“From the age of twenty-five we are all in a state of irreversible decay,” the doctor said. “Welcome to the club.”
As Otto walked Luis to another part of the embassy, he said, “There’s no such thing as Quixote’s Disease, is there?”
“All Spaniards suffer from it,” Luis told him sombrely.
Otto knew it was a leg-pull but he couldn’t leave it alone. “What are the symptoms?” he asked.
“Hot blood. Steaming hot blood.”
“Ah. That probably explains all the smoldering eyes one sees.”
“Yes. Smoldering eyes and burning lips and blistering tongues and smoking shoulderblades and even, at the height of the summer, occasional warm feet.”
“Sounds uncomfortable.”
“We have an old saying,” Luis said wisely. “‘Scratch a Spaniard, and start a fire.’”
Otto found that vastly amusing. He laughed and chuckled all the way to another office. He paused with his hand on the door. “What happens when you scratch a German?” he asked.
“Start a war?” Luis suggested.
Otto grunted. “Just don’t try that on Colonel Christian.” He took Luis inside.
*
For two hours, a lanky, sandy-haired ex-journalist called Richard Fischer coached Luis in secret writing.
They practiced with a variety of invisible inks on a variety of papers. Sometimes Luis wrote on the back of a sheet of notepaper, sometimes between the lines of a typed letter. Fischer showed him how to unseal all the joins of an ordinary envelope so that its inside surface could be used for secret writing, and then how to reseal the envelope, and then how to slit it open without damaging the message. They studied different printed papers—insurance policies, bank statements, furniture catalogs, theater programs—while Fischer pointed out advantages and disadvantages: plenty of white space here; glossy surface there, bad for certain inks; this stuff’s like blotting-paper, quite useless; that’s better but far too small, of course … At the end he picked out a British Post Office form, dense with information about revised overseas parcel rates. “On the whole, I think I’d use this,” he decided.
“Not much space,” Luis said. The margins were cramped, the lines were crowded. “It would have to be a very short message. ‘Dear Hitler, Nothing new this end, Love, Luis.’ That sort of thing.”
“What do you bet that I couldn’t get the British Army’s Order of Battle on there?” Fischer asked. He was as bland as a bigamist.
Luis found a fifty-peseta note in his back pocket, uncrumpled it and spread it on the table. “I am sure that I shall soon regret this,” he said.
“Watch.” Fischer took a scent-spray filled with a faintly green liquid and pumped a fine and gentle mist all over the Post Office form. He placed the form in a patch of sunshine. As the mist dried, a message came into being, all over the form. It was clearly readable because it was in red and because the lines of writing ran at right angles to the lines of print. “British Order of Battle,” he said.
“That’s clever.”
“Now watch this.” Fischer took another spray, full of a smoky yellow liquid, and coated the form again. This time, bright green writing appeared between the rows of red words.
“French Order of Battle,” Fischer said.
“Formidable! Is there more?”
“No. Wait a minute: yes.” Fischer turned the form over and held it up to the light. The secret writing showed through, reversed. “Hebrew Order of Battle,” he announced. Still holding it to the light he turned it upside down. “Chinese Order of Battle,” he said. He handed the form to Luis.
“That’s quite brilliant,” Luis said. “And the great thing about it is that, once you have defeated the British, French, Hebrew and Chinese armies, you can still find out what it costs to send a parcel to New Zealand.”
Fischer shrugged modestly. “You know how thorough we Germans are.”
“Mind you, I’m a bit surprised to learn that agents still communicate with invisible ink. This is 1941, after all.”
“Don’t underestimate secret writing,” Fischer warned. “It’s survived because it does a good job. Have you any idea how much mail goes between Britain and the neutrals? Tons and tons of it. Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland, Turkey, Russia, America. The British cannot possibly test every piece of mail. What am I saying? They can’t test even one percent of it! Provided your information isn’t red-hot urgent, there’s no better way to send it, especially if it’s long and complicated.”
Luis nodded, studying the British Order of Battle. “This would make a long radio signal,” he said.
