Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

  This one column alone must have cost ten thousand pesetas. And after that they had to buy all the pictures on the walls inside. Two fortunes, right here in one building! But there were riches everywhere you looked. Next to the Prado was the Neptune Fountain, with a couple of rather slap-happy seahorses galumphing boisterously in the huge pool, and the shaggy old man waving a generous arm toward the Palace Hotel, worth a few million as it stood, and it seemed to be doing good business, too. The whole of Madrid seemed to be doing good business. Most of the damage from the Civil War had been removed or repaired, and Luis saw uniforms everywhere. He stood on the corner of the Calle de Alcalá where it joined the Gran Via, and marveled that so many countries could afford to send so many military representatives to Spain, and in such big cars, too. The Banco de España had its headquarters on the corner, sturdy and splendid, and Luis felt pleased to see that his financiers were still prospering. The whole of the Gran Via Seemed to be awash with prosperity: he went along in a happy tide of well-dressed shoppers, past stores which were brilliant with goods, and eventually reached the Plaza España, a great and tranquil plain of trees and flowers. In the middle stood the Cervantes Monument. Luis strolled over and stared. Posterity had done very well by Cervantes, he thought, but the publishers must be doing even better out of him. There was money in books, if only you could come up with the right book …

  Around the corner, then, to the Sabatini Gardens and good God in heaven above, the Royal Palace! What a size! The damn place stretched forever. Everything was squared-off and balanced, balconies and windows and pilasters multiplying themselves with great discipline, but it was all so bloody big! And then Luis realized that he was looking at the end of the Palace. To see the front—the entire front—he had to walk across to the far side of the Plaza de Oriente. The view dazed him: how could there be enough money in the world to put up a building like that? How could he have driven a taxi around Madrid and not seen all these fantastic riches? All this phenomenal wealth?

  A combination of fresh air, sunshine, hunger and architectural magnificence began to work on his brain. He walked through the backstreets to the most spectacular square in Madrid, the Plaza Mayor, and stood in its center, like a drunk in a distillery. The terraced houses rose five stories high on all four sides, with a colonnaded piazza running around the base. He was in a stadium of balconies far bigger than any bullring, and as vivid as a theater. If I owned one-tenth of this, Luis thought, one-hundredth even …

  He moved on, restless with envy, and found himself in the Puerta del Sol, the Times Square of Madrid. The pulse of the crowds was stronger here, everyone heading for lunch. Only Luis, it seemed, had nowhere to go. He looked for and found the zero-kilometer landmark, the spot representing the nominal center of Spain, starting-point for all the radial roads. “This is where it all begins, then,” he said. He looked for, and found, the statue of the symbol of Madrid: the bear and the madrono tree. The beast was standing on its hind legs and eating the fruit. Luis patted a massive bronze paw. “You have the right idea, friend,” he murmured. “There is money to be made here. I shall make a lot of it. You want to know how? I shall spy for the British.”

  Chapter 12

  “Now, exactly what sort of agency do you represent, Señor Cabrillo?” asked the British Embassy’s assistant commercial attaché, unscrewing the cap from his fountain pen.

  “Military intelligence,” said Luis.

  The cap went back on the fountain pen. “Wrong department,” the man said.

  “Yes, I know,” Luis told him. “You see, I did not trust the man who met me when I arrived here. He looked …” Luis wobbled his hands and tried to think of the English word. “What is …?” He fluttered his fingers. “Not quite criminal, but …”

  “Shifty?” suggested the assistant commercial attaché, getting to his feet.

  “Yes, shifty! You have noticed it too.”

  “I must remember to tell him. That was Williams, our head of security.”

  Luis smiled. “He has a sense of humor, then.”

  “Absolutely none. Stiff as a plank. Wait here, please.”

  Fifteen minutes later a woman looked into the room and offered Luis a cup of tea. He accepted.

  After another ten minutes a tall, thin man came in and introduced himself as Cameron. He wore a doublebreasted blue blazer and very dark gray trousers. “Now, Mr. Cabrillo,” he said, “I understand you have some secret knowledge of the German war machine which you wish to share with us.”

