The Eldorado Network (29 page)

Freddy found himself a chair and pulled forward another for Luis. 'This may take a little time,' he said.

'Stand up!' Christian ordered. 'You have not been given permission to--'

'For heaven's sake, colonel, just get on with it,' Freddy said. 'Whether we sit or stand is irrelevant. If we're in the soup, standing won't save us; and if we're not in the soup why should you give a damn whether we sit, stand or blow bubbles in the bath?'

Christian glared. 'Has it ever occurred to you that your behaviour might offend someone in this organisation other than myself}'

'The ambassador,' Luis said.

'No, no,' Freddy said, 'not that kindly old gentleman, in theory he doesn't even know the Abwehr is under his roof. No, I think the colonel's talking about his boss.'

'His boss?' It had never occurred to Luis that Christian might not be in complete command of the Abwehr in Madrid. 'The colonel's boss?'

'Shut up!' Christian barked.

'Captain Mullen,' Freddy said. 'A sailor.'

For a moment Luis thought that Colonel Christian was going to attack someone. Then all the rage seemed to drain out of him. He took off his tie, picking clumsily at the knot. He walked over to his jacket, let the tie run through his fingers, and watched it coil on the floor. 'You know so bloody much, Ryan,' he said. 'You tell us why you're here now.'

'Easy,' Freddy said. 'Mullen heard about the argy-bargy out at the Country Club, he didn't like it, sent for you and sank his dentures into your bottom, and you didn't like that, so you decided to unload the pain and you sent for us.'

There was a silence, while Krafft and Fischer breathed quietly, Luis tried to think of something helpful to say, and Christian scratched his armpits.

'Well, if that's all that's troubling you,' Freddy said, getting up, 'just keep taking the tablets and--'

Christian waved him to sit, without looking at him. 'You two can go,' he said.

'Go out or go to bed?' Fischer asked.

'Go to bed.' He waited until the door had closed and then waited as long again. 'Let me tell you about Captain Mullen,' he said. He sat on the floor, going down slowly and straightening his legs as if they had rheumatism. 'Captain Mullen is not like me,' he said.' 'I believe in taking risks. For me, espionage cannot be safe. It is essentially a business in which one gambles in search of big winnings. If one is in no danger of great loss then one is not likely to be rewarded with great success either.'

'But Captain Mullen is not like you,' Luis said.

Christian leaned against his desk. 'Unlike the British, our sailors have never been adventurers. For Captain Mullen the secret of success is to eliminate all mistakes.'

'Some truth in that,' Freddy said.

'So Captain Mullen is a great believer in counter-intelligence. He thinks we should let the enemy make his mistakes, and then we should exploit them.'

'Are you trying to say,' Luis asked, 'that Captain Mullen doesn't approve of sending agents to England?' He experienced a twinge of anger.

'I am not trying to say anything, Cabrillo. I am telling you what happens to people in this department who make mistakes: Captain Mullen eliminates them.' 'Would he eliminate you, for instance?' 'If I am not successful I shall certainly be sacked.' 'Just sacked?' Freddy said. 'I don't mind being sacked. I've been sacked from all the best armies. And some of the worst.'

'Oh, for God's sake, Ryan.' Christian began taking off his shoes. 'Put your cricket-bat away and listen to me. If Mullen thinks either you or Cabrillo have gone wrong he won't just sack you and leave you lying around for the British to sweep up. He'll have you killed, double-quick.'

'Oh Christ,' Luis said. He stared as Christian exercised his toes. They moved stiffly in his socks, as if they too had just been woken up. 'You mean to say, even when we're in England ...'

'Especially when you're in England.' Christian tossed his shoes over his desk and stretched out on his back.

Luis was holding his head in his hands. 'Colonel, why are you telling us all this?' he asked. 'It seems very strange.'

'Two reasons,' Christian said. 'First, because I want you to succeed and that cannot happen if you blunder and end up getting strangled by your replacement in some filthy London back-alley. And second, because you have already blundered, especially tonight, and I have spent the past hour trying to persuade Captain Mullen that you should not be strangled immediately in some filthy Madrid back-alley.'

'Or, indeed, in some quite clean Madrid back-alley,' Freddy murmured.

'How did you get on?' Luis asked.

'Badly,' Christian began, when the doorhandle rattled.

They all looked at it, and it rattled again. Luis stared. He was helpless with fright.

