Artillery of Lies (40 page)

“Ex-girlfriend, actually.”

“It's still a melodramatic cliché, isn't it?”

“Life is a cliché. War is a cliché. I mean to say, sir, clichés are clichés because they keep on happening, not because they're unusual.”

Away to the south, tiny black spots speckled the sky at enormous height. The Director stared and squinted, but he couldn't make out enemy aircraft among the shellbursts. “Nuisance raid,” he said. “A
couple of Huns, a brace of bombs, and more toil for the gravedigger.” The booming of the guns at last reached them.

“There you are, then,” Garcia said. “Another cliché.”

“What if she won't go?” the Director asked. “Ex, you say.”

“I've been thinking about that,” Garcia said. “How best to present our case. Why she should care enough to go anywhere near an
Abwehr
reunion. There are three powerful arguments which I could put to her. There's the military one: the network is a crucial weapon that could end the war more quickly and so on. Massive saving of life. A huge reprieve for tens of thousands of children as yet unborn—”

“Hit that thought hard,” the Director said. “Remember the maternal instinct. Strongest force on earth.”

“Right. Then there's the idealistic argument. This is a turning-point in the crusade against Fascism.”

“Too damn right it is.”

“This is her chance not just to help win the war but to make the world a decent place to live in.”

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the Director said, and cleared his throat. “A land fit for clichés to live in.”

“And finally there's the personal angle. Eldorado's not such a bad bloke and all that. Frankly, sir, I'll have to play that one by ear.”

The Director came back to his desk. “Why don't you try the personal angle first? Tell her you know it's all over between them. If that's true, you've reinforced her independence. Americans are very keen on independence. If it isn't, you've got a head start.”

“I'll go and see her now, sir.” Garcia turned to leave.

“There's one option we haven't discussed,” the Director said. “Eldorado could be eliminated from the cast of characters before he comes up against Canaris.”

“Killed,” Garcia said.

“We've done it before. It has a certain logic: an
Abwehr
agent meets his death at the hands of who else but British Intelligence? That's how the other side would see it. And with a bit of luck we might even be able to keep the network going. Perhaps Docherty could run it.” He shrugged. “It's an option. But don't tell the lady.”

Garcia gave the bleakest of smiles and went out. He found Julie Conroy waiting in his office. “Are you going to Santander?” she asked him.

“I can't.”

“Then I'd better go. The silly bastard isn't going to trust anyone else, is he?”

“No.” Freddy cleared his throat. “It really is worth the risk, you know. If we can save the network we can shorten—”

“Sure, sure. Save the patriotic horseshit, Freddy. Just get me on a plane.”

That process was relatively straightforward. Somebody important got bumped from the next commercial flight to Lisbon and Julie took his place. The airliner landed at dawn; an embassy official led her to a private plane, a de Havilland Rapide owned by a Portuguese millionaire whose family had sold port to England for centuries and who just happened to be flying to Madrid. Another embassy official met her at Madrid airport and drove her to the railway station. Nobody wanted to see her passport. Nobody even said very much. She was simply transported with all the speed and delicacy of urgent medical supplies or perishable flowers. By early afternoon she was sitting in the restaurant car of the Santander express, watching the Madrid suburbs slide by.

She saw the waiter's reflection in the window, waiting for her to order, and she summoned up all the Spanish she'd forgotten. What was “hello?” Couldn't remember. She smiled instead and he smiled back. “I'd like a really good steak,” she said. “
Bistec, poco asado. Con una ensalada.”
Amazing how the words came back if you didn't try too hard.

Five hundred and sixteen kilometers to Santander. Say three hundred miles. According to the timetable, just under nine hours. Obviously “express” was a relative term. But the
bistec,
when it came, was good; and without being asked he brought her a bottle of
vino tinto
that made English beer taste like a penance. Later there was
torta
and
fruta
and
queso,
and then
un poco de café.
Outside, the plains and prairies of Castile shivered under the heat. There were worse ways of traveling to Santander. The only problem was that, eventually, you arrived.

“It doesn't fit properly.” José-Carlos Coelho tapped his foot on a little pool of water on the linoleum. “It never did fit. It's a cheap door, the rain blows in. You can see.”