“Very long. I reckon that by the time you reached there …” (Fischer’s finger snapped against the form) “… British counterintelligence would be closing in with their butterfly-nets at the ready … Now then: time for more practice. Let’s find you something tough … Summary of bomb damage to Coventry: there, that’s pretty juicy stuff.”
Luis dipped his pen in the clear liquid and carefully wrote his invisible report. “How can I be sure I haven’t made a mistake?” he asked.
“That’s easy,” Fischer told him. “Each time you make an invisible mistake, we pay you with invisible money.”
“Ah.” Luis copied out a column of casualty figures. “I think I shall become infallible.”
“Good idea,” Fischer said. “There’s not much future in the alternative, I can tell you that.”
*
At four o’clock Luis was taken to Colonel Christian’s office. The colonel had changed his rumpled brown suit for a rumpled blue suit, but he was just as restless as before. He held a steel-shafted putter and he was hunting a golf ball around the room.
Luis sat on the sofa and poured himself a cup of tea.
“Pressure, pressure, pressure,” Christian murmured to himself. “Think, think, think. Make it happen. Win.” He stroked the ball and watched it miss a potted plant. “Damn.” He strode after it. “I hear you hate the British almost as much as I do,” he said flatly.
Luis sipped his tea. “I don’t hate the British,” he said.
“Lucky you.” Christian found his ball and hunched over it. “If you had answered differently, I would have flung you through that large, expensive window and into the street, never to return.” He putted again and tramped on. “Hatred is about as much use as bile in this job. You’d be amazed at the people I get volunteering to be spies. ‘Why?’ I ask them. ‘I hate the enemy.’ Or: ‘I want to sacrifice myself for the Fatherland.’ Or: ‘My father-in-law was a big hero and won several medals.’ Crash, tinkle-tinkle, straight out the window. Idiots.” He chipped the ball over a foot-rest and watched it ricochet off a small table.
“I wouldn’t be amazed at that,” Luis said. “We had a war too. I remember seeing the Requetes go into action. They were a sort of Basque militia, you know. Fought for Franco. They always wore brilliant scarlet berets and they always stood up to get a better shot, so the Republicans killed them with enormous rapidity.”
Christian grunted. He putted past the fireplace, and walked on.
“I once asked them why they wore such bright red berets, and they said it demonstrated how brave they were. So I asked them why they didn’t dig trenches and take cover, and they said they refused to dignify the enemy by hiding from him. Bravery and dignity. More lethal than poison gas.”
“But you are brave,” Christian said. He twiddled his putter and frowned at the ball.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure that courage really exists. I think it’s a necessary myth.”
“Like God.” Christian played his shot. The ball stopped a long way short of its target. He glared at it.
“I thought I met a brave man once,” Luis said. “Now I think he was probably just obstinate. I thought I was quite brave, once, but now I know I was just showing off.”
“I admire the British, you know.” Christian said. “We Germans have never really wanted to destroy Britain. You might remember that when you’re over there.”
>
Luis made an acknowledging grunt. Christian found his ball trapped behind an escritoire, and hooked it out. “The British are remarkably inventive, for one thing. They invented lawn tennis, and several kinds of football, and even golf. Remarkably inventive people. What would you say is their most powerful weapon?”
Luis knew enough of Colonel Christian’s fast mental footwork to feel sure that “inventiveness” was not the right answer. “Tell you in six months,” he said.
“It’s obvious, man. Stark staring obvious.” The ball had rolled onto the carpet and was now perched on a tuft. Christian got into position and waggled the club about while he glanced at his reflection in a large, gilded mirror which covered half of one wall. Luis slumped deeper into the sofa and rested his teacup against his chest. It was a pleasant way to end an industrious day, conversing with one’s boss. Christian stopped waggling, brought his bristling eyebrows together, pressed his chin hard down, took one last sideways glance at his reflection, breathed deeply, raised the club until it just missed a chandelier, and whacked the ball as hard as he could. Luis heard the whoosh of the putter-head racing through the air and he ducked behind the arm of the sofa. The thwack was meaty and the ball streaked away, but Christian had hooked his shot. It missed the mirror and smashed into a door, making it shiver. Christian fell to the floor as the ball whizzed furiously about the room, attacking two walls and the fireplace before thudding against an armchair and trickling to a halt.
