Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

  *

  They were clearing away the breakfast things when she came down, feeling stretched and wary because of her hangover. It created an overinflated, insecure sensation, like going down in a fast lift. She had an irrational conviction that she was going to drop Luis’s letter unless she constantly remembered to hold it.

  The assistant manager hurried toward her. “Señora Conroy! Something for you!” His smile made his mustache bristle with pride. “From New York, Señora!”

  “Hey, that’s great.” Julie took the letter and sat in the nearest chair. The letter was from Harry’s agency; their return address was on the envelope. She slit the flap. There was no check inside, only a short letter. It informed her, as a matter of courtesy, that Mr. Conroy was no longer employed by them.

  Julie got Evans on the phone. “My guess is he’s gone freelance,” Evans said. “Harry often talked about doing that, you know.”

  “And what about me?”

  “Well, I can lend you a few bucks if—”

  “No, no, no. I’ve got a few bucks. But he’s supposed to support me, for Christ’s sake! What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

  Pause. Evans sighed. “You know old Harry,” he said.

  “Yeah. That was where I made my big mistake.”

  She drank a cup of coffee and went back upstairs. She took the lift; it went like a rocket and made her feel like a melting snowman. In her room, she did some rough reckoning and let out a groan. What she’d told Evans was right: she had a few bucks. Enough to pay the hotel, get to Lisbon, and buy an airline ticket, one-way, to New York. She glared at the magnificent Madrid sunshine, flooding through her window. The entire goddam world was ganging up to drive her back to goddam Indiana, led by Harry goddam Conroy!

  Luis’s letter was on the bed. No point in sending that now. She tore it up and began packing.

  Chapter 37

  Only one thing spoiled Colonel Christian’s general happiness in July of 1941, and that was Wolfgang Adler’s coldness.

  The war was going extremely well and Eldorado was doing even better: twice a week, sometimes three times a week, Otto Krafft opened new reports which were stuffed with valuable information about British military abilities and intentions. The Madrid weather was sunny and invigorating. Captain Mullen had stopped nagging him for action, Berlin was congratulatory, and Christian’s bowels had resumed normal service. Everyone was cheerful and enthusiastic except Wolfgang Adler. He was not antagonistic; he was just silent. He limped into meetings, sat with his damaged hand tucked inside his jacket and said nothing. But his stony expression plainly disapproved of what he heard.

  Christian said nothing and hoped that the mood would pass. The contrary happened: Wolfgang’s grimness became more obvious. Eventually, Christian decided that he must do something about it. The decision reached him during a meeting he had called to discuss an exciting development in Eldorado’s affairs. The Spaniard had recruited two sub-agents.

  “Eldorado has given them suitable codenames,” Christian informed the meeting. “‘Seagull’ is a foreman working in the Liverpool docks, and ‘Knickers’ is a traveling salesman operating in south-east England. Eldorado has sent us their first reports, together with his own comments. Richard has read the lot, I hope.”

  “With great interest, sir. Seagull’s effort is written on wrapping-paper—” Fischer held up a brown sheet, covered with pencil scribblings. “—but no less valuable for that. He gives us a lot of good stuff about shipping movements, especially British aid to Russia. Eldorado’s note says that Seagull is fanatically anti-Comminist. He’s not well educated, by the way. Misspellings everywhere.”

  “Could be Irish,” Dr. Hartmann suggested. “Lots of Irish in Liverpool.”

  “That would explain the anti-Communist element too,” said Otto Krafft. “He’s probably a rabid Catholic”

  “Quite possibly,” Richard Fischer said. “The other sub-agent. Knickers, is very different. His job as a soft-drinks salesman takes him into Royal Air Force bases where, according to Eldorado, he also visits the officers’ messes in order to sell black-market nylon stockings.” Everyone chuckled except Wolfgang, who winced. “This enables him to pick up useful information,” Fischer went on. “I may say his first report is very promising indeed …”

  When the meeting broke up, Christian asked Wolfgang to stay behind for a minute.

  Wolfgang leaned on his stick and said nothing. Christian closed the door, walked back to his desk and perched on a corner of it. “You’re not enjoying your work, are you?”

