yolanda was moved to something that sounded to Gómez like disapproval.
‘Pimp heaven,’ she said, eyeing the street girls on the sidewalk.
Gómez found a motel down near the river. Across the Rio Grande lay El Paso. Yolanda wanted to know how long they’d be staying. She was standing at the grubby desk that served as reception, filling in the register.
‘No idea. As long as it takes.’ Gómez was looking at the guy behind the desk. He gave him the address from Diego. ‘Ever heard of this street? Calle Maravillas?’
The guy behind the desk didn’t even look up. Just shook his head. He wanted a deposit on the room, US dollars, else they’d have to find another place. Yolanda looked at Gómez. Gómez had nothing. Everything he’d been carrying had disappeared at the penitentiary except for his passport and a twenty-dollar note that he’d tucked into the waistband of his underpants and after Tijuana that was now done.
‘You recommend any bars round here?’
‘Take your pick.’ The guy behind the desk nodded towards the door. ‘We got plenty.’
Gómez waited while Yolanda checked out the room. Cleaner than she’d expected with hot water that worked. She left three dollars on the counter and took Gómez to the nearest bar. It was hid
eous, maricónes everywhere. The second was worse. A fight had just ended and a man was on his knees by the bar, holding his face, blood trickling through his fingers. Gómez studied him a moment then escorted Yolanda back on to the sidewalk. On the other side of the road, next to a strip club called The Hot Zone, was a roadside stall that sold beer and a mess of beans. Gómez ordered both. Twice. There was a sit-down area on the rubble behind the stall, battered chairs, no table.
Yolanda was gazing at the chair Gómez had pulled towards her with his foot. He had two plates of beans. Yolanda said she preferred to stand.
‘Whatever. Care for some of this stuff? Only we need a little chilli sauce here.’
She went to the counter and spooned sauce on to both plates. The owner was sweating in the heat from the stove. He had a flat Indian face and a flower tattoo on the side of his neck. Gómez joined Yolanda at the counter.
‘We’re here to buy a car.’ Gómez was looking at the owner. ‘Any idea where to go?’
‘What kind of car?’
‘The kind of car that goes over that river and earns us a lot of money. Comprende?’
Gómez rubbed his fingers together. The Indian gave him a look.
‘You have money?’
‘We do.’
‘US?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then maybe you call this person. He’s a friend of mine. He does good business.’
He scribbled a name and a phone number on a scrap of paper, and handed it over.
‘Call him tomorrow. Early’s best.’ He nodded at Gómez’s empty plate. ‘You want more beans?’
Later, in bed at the motel, Yolanda wanted to know more.
‘You’re serious? We’re really here to buy a car?’
‘We’re here to find a guy called Frank Donovan. He’s driving a lime-green Caddy. He has a pretty Mexican wife and three kids and the people I work for need to know a whole lot more about him.’
Coming from Gómez, this had the makings of a speech. Yolanda had never pressed him on his work before, though other conversations had given her ideas of her own.
‘You’re based in New Mexico, yeah?’ She nodded at the window. ‘Right there across the river.’
‘Who says?’
‘Agard. Some place near Santa Fe.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Care to tell me more?’
‘No. Except the Army pays my bills.’
‘You’re a soldier?’
‘G-2. Counter-intelligence.’
‘This guy Frank is some kind of spook?’
‘He may be. Otherwise he’s just another punk hit man.’
‘You’re telling me he’s killed someone?’
‘That’s what the evidence says. Does that make him a bad man? Definitely. Are we going to find him? Yes, we are. Come here …’
He rolled over and kissed her. She held him at arm’s length for a moment. She liked ‘we’.
‘Those beans were shit,’ she murmured. ‘You need someone who knows how to cook in your life.’
19
Stefan spent the night in a small, clean bedroom on the embassy’s top floor. The window, barred on the outside, was open and he lay awake, alert to every sound. A dog barking in a nearby compound. Further away, a baby crying. The clatter of a late tram and the occasional parp-parp from shipping out in the estuary. Towards morning, fog rolled in from the sea, a blanket of clamminess settling on the city, and the temperature plunged. Stefan pulled the blankets a little tighter around himself, trying to imagine the coming days and weeks. By now it would be late autumn in England, he thought. The season of death.
He awoke again at eight, disturbed by a knock at the door. A maid left a tray of coffee on the table beneath the window. An accompanying note told him to be downstairs and ready to leave within the hour. Stefan swallowed the coffee and washed as best he could in the tiny sink. Inspecting his face in the mirror, he recognised a deep exhaustion in the hollows beneath his eyes. At sea, he thought, you expect the worst at any moment. At least he felt prepared.
A car from the embassy took him down to the flying boat terminal near the docks. There was no sign of the military attaché. The flying boat, a huge Boeing, had earlier arrived from Bathurst and refuelling was complete. Stefan was escorted along the wooden pontoon and handed over to a male steward. The Clipper service had once been a byword for luxury but most of the fittings had been stripped out and the cabin was full of military personnel. Many of them were still dozing after the long flight up from West Africa. Stefan had never flown in an aircraft like this before and, after the narrow confines of the Ju-52s that operated the daily shuttle from Brittany to Berlin, it felt enormous. I’m Jonah, he told himself. Sitting in the belly of the whale.
