“Right,” I said. “I’m a buyer for a firm of importers. I come over, and I look at the wheat where it grows and I make an assessment … “ All of a sudden I remembered it was January; I added, “I make an assessment of the acreage and talk to the farmers. Know what I mean?”
The barman smiled. “I know nothing of wheat, senor, nor of any crop matters.”
“You’ve always been behind a bar?”
“No. I was a seaman, senor, that is to say a steward, until my wife, she make me leave the sea.” He spread his hands, smiled confidentially, and leaned closer across the bar. “My ship, you see — she come often into Valparaiso, and my wife, she knows that in Valparaiso are many, many women who wish to please the men from the ships, you understand, senor?”
“I understand,” I said. Gabrielle Opazo, according to Paul Younger, was believed to be in Valparaiso; I still felt it might be worth while trying to make contact, even though Younger had been doubtful. I thought the curious connection with Lothar Bolz might be strong enough to yield something or other even if only indirectly … I gave the barman a man-to-man wink; that wink said that wives could be tiresome. I went on, sounding off-hand about it, “I have to go over to Valparaiso as it happens. Interesting city — so they tell me.”
“Interesting, yes, very.” There was a pause. “You are in Chile alone, senor? No wife here?”
“No wife anywhere,” I said.
“Then perhaps the women, when you are in Valparaiso, yes?”
“Perhaps,” I said. Ostentatiously I slid a hand inside my jacket and half showed my wallet. The barman looked business-like; I brought out a high-value escudo note and he gave me an address. Brothels in Valparaiso must be selected with care if one was fastidious. I was to mention his name and the service would be very special. Of course, it would be only by the sheerest fluke of good fortune that the address would be that of Gabrielle Opazo, but I thought it was likely that she could be known as an operator in the same trade. True, there was another side of the coin: barmen get to know a lot of people and get entrusted with a lot of secrets and sometimes with missions. If, as I’d thought earlier, my presence in Santiago was known and the barman had recognised a description of me, then I might be heading right into a trap. If so, I would have to play it as it came. Time was desperately short. Short enough to propel me brothelwards within the next few minutes. Valparaiso wasn’t far by train and in terms of brothels the night would scarcely have begun by the time I got there.
*
It was a super brothel, real luxury class, five star. There was even a reception desk, with sexy receptionist, telephone and filing cabinet. It called itself the Hotel Concepcion, which I thought a poor choice of name. I dare say it was used by half the Chilean cabinet. The tariff sounded not only exotic but also very expensive; it was varied, too. Never had I imagined such selection. I was assured that all the young ladies were very beautiful, very eager, very experienced and nothing, but nothing, would be too much trouble. There would also be the matter of the gratuity in certain cases, but that was up to me and they knew I would be generous. From the corner of my eye I caught sight of what might be the guarantor of generosity: a huge man, dark-faced and moustachioed, standing with arms folded across a massive chest. At his side was a holstered revolver and he was guarding a staircase. It looked as though sex in Chile could be lethal.
When I could get a word in, I said I’d come from Santiago and I mentioned the barman’s name.
“So? Then ten per cent discount. Senor Montero was a much valued client. Why does he come no more?”
“Wife trouble,” I said. There was an understanding look and a sad shake of the reception girl’s head. Before she could utter again I managed to say I didn’t want to avail myself of the many services but was looking for someone. At once, the girl lost interest.
“For who?” she asked distantly.
“Senorita Gabrielle Opazo.”
“Yes, I know her, she is well known.”
“She’s here?”
“No, certainly she is not here. Her establishment, it is not of the same quality as ours.” The voice had become sharp and shrewish and the hair was now tossed contemptuously. “If you wish the services of La Opazo, then you do not come to such a hotel as this.” She paused, looking at me vindictively; I had wasted her time, and gentlemen were waiting. “Perhaps I tell you where to find her. Perhaps I do not.” I brought out more escudo notes and was given the address. “A bad part of Valparaiso,” was the girl’s parting shot. “All dirty foreign seamen, British, French and German. I spit.” She did, too. It wasn’t in fact the first time I’d heard British seamen called dirty and foreign; but the boot was usually on the other foot.
