“And who’s controlling him?”
“Me,” said Franz.
“But you’ve got Seagull.”
“Well, now I’ve got Nutmeg too.”
“Good God!” Fischer exclaimed.
“You’ll be next, I expect,” Otto said. “Eagle’s already sending as much material as two ordinary agents, so I’m fully occupied.”
“I wonder what Adler had in his magic folder?” Franz said.
“Sandwiches, I hope,” Otto said. “He’s got a long wait ahead of him.”
Chapter 52
Two Portuguese delivery-men carried in the new filing-cabinets, placed them next to the old ones, gave Luis the keys, got his signature and went out. They had also brought a Dictaphone system and three second-hand typewriters.
“Great idea,” said Julie from the door of her office. “Now I can type three reports at once. I’d do four, but I need my left foot to beat time.”
Luis tapped a space-key until the machine rang its little bell. “Different type-faces,” he said. “It occurred to me that all the reports should look different, you see, especially now that Garlic and Nutmeg are working. I got them cheap. Can you work them okay?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“If not I’ll get some more. They’re a deductible business expense.”
It was eleven in the morning on a day of autumnal crispness. Outside, the sky was a bowl of such pure blue that it looked as if it could be cracked with a spoon. A few gulls had wandered up from the Tagus and were flashing their extreme whiteness against the sky in a lazy display of flying skills. Down below, the red roofs and white walls of Lisbon stood out as sharply as the pop-up houses in a child’s picture-book. It was, Julie thought, one hell of a day.
Luis stretched, and rubbed his eyes; he had been writing since 8 a.m. “Shall we get ourselves organized?” he asked. He found a sheet of paper with a list of items. “Let’s start with Bradburn & Wedge.”
“I saw that guy Rodriguez again this morning.” She came over and sat on his desk. “He says he’s definitely bankrupt. He can’t return the five hundred bucks’-worth of lemonade crystals because the guy he sold them to has gone away without paying.”
Luis grunted. “No wonder he’s bankrupt.”
“Rodriguez feels very bad about it all. He’s offered to pay us back in de-greasing patents.”
Luis looked sideways at her. “What are they?”
“God knows. But Rodriguez reckons they’re worth eight hundred bucks, so I said yes.”
Luis crossed off item one. “That still leaves us with half the crystals, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe. Here’s another reply to my ad in Diario.”
He scanned the letter she gave him. “He’s a German,” he said.
“That’s just his name. Joachim von Klausbrunner. For all you know he comes from Nigeria.”
“He’s got offices in Hamburg and Rome.” Luis raised his eyebrows. “Why does he want lemonade crystals?”
“His secretary told me she thinks it’s for export to Rommel’s Afrika Korps.”
“Oh,” Luis said. “Oh, oh.”
“Yeah. That about sums it up.” She swung her legs. Luis looked at them, and then looked away. “They want all they can get,” she said. “Twenty percent above market price, too.”
“I don’t suppose lemonade crystals can do the Afrika Korps all that much good, can they?” Luis asked. “I mean, the really important thing is to get Bradburn & Wedge established. Isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“It’s a question of ends versus means.” He twitched his nose. “Damn, damn.”
“Spin a coin,” Julie suggested.
Luis found an escudo. “Heads we go ahead and sell them the stuff,” he said. It came down heads. “Thank you, God, you can go home now.” He ticked lemonade crystals. “Now, about Garlic. I think he ought to find out something to do with shipbuilding. Have you ever been to Glasgow?”
“Drove through it once. Grim.”
“Jasper Stembridge reckons they do a lot of shipbuilding in Glasgow.” He flipped open the book to a marked page. “‘The deafening noise of countless hammers tells that men are busy at work building a vessel that soon will slide into the murky waters of the Clyde, and later speed across the seas.’ I bet they’re working night and day.”
“Sure. To make up for the U-boat sinkings.”
