Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

  “It may be worth remembering, sir,” said Otto, cautiously, “that Berlin has had Eagle’s report for over a week now, and nobody there has queried it.”

  “Not out loud, maybe.”

  Dr. Hartmann cleared his throat. “Eldorado’s team does have a remarkably good record, sir,” he observed. “None of his sub-agents has ever let us down, Garlic least of all.”

  Christian grunted. “As far as we know, you mean. The fact remains that one or other of your geniuses has been spitting in his soup. The British light alloy industry cannot be going up and down at the same time, for God’s sake. Eagle tells us it’s booming, Garlic says it’s going bust. Who’s right?”

  “On the face of it, sir,” Otto suggested, “Eagle is better qualified to judge. He’s an industrialist, whereas Garlic—”

  “I know, I know. Don’t you think I’ve considered all that?” Christian paused at a mirror, breathed heavily on his reflection, and prowled away. “The point is, what do we do now?”

  “Get a third opinion?” said Dr. Hartmann.

  “I don’t want any more bloody opinions. I want the truth.” Christian reached the sofa and leaned on the back, making it rock. “They’ll have to fight it out between them, that’s all. Send them both an order.” He prodded Otto on the shoulder and made him start. “Make sure they know it’s an order. Tell them to meet as soon as possible. How soon can they meet?”

  Otto began: “I really don’t think …”

  “Five days from now should be reasonable,” Hartmann said, “allowing a day for delays.”

  “Five days from now, then. Where?”

  “Well, Manchester’s midway between London and Glasgow,” Hartmann said. “That’s fair to both.”

  “It may be fair, sir, but it’s just not practical,” Otto protested. “Eagle stressed when he joined us: no personal contact. It’s the only way he can protect himself.”

  “That’s no damn good to me. Until I get an answer from both of them, how can I trust either? Tell Eagle that if he doesn’t keep that rendezvous, he’s fired. Tell Garlic the same. They rendezvous, they fight it out, they report back: who’s right, who’s wrong, and why. Got it?”

  “Sir,” Otto said.

  “Do it now. Sort out the details between you. Go.” He pointed to the door.

  Chapter 55

  Three days after he had posted Garlic’s light-alloys report, Luis walked down to the bank to pick up his mail.

  There was an unspoken agreement between him and Julie that he always went to the bank alone. It gave them a welcome break from each other, and he enjoyed the brisk walk down to the Rua do Comercio in the cool winter air.

  The three-piece-suit saw him come in and was ready for him. There was only one letter, in the familiar square, brown envelope which Madrid Abwehr used. Luis signed for it. “Your friend from the Spanish embassy would have collected it for you, Senhor Cabrillo,” the three-piece-suit said, “but unfortunately he arrived too soon.”

  “Ah,” Luis said. He blotted his signature to give himself time to think. “That was when?”

  “Oh, half an hour ago. The mail had not yet been sorted. You were not inconvenienced, I hope.”

  “Not at all.” Luis slit open the envelope. He had an extraordinary sensation of déjà vu, of living a script that he had written. “I’d like a word with him. Will he return, do you think?”

  “I think so. He had to go back to the embassy to collect your written authorization.”

  “I see.” Luis was looking at the letter but not reading the words. “He forgot that, did he? Silly fellow.”

  The three-piece-suit gave a tiny, tolerant shrug.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Luis said.

  He found a quiet corner and made himself read his letter. It was bad news; the worst possible news. Christian ordered Garlic to rendezvous with Eagle at Manchester (Main Road) railway station on platform one, under the clock, at 3 p.m. by that clock, each man to carry a fountain pen in the left hand and have one shoelace undone … Luis skimmed through the rest, and then rested his head against the cold marble wall. Something had gone wrong. Evidently Garlic had made some sort of blunder and now he was to be investigated by this terrible man Eagle. It was all going horribly wrong.