Off I went and soon got lost in spite of directions given briefly in the Hotel Concepcion. I asked a passing policeman the way; he was disgustingly matey about it, but helpful. The street I was aiming for was dead central in the red light district, as soon became obvious; talk about good wine needing no bush! Generations of seafarers from all over the world must have beaten a path to the various doors. Many of them were beating it that night. It was like Hampstead Heath on a Bank Holiday; it must have been a gold mine. Passing a number of brothels with queues outside — no touting was needed in Valparaiso — I identified the one I wanted. There was a big neon sign outside depicting a dancing, half-naked girl inside a hoop of twinkling stars, red, white and blue. Over the top was another lit-up sign reading La Opazo. I felt safe enough from traps by this time; the barman evidently hadn’t led me to the Hotel Concepcion with anything but helpful intent.
I went in, first, having to pass a man whose arm shot out and pinned me to the door-post. In guttural German he asked me to show my money, which I did, and was admitted. There had been no queue outside, which seemed to bear out what the girl in the Hotel Concepcion had said, but inside six seamen waited in line. They did look a right dirty bunch, too. It was possible that La Opazo took the rejects, the ones not passed as clean by the mother-judges in the better establishments. Since I had no intention of accepting the services offered, not even for Britain. I by-passed the queue. I said I was not a client but wished to see the Senorita.
“Private business,” I said in Spanish to a man with only half a nose.
“You are police? I thought I had paid all that was demanded. I shall protest to the — ”
“Not police. Feel free, feel safe.” It was more than I felt in the midst of the revolting clients. “A friend, though the Senorita will not know my name. Tell her I come from Herr Bolz … from East Germany.” I put a snap in my voice: the man looked susceptible to authority. “And hurry!”
He went away through a bead-curtained door. I waited, in a terrible smell of cheap scent and of vegetables being cooked. It was a longish wait and I was pushed around by the eager clients as they milled about, more coming in now, all keen to have their oats before their ships sailed. I heard fragments of every language under the sun, and after a while I became aware that I was being observed from behind a pane of dark glass let into the wall just below the ceiling. There was a hint of light behind, enough to reveal a face and a mane of long hair.
Soon after this, the half-nosed man came back through the curtain, which he held aside for me. As I went towards it, I was subjected to some heckling from the waiting seamen. Some of it was English; it was intensely personal and very rude; they fancied I was there for something special, something way out. In a sense, I was.
I was led up a flight of stairs, threadbare-carpeted and smelly and greasy. At the top a lamp burned — an oil lamp, highly dangerous. As I reached the landing, a girl brushed past, heavily made up and with a no-hope expression on her face as she moved towards her place of duty. I fancied she looked English, though I could have been wrong — European, definitely. The white slave trade still goes on, and decent girls vanish from the big cities. No-one under twenty should feel too safe. I was taken towards the left of the landing, up some more stairs, then halted outside a paint-peeled door upon which my guide
knocked. There was a harsh voice from inside, and the man shoved the door open and I went in with a hand feeling for the butt of my revolver. The guide shut the door and stood with his back against it.
A dreadful scarecrow stared at me from an arm-chair bulging with expelled stuffing. The rich wouldn’t come to La Opazo, and those that did were probably charged according to the establishment’s third-class reputation. La Opazo wouldn’t attract the best girls, and a man didn’t over-pay for dross. Gabrielle Opazo, if this was her and I soon found out that it was, had a long, haggard face slit by a thin mouth; the skin was wrinkled years beyond her age, and the jet-black hair, probably dyed, was flattened to the sides of her face and head by grease. There was a sewer smell not quite overlaid by the same scent as I’d inhaled downstairs.
“What do you want?” she asked. The voice grated, the hoarsest sound I’ve ever heard. “Who are you?”