“Exactly …”
They talked about that, and about the four other items on Luis’s list, involving Seagull, Knickers, Nutmeg and Eldorado. When he had crossed off the last one, Julie said: “Okay, now let’s get down to Any Other Business. The topic under discussion is sex.”
“Ah.” Luis adjusted the point of his propelling pencil. “Sex.”
“Yes. Does it exist, has it a future, is there a place for it, and why can’t that be in our bed?”
“I see what you mean. It has been rather a long time, I suppose.” He scratched his chin.
“It’s been a week,” Julie said. “A whole seven-day week.”
“As long as that? My goodness.”
“Your goodness is exactly what I need, Luis. Dammit, every night we stagger home, dead beat, and you fall into bed. And every morning you’re up and crashing about, fully dressed, before dawn!”
“Seven o’clock.”
“Same thing. I mean, Seagull and Garlic and all those guys are lovely people, Luis, but none of them has what you have. That is; assuming you still have it.”
“Mmm.” He nodded several times. She looked away. There was an awkward silence. “The work takes up so much time.” he murmured.
“I can remember when we were in Madrid …” she began. She left it unfinished and went into her office. Soon Luis heard her start typing. He sighed and returned to his report.
There was another briefing letter waiting for him at the bank that afternoon. He scanned it, recognized Richard Fischer’s style, and stuffed it into a pocket. That evening they worked until nine, and then went to a restaurant which overlooked the river. The view was deep and dark: blue-black sky and inky water. A few early stars gave depth to the night, and the yellow lights of ferries trickled to and from the far shore. There was lobster and watercress salad with a cool white wine. There was every fruit that Julie had ever seen and a few she hadn’t, and a waiter who could carve a fat orange into the shape of a perfect waterlily without spilling a drop of juice. The coffee was like molten gold and the port was like molten grapes, except that it was molten grapes, but by that time Julie was too happy to conduct a careful analysis of her pleasures; she simply enjoyed them. “You know, Luis,” she said, curling her leg inside his, “for a dumb Spanish schmuck, you’re not such a heel as you might be, even if you have got crumbs on your mustache.”
He reached for his handkerchief, and pulled the letter out with it. “I forgot to tell you,” he said. “Madrid is now interested in the economic planning of the British. It looks as if the war might last longer than was first thought. Isn’t that encouraging?”
“Sure. What this world needs is another long war.”
“No, I mean it opens up a fresh area for us. I can feed them stuff about manpower and raw materials and budgets and …”
“And sex.”
“Well, growth of population is a factor. I mean, look at Russia.”
“Is there much sex in Russia?”
Luis sipped his port. Julie stroked the inside of his thigh. “I wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “I just wonder if it isn’t all a matter of energy.”
“Tell you what. Let’s go and find out.”
“Productive capacity, for instance. You get out what you put in.”
“It’s worth trying,” she murmured. “Who knows, we could be on the verge of a great discovery.”
Luis paid the bill and said nothing until they were outside, “It really is a very promising development, you know, Julie,” he remarked. He was clicking his fingers and hoping from foot to foot as he searched for a taxi.
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“I mean, it offers us so many new opportunities, so many …” A taxi stopped. He held the door open while she got in, and he stood for a moment, twisting the handle back and forth, “I’ll tell you what: you go ahead. My mind’s full of ideas. I’ll just pop back to the office for a few minutes and dictate them into the machine. Otherwise I’m afraid I might forget them.”
“How long are you going to be?”
“Not long. I promise.”
He talked into the Dictaphone for half an hour, and then glanced through Jasper Stembridge to check a couple of facts. What he read about iron-smelting in the Middlesbrough district—“By day smoke pours forth from the chimneys of many blast furnaces and steel factories, by night their lurid flames light the whole countryside”—gave him new ideas about the effects of economic dislocation caused by black-out restrictions. He looked up Middlesbrough in the 1923 Michelin. It was very close to the North Sea, which made it highly vulnerable to bomber attack from Denmark. What would the British be doing about that? He put a fresh roll in the Dictaphone.