By late morning, after a problem with one of the engines had been resolved, they took off, slowly gaining altitude as the city dwindled beneath them. Stefan was still dressed in the clothes Erwin had given him in Coruña and his obviously German accent when the steward offered him a blanket attracted looks from the passengers around him. He was sitting by the window, the sun on his face, his mind a blank. Within minutes he was asleep.
Five hours later, the aircraft began to lose height and the steady throb of the engines diminished. For the last hour, awake again, Stefan had been staring at what he knew was the coast of northern France. St Nazaire was down there, and Lorient, and Brest, U-boat gateways to the happy hunting grounds of the deep Atlantic. Within a day or so, he’d be obliged to trawl his memory for the smallest detail from those wonderful days, cementing a bridge to the interrogation team that the military attaché had warned him to expect.
‘They’ll want to know you’re real,’ he’d said. ‘They’ll need to taste what it’s like to have been in your position, to have your talents, your training, your expertise. You and I might think the fighting is nearly over but for these people the war never ends.’
Really? They were over the English Channel now, still droning north. The pilot had levelled off at a much lower altitude and Stefan could make out the white scribbles of wake towed by shipping heading south. He counted four of them, then spotted another. They’re all making for the Normandy coast, Stefan thought, with supplies for the Allied armies pushing ever deeper towards the German frontier. Food, fuel, ammunition – material to bring the Fatherland to its knees.
In the Happy Time, Stefan had slipped through these waters, alert for the tell-tale thrum-thrum of enemy vessels. Peering through the periscope, or bent over his charts, had he ever expected to end up in a situation like this? Scuttling off to the enemy with a headful of secrets and a heartful of lies? Did he really believe he could outfox these people? Beat them at their own game? And if he failed, what then? He pondered the latter question for a moment or two and then dismissed it. There were situations in life that simply didn’t repay too much thought, he told himself. Better to close his eyes again and try and sleep.
They landed on the vast expanse of harbour at Poole. England’s south coast stretched away left and right, chalk-white cliffs in one direction, a long curve of sandy bay in the other. The clouds had gone now and the sun was out and as they taxied towards the quayside the only indication that a war was on was a uniformed naval officer waiting on the pontoon.
It turned out she’d come for Kapitän Portisch. She had a whispered conversation with the chief steward the moment the aircraft’s door was opened. The steward handed over a brown foolscap envelope and moments later Stefan found himself helped on to the pontoon. The woman had the envelope under her arm. She extended the other hand in greeting. She was tall and blonde, handsome in the German style, and Stefan wondered whether the choice of escort had been deliberate.
‘Lieutenant Mossman.’ The smile was icy. ‘I trust you had a good flight, Herr Kapitän.’
There was a car waiting on the quayside with a male driver at the wheel. They left the port area and drove through the town. After the emptiness of Spain and Portugal, even when they were out in the countrysi
de, there were people everywhere. The villages looked shabby and rundown, none of the civic pride that Stefan remembered from pre-war Germany, and in the larger towns there were queues wherever you looked.
His escort wanted to know whether he’d been to England before. He said yes. He’d been to London as a naval cadet. They had stopped at a level crossing, waiting for the train to pass through. He nodded at a woman hurrying up the steps on the bridge across the railway line. She had something wrapped in newspaper in one hand and a basketful of kindling in the other.
‘Do people go hungry here?’ he asked.
‘Not really. There’s not a lot of anything but there’s enough to go round. I believe it’s worse in Germany.’
Stefan nodded. Barely a year ago, in Hamburg, he’d watched an old woman with barely a tooth in her head gnawing at a raw turnip.
‘It’s terrible in Germany,’ he said.
‘Because of the bombing?’
‘The bombing doesn’t help.’
‘I expect not.’ She was staring out of the window. ‘We had the same problem with your submarines. That was the worst time. We nearly ran out of everything, which I imagine was rather the point.’
They spent the rest of the journey in silence, for which Stefan was grateful. He no longer trusted the kindness of strangers. Ignacio had betrayed him. Erwin had threatened him with the firing squad and then schooled him in lies which might still take his life. At least this woman was honest enough to leave her hostility undisguised.
It was dark by the time they reached the outskirts of London. Their destination turned out to be a sprawling red-brick property hidden behind a screen of trees. The grounds were extensive and Stefan glimpsed rolls of barbed wire on top of the surrounding brick wall as they paused at the gatehouse before the sentry waved them through. On either side of the drive were temporary huts that looked like barracks, each with a soldier posted at the door. The car came to a halt and Stefan stepped out into the damp chill, gazing up the house. With its rusting fire escape and peeling paintwork, it looked forbidding. It reminded him of an illustration in one of the books his father used to read him as a kid. Bad things happened here, he thought. Beware trolls.
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