“Never mind who I am,” I said. “If I told you, it might not be the truth. But you know why I’ve come: Lothar and Lotte Bolz. Lothar Bolz, who tried to rape you fourteen years ago. You remember?”
“I remember.”
“And your mother and father … they died, largely because of what your father tried to do for Bolz. You’ll remember that, too.”
“Yes. Why do you come, to speak of things I remember?”
I asked, “Did you know that the Bolzes were being released — exchanged back to East Germany?”
She showed no emotion, no surprise that I could see. She said, “No, this I did not know. But it happens.”
“You regret it?”
She laughed, a horrible cackle. The teeth were false. “Why should I regret it?” she asked when the laugh ended. “Because their imprisonment is at an end.”
“So?”
“After what Lothar Bolz did to you, and after what the result was to your mother and father?”
“I am not revengeful,” she said. “And my father at least was on the side of Lothar Bolz. My father would have welcomed the exchange.”
I nodded. “Yes, I’m prepared to believe that. Do I take it that you do also?”
“Because of my father, yes.”
I said, “Other people may know that.” I asked the question direct: “Are you a Communist, Senorita?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not a Communist — ”
“Then why stress that your father was on the Bolzes’ side, and that because of this you don’t mind the exchange?” The woman laughed again and said, “I think you are not a very understanding man. It is possible to honour one’s father’s wishes without also sharing his politics. I am not a Communist, no.”
“A Nazi?”
“Not a Nazi either. I have no politics, neither right nor left. I have my business, and it does not mix with politics. I think now you must tell me why you come here, Senor.”
“All right,” I said, and decided to play a hunch since time was pressing so urgently on my mind. “I believe you may be used as a safe house. I believe you may be approached by persons representing Lothar and Lotte Bolz … and asked to take temporary charge of something until it can be got out of Chile with the Bolzes.” I paused. “Even that you may have been asked already.”
“Why do you believe this?”
“Because your father was known to have helped Lothar Bolz, even though Bolz had tried to rape you, his daughter. And because you may be seen as the only contact with Bolz, the only person who might help — for her father’s sake. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, I understand. It is much what I have said myself, that my father’s wishes prevail in my mind.” The voice seemed to grow even hoarser, and the scraggy frame leaned forward. “Whose side are you on, Señor? What is your part in what you are telling me?”
“I’m on the side of peace,” I said. “The thing that you may be asked to take charge of will lead to many killings, many riots, even to war, if it goes where certain persons intend it to go.” I paused; I had been coming to certain conclusions, and I went on, “There’s only one safe place for it in my view, and that is where Lothar Bolz believes he’s taking it. Where your father, also, would have wished it to go.”
“Then you are on the side of Lothar Bolz?”
“In this respect, yes. If Lothar and Lotte Bolz take this thing aboard their aircraft, in all innocence of where it’s really intended to go, they may well die themselves.”
“Why is this?”
I said, “Because there are people on the other side who mean to get it. These people also may be in touch with you.”
“Nazis?”
“Yes,” I said. “People who would like to see Nazism grow in the West, people who still believe in the Hitler ideology even though few of them actually experienced it themselves in the days when Hitler was alive. Your father’s enemies,” I added, and let it sink in.
The woman didn’t say anything for a while; there was a tense silence in the sleazy room. Behind me the man still stood with his back to the door, breathing heavily. Gabrielle Opazo’s eyes stared at me, blazing, red-rimmed. The mouth was thinner than ever, a hard line, the tight lips bloodless. I saw that her body was shaking, and I saw her shift her gaze and stare past me towards the man guarding the door. Then she said, speaking fast as if to get it across without delay, “I will tell you. I believe I must tell you. I — ” She stopped. She had to. Behind me, a gun had gone off; Gabrielle Opazo lurched backwards. The bullet had taken her light between the eyes. She was as dead as mutton. She had a look of surprise, of shattered trust. As the shot came I had nipped smartly aside and now I had my own revolver drawn and ready. Before I could use it, the man on the door fired again, this time at me, but I threw myself sideways just in time and his bullet did no more than nick my sleeve. Then I fired; the heavy bullet took him in the arm like a sledgehammer, and he spun in circles before falling. I had got the elbow joint: it would never work again. There was probably nothing left of it. A moment later I heard feet pounding up the stairs, quite a number of them, and, deciding that attack was the best method of defence, I stormed out from the room. I went slap into six men. It was quite a fight while it lasted, which in fact was not long. I got two of them with my revolver and another with a fist that nearly tore his jaw off, but the odds were rather too much and when two of the men grabbed me from behind and held me, and the sixth man, in front, used my face as a punch bag for his knuckle-duster, I went out like a blown candle.