Julie was asleep when he got home; he was astonished to discover that it was three in the morning. Habit awoke him at seven; when he got up she stirred and blinked but fell asleep again. He was eager to be back at work, and he hurried his breakfast. She half-opened her eyes to see him getting dressed, and grunted. He paused and looked. “See you later,” she mumbled. He squeezed her blanketed foot and walked softly away.
It was ten-thirty when she came into the office. There were two Portuguese men behind her, carrying a new divan bed and a package of sheets, pillows and blankets. They put it where she said. She tipped them. They went out. Luis watched with interest.
“Just a little idea I had last night while I was waiting for you to come home,” she said.
Luis tested the springs. “Very comfortable. What a good idea. If I ever have to work really late—”
“I said it was for Bradburn & Wedge, so the store gave me twenty percent discount.”
He nodded. “I don’t suppose it’s a tax-deductible expense, but still …”
She watched him walk all around it.
“Don’t forget to kick the tires,” she said.
He smiled, and picked a loose thread from the mattress. She looked at him while he looked at the bed. Eventually he glanced up. “A nice thought,” he said. “Thank you.”
Julie held his gaze for perhaps five seconds. “I’m pleased you’re pleased,” she said, and went into her office.
They worked separately for about twenty minutes. Then she called out: “What’s this word ‘loins’?”
He frowned. “I don’t remember writing anything about loins.”
“Could it be ‘groins’?”
“No. Show me.”
She came in, smiling brightly and utterly naked. Her breasts swayed slightly in counterpoint to the easy swing of her hips. She looked very white and very lithe. Luis’s head jerked as if someone had tugged his hair.
“Here it is.” She leaned gently against him and showed him the page of notes.
“That’s not ‘loins,’” he said. “That’s ‘dynamite.’”
“Is there a difference?” She walked back to her office, taking the long way round. Her buttocks twinkled neatly.
Luis took a deep breath and picked up his work, but the words had lost their meaning. One minute later Julie was back. This time she drifted slowly over to his desk, walking on tip-toe and smoothing the back of her hair while she held a different sheet of paper at arm’s length. In the reflected sunlight her skin had a sheen like new satin.
“Look,” she said, placing the paper in front of him. “It must be jelly, cuz jam don’t shake like that.”
She had ringed one word. “That’s ‘dynamite’ again,” Luis said.
“Really?” She put her arm around his neck and leaned so that one nipple brushed his cheek and touched his lips. “Dynamite, huh?”
“For God’s sake!” Luis roared. He heaved himself out of his chair as she took her paper and walked away. Throwing off his coat and shirt and kicking off his shoes he followed her into her office, where she had already begun typing.
“Sorry if I disturbed you,” she said.
“Forget that,” he told her, dragging off his trousers with some difficulty. “Come to bed.”
She paused with her hands on the keys, while he stood, panting and rampant. “You do realize that it’s not a tax-deductible expense,” she remarked.
“Oh, balls!” he cried.
“Well, if you put it that way,” she said, “how can a lady refuse?”
They ripped open the packets of sheets and covered the bed. The cotton rustled stiffly against their bodies. One of the bed-springs squeaked. “Did you really think I got this just for when you worked late?” Julie asked.
“Yes,” Luis said defiantly. He tucked his head under the sheet and blew a series of raspberries against her breasts until it made her laugh and she hugged him to stop it. “Anyway,” he mumbled, “when a woman arrives in your office with a bed at half-past ten in the morning, it’s not easy to know exactly what to do next.”
“Poor Luis,” she said. “Still, you seem to be getting the hang of it now, don’t you?”
“Beginner’s luck,” he said.
*
Luis slept for half an hour, and woke up to see Julie curled beside him, reading a Portuguese guide book. “Let’s go to Oporto,” she said. “It’s all green and blue up there. Lots of rivers and mountains. Have you ever been to Oporto?” He shook his head. “Couple of hundred miles north,” she said.
He lay sideways and enjoyed watching her.
