Message From Malaga (28 page)

“Listen,” he said angrily, “I will think up my own way of escape. Why not come back up to your house? Leave in darkness.”

“You leave from here.”

“More dangerous.”

“Less dangerous. There may be friends visiting me. I may even be watched. You caused trouble at El Fenicio. There are people who have questions about that, and they will search for an answer.”

She was thinking no doubt of that little State Security man—Rodriguez. But there were others who were interested, too, and able to move more quickly. Reid’s death—no accident—bore witness to their speed and efficiency. A good operation, even if it increased his fears for his own safety. He wondered if he should let drop the fact that Reid had been murdered, but then decided it wouldn’t be worth the extra shock he’d give her. With woman’s lack of logic, she would blame him for Reid’s death, making him its entire cause. And that could be really dangerous: she might even forget what trouble he could raise for her brother, turn him over to Esteban right away. Yes, that would be highly dangerous. And unjust. For it was a vain, emotional, irresponsible creature like Lee Laner who had really been the cause of Reid’s death: Laner had made Reid helpless, an easy target set up for the assassin. Yet come to think of it, even Laner was not to blame. It was the unknown informant, the one who had told Laner who Reid actually was. Without that little bit of help, the chain of Reid’s bad luck could never have been forged.

“And so, you leave from here,” she repeated. She waited for a sharp contradiction, but he was strangely silent. She moved into the small room with its panelled walls.

She isn’t even going to say goodbye, he thought. Well, if she doesn’t want the usual last word, I’ll give her it. “All very
cosy, but you’ve forgotten one thing.” She turned to look at him. “Books,” he said sarcastically, waving his hand around the over-furnished room. “Pink shades on the lights, cushions, paper flowers, embroidered mats, all a man could desire. But what the devil do I read? Five days and—”

“Ample time to think your great thoughts,” she said, and she was smiling. “Or, over by the telephone, you will find paper and ink. You might even write your memoirs.” She unlocked the door, stepped over the threshold, pulled the panel back into place behind her. By the time he reached it, she had already locked it once more. He listened, but he could not even hear the bolt sliding free on the second door. She would be entering the main corridor now, fastening that door securely. Then she would stride, lithe and sinuous, head high and triumphant, up the stairs and the sloping floors, until she reached her own security. And she would be laughing.

He struck the panelled door with his fist. Twice. The pain brought him back to cold sense. He turned sharply on his heel, returned to the main room. He switched off the stupid little lights on their spindle-legged tables, felt his way to a window, opened shutters and glass pane, let the air stream in. It was bland, tepid. Not the cool breeze that had drifted over the high terrace, bringing the perfume of ripening apricots and night-flowering vines. He gripped the iron screen, shook it. I am trapped, he thought in a hot surge of anger; if she wants to betray me, she has me trapped.

Would she betray me?

No. Not until I am safely away from her and her people. Not until then. “We shall see about that,” he said softly to the silent courtyard. “We shall see.”

Ian Ferrier had swung the door open, but only far enough to let him bang it shut if the face of the cautious visitor turned out to be unknown. He might have a pistol in his hand or he might just happen to have a voice that sounded like Ben Waterman’s. Ferrier wasn’t in much of a trustful mood tonight.

But it was Ben, all right. He stepped smartly into the hall, closing the door behind him on the dark, silent garden, saying quickly to Concepción in his execrable Spanish, “No, leave that hall light off. Please!” He moved past her into the big room, turned to face Ferrier, and stared. He shot a second glance, at Concepción, who followed them slowly, uncertainly, and his stare intensified. “What’s that for?” He pointed to the half-raised cooking pot. Then he looked at the chairs out of place, rugs wrinkled, one floor lamp fallen, and—through the wide doorway of the study—disorder complete. “I wondered why you were so damned slow to open that door,” he said, “but I
must say—” He looked around him again, shook his head.

“It’s all right, Concepción,” Ferrier said. She wasn’t even aware that she was gripping the pot as a weapon. “This is one of my friends. Would you get him a Scotch and soda? I’ll have another of Esteban’s specials.” That reassured her. It also got her out of the room. “What the hell are you doing in Málaga? Thought you were going to Toledo for the bullfight this weekend?”