*
A lamp was shining down on me and I was aware of a damp smell, a cellar-like fug. My face was sore and I felt blood running and my head ached. I was roped as to hands and feet. I was lying on something hard, like stone. Several men stood about me and I heard one of them say, in Spanish, “He’s coming round.”
Another said, “Fetch the German.”
Someone left the room. The rest kept on staring down at me, saying nothing. It was a nasty atmosphere. I had thoughts of death, the only query seeming to be the manner in which it was to be brought about. I was pretty sure death came easy in the crummier areas of Valparaiso, and that corpse disposal was equally easy. My surroundings were certainly not auspicious. The police, bribed to the hilt, would avoid the red light district whenever possible. After a while one of the men kicked me hard in the side and said, “Dirty Communist pig.” He said this in Spanish.
I said, speaking English, “I’m no Communist.” All I got was another kick. I assumed that in their book anyone who wasn’t a Nazi was a Communist. It was a simple philosophy, easy enough to follow. I lay there listening to a drip of water from somewhere not far off and I wondered who ‘the German’ was. I found out within the next few minutes. Approaching footsteps coming down steps heralded the return of the despatched messenger with the German. As they came in, the ranks around me parted to allow the German access. He stared down at me. Staring back I saw a thick, squat body, a very powerful one, with a square bald head and cold grey eyes. He said in English, heavy with his German accent, “You are Commander Shaw of 6D2.”
“Clever,” I said. “How do you know?”
“I have a description, also photographs.”
“I see. And who are you?”
The German said, “I am Klaus Kunze.”
I nodded; I’d begun to expect this. “A member of the Bundestag, and — ”
“Just so, yes.”
“And, in your spare time as it were, a Nazi.”
Klaus Kunze clicked his heels together and drew himself up. An arm shot into the air at an angle of forty-five degrees. He said, “Heil Hitler!”
I looked up at him; he had to be crazy. His face was alight with reverence, with vicarious recollections of pre-war days when he had been at most a tiny child. As he’d heel-clicked and heiled I’d noticed that he had turned his body a little. The salute seemed to be directed with purpose, and I glanced in the direction where he had faced and I saw something I hadn’t been aware of earlier, probably because it had been shielded from me by the Spanish-speaking Chilean bodies. There was a sort of niche in the wall, and from it dangled a gold swastika. In the niche two small candles burned, and between them was set a black box about a foot square. Beneath it was folded what looked like the old pre-war German flag. There was no need to ask what was in the box. I felt my flesh creep. It was in a cellar that it had all ended for the Fuehrer, according to popular belief at the time, and here, again in a cellar, was an integral part of Adolf Hitler, all set to recreate the glorious days of the Third Reich in modern West Germany. It could be the worst thing that had ever happened since the war ended if that dreadful box reached the destination intended by Klaus Kunze, the worst thing for the western world.
The German was still staring, still motionless — until he took a pace forward, stepped over me as I lay bound and helpless on the cellar floor, and approached the shrine of his Fuehrer. Reaching it, he gave the Nazi salute once more, once more said, “Heil Hitler,” and then reached for the box, bringing a small gold key from a pocket. He unlocked the box, lifted the lid, and brought out the contents. There was a tense silence as he lifted the brain, which was in a glass tank, like a goldfish, and held it aloft, and turned to face me and the Chileans, his eyes alight with fervour and loyalty to the past.
Werewolf (Commander Shaw Book 16) Page 8