  Luis forced himself back to the present. There were four days before the Manchester rendezvous; four days in which to avert disaster. Meanwhile a man was wandering around Lisbon pretending to be from the Spanish embassy so that he could get his hands on Luis’s mail. That looked frighteningly as if someone had penetrated his cover. But if this weird someone knew all about Luis’s set-up, he must also know that the Spanish embassy cover was mythical, was bogus. So why was he behaving as if it were real? And why did he want this particular letter?

  There was only one way to find out. Luis got an envelope from a cashier, put the letter inside it and addressed the envelope to himself, exactly as Madrid Abwehr had done. Then he handed it to the three-piece-suit.

  “Please give this to my friend from the Spanish embassy when he comes back,” he said, “and don’t worry if he hasn’t found my authorization. He’s a terrible fellow for losing things.”

  “Certainly, Senhor Cabrillo.”

  “He even left his hat in my office.” Luis held up the big black hat. “I had hoped to meet him here, so that …” Luis spun the hat on his forefinger, and smiled ruefully.

  “Would you like me to give it to him?” the three-piece-suit asked.

  Luis blinked, and widened his smile. “Would you mind?” he said, handing it over.

  He strolled up and down the street, watching the bank entrance. The longer he waited, the more he worried. Suppose the man never came back. Suppose he came back and refused to take the hat. Or he might accept the hat and then leave it inside the bank. Luis felt panic nibbling at his guts. He was enormously tempted to go back inside and keep watch, but commonsense insisted that that would be fatal: the three-piece-suit would notice him and, when the time came, would point him out. Luis stamped his feet and tried to decide how he would behave in the same situation. Would he realize that the hat was just a badge, a label? Would he think that it concealed a message? Would he, God forbid, fold it up and hide it in his pocket?

  Luis suddenly stopped worrying. A man had come out of the bank and was examining the hat. He tried it on, and looked at himself in a shop window. Too big; far too big. He took it off, turned it inside-out, searched the lining, found nothing. He stood and thought. Finally he flattened the hat, rolled it up and shoved it into a briefcase. He began walking. Luis followed.

  They turned south and crossed Black Horse Square. The traffic was busy—it was getting on for lunchtime—and they had to wait for a gap. Luis hung back, thought briefly about telephoning Julie, and abandoned the idea. His man seemed to be heading for the ferry terminal. The crowds were thick around here: Portuguese soldiers going on leave, people buying fruit from stallholders, lottery-ticket sellers, bootblacks, gypsies, police. A party of nuns got in the way. Luis lost him for a moment and had to hurry. He found him again, beyond the ferry, walking along the waterfront. As they passed below the Alfama, Luis heard a distant burst of accordion music. It sounded strange on such a gray and dreary day, with the wide Tagus slopping little black waves and the sky dirty with coming rain. They went across a small square, dodging taxis all the way, and into Santa Apolonia station. Luis hid behind a pillar while his man studied the departure board. He liked what he saw. Half a minute later he was on a train.

  Luis ran back to the departure board. It was a fast train on the northern route, stopping at Santarém, Coimbra, Aveiro and Oporto. It was due to leave in ten minutes. He used up five of those minutes on finding the ticket office, standing in line, and buying a second-class one-way ticket to Oporto, which took nearly all his money. Hurrying to the train he saw an empty phone booth. He dialed the office. The number rang, then stopped. He shoved a coin into the slot but it refused to go: another coin was jammed inside. He hammered with his fist, bashed the
side of the coin-box, punched the coin-release button again and again. Nothing happened. One minute left; somehow the time had raced away. He flung down the phone in disgust and ran to the barrier. They were slamming doors as he got aboard. Before he had caught his breath, the train was moving.

  It turned out to be a long, tedious, anxious journey. His man was traveling first-class. Luis, as he swayed through the first-class carriage, recognized him at once: thoughtful, cleanshaven, medium height, stocky build, about thirty-five. Dark blue suit. Belted raincoat neatly folded beside him. Briefcase. There were a million like him, but Luis knew this one immediately. He was staring at the rain which had begun to streak the window, and Luis knew what he was thinking. He was wondering why the hell anyone would want to give him a black hat.