'Open it,' Christian said.

The door was not locked. Freddy opened it to reveal a black tomcat standing on its hind legs. The animal dropped through the gap and padded inside, its tail as erect as a sabre. 'What a cheap trick,' Freddy said.

'That unpleasant beast has very little brain,' Christian said, 'It thinks that it is clever when in fact it is merely annoying.' The cat sniffed his toes and looked thoughtful. 'Just like you two,' Christian said.

'Whose doorknobs have we been rattling?' Freddy asked.

'Your association with Mrs Conroy,' Christian said wearily. 'Stupid, ostentatious and damagingly offensive. She has insulted German officers all over Madrid, in your company. Tonight's episode was only the worst. We don't pay foreigners to piss on us.'

'You see what you've done?' Freddy said to the cat. 'You've gone and upset Colonel Christian.'

'Mullen told me that any agent who behaves like you is by definition incompetent and unreliable. He wants you dead.'

'You said yourself that Mullen's a dummy,' Freddy observed. 'I think somebody must have screwed his head on the wrong way round. Does he want Luis and me to go around Madrid in lederhosen, singing the Horst Wessel song and giving flowers to German officers?' Christian sighed and closed his eyes. 'Well, why not?' Freddy demanded. 'That would show everyone whose side we were on, wouldn't it?'

Christian heaved himself up. 'This is a secret service,' he said. 'Captain Mullen won't stand for publicity of any kind.'

'I can't stop her shouting at Germans,' Luis said.

'You should never have allowed the situation to arise in the first place,' Christian told him sharply. 'How the devil can I run this department when you turn a simple tennis-match into a brawl?'

'We didn't approach you tonight, colonel,' Freddy pointed out. 'You made the first move.'

'You could have stopped her.'

'Bosh! Look: once you'd insulted her I had to defend her. Right? In any case, what's the panic about? Personally, I think that little dust-up was the best thing that could have happened for everyone.'

'Fischer may have concussion.'

'Excellent,' Luis said. 'The British will never suspect us now.'

They argued the point for another ten minutes, while the cat walked amongst them and rubbed itself on their legs. In the end Christian seemed suddenly to get bored. He told them they could go.

Perhaps the cat is not so stupid,' Luis said as they went out. "After all, it does succeed in entering the room.'

Christian yawned. 'One day,' he said, 'it will rattle that 'doorknob and I shall open the door and boot it straight through the window.'

Luis and Freddy shared a taxi back to their apartments. 'What d'you think all that was about?' Freddy asked.

Wasn't it about Julie and the tennis?' Luis was surprised at his question.

Christian isn't that stupid. And neither is Mullen. It's all rather odd.'

'Oh sweet Jesus,' Luis said miserably. 'Why did you have to tell me that? I was just beginning to relax.'

'Oh, never relax,' Freddy told him seriously. 'It rots your socks

Next morning they continued training as if nothing had happened. The first lesson was in converting British weights, measures and currency to metric and German units. Luis felt tired; he missed the couple of hours sleep he had lost. Freddy, looking as refreshed as ever, helped

Richard Fischer to coach him.

'All right, Luis: you pay for a threepenny bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate with a ten-bob note. How much change d'you get?'

'A bob is a shilling,' Fischer reminded.

'Ten bob . . . Three pence . . .' Luis yawned. 'Sixteen pence equal one shilling, so ...'

'No, no,' Fischer said. 'You're thinking of ounces. Sixteen ouces make one pound.'

'I thought that was twenty shillings,' Luis said.

'One pound weight,' Fischer explained.

'Oh yes. Pound weight.' Luis wrote 16=1, and stared at it hard. 'That's right, I remember now. And a hundred of them is called ... a hundredweight.'

'Actually, a hundred and twelve, Luis,' said Freddy. 'One hundredweight equals a hundred and twelve pounds.'

'That doesn't make any sense.'

'Well, it does if you remember that fourteen pounds equal one stone and two stone make one quarter,' Fischer told him. 'The sequence is sixteen, fourteen, twenty-eight, one hundred and twelve.'

Luis wrote it all down. 'Bloody hell,' he said.

'No, you're thinking of liquid measure,' Freddy said. ' That's bloody hell. Four gills one pint, two pints one quart, four quarts one gallon, except in America, where their measures are ever so slightly smaller.'

'Why?'

Freddy shrugged. 'So they can imagine they drink more, I suppose.'