Very carefully, Luis raised his saucer, which was half-full of spilled tea, and put it on the tray. “Is that game over now?” he asked. “And did you win?”
“We nearly had them in 1917, you know.” Christian’s voice was soft, a little wistful, almost affectionate. He had rolled onto his back and was lying with his hands linked behind his head. “It was so close. Another dozen torpedoes in the right place and Germany would have won that war.”
“You mean the submarines? U-boats?”
“We nearly starved them into surrender. They were actually running out of food in 1917. If only we could have sunk a few more ships … Just think: none of the shame of 1918 would have happened. No disgrace, no betrayal. No occupation by foreign troops, no mutilated frontiers, no massive reparations, no confiscated industries, no inflation, no economic chaos, no civil disorder …” Christian smiled at the ceiling.
“No Hitler?” Luis suggested.
The colonel swiveled his eyes and gave him a hard look.
“Well, it’s a logical conclusion,” Luis argued. “After all, if Germany—”
“To get back to the sea,” Christian said firmly. “The sea is Britain’s greatest weapon. It saved her after the fall of France. The sea is also Britain’s greatest weakness. Remember that.”
“All right.”
“Now look in the piano.”
Luis heaved up the top of the baby grand and found, lying on the strings, the maps of Britain which he had been shown the day before. “Oh yes,” he said. “I remember this stuff.”
“Well, now you can disremember it.” Christian got up, took the maps, and peeled them off, sheet by sheet. “Coastal approaches, submarine access, parachute areas: that’s all nonsense. Rail network; nonsense. Distribution of Abwehr agents: nonsense. Location of British military bases: utter nonsense. Abwehr radio network: pure fantasy. Forget them all.” He threw the maps behind the sofa.
“I never took them seriously, anyway,” Luis said. “You weren’t likely to tell me all your big secrets on the first day we met.”
“We’re not likely to tell you any big secrets, ever. I just want to be sure you don’t depend on any of that rubbish when you get to England. We’ll tell you anything you need to know.”
“All right.”
“It wasn’t all right yesterday. That railway map showed main lines running up and down mountain ranges like polar bears on heat, and you never even blinked.”
Luis said nothing. The colonel went over to the fireplace with his putter and prodded moodily at the brickwork. “It’s not going to be like bloody golf over there, you know,” Christian said with his back to him. “You don’t get given a handicap, nobody cares about fair play. Just one little stumble and your neck’s broken. I’m told they use a very hairy rope, too.”
There was a long and unhappy silence. Then Luis said: “If you’ve finished, I’ll take my five hundred pesetas and go.”
“What five hundred?” Christian turned; there was something black and fungoid on the end of his putter which he had pried out of the back of the fireplace. He stared at it with dislike.
“My daily expenses. Five hundred pesetas. We agreed, yesterday.”
“What a bore you are about money, Cabrillo.”
You arrogant bastard, Luis thought. And after all that death-and-no-glory warning, too! He said: “And what a bore you are about money, colonel.”
For a moment the atmosphere in the room was brittle with anger. Luis felt that at that moment Christian was capable of doing almost anything: hurling the putter at him, kicking him out, perhaps even killing him. “It galls me,” Christian said, and his large, muscular face twisted with disgust that was also self-disgust, “it galls me to think that we Germans have achieved a united Europe and yet we are still obliged to depend on specimens like you.” He tossed the putter behind him and pressed a button on his telephone.
Otto Krafft came in, smiling pleasantly.
“Pay him his parasitic five hundred pesetas,” Christian ordered.
“Today, and every day,” Luis said, “I’m not going to keep asking.”
“You’re very touchy, for a whore,” Christian told him.
