Undertow

by Desmond Cory

  The helicopter droned on. A pale glow of light was visible now some way ahead; the lights of Marbella; and the village lighthouse stabbed its silver cone at them three times swiftly, then died out into blackness. “Marbella,” said Valera, as though to himself. Then, “Why don’t you let me try that hunch?”

  “Because it’s probably wrong,” said Acuña. “And because even if it’s right, we’d risk scaring them. I don’t want to scare them. I want to spot them. That’s all.”

  “That’s where he lived, towards the end of the war. In that Anteojo place. He was sent there. I don’t have to tell you what for.”

  “No,” said Acuña. “You don’t have to tell me what for.”

  “Well, it’s a hunch.”

  “I know,” said Acuña. “A hunch. I have them, sometimes.”

  A few moments’ silence, except for the growl of the engine and the firm swinging beat of the great vanes above them . . . noises to which they had grown so accustomed over the last few hours as to be able to accept them as silence itself. Then the observer leaned back again towards Valera. “Radar’s picking up something,” he said. “Something we don’t know about.”

  “Where?”

  “Straight ahead. Maybe two hundred yards off the coast.”

  Valera pushed himself sideways, peering out and downwards. He saw it almost at once, and at the same time as the observer. A small pool of silver on the sea, the reflection of powerful arc lamps on the water’s surface. He made a faintly disgusted noise in his throat. “Nada,” he said. “Another bloody fishing-boat.”

  “It’s by itself,” said the observer. Valera stared down through the perspex once more. Yes, that part of it was unusual. “Take its position,” he said.

  “Ya lo he hecho.” The observer passed back the mapping pad, a spider’s web of connecting compass references, and tapped it with the point of his pencil. Valera studied it with increasing interest, then leaned sideways to stare downwards yet again; the boat had already disappeared behind them, and more pools of silver light were coming into view farther out at sea. “There’s some more of them,” said the observer cheerfully.

  Valera took no notice. He nudged Acuña’s elbow. “Here, look at this. That one must have been fishing pretty nearly dead opposite this Anteojo place . . . if he was fishing. Can we take another look at him?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see if there are any lights showing on shore.”

  “There weren’t,” said Acuña. “I looked.”

  “None at all?”

  “None at all.”

  “All the same . . . that’s where El Anteojo is.”

  Acuña grunted. “Oh yes. I saw it. I saw a flash of white, anyway. Could only have been a house. But no lights. And that’s odd, because there’s someone living there.”

  “Maybe they go early to bed.”

  “Like hell they do.”

  “You mean you know who they are?” said Valera, beginning to grin a tight internal grin that his face did nothing to reveal. Whatever it was you thought of, Acuña would always have thought of it first. The damned old fox.

  “Yes, I know who they are. Daughter of an Argentine millionaire and a couple of boy friends.”

  “Two boy friends?” said Valera, and whistled under his breath. “My God. These South Americans.”

  “She left a couple of weeks back. But her pals are still there. They both once worked for the British Intelligence Services.”

  Valera’s lips stayed puckered up, as though he had been frozen into that position by a blast from a Martian ray-gun. “Oh no,” he said. “Oh no. We can’t have that.”

  “Not much we can do about it. Their passports are in order.” Acuña frowned, joggled his left foot up and down. “All right. I’m buying this one. You go down there tomorrow and get your nose to the ground. Check on that boat with the local patrols. But be damned careful how you play it, that’s all. It may interest you to know that someone went to see Heredia this morning—someone we don’t know about. At any rate, no one seemed able to place him.”

  “Heredia?”

  Acuña clicked his tongue. “Bruniev.”

  “Oh, Bruniev. And it’s somebody. . . . ?”

  “It isn’t just the rank and file who drift in to chat with Bruniev,” said Acuña impatiently. “As yet I can’t be sure, but I’ve got a sneaking feeling it was Feramontov. If it was . . . then this is what we’ve been hoping for. And it’ll give you some idea of what you’re up against.”