'I shall forget about America,' Luis decided.

'Oh no.' Fischer winced: he still had a dull headache and a slight singing in the ears. 'That could lead to serious inaccuracy, for instance in fuel-consumption figures--'

'All right, all right . . . Now I've forgotten what I was buying.'

'Tell you what,' Freddy said. 'Let's make it a yard and a half of pork sausage, at two-pence-farthing a foot.'

'A foot.' Luis looked at his own feet. 'A foot is what?'

'Twelve inches,' said Fischer automatically.

'Or think of it this way,' Freddy suggested. 'Three-and-a-~.i feet give you one metre.'

'What would I want with such a great length of pork sausage?' Luis asked.

Listen, chum, if you can get a yard and a half of genuine pork bangers, you grab 'em,' Freddy advised. 'I'll scoff 'em, if you don't. Britain's gift to western civilisation, the noble banger.'

When they left Fischer and went to the restaurant for a coffee break, Luis felt as tired as if he had worked a full day. The steady buzz of conversation seemed to wrap him in a seamless cloak. He propped his head on his fist and let his eyes watch Freddy writing a letter. That too was soothing: the pen danced smoothly across the page, trailing line after line of neatly manufactured words. Freddy wrote well; he did everything well; he was a brilliant all-rounder. That was what made him such a reassuring person to have on one's side. Luis found it impossible to imagine anything very unpleasant happening to him as long as Freddy was around.

How would you pass a secret note to an accomplice in a crowded restaurant?' Freddy asked.

Luis came awake with a start. 'Make it look like the bill?' he suggested.

'A long note,' Freddy said. 'And please don't suggest eating a long meal.' Give up.'

Freddy leaned back and linked his hands behind his head. 'Move your chair forward and slouch a bit. Now let your hands hang between your knees, under the tablecloth.'

Luis did as he was told. Freddy's foot nudged one hand.

He felt around the foot and found an envelope tucked down the side of the shoe. 'Got it,' he said.

'Good. Now this is the difficult bit. Can you eat it, without moving your hands?' Luis stiffened, and stared.

'Never mind, we'll practise that next week. For now, just fold it and stuff it up your sleeve, as far as it'll go. successful?' Freddy stood up. 'Keep it hidden. Shall we go?'

They set off for Dr Hartmann and a refresher lesson in radio maintenance. 'Who taught you that trick?' Luis asked.

'W. C. Fields. Only he did it with the ace of diamonds.'

Dr Hartmann was eager to start work. He had rigged up a gadget which made the electric light flash off and on at brief but irregular intervals; this, he said, would simulate difficult conditions in the field and thus make today's exercise in emergency repairs as realistic as possible.

'Tell you what,' Freddy suggested. 'I'll stand in the corridor and toss hand-grenades through the fanlight, while Luis hides all the screwdrivers. That should be even more realistic.'

Dr Hartmann conceded a short and wintry smile, and closed the curtains. The training exercise began.

After five minutes the telephone rang. Dr Hartmann answered it, his face changing expression jerkily as the light found him and lost him and found him again.

'A change in the schedule,' he announced. 'You are to report to the sub-basement immediately.'

For a moment Freddy remained bent over the dismantled transmitter, his hands full of parts. Carefully he put them down. 'What a bore,' he said. 'Just as I was expanding the frontiers of science.'

Otto Krafft met them when the lift opened at the sub-basement level. 'Follow me,' he said. They walked along a corridor. Luis was puzzled: he couldn't remember having come this way before, yet it looked oddly familiar. The odd-ness was that he had no idea where it led. They turned a corner, and Otto opened a steel door. He held it while Luis and Freddy went inside. Franz Werth, in freshly laundered white overalls, was sitting in a steel chair behind a steel table. The whole room was steel. Suddenly Luis understood the strange familiarity of the corridor. The only other time he had used it, he had walked in the opposite direction, away from this room. It seemed a very long time ago.

Freddy breathed on a wall and watched his misted breath ride to nothing. 'I suppose it makes for easy dusting,' he remarked.

This is the Joke Department,' Luis said. 'Nothing is what it seems.'

Please do not talk,' Otto announced.

He stood by the door and stared at the opposite wall. Franz sat at the table and maintained a plump and gentle smile. A minute passed. Luis stopped walking up and down, and stood with his arms crossed, watching Freddy do little