“Can't you get the lock changed?” Sandy Hogg asked. “I mean, look at it …”

“I agree, it's pathetic. Useless. I'm not the owner, Inspector. I just rent the house. The owner's in the army. Abroad, I think.”

“At least put some bolts on the door. Top and bottom. Same at the back.” They walked through the house. “I'm not at all happy about these window-catches either,” Hogg said. “Anyone with a thin screwdriver or a strong penknife could …” He shrugged.

“Let him try,” Coelho said. “I'll help him through the window and then I'll break his neck.”

Hogg looked at him. Coelho was two inches taller and the floorboards creaked when he walked. “No, you musn't do that, sir,” he said. “There are legal limits in this country. Reasonable force is all you can use. I have to tell you that.”

“Of course.” Coelho smiled and nodded but Hogg could see that he wasn't really impressed.

“You do realize, don't you, sir, that this man is armed and dangerous,” Hogg said. “I mean to say, I wouldn't be here otherwise.” He glanced into the front room. “I don't like that big bush at the front. Hides the house too much … In fact to tell the truth I'd be a lot happier if you went away and lived somewhere else for a while.”

“Impossible, I'm afraid.”

They went out and Hogg got into his car. “One of my men will check up on you from time to time,” he said. “I don't know what more I can do. Make sure he shows his warrant-card.”

“If he doesn't,” Coelho said, “I'll kill him.” And gave a big grin.

What it is to be twenty-two and built like a heavyweight,
Hogg thought as he drove away.
You're immortal.

Luis Cabrillo's train—a slightly faster express—arrived in Santander at just after four in the afternoon. He told the taxi-driver to take him to the best hotel in town. The ride took him along the Paseo Pereda, which showed him everything there was to see of the waterfront, and into a district which the driver said was El Sardinero. The best hotel in town turned out to be a wedding cake called the Wellington. Luis gave the driver money as a porter took his suitcase. “Wellington,” he said to the driver. “You're sure this is really the best?”

“What's wrong with it?”

“It's got a funny name, for a Spanish hotel. A Wellington is an English rubber boot.”

“I could take you to the Villa Rosa Linda. That's got a nice name. Nice fleas, too.” He drove away.

The Wellington turned out to be clean and comfortable and not too full. He took a suite on the second floor, unpacked, had a bath. Room service brought him a bottle of white wine and some olives. He put on one of his new silk shirts and took a drink out on to a balcony. El Sardinero was a peninsula, so he had a fine view across the bay to old Santander. If he squinted into the setting sun he could see fishing boats painted in all the colors God created plus a few He dismissed as downright diabolical. Large, impressive waves lined up at sea and took their turn to charge the beach and make the supreme sacrifice. After Knightsbridge, the air was indecently warm. In three days Luis had consumed more than a month's ration of sunshine in war-torn England. The wine went down like a well-earned bribe. And yet he felt at a loss. There was something wrong.

He went inside, slumped in a deep easy chair that was all cane and pillows, and put his feet on a coffee table made of a slab of marble long enough to support a small corpse. Instead it supported a complimentary copy of the Santander paper. Luis flipped through it. War, war, crime, cinema, sport. Junk, all junk. Not a word about a secret, anonymous and clandestine rendezvous between a top spy-master and his top spy. He dumped the paper.

The suite contained everything you might need and nothing you really wanted. There were mirrors. He looked at himself and decided he looked discontented. Or perhaps skeptical. Wary: was that the word? He walked away, turned back sharply and caught his reflection off-guard. Glum. That's how he looked, glum and disappointed. He rubbed his face vigorously, bullying it into brightening up. The mouth responded willingly, like the creep it was, but not the eyes. The eyes looked through him.
You found Santander,
they said.
Big deal. Now go out and find Canaris, because it doesn't look as if he's breaking his neck to find you, does it?
He abandoned the mirror and found a small desk, its drawer full of hotel notepaper. Good time to write a letter.
Dear Julie,
he began, changed it to
My dear Julie,
changed that to
Dearest Julie
and sat for a long time thinking. Then he tore it up and burned it in an ashtray and went for a walk.