  Wolfgang looked down and then up. His expression remained blank.

  “Is it because of your injuries?” Christian asked. “Would you like a few weeks’ leave to help you recuperate?”

  Wolfgang gave a single shake of the head.

  “Well, something’s obviously wrong, isn’t it?” Christian said briskly. “What is it: a woman, money, trouble at home?”

  “None of those.”

  “Look, Adler; you’re intelligent, you’re perceptive, and most of the time you’re well-balanced. You’ve got a mind of your own. Good. Now I don’t go to the trouble of recruiting lively minds in order to shut them up whenever they speak out. I believe in poking people in the ribs but not in beating them over the head. Right? So if you have something on your mind, for God’s sake unload it. That’s what you’re paid for.”

  Wolfgang breathed in deeply. His eyes showed the strain of fatigue: his aching hand had kept him awake most of the night. “All right,” he said. “Since you ask me, I’ll tell you. This whole Eldorado operation leaves me cold. I don’t trust it.”

  Christian looked at Wolfgang’s stick. “Perhaps you have a special reason.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks, and that’s why I keep my mouth shut in these meetings. Nobody’s prepared to look beyond the obvious.”

  “What is there to see?”

  “It’s what there isn’t to see that’s important. There’s a total lack of proof, of corroboration. Eldorado is operating in isolation. That means we never check his reliability.”

  “There’s Mercury.”

  “Mercury can’t even check his own laundry-list. He’s not a voice, he’s an echo.”

  “Well, let’s not argue about Mercury. But can you point to anything that suggests Eldorado’s unreliability?”

  “Yes. In last week’s report he located Waterloo station on the wrong side of London.”

  “True. But surely that’s just a detail. All agents make minor mistakes. After all, the man’s under great stress.”

  “Then he shouldn’t be left operating on his own.”

  “Oh.” Christian took out his handkerchief and tromboned a lengthy snort into it. “Do you mean we should send another agent to work alongside him?”

  “Why not send several?”

  “There are plenty of reasons why not. Every additional agent increases the risk, the cost, the administrative complications. And the encouraging aspect of the Seagull-Knickers development is that if Eldorado can find his own sub-agents, we shan’t need to send anyone else.”

  Wolfgang made a sour face. “It’s all happening too easily. Eldorado’s in England as a Spanish businessman. How can he recruit a soft-drinks salesman and a foreman docker, just like that? Especially as one of them’s a rabid Catholic? Eldorado’s an atheist.”

  “So what? You’re a cultural attaché, according to the embassy. That proves nothing.”

  Wolfgang was silent for a moment. “Nothing proves anything, does it?” he said. He glanced at the door.

  “You’re still not convinced, Adler, are you?” Christian tried to give him a sympathetic smile. “Well, I admire your consistency. And your courage. I’m glad you’re not prepared to change your tune just because its unpopular. That could be quite useful. After all, Eldorado’s only human. He has weak areas, he makes mistakes. I depend on you to spot them.” Christian thought of adding Only try not to be so bloody miserable about it, but he gave an encourag
ing nod instead.

  “That won’t be difficult,” Wolfgang said. He went out, the end of his stick leaving a trail of indentations in Christian’s carpet.

  Chapter 38

  The Lusitania Express steamed into Lisbon’s Santa Apolonia station some time between 9:25 a.m. and 10:12 a.m., depending on which of the two station clocks you didn’t believe. To Julie it didn’t matter a lot. Her sleeper from Madrid had been comfortable. Since she awoke she had been looking at mile after mile of olive trees, cork woods and rice fields, until the track met the Tagus and she watched the Tagus grow from a river to an estuary to a bay, and they were trundling past the Lisbon suburbs. She counted a dozen big freighters anchored out there, plus another dozen warships flying a variety of flags. She knew that the open Atlantic was only a few miles away but somehow Lisbon didn’t feel like a big, tough, deep-water port. The air was soft and mild. Nobody hurried. If the time really was 9:25 the express was a little early. If it was actually 10:12, the train was a bit late. What difference did it make?