  Valera looked down at his hands, which lay in his lap. He clenched and unclenched them lightly, conscious of an unpleasant feeling in his stomach as though he had suddenly swallowed a block of ice. “Feramontov,” he said. “I see.” A nice thing to have slung at one casually, just like that. “All right. I’ll be careful.”

  “Yes,” said Acuña. “You’d better.”

  UNDER the swinging circles of the Klieg lights, the smooth sea bubbled and heaved. Feramontov leaned out over the bulwarks, staring downwards; then reached over to snap off all but the riding lights. His green cat’s eyes swiftly accustomed themselves to the sudden darkness; he saw a hand appear on the side of the boat, another come grasping up to join it. Feramontov moved aft, helped Moreno aboard; turned to start the motor. Moreno lay at full length on the boards, the rubber diving-mask pushed up high over his forehead, gasping.

  Feramontov said, “Where are they?”

  Moreno loosened the string bag at his belt. “Here.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, all.”

  “Good.”

  Feramontov swung his hip hard against the tiller as the engine picked up, steering the dinghy expertly away from the line of semi-phosphorescent foam marking the rocks on the beachline. A row of distant lights came into view as they rounded the little headland; the other night fishers, farther out to sea. Moreno had almost recovered his breath now; he sat up, kicked the rubber flippers away from his feet. “What was that came over?”

  “A helicopter.”

  “Does that mean trouble?”

  “No way of knowing.” Feramontov shrugged. “And you?”

  “A very little. Hardly worth mentioning.”

  He slipped from his shoulders the canvas straps, the nearexhausted compressed-air tubes; took off the diving-mask, then the weighted belt with its dangling geologist’s hammer and broad-bladed chisel. His fingers caressed the wooden handle for several moments before relinquishing it. Feramontov watched him closely, studying the blur of his raised face profiled against the bubbling white slash of the dinghy’s wake. But Moreno said nothing more. He whistled instead, under his breath, almost inaudibly; and began to put on his shirt.

  “One never dives alone,” Elsa was saying. “That is rule number one. So many things can happen. One never knows. It’s rather like mountaineering. One takes no unnecessary risks.”

  Fedora tried a little more of the Fino Oloroso and then leaned back, feeling comfortable. He stared vaguely round the room. By now, the party was well under way; the dining-table, which earlier had been laden with all variety of condiments from cold tortillas to fried shrimps, had been largely denuded, and the staggering display of wine-bottles along the dresser was diminishing even faster. Fedora himself was getting the slightest bit tiddly. He didn’t care.

  Elsa, who had been standing to his right, now sat down beside him on the sofa, crossing her long brown legs and pulling down her skirt. She was wearing a dress now, a pink dress with a wide red Turkish sash and with a matching red turban of towelling over her still-damp hair; on most other girls it might have been called demure, but on her it certainly didn’t seem to be.

  “You look nice in that,” said Johnny, focusing on her with an effort. “It suits you.”

  “Thank you. I like it because it is comfortable. Though nowadays I am most comfortable in a bathing suit.”

  “Well, you look nice in a bathing suit, too.”

  She looked at him for a moment before replying. Johnny noticed th
en—and was surprised by—the darkness of the pupils of her eyes; they were Eastern rather than Nordic, he thought, hinting perhaps at a touch of Slavonic blood. “I do know how to flirt, Mr. Fedora, if that is what you are wondering. One can be an efficient scientist and still know how to flirt. Ist nicht unvereinbar.”

  Johnny smiled. “All right,” he said. “Let’s flirt But not in German.”

  “I agree. For that, German is not suitable. I am sorry, though—I don’t speak English very well.”

  ‘Too many ones.”

  “What?”

  “You use the construction with ‘One’ too much. If you say, ‘One knows how to flirt,’ it sounds so impersonal that nobody’ll believe it.”

  “I see. Then what should one. . . . V “What should you say?”

  “Yes, what should I say?”

  “It’s not so much what you say. It’s how you say it.”

  “Yes, I appreciate that. Well, then. I am very very glad you could come tonight to our party. Because it is nice for me to get away from my work from time to time, like this, and to talk to a . . . a . . .”

  “Handsome and talented young man.”

  “. . . To a handsome and talented young man such as yourself. Yes. How am I doing?”