He was sitting in a clump of umbrella pine, watching seabirds do their swinging and swooping far below, when an old man with
a beard approached him. “Good to meet you again, Mr. Cabrillo,” he said in English.

Luis felt his fingertips tingle with a tiny rush of blood. “Do I know you?” he said. White shirt with short sleeves and epaulets, blue slacks, tennis shoes: not the way a Spaniard would dress.

“Of course you do. I'm Brigadier Christian.”

“Impossible—” Luis stopped himself on the brink of saying
Christian's dead.
His brain was suddenly shrill with warning signals: he wasn't supposed to know about that, the
Abwehr
had never told Eldorado of Christian's death. He felt slightly sick.

“Why impossible?”

“Christian hasn't got a beard. You don't look a bit like him.”

“But I grew a beard. In any case, I recognized you at the train station. I decided to let you settle in first and then—”

“Bollocks. I've never seen you before. Mother warned me against dirty old men like you.” Luis got up and walked away. He knew by now that it really was Christian, he recognized the voice, but some instinct told him not to give in easily, to fight for a psychological advantage.

Christian followed. He tried various arguments. Luis ignored them all. “All right, damn you,” Christian said, “I'll shave the bloody thing off if that will make you happy.” He was furious. It was a good beard.

“Shave half,” Luis said. “Half your face is all I need.”

The fishermen of Santander wished the cruiser
Barcelona
would go away. For nearly a week now she had been steaming slowly along the coast, always inside the three-mile limit, back and forth. It spoiled the fishing, having fifteen thousand tons of steel rumbling up and down all the time; I mean, would you like that lot overhead? Nor did the fish. It put them off their feed, they beat it to God-knew-where, the catches were lousy. The
Barcelona
was the pride of the Spanish navy; fine, terrific, wonderful, Santander was honored. Now let her go away and honor some other poor bastards.

To make matters worse there were two more warships prowling about: a British destroyer and an American destroyer. The day Luis Cabrillo arrived at Santander the three ships made a rendezvous in a piece of sheltered water. Launches were lowered from the
Barcelona
and they fussed about, collecting people and bringing them back to the cruiser, which retrieved its launches and departed at a modest and cautious speed so as not to spill the drinks being served at the captain's reception for his distinguished guests.

Admiral Canaris and General Oster had watched the completion of the rendezvous from the
Barcelona's
bridge. Oster was using a borrowed pair of binoculars to study the arrivals. “The American looks excited,” he reported, “and he is wearing a revolver.”

“Don't they all?” Canaris said.

Oster swung the binoculars an inch or two. “The Englishman is frowning, and he is wearing a small mustache,” he said.

“What caliber?” Canaris asked.

Oster returned the binoculars to a Spanish officer. “You appear remarkably composed, sir,” he said. “I mean, considering that this meeting marks the culmination of many months of difficult negotiations on your part, in the face of repeated rebuffs which would have discouraged a lesser man long ago.”

Canaris stared. “Oster, are you trying to borrow money, or what?”

“Well, it's true, sir. This could be a turning-point in the war.”

“I don't want the damn thing to turn, Hans. I want it to stop dead.” He led the way out. “Half of it, anyway.”

The captain of the
Barcelona
met his guests as they stepped on deck. It was quite a party: the American had six men with him, the Englishman four. The captain escorted them to the wardroom, where Oster was waiting at the door. The first man through it was the American. Oster made the introductions: “Admiral Canaris, may I present General William Donovan, Head of the Office of Strategic Services of the United States of America. General Donovan, Admiral Canaris.” Donovan was big, not fat but hefty, and there was a slight twist to his lips that could have been enjoyment or perhaps appraisal. They shook hands. He stepped aside, and Oster said: “Admiral Canaris, may I present Major-General Stewart Menzies, Head of the Secret Intelligence Service of Great Britain. General Menzies, Admiral Canaris.” Another handshake. Menzies was not tall, and he gave Canaris one brief, comprehensive glance, like a boxer meeting an opponent for the first time. Then he too stepped aside.