  She checked her bags at the station and walked along the waterfront until the streets opened onto a big square calling itself the Praca do Comercio. It had a blackened statue of a man on a horse in the middle and it was flanked by colonnaded government offices. This seemed to be where everything began; the city rose behind it in a great, shallow bowl, with the old castle perched on the right-hand side. There were odd echoes of London: doubledecker buses, red pillar-boxes, even businessmen with rolled umbrellas and regimental-looking ties. But where were the Pan Am offices? She found a phone box and looked them up, found a taxi and showed him the address: Avenida da Liberdade.

  It turned out to be Lisbon’s Park Avenue, only wider and pleasanter. The Pan Am people turned out to be friendly and helpful, but the weather in the Atlantic was not. The Clipper route to New York went via Portuguese Guinea, Trinidad and Puerto Rico. Somewhere in that seven and a half thousand miles the incoming Clipper had run into a storm and been delayed. As a result, the Lisbon schedules were disrupted. Pan Am hoped, with luck, to get Julie’s flight away on Thursday. Today was Monday. “Please don’t be late,” the ticket clerk told her. “If anyone doesn’t check-in on time, that seat automatically goes to a stand-by. And believe me, there are always stand-bys.”

  Julie paid him and counted her change. There was not a lot to count. If she found a cheap pensão and lived on beans she might reach New York with enough to make a collect call to Indiana. So, no more taxis. She walked back down the Avenida, enjoying the sunshine, the scenery, the smells and the Liberdade: all, thank God, free.

  Chapter 39

  There may have been a cheaper pensão in Lisbon, but not much. The Pensão São Vicente was in a courtyard off a small square in the heart of the Alfama. The inside smelt strongly of cooked cabbage and the outside, when she opened a window, smelt more strongly of live chickens. The bed groaned when she sat on it, and the only picture on the walls—a startlingly realistic lithograph of the Sacred Heart—bled in sympathy for her sufferings to come. But the place was fairly clean, the owner had a friendly smile, and above all she was bone-weary of tramping around Lisbon, looking rich and sounding poor; so Julie took the room for three nights. It cost her the equivalent of two and a half dollars.

  The Alfama was ancient Lisbon. It staggered up the hillside below the castle of São Jorge in a confusion of twisted alleys, staircases and dead-ends. It had plenty of atmosphere, aside from cooked cabbage and chickens: a Moorish look in the faces, a gypsy look in the clothes. The Alfama felt like an independent village within the city. Julie liked it. The kids peed in the gutters. The cats chased the pigeons. People stared, and when she stared back they said Boa tarde, which had to mean either good afternoon or get lost, so she boa-tarded them right back in her godawful Middle-Western Portuguese, and they grinned; so that was all right. No bullshit about the Alfama.

  By eight o’clock she was ravenous. She walked into a crowded café where nobody had shaved for a week and everybody was having a good time. Her arrival created a small hubbub of surprise, which brought out the cook, who was also the waiter. She guessed at what he said: sorry, no tables. “Can’t I sit there?” she asked, pointing to a place at a table which had three pairs of hairy elbows on it. Pan Am gave its passengers a free phrase-book, and she’d memorized a little Portuguese. “Com licença?” she inquired. The hairy elbows were vastly impressed. She sat down. The menu, chalked on the wall, was beyond translation. What the hairy elbows were eating smelled good. She looked up “same” in her little book, and said to the cook, very clearly: “Mesmo.” The word was repeated, approvingly, all over the café. She was in. Mesmo turned out to be beans with chunks of spiced sausage and hunks of pork. It was called feijoada: this she learned from the hairy elbows. They adopted her, gave her red wine, taught her words: glass, copo; enough, basta; so long, T’amanha! They were building laborers. Her choice of their table made them proud and pleased; it was like being visited by a film star. They escorted her home, and they all shook hands in the moonlit courtyard. T’amanha!

  Julie slept deeply, despite the groaning bed, and was woken by a cock-crow. She stretched and relaxed, and could hear half-a-dozen other cocks crowing. Right in the middle of Lisbon! Delightful.