  “No,” said Luis.

  Cameron stiffened, and gave him a hard look. “That is not the impression you gave my colleague.”

  “He makes his impressions, Mr. Cameron, and I make mine. I did not completely trust him. He looked … shifty.”

  Cameron grunted. “Like Williams, you mean?”

  “More or less, yes.”

  “You will tell me, won’t you, if I start looking shifty?”

  “Yes. At once.”

  “You’re very kind. If you have no military information to share, why come to the British Embassy?”

  “I wish to spy for Britain,” Luis declared. “In Germany, preferably. Or in Italy, if you wish.”

  “The grub’s better in Italy,” said Cameron thoughtfully. “There’s probably more business to be had in Germany, but I’d pick Italy for the food, and of course for the climate … Not that I know the first thing about it.” He got up. “Not my department, thank God. Wait here, would you?”

  Luis waited for another half-hour, during which a different woman brought him another cup of tea.

  The next man to arrive was a friendly squadron-leader in the RAF, called Blake. He shook hands warmly and smiled jovially, and Luis felt greatly encouraged. At last he was getting somewhere.

  “Right! Now, let’s find out something about you. I take it you’re … Spanish?”

  “Yes.”

  Blake wrote that down. “And I’m told you’re offering us your services as a sort of a … That is to say, you’d be involved in … well, in a sort of intelligence capacity. So to speak. Mmm?”

  “I wish to spy for the British,” said Luis. There had been enough confusion already.

  “Of course,” beamed Blake. “Jolly good.” He wrote that down. “Now, I hope you won’t be offended, old chap, if I ask you why?”

  Luis frowned. He had not expected that question. How or when, yes; but not why. This was probably not the time to raise the subject of money. He moved his cup and saucer an inch to the right, crossed his legs, tugged the lobe of his left ear.

  “Porque?” Blake added, helpfully.

  “It is a matter of style,” Luis told him. “I very much admire style, and from what I have seen, British style is second to none.”

  “Style?” Blake looked surprised, but he made a note.

  “I do not mean taste,” Luis said. “Taste is not style.”

  “Isn’t it?” Blake chewed his pen. “No, I suppose it isn’t.”

  “On the other hand, style is never in bad taste.”

  “No. I mean I couldn’t agree more, old boy. Not that I know much about that sort of thing, but it’s always good to hear someone say something nice about the old country … Really, though, what I meant was: why come to us instead of to the Germans?”

  “As I have said—”

  “Yes, I know, style and all that; but let’s face it, your government is much chummier with them than it is with us, isn’t it?”

  “I do not support the government,” Luis said. “As we say in Spanish: I shit on fascism.”

  “Oh.” Blake thought for a moment, wrote something, crossed it out, wrote something else. “Sounds as if you might have been on the other side in the recent Civil War,” he remarked.

  “I shit on Communism too,” Luis said.

  “Ah. Well, that seems to take care of the political situation, then.” Blake grinned cheerily, and Luis’s confidence in him increased yet again. Clearly this was a man who understood men, who saw facts clearly an
d made decisions quickly. It would be a pleasure as well as a profit to work for the British.

  “In any case, it would be pointless for me to go to the Germans,” Luis said. “They are winning, they don’t need spies. Your country, however, is not winning, and so you need all the help you can get.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Blake said thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard it put quite like that before.”

  Blake asked him about his background, and smiled sympathetically when Luis revealed that he had no previous experience in espionage, although his work for the newspaper correspondents could be described as a sort of apprenticeship. “That does not worry me,” Luis said. “It means I have nothing in my past to hide, so I cannot be exposed by anybody. My inexperience will be a great advantage, in fact.”

  Blake snapped his fingers in admiration. “I must remember to tell that to the Air Ministry,” he said, and scribbled a final note. “Perhaps they’ll make me a wing commander. Look, thanks awfully for being so helpful.” He shook hands again and clapped Luis on the shoulder. “You don’t mind stooging about here for a sec? I’ll get you a spot of tea.” He winked reassuringly, and stepped bouncily out of the room, whacking his notebook against his thigh as he went.