  The train was half-empty. Luis took a seat in the nearest second-class carriage. As they rattled northwards, the rain smearing the view, he chased one inadequate explanation after another around his brain. The probability was that some intelligence agency or counter-intelligence agency was involved, but the British had already told him they weren’t interested, and why should the Germans want to steal their own letter? Moreover, this man behaved extremely clumsily. It was baffling. Luis gave up and began worrying about what he was going to do when the man got off. Any expert secret agent would have been trained to handle this kind of emergency. Madrid Abwehr had not included it in the curriculum. A pity.

  At Santarém Luis was waiting and watching, but his man didn’t move. After that there was a long haul of over a hundred kilometers to Coimbra. Luis sat and listened to his pleading stomach. Finally he gave in and spent almost all his remaining change on a cheese roll. He ate it slowly, taking very small bites.

  The wooden slats of the second-class seats had numbed his backside long before the train clattered and jinked into Coimbra station. Again Luis watched his man stay put. As the train heaved its way back out into the worsening weather, his spirits sank. He was being carried steadily further from his base, he had no money, no coat, it was pouring with rain. Outside it would soon be dark, cold and miserable. He asked himself why on earth he was behaving in this crass, reckless, cock-eyed way? Just because the idiot in first class did stupid things, was that a reason why he should chase him to the black, wet ends of Portugal?

  Aveiro station was dank and gloomy. Luis got up, kept watch, sat down again. Now he knew the worst. His man was going to Oporto.

  The last leg of the journey was also the slowest. The train kept finding reasons to squeal to a halt, usually in the middle of a stretch of wintry scrub. When it moved on, its pace was pessimistic. Luis was hunched in helpless boredom by the time it trundled unhurriedly onto the long bridge that spanned the Douro. He looked down at the broad, black waters, reflecting flickers of light from the city on the opposite bank, and wondered what Julie was thinking. He felt stiff, weary and depressed.

  A minute later the train had grudgingly found its way into Campanha station. Luis stood and stretched until he saw his man walk by on the platform, and then he followed. The station seemed to be all boom and bustle after his cramped, dull journey, and the air on his face felt much colder than Lisbon’s. Oporto sounded and smelt different: brisker, busier. His man stepped out confidently. Luis tracked him to the street outside and saw with dismay that he was getting into a taxi. You might have guessed that, you bloody fool, he told himself. At once the taxi moved off, its lights probing the gloom. Luis started to run. He had no plan, he only knew that he hadn’t come all this way to lose everything so easily. He ran after the tail-lights of the taxi, pounding down the road, releasing all the stored-up frustration of the afternoon. He saw the taxi reach a corner and stop, and he put on a spurt. A vague shape loomed in front of him. He dodged but it turned across his path. Something heavy and woolen collided with his face, his knee struck metal, numbingly hard, and then he was diving, arms flung up to protect himself. There was a scraping crash as he landed hard on someone big and bony. One of Luis’s hands skidded hotly across a wet cobblestone, the other banged against a greasy head. They lay for an instant, sprawled and stunned. A bicycle bell tinkled.

  Luis heaved himself up. A car was approaching. By its lights he saw what he had run into: a railwayman, cycling to work. The car slowed. Luis looked for the taxi and found it just as it moved off. The railwayman was staggering to his feet, cursing. Luis seized his bicycle and dragged it around. He ran with it, got one foot on a pedal, gave a last, huge thrust, and swung his leg over the crossbar. Sounds of rage and pain followed him. His right kneecap ached like hell. He pedaled furiously.

  The corner where the taxi had stopped was a junction with a main road. Luis didn’t stop. He raced into the stream of traffic, heard the scream of car tires behind him, and swung the bicycle into a long, fast curve. Horns blared in the night, but by then he was pedaling hard, threading between and across vehicles, praying that his wheels wouldn’t get trapped in a tramline. His brakes didn’t work. His lights didn’t work. The saddle was far too low. And it was raining very hard.