“Coimbra looks good too. And Santarém. Nazaré. Grandala. Beja. Loulé. Terrific old places, built by Moors and Romans. We should go take a look.”
“It would be nice.”
“Well, we can afford a week off.”
“Afford the money, yes. What about the time? What about the work?”
“It’ll still be here when we come back.”
Luis almost laughed. “Madrid wouldn’t be very pleased to hear that the war has been adjourned for two weeks,” he said.
“Can’t you cook something up? Tell them that Seagull’s got mumps, Knickers got married, Garlic’s working double-shifts at the hospital and Eldorado … I don’t know, Eldorado’s been run over by a bus.”
“That still leaves Nutmeg.”
“Jailed for shoplifting.”
Luis grunted, and looked away. “They’re easy enough to destroy,” he said, “but they’re damn difficult to create. In any case, I want to recruit a new man soon.”
Julie slowly raised her head and looked over the top of the guide book. “Not another subagent, for heaven’s sake?” she said.
“Certainly. He’s a homosexual lecturer at the University of Birmingham. Codename ‘Wallpaper.’”
She moved until she was kneeling and sitting on her heels, looking down at him. “Luis, tell me something. Why are you doing all this?”
He shrugged. “You know why.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t mean how did it happen, I mean what’s the purpose of this whole damn great operation? Where is it getting you?”
“It’s getting me rich, of course. What else?” He made a wide-open gesture.
“But you are rich, now.” She stared at him, determined to make him explain. “How much do you make per year at the moment?”
“In dollars? About …” He worked it out. “Maybe sixty or seventy thousand a year. That’s before taxes and expenses,” he added hurriedly.
“Then I don’t understand. What more do you want?”
“It’s a business, Julie. You can’t stop it growing if the market wants it to grow. All I’m doing is meeting the demand.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Luis? You create the demand! You create all these nobodies! I mean, how many more do you need, for Pete’s sake? What are you trying to do: make yourself the first spy mill
ionaire?”
Luis looked at the ceiling and smoothed his mustache.
“Holy cow,” Julie said, in a voice flattened by amazement. “I just aimed ten feet high and hit the target.”
Luis got out of bed, and stretched. “Duty calls!” he said.
*
Luis successfully launched Wallpaper, hinting not only that his homosexuality was the lever which Eldorado had used to recruit him, but also that—in the decadence of Birmingham University—it won him access to secret research being done for the War Office. Wallpaper’s first report was on experiments with hypnosis to reduce sexual tension among submarine crews. He ran up an impressive bill for entertaining his informants, which Madrid paid without question.
Bradburn & Wedge was also doing well. Julie sold a second consignment of lemonade crystals to the firm of Joachim von Klausbrunner. The degreasing patents which she had taken in payment from the bankrupt dealer lay on her desk for a while, until she advertised them in Diario (Patentes Anti-Lubrificantes—Grande Utilidade—Oportunidade Exceptional). This brought an inquiry from a firm of engineers, who bought a five-year license on the patents. Her accountant urged her to invest the money in Portuguese Government bonds; instead she spent it all on soap.
“Very American,” Luis said when she told him.
“Listen, you’re more American than I am. At least I get some fun out of business. All you ever want to do is make money.”
“All I want to do is succeed. Would you prefer me to fail?” “Oh, forget it.”
“The money comes afterward. It’s just a measurement of success, that’s all.”
“Okay, you’re rich! You’re successful! So why can’t we at least take a weekend in Oporto?”
Luis shook his head. “We’ve been over that. You go, if you want to.”
“You’re a goddam addict,” she said. “Any time you’re not making money you’re afraid you’re going to die. The more you get, the more you crave.”
He smiled, and steered her to the door. “I always know when you’re hungry,” he said, “because that’s when you stop making sense.”
It was drizzling and gloomy, so he took her to a restaurant made warm and cheerful by its charcoal fire. They ate grilled chicken made even hotter with piri-piri sauce, drank beer, and said little.
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