  Intellect, competence and decisiveness, Luis thought. Ability and clarity. Above all, style. What an admirable people the British were. Admirably dependable too: the tea arrived almost at once.

  *

  On the floor above, a grayhaired naval commander named Meredith looked out at the Calle Fernando el Santo, listened to Blake’s report, and wrinkled his nose.

  “What it boils down to, Freddy, is he’s a dago spy. What do we want with a dago spy?”

  “No idea, sir. I’ve only been here a week, remember, so it’s all Greek to me.”

  “All right, listen. Point one: London’s not keen on local recruiting. Point two: if we encourage him he’ll want money and we haven’t a budget. Point three: in any case we don’t need a dago spy, we need a victory. Greece has gone down the drain, Crete’s going fast, North Africa’s bloody dodgy, and look at the havoc the U-boats are doing to our convoys! Have you any idea how much tonnage those bastards sank last month, Freddy?”

  Blake creased his brow. “Quite a lot, sir?”

  “A hell of a sight more than we can replace,” Meredith said bitterly. “And no amount of dago spies is going to alter that awful fact.”

  “Tell you what, sir,” Blake suggested. “I’ll stagger down and tell him to buzz off, shall I?”

  Meredith leaned forward and squinted into the sunlit street. “There go those frightful Hungarians,” he grunted. “Thank God they’re not on our side.”

  “No style, sir?” Blake asked.

  Meredith turned away from the window and heaved a sigh. “He’s got a bloody nerve, hasn’t he? Wandering in here without an appointment and … Are you sure he hasn’t got any connections or … or influence? What university did he go to?”

  “None, I think,” Blake said, “but I’ll find out.”

  Meredith followed him downstairs. When Blake opened the door, Meredith peered through the crack. He saw Luis stand up and smile.

  “I say: you didn’t go to a university, did you, old boy?” Blake asked amiably, shaking his head: and Luis confirmed this. Blake smiled his gratitude and shut the door.

  “How old is he, for God’s sake?” Meredith asked.

  “Mid-twenties, I’d say, sir. A handsome lad, though.”

  Meredith made a face. “He doesn’t look like my idea of a spy. Not a bit like.”

  “Sometimes that’s all to the good, sir. We don’t want our spies to look like spies, do we?”

  “He’s had no experience, he doesn’t know anyone, and he hasn’t been to a decent university. Not even an indecent one. The fellow must think we’re absolutely desperate. Damn cheek. See him off, Freddy.” Meredith tramped upstairs.

  Blake opened the door and gave Luis a friendly grin. “Sorry, old chap,” he said. “None today, I’m afraid.”

  *

  On his way out of the embassy, the shock and the many cups of tea caught up with Luis. “May I use your bathroom?” he asked.

  “Be my guest,” Blake said. He pointed to a door.

  Luis went inside and discovered that the room was indeed a bathroom: it contained a bath and a washbasin. He was too weak to argue. He pissed down the side of the bath to minimize the noise, ran the taps for a moment, and walked out into the glaring heat of the street, trembling with relief and chagrin.

  At right angles to the Calle Fernando el Santo was the Calle de Fortuny. The German Embassy occupied number eight. Luis Cabrillo was ringing its doorbell less than a minute after leaving the other place.

  Chapter 13

  The British Embassy had been like a gentlemen’s club on a quiet weekend: spacious, quiet, with an occasional glimpse of a uniformed porter taking something to somebody at no great pace. By contrast the German Embassy bustled like a railway station.

  It was in a huge and rambling four-story building, once the town house of some eighteenth-century grandee. The entrance hall was slightly smaller than a tennis court, but it was big enough to be used as a waiting room. The man who opened the door for Luis gave him a form to fill in, and indicated the rows of chairs. They were well filled.

  Luis found an empty seat and studied the form.