  He caught up with the cab just as he was losing hope, afraid that it had turned off. He got close enough to note its number-plate, then dropped back a length or two. They were on a wide avenue leading into the city but it was thick with traffic; keeping pace with the taxi was not difficult. He had a fright when they reached a large and un-square square with half-a-dozen exits: in the free-for-all, the taxi-driver zigged and zagged until Luis had to chase him through the narrowing gap between a bus and a delivery truck. He made it, at the price of more bellowing horns, and earned himself a straightforward run along another avenue. The rain plastered his hair and made him blink, and a traffic policeman shouted angrily. Luis concentrated grimly on staying with the taxi. They were both waiting at traffic lights when he saw that his trouser-leg was getting caught in the unguarded chain. He dragged the trouser free and tucked it inside his sock, fouling his hands with oil. Not just oil: there was blood too, from a cut finger. He sucked it and swallowed. The lights turned green.

  Soon the taxi turned left, away from the shopping center, and they went downhill, toward the river. The traffic was thinner here and Luis had to work harder; but without any brakes the only way he could stop was by letting both feet skid along the ground, so there was a danger in going fast, too. His legs and arms were aching when the taxi turned the last corner and pulled up outside a small stone building. The place stood on its own, on the uphill side of a street that had been terraced out of the slope. Luis turned his face away as he rattled past the taxi. Below was the chilly glitter of the Douro.

  He rode on until he was safe in the darkness, stopped, and looked back. His man was unlocking the front door while the taxi U-turned and cruised away. The door shut. A breeze came wandering through the blackness and flicked invisible drops into Luis’s face.

  He knew one thing: whatever he did next, it had to be planned, calculated and methodical. Ever since they left the bank he had been acting on impulse, improvising. Now it was time to get organized.

  For three minutes he stood in the wet and drafty night, reviewing the problem, analyzing the known facts and preparing possible courses of action. After three minutes he was shivering and his teeth were chattering. All the possible courses of action appeared to be equally useless. He threw the bicycle behind some trees and walked briskly to the house.

  It wasn’t just a house; it was an office, or maybe a shop. It had a big front window with a closed Venetian blind, and a brass plate beside the door read C.A.P. Lda.

  Luis rang the bell. It made a woolly sound, as if the rain had got into it. After five seconds he beat on the door. There was no porch to protect him. He hopped stiffly from foot to foot, and beat on the door again. A light came on and it occurred to him, too late, that other people might live here too. The door opened. It was his man, now coatless. “Sim? O que é que deseja?” he asked sharply.

  “You have my letter,” Luis said in English.

  The man stared. Luis stared back. Ins
ide the house an enormous dog padded into view: some kind of mastiff or wolfhound.

  “Who are you?” the man asked.

  “Luis Cabrillo. Who are you?” Luis suddenly sneezed. He was shivering again. The dog came up and looked at him with interest.

  “Good heavens, you’re soaked to the skin. Have you had an accident?”

  “Not yet,” Luis said. It wasn’t an intelligent answer but it was the best he could do. The man’s accent puzzled him: not English, but not Portuguese, either. The dog dropped its head and sniffed his hand. “Well, you can’t stand out there all night,” the man said. “Come here, Bruno!”

  Bruno escorted them into the house. They crossed a bare hallway and went into the front room. It extended the full depth of the building and everywhere Luis looked he saw a cutting instrument: axes, cleavers, billhooks, knives, scythes; they were stacked around the walls by the dozen, glinting and gleaming, brand new and alarmingly sharp. Luis hated sharp-edged tools. The very thought of a cut-throat razor made him fidget and hunch his shoulders. He felt horribly unsafe in this room. No matter where he stood, something sharp was pointing at his back.

  “What name did you say?” the man asked. He seemed quite calm; just curious.

  “Luis Cabrillo. I followed you from Lisbon. You have my letter, you took it from the bank, and I want to know why.” Luis kept turning as the man strolled across the room. There was something strange about his eyes. Luis had a feeling he had seen them before … No, not the eyes, but the expression.

  “You followed me here? All the way from Lisbon?” He gave an astonished chuckle. “And it’s all about some letter, you say?”