  “Not bad. Perhaps a bit more feeling.”

  “Feeling? All right. Who feels? Me or you?”

  “I will,” said Johnny with alacrity. “Shoulder, perhaps, to start with? Or do you prefer the knee?”

  “Initially, I think, the hand.”

  “Oh Lord.” Fedora readjusted his posture. “That’s rather a disappointment.”

  “The second of the day.”

  “The second?”

  “Yes. Mr. Trout was disappointed this morning, I couldn’t help thinking, when I didn’t wear my bikini.”

  “You’re not allowed to, are you? In Spain?”

  “No, that’s why I didn’t. I am not a girl who likes to disappoint.”

  “I shouldn’t worry,” said Fedora. “Anyone who’s disappointed at you in a bathing suit ought to see either an optician or a neurologist. My God, here comes the Professor.”

  “Ah, the Professor,” repeated Elsa dreamily. “He is a duck.”

  Fedora found this remark so totally unexpected that he stared at her open-mouthed. He had time to say nothing more before the Professor was alongside; he was holding in his hand—or not so much holding as flourishing—an empty wineglass, and his expression was convivial in the extreme.

  “Ah, gna’ Fraulein,” said he, in an outburst of old-world gallantry. “Aha, my dear boy! So charming the party, the atmosphere, our hospitality! Yah, yah! Enchanted, enchanted.” Fedora stood up. “Let me fill your glass for you, Professor.”

  “Ah, this vine, this vine! Merkwerdig! Ich konnte mich jetzt betrinken wie zwei Matrosen,” said the Professor, relinquishing the glass. “Und es wurde mir gut tun. Ha ha! Ha ha!”

  “Perhaps you’d better. . . . I mean, won’t you sit down, Professor?”

  “Danke, danke,” said the Professor, collapsing on to the sofa and slapping Elsa heartily on the back. “My little helper! You know my little helper?”

  “We have indeed met,” said Fedora. “Er. . . . Charming.”

  “Charming, tjaaa, a charming girl, a good girl. And very sound, what’s more, biologically speaking.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Fedora. “If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll get you another drink.”

  “A small one, a small one! Already the mouth can with the wineglass difficultly in contact come!” The Professor gestured wildly, preparing to embark on yet another complicated stretch of syntax; Johnny, forestalling him, stepped smartly away. The movement brought a sudden prickle of perspiration to his forehead. Some fresh air, he decided, would be just the thing.

  He handed the glass to one of the white-coated stewards who stood by the dresser. “For the Professor,” he said. “A little wine and the rest, gaseosa. Otherwise it’ll be a lucky break for the jellyfish.” Then he walked fairly quickly towards the door, bumping lightly into Meuvret; who was regaling Trout with a long description of some piscatorial or amatory exploit, his hands sketching in the air a rapid outline of what might have been either a sting-ray or an anatomically spectacular Frenchwoman. “Going out?” said Trout, looking up. “Just for a moment,” said Johnny.

  He went down the passage towards the deck. When he was halfway along, a door to his right opened and a big man came out; a big man in a white shirt and grey flannel trousers. His head was lowered towards the deck, and he saw Fedora only in time to avoid walking straight into him. Then he stopped short; and the two men, not a foot apart, stared at each other. Then, after a moment, the big man smiled.

  “Been having fun?”

  “Yes, thanks,” said Fedora.

  The big man went on smiling. “That’s right,” he said. “So have I.”

  He turned away, stepped back into the room he had just left and closed the door. Fedora realised suddenly that his cheek muscles had gone tight . . . that he, too, was smiling, though not in a way that he could immediately recognise. He leaned abruptly forward to read the card in the slot by the door: Jaime Baroda, it said.

  Fedora stepped back and wiped his forehead. He was probably rather drunker than he’d realised. Well . . . a breath of fresh air, a last glass of wine, and then it would be time to go home. It hadn’t been a bad party, at that. He walked on to the end of the corridor, put his weight against the door and stepped out on to the deck.