“That’s tomorrow. Might make it yet.” Waterman had a soft, gentle voice with traces of Atlanta clinging to it; a most deceptive voice. In Korea, where Ferrier had first met him after the ceasefire—both twenty-two and already realists—he had been one of the toughest reporters who wouldn’t take an evasion for an answer or an excuse as an explanation; in the Philippines, he had been one correspondent who had left the bars of Manila for Huk territory; in Vietnam, around 1958, he had penetrated to remote villages that had been converted to supporting the Vietcong and found—as an incentive to unanimity of opinion—the leaders of the anti-communist opposition impaled on high posts for all to see; in Washington, where he and Ferrier had come together again in the early sixties, he had frankly disliked his editor in chief, longed for overseas assignments, and eventually exchanged the newspaper world for government service. As a press attaché, he had been moved around enough to please, and perhaps exhaust, his curiosity about other places, other people. Or perhaps the times were out of joint. At present, he was stationed in Madrid, a pleasant appointment as well as a difficult one, which of course made it interesting. But when Ferrier had seen him last week for a long dinner and a catchup talk, Waterman was thinking of resigning
before his next transfer, of getting back to reporting and the United States again. This time, he was going to explore his country. And he was also going to explore the new mushroom growth of little magazines and get-with-it newspapers that gave peculiar left twists to facts and events. That was the need, right now: an enquiring reporter (and the more the better), belonging to neither extreme left nor extreme right, who really went to work on the lower levels of his own fourth estate, exposing their sources to some bright daylight, getting into the dark corners of paranoiac rumour and calculated misrepresentation. Yes, that was where the biggest news story lay right now. In the USA... Dangerous? Well—there might be a little trouble, he had admitted gently. His soft blue eyes had looked as engaging as the rock face of Gibraltar.

He had that same expression in his eyes now, as he crossed over quickly to the study to get a full view. He was a compact man, of commanding height, with a face as deceptive as his voice. It was round, soft, with a highly pink tan and a fuzz of curly fair hair far-receding from a clear, untroubled brow. “Anyone else here?” he asked. “Just you and the avenging Fury? Good.”

And no questions about what happened, thought Ferrier. That means Ben has something else on his mind. “What are you doing here, anyway?” Ferrier insisted. “Or is this part of your job?”

“Only temporary. I’m the innocent middleman. Co-opted and brought kicking and screaming away from the pleasures of Toledo. We got here around half past six, and I tried to telephone you. No answer. Later, we learned you were at the hospital. We also learned about Jeff Reid. So I’m no longer kicking or
screaming, but the sooner we get this over with, the better.”

“The middleman?”

Waterman looked at him. “You’re slow on the uptake tonight.” He didn’t usually have to explain and double explain to Ian Ferrier.

“Slightly thickheaded. Give it to me straight. Are you in Jeff’s line of work?”

“No. I’m here for one reason, and that’s you. I know you. I can say definitely, ‘Yes, this is Ferrier, friend of Reid’s.’ And there are a couple of real superspooks outside in your garden right now, wanting to meet you. I also know them—mild acquaintances, but enough to assure you that they are the real thing. Not phonies. Not impostors. They and you can take each other at face value. And that, so help me, is why I am here.”

“Two of them?”

“There’s a third tagging along—Mike, a young fellow who watches everything and says little. He’s some kind of subordinate to the big guy—one of the top—who came all the way from Washington. He’s calling himself Smith at the moment.” Waterman smiled. “But he is for real. Believe me.”

“I didn’t hear you drive up.”

Waterman’s smile faded. He looked worriedly at Ferrier. “You really do need reassurance, don’t you?”

“By the carload.”

“That kind of day?”

“That kind of day.”

“Then it looks as if this introduction job of mine isn’t the hare-brained idea I thought it was.”

“It isn’t. How did the four of you get here?”

“We came to Málaga separately, got together as soon as the
news of Reid’s heart attack reached us, and then travelled in two cars to a nearby street. We parked them there, at some distance from each other, and then drifted into the garden about ten minutes ago. The chap from Madrid, Martin is his name—”

“Martin? So he actually got here,” Ferrier said bitterly. “What the hell kept him?”