  Name. Address. Nature of inquiry/business/request. At the bottom, three little boxes marked Department. Officer. Action. In very small print, down in one corner, IG Mad 7/40—50,000. They’d had fifty thousand of these things printed in July 1940.

  Fifty thousand people ringing fifty thousand doorbells to fill in fifty thousand forms and sit on fifty thousand chairs. For how long? Judging by all these expressions of boredom and slumped weariness, fifty thousand years.

  Depression seeped into him and stole his energy, his will, his purpose. He had not eaten since breakfast, and his legs ached from too much walking. He stretched and relaxed, and watched the busy Germans hurrying along the corridor that crossed the hall, or trotting up and down the double staircase leading to the other floors. What industry! What organization! What possible use could these Europe-conquerors have for a dusty, hungry, penniless ex-journalists’-assistant with throbbing feet?

  He rested his head against the chairback and caught sight of an astonishing woman sitting in the row in front.

  One glance erased all thought of his feet, his poverty, and even his hunger. A prolonged stare made his head tingle with an enthusiastic charge of blood, and he straightened up as if someone had poked him in the ribs with a pointed stick.

  She was young: over twenty, under twenty-five. What startled Luis was not so much her looks as—he could find no other word for it—her style. He was accustomed to women who were proud or vain, flirtatious or submissive. This was the first time he had seen a woman so obviously in complete control of herself and her emotions; a woman who knew what she wanted and didn’t give much of a damn whether anyone else liked it or not. Those wide gray eyes surveyed the people in the waiting-room as calmly as a contented leopard watching a herd of gazelle. Yet there was humor in the curve of her mouth, and even a suggestion of sympathy in the tilt of an eyebrow.

  Or was he finding humor and sympathy only because he was looking for them? She fascinated Luis; she generated an unconscious sexual challenge: how could anyone be so utterly desirable yet so completely self-sufficient? She wasn’t Spanish, that was sure. German, perhaps? Healthy-looking enough; confident-looking enough. But long black hair. No, not exactly black: very very dark red. All right, so what? All Germans aren’t blonds. Look at Adolf Hitler.

  He glanced at Adolf Hitler, whose picture was on the wall, and when he looked back she had half-turned and was examining him in a detached but not unfriendly fashion. He gave her a tight smile and a stiff nod. His heart was playing ragtime and his lungs couldn’t keep up with the beat. She returned a small part of the smile with devastating ease. He fumbled open the form
and searched for his pen, his face rigid with indifference.

  Nature of inquiry/business/request.

  Luis crossed out inquiry and request, thought hard, his brain still alive with excitement, and wrote: I have technical information concerning the new secret British weapon code-named “Elephant.” He signed: Luis Cabrillo, Count de Zamora y Ciudad-Rodrigo.

  The official who took the form gave him a numbered disc and said automatically, “Listen for your number.” No number had been called since Luis had arrived. He stalked slowly and aristocratically back to his seat, watched with stoicism by the crowd; whether or not the astonishing woman was watching too he did not dare find out. “Espérese un momento!” called the official in a bad accent. “Count de Zamora?”

  Luis turned. The crowd shifted suspiciously, and when Luis was beckoned back, looked cheated and disapproving and helpless. The official finished murmuring into a telephone and replaced the instrument.

  “Por favor, Excelencia,” he said, inviting Luis to precede him.

  In a very short time Luis was seated in a small, comfortable room, facing a pleasant young man who said his name was Otto Krafft.

  “Well, you’re not the Count de Zamora y Ciudad-Rodrigo, are you?” said Krafft in good Spanish, putting aside a copy of the Almanach de Gotha.

  “No,” Luis said, “but then you’re not the assistant commercial attaché, are you?”

  Krafft steepled his fingers and hid behind them. “So what?” His eyebrows were so blond they were almost silver.

  “Suppose I’d written ‘Nature of business: espionage’ on that form,” Luis said. “What would the German embassy have thought?”

  Krafft shrugged. “Another crank, another halfwit.”

  “Yes. So instead of ‘espionage’ I might put down something tedious like ‘import-export.’ That would get me as far as the assistant commercial attacheé.”