  THE car drew up outside the house a little before midnight. Trout sat back in the driving-seat to knuckle his eyes, then opened the door and got out. “My God,” he said, staring belligerently at the wavering outlines of the front door and breathing cognac fumes into the atmosphere. “My God, I’m pickled.”

  “You might have told me that before you started driving,” said Fedora.

  “Switching to cognac, that’s what did it. Quite a party, eh? Quite a party.”

  Johnny didn’t feel that he had anything useful to add to the conversation at this stage in the proceedings. He got the doorkey out of his pocket, manoeuvred it into the lock. They went in. Johnny collapsed on the sofa.

  “That goddam cognac,” said Trout, tramping round the room like an energetic elephant. “That’s what did me in. The cognac. Let’s put the radio on, hey, dance a bit, sober up. Hey?”

  Johnny groaned. “Dance who with? Me?”

  “Oh well, there’s that. Thought you were doing all right, too.”

  “What?” said Fedora, failing to follow.

  “With what’s-her-name. Nice little girl, that. Going on to cognac, that was my mistake, odsbodikins,” said Trout, flapping his arms to and fro like a Polar explorer warming himself up. “Jewish blood there somewhere, I wouldn’t mind betting.”

  “What blood? Who?”

  ‘That girl. Elsa. The German one. Anyway, there wasn’t any other, you must know who I mean.” Trout’s eyes focused horribly on a point in the air about one yard in front of his nose. “I say, I feel awful.”

  “You look awful. Let’s have a shower.”

  “Good idea. No, let’s all go down to the swimming-pool and take a quick dick, I said a quip dip. Jus’ to stone us up a little.”

  “No, I want a shower.”

  “No, let’s have a swim.”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “Well, I’m going.”

  “Well, go then.”

  “All right,” said Trout, offended.

  Fedora immediately rose and went out through the bathroom door. There was a few moments’ silence. Then a sudden agonising blast of orchestral music indicated that Fedora had pressed the wrong switch again; Trout, who was definitely not in the mood for that sort of thing, clutched at his head with a hunted expression and bounded out of the room. Fedora, searching feverishly over the control panel, at last managed to cut the music off in mid-crescendo and to get the shower turned on: silence descended again, except for the fast fluid gushi
ng noise of the water. Johnny stripped off his clothes, raised his head, screwed up his eyes and stepped in. Ahhhhhh. That was better. Except that he couldn’t breathe. He fumbled for the key; a faint whining noise showed that he had succeeded only in devaporising the shaving-mirror. A further frantic scrabble increased, if anything, the velocity of the cascading water and turned it on the instant to an icy coldness; whimpering faintly, Fedora leapt away and towards his bathrobe. His head ached rather worse than before, but at least the cobwebs had disappeared. He towelled himself down and then, returning, switched off in succession both the water and the devaporiser. Pleased at this success, he went through to his bedroom and fell face downwards on the bed. Now, he thought, it would be nice to go to sleep.

  He was, in fact, on the point of dropping off when the door opened with a startled jerk and Trout shot into the room, stopping so abruptly that his hair flipped down over his eyes. He was very wet and was wearing his bathing shorts. Also he was looking at Johnny, and his eyes weren’t out of focus at all. “. . . Johnny.”

  Fedora’s feet were already swinging, very fast, off the bed. “What’s the matter?”

  “In our pool. There’s a girl there. She’s dead.”

  “What, drowned?”

  “No, no. It’s not an accident.”

  “Phone the police, then.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Trout went. Johnny pulled on his shirt, his trousers and a pair of sandals; then flipped open the brown pigskin travelling-case at the foot of the bed and took the Mauser pistol from its clip. He didn’t know exactly how bad things were, but Trout was obviously stone-cold sober and that had to mean something. He went through to the sitting-room, where Trout was talking very fast, in Spanish, to the telephone. “ . . SI, hombre, si. Asesinada, ya lo he dicho dos veces. Bueno, y a mi que me importa la hora que es? . . . Pues claro que vendrá en seguida, le estamos esperando.”

  He jammed down the receiver, pushed his wet hair back from his forehead. “Murdered?” said Johnny. “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” Trout hesitated. “It’s one of those.”