“And you’re very clumsy for a ponce.”
Otto and Luis went out. On the way to the cashier’s office, Luis mentioned the colonel’s curious change of mood. Otto merely smiled and shrugged. Luis described the incident of the savage golf-ball. Otto nodded. “But why do a thing like that?” Luis asked.
“I think there is something about games which annoys him,” Otto said.
“It was extremely dangerous.”
“Yes. Anything which annoys Colonel Christian is always extremely dangerous.”
*
After the cashier’s office there was still half-an-hour before the working day ended. As Luis walked in step with Otto to yet another part of the building, he felt weary with so much learning. His brain was heavy with new knowledge. Outside, the air would be fresh and undemanding, and Madrid would be warm and cheerful, hugely inviting; he had his money, he’d surely earned it, now he deserved some rest and recreation …
That was the lingering adolescent in Luis. The adult in him thought differently. Spying was a trade, so you had to acquire the technical skills. Despite Colonel Christian’s tantrums—and Luis was not convinced that they were all completely spontaneous—the Germans were professionals: intelligent, experienced and clear-eyed. He was being taught by experts (and getting paid for it). It was a course in lifesaving. The life was his own.
Otto opened a door and waved him in. To Luis’s amazement, the man behind the desk was Wolfgang Adler, the blond and barefoot Pongo of yesterday. His head and face were cut and bruised, one wrist was in a sling, and his right leg was propped on a stool, the foot being in plaster.
“Collect you at five,” Otto said, and shut the door.
They looked at each other for perhaps eight seconds.
“I am here to instruct you in how to protect yourself,” Wolfgang said. “You have my permission to laugh.”
“No, no,” Luis said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Nevertheless, please make the effort.” Wolfgang’s lower lip was split and swollen, making his speech deliberate. “I think it will make you feel better.”
“But this is not a laughing matter,” Luis said. “I mean …” He gestured at Wolfgang’s injuries, and suddenly the situation was funny, was overwhelmingly funny, and he laughed until his ribs hurt. Wolfgang sat like a statue and watched, the only movement coming from one slig
htly blackened eye, which twitched.
“Sorry,” Luis said.
“One day I hope to break both your legs,” Wolfgang said. “But I promise you I shall not laugh. Now … Do I have your full attention?”
“Go ahead.”
“When you get to Britain you will face two constant dangers. One from the professional spy-hunters, the men and women of MI5, the other from the great mass of the population. I must tell you that there is very little you can do against the first, except to take every care and to go into hiding as soon as you suspect that you are in danger. Once they decide to arrest you, there is little hope. They have all the advantages. It would be foolish to imagine that even the greatest skill in gunmanship or unarmed combat can save you once you are trapped in a building and surrounded. The spy who shoots his way out of trouble has one enormous advantage: the collaboration of his scriptwriter. Understand?”
“Um,” Luis said. He breathed deeply, looked at the ceiling, exercised his shoulders. “Let’s not be coy. What you’re saying is, give up without a fight. I don’t see how I can agree to that.”
“Do as you please. I’m here to tell you the facts of life. You will be given a handgun and trained to use it. In my opinion it has only one use for an agent who finds himself cornered.” Wolfgang raised his uninjured arm, poked his index finger in his ear and pulled an imaginary trigger.
“Nothing personal, I hope.”
Wolfgang looked away. “You flatter yourself, Mr. Cabrillo.”
“Sorry. All the same, I don’t think I could shoot myself just because … I mean, it seems such a waste.”
“It’s better than hanging. Being hanged is a very wretched death.” He took a small automatic from a drawer and slid it across the desk. “Rehearse.”
Luis held the weapon by the fingertips of both hands and made sure that it was empty. He gave the trigger a few practice squeezes. It didn’t feel at all lethal. It felt like an office stapler. “Does it matter which ear?” he inquired. Wolfgang looked at his fingernails. “No, I don’t suppose it does,” Luis murmured. He pressed the muzzle into, his right ear, sealing off half the world with a cold and slightly oily plug of steel.
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