“Well—he’s pretty strong on security. He arranged all the timing and manoeuvring. You’d think he expected KGB cadres at every street corner. Mr. Smith from Washington was getting a little impatient; but of course this isn’t really his field of operations—he may outrank Martin, but in Málaga he has to take Martin’s advice. I suppose—I’m out of my depth, Ian,” he added frankly.

“So am I. But keep swimming hard. All right. Let’s have them in.” Mr. Smith from Washington, and his sidekick, and Mr. Martin from Madrid. Suddenly, Ferrier’s headache cleared: that was what a good flash of anger could do.

“Keep your dragon lady out of it.” Waterman nodded towards the dining-room, where Concepción had made a reappearance. She was bringing a tray, with the drinks, a folded towel, and a load of ice. Waterman raised an eyebrow at the huge bowl of ice cubes. “Do we look as thirsty as all that?”

“I had my head banged up a little.”

“Who bashed you?”

“Later, later.” Ferrier took the drink from Concepción, swallowed it quickly, began to feel almost normal. At least he was able to think ahead clearly now. Quickly, definitely, he gave instructions to Concepción. No, absolutely no dinner to be prepared; but he would be pleased if she would make some sandwiches—something simple like ham or cheese, the
kind of sandwich that Señor Reid had sometimes asked for, hadn’t he? Good. Some of those. To be wrapped and put into the refrigerator. That would let her get to bed; yes, she was to go to bed and try to get some sleep. Not to worry about anything. Some friends might drop in to visit him later on. Yes, make enough sandwiches; no, he didn’t know how many were coming, just make a dozen sandwiches, that was all. And get to bed, and not to worry. Understood? He added his thanks for all she had done, patted her shoulder gently, and she left without one protest.

Waterman looked at Ferrier with a touch of admiration. Yes, he was thinking, Ian has a way with women, the young and the old, the plain and the pretty. “You really like them, don’t you?” That’s what got through to them, one and all.

“Let’s have your friends in,” Ferrier said brusquely.

“Do you feel well enough to face them?”

“I’ll manage.” That was something he couldn’t have truthfully said half an hour ago. It was a cheering measure of his recovery.

Waterman started moving quickly again. He went into the hall, slightly opened the door, avoided the bright moonlight, kept to the pools of dark shadows. He found the three men waiting under the nearest palm trees. Martin was the most impatient. He didn’t speak his grumbles at being kept waiting so long, but they were clearly expressed in his abrupt movements, in his way of forging ahead without even listening to Waterman’s quiet explanation. The man who was calling himself Smith was definitely interested. So was Mike, who risked a whispered comment: “Looks as if our quick hop across the Atlantic was worth it after all.”

“Sh!” said Martin angrily. He was the first to go inside. He waited in the dark hall until the others had slipped through the half-opened door, locked and chained it, moved over to a wall switch, turned the hall light back on. Then in a tight little phalanx the three men came into the big room. (Waterman kept tactfully apart, a mild demonstration of his own independence.)

Which is which? Ferrier wondered as he stared at them and they at him. The youngest was easy to place: Mike, the subordinate, in his late twenties, neat and crisp and squared away like a small frigate between two ships of the line.

“This is Smith, just over from Washington,” Waterman said, and indicated the man Ferrier had been studying with a very cold look. So the other one is Martin, Ferrier thought, and transferred the cold look to its proper target. Martin was the older of the two—in fact, he was the oldest in the room by about ten years. He was fairly tall, carried himself with authority, was half bald (his dark hair hadn’t lost its colour, though) and had a white-skinned face as if he had never been touched by a Spanish sun. His features were good, his expression would be pleasant enough once that slight scowl of impatience faded, and his movements were quick, decided. At present, he was adjusting the shutters, barely looked around for a brief nod in Ferrier’s direction as Waterman introduced him. Waterman said, with his own touch of impatience, “Look, Martin, there’s nothing to be seen through these cracks in the shutters—you tested that from the garden. Just lights on, that’s all we could see.”

“Too many lights,” Martin said. He had a rich and imposing voice, mellifluous. “You’d think a party was going on here.” He moved over to the master switch at the foot of the staircase, fiddled around with it, dimmed some of the lamps. He then
chose a seat beside one of those, smoothed down his neat dark-blue jacket, seemed quite content to sit there and outstare Ferrier from his chair in the shadows.