  She felt lighthearted, for a good and simple reason. She had nothing left to worry about: not money, not men, not the problem of what to do about Harry or Hitler or the survival of Soviet Russia. All her decisions were made. Her past was now irrelevant, and her future was still seven and a half thousand miles away. For the first time in many months she was free to be happy, happy to be free.

  She got up and enjoyed her day, exploring Lisbon in the sun, coming back to eat in her café, sleeping well and getting up next day to enjoy it all over again. By Thursday morning she felt better than ever: calm and optimistic, looking forward to her noon flight.

  Noon check-in, or noon takeoff?

  She fished the ticket out of her bag. Along with it came a piece of paper, ragged-edged, torn from a notebook. HOSPITAL DE XABREGAS, she read. ANTONIO DA SILVA. and scribbled underneath: $50 max, remember!

  Evans’s pal. The Portuguese who ran the black market in travel documents.

  Oh well. That was all history now. She had a perfectly good American passport, and in any case what she didn’t have was $50, either max or min. Always supposing she still wanted to go to Britain, which everyone she knew had told her was an extremely lousy idea. She screwed up the paper and threw it away.

  Ten minutes later she found it and unscrewed it. There were three hours to kill before her flight—check-in time was noon—and why turn up a chance to meet a genuine Portuguese black-marketeer? They’d be thin on the ground in Indiana. And not having fifty bucks just meant she had nothing to lose.

  There was a pawn shop she’d noticed, below the Alfama, near the waterfront. She got there just as they were taking down the shutters, and she got two hundred escudos for her watch. That financed a taxi; Xabregas was just a name to her and this was no time to get lost. The driver took waterfront streets for a mile or two, then turned inland and drove through semi-suburbs, where houses met country. The hospital was up a dead-end. It was smallish but newish, just a three-story concrete block with a lot of flowers growing up the side.

  Julie let the taxi drive away while she thought about tactics. Antonio da Silva sounded like a smooth crook. What would be the best approach? Her imagination revived a string of scenes from “B” movies. They all involved a lot of leg and a lot of cigar smoke and a lot of saxophone on the soundtrack. Not much use in this sunny, healthy setting. She gave up and went in.

  Everything the nurse behind the reception desk had on was starched, including her expression. She creaked when she looked up.

  “Doctor da Silva?” Julie said. “Antonio da Silva, that is.”

  “Senhor da Silva?” the nurse corrected. “Your name?” Her accent was good.

  Julie gave her name. The nurse made a telephone call and had a short, rapid conver
sation in Portuguese. “Please sit,” she said.

  Julie sat.

  Nothing happened for fifteen minutes.

  The reception area was small and bare. The nurse had some kind of work to do: sorting file cards. Otherwise, only the clock moved.

  “Did Senhor da Silva say how long?” Julie asked.

  The nurse gave a small, stiff smile.

  Another ten minutes of nothing happened. Julie began to worry about the time: nearly ten o’clock, and her bags were still at the pensão. This was crazy. The sane thing to do was to get up and walk out. Forget Britain. Go home, while you still can. The guy’s not worth crossing the street for. He’s a bum, a mercenary bum. Get up now and walk out.

  The clock reached ten, and it was the nurse that got up and walked out. She took her handbag and gave Julie a starched half-glance. Off to the ladies’ room.

  Julie gave her ten seconds’ lead and followed. Short corridor, empty. First door on the right revealed a broom cupboard. Second door was a laundry store. Julie moved on, then went back to the store and took a white coat. The sleeves crackled as her arms thrust into them.

  Next was a set of double-doors. She pushed them open, walked past some nurses chattering in Portuguese, and went through more double-doors into a broad corridor. The air had the aromatic, disciplined smell of all hospital wards.

  The first three rooms were closed. In the fourth she saw a man sitting in a wheelchair. His hands, feet and head were bandaged. She stopped, and he smiled.

  “Faz favor,” she said. “Senhor da Silva?”

  “Funny you should say that.” He brightened up even more. “I mean, I was one of the lucky ones, right?” He was English, from somewhere north, like Yorkshire.