The Eldorado Network (13 page)

It was in a huge and rambling four-storey building, once the town house of some eighteenth-century grandee. The entrance hall was slightly smaller than a tennis court, but it was big enough to be used as a waiting room. The man who opened the door for Luis gave him a form to fill in, and indicated the rows of chairs. They were well filled.

Luis found an empty seat and studied the form.

Name. Address. Nature of enquiry/business/request. At the bottom, three little boxes marked Department. Officer. Action. In very small print, down in one corner, IG Mad 7/40 -- 50,000. They'd had fifty thousand of these things printed in July 1940.

Fifty thousand people ringing fifty thousand doorbells to fill in fifty thousand forms and sit on fifty thousand chairs. For how long? Judging by all these expressions of boredom and slumped weariness, fifty thousand years.

Depression seeped into him and stole his energy, his will, his purpose. He had not eaten since breakfast, and his legs ached from too much walking. He stretched and relaxed, and watched the busy Germans hurrying along the corridor that crossed the hall, or trotting up and down the double staircase leading to the other floors. What industry! What organisation! What possible use could these Europe-conquerors have for a dusty, hungry, penniless ex-journalists'-assistant with throbbing feet?

He rested his head against the chairback and caught sight of an astonishing woman sitting in the row in front.

One glance erased all thought of his feet, his poverty, and even his hunger. A prolonged stare made his head tingle with an enthusiastic charge of blood, and he straightened up as if someone had poked him in the ribs with a pointed stick.

She was young: over twenty, under twenty-five. What startled Luis was not so much her looks as  -- he could find no other word for it  --  her style. He was accustomed to women who were proud or vain, flirtatious or submissive. This was the first time he had seen a woman so obviously in complete control of herself and her emotions; a woman who knew what she wanted and didn't give much of a damn whether anyone else liked it or not. Those wide grey eyes surveyed the people in the waiting room as calmly as a contented leopard watching a herd of gazelle. Yet there was humour in the curve of her mouth, and even a suggestion of sympathy in the tilt of an eyebrow.

Or was he finding humour and sympathy only because he was looking for them? She fascinated Luis; she generated an unconscious sexual challenge: how could anyone be so utterly desirable yet so completely self-sufficient? She wasn't Spanish, that was sure. German, perhaps? Healthy-looking enough; confident-loo king enough. But long black hair. No, not exactly black: very very dark red. All right, so what? All Germans aren't blondes. Look at Adolf Hitler.

He glanced at Adolf Hitler, whose picture was on the wall, and when he looked back she had half-turned and was examining him in a detached but not unfriendly fashion. He gave her a tight smile and a stiff nod. His heart was playing ragtime and his lungs couldn't keep up with the beat. She returned a small part of the smile with devastating ease. He fumbled open the form and searched for his pen, his face rigid with indifference.

Nature of enquiry/business/request.

Luis crossed out enquiry and request, thought hard, his brain still alive with excitement, and wrote: I have technical information concerning the new secret British weapon code-named 'Elephant'. He signed: Luis Cabrillo, Count de Zamora y Ciudad-Rodrigo.

The official who took the form gave him a numbered disc and said automatically, 'Listen for your number.' No number had been called since Luis had arrived. He stalked slowly and aristocratically back to his seat, watched with stoicism by the crowd; whether or not the astonishing woman was watching too he did not dare find out. 'Esperese un momento!' called the official in a bad accent. 'Count de Zamora?'

Luis turned. The crowd shifted suspiciously, and when Luis was beckoned back, looked cheated and disapproving and helpless. The official finished murmuring into a telephone and replaced the instrument.

'For favor, Excelencia,' he said, inviting Luis to precede him.

In a very short time Luis was seated in a small comfortable room, facing a pleasant young man who said his name was Otto Krafft.

'Well, you're not the Count de Zamora y Ciudad- Rodrigo, are you?' said Krafft in good Spanish, putting aside a copy of the Almanack de Got ha.

'No,' Luis said, 'but then you're not the assistant commercial attache, are you?'

Krafft steepled his fingers and hid behind them. 'So what?' His eyebrows were so blond they were almost silver.

'Suppose I'd written "Nature of business: espionage" on that form,' Luis said. 'What would the German embassy have thought?'

Krafft shrugged. 'Another crank, another halfwit.'

'Yes. So instead of "espionage" I might put down something tedious like "import-export". That would get me as far as the assistant commercial attache.'

'More likely the deputy assistant.'

'Even worse. Then I tell him what I really want, but of course he knows nobody in that department.'

'Of course. The less he knows, the better.'

'And two hours later, after another three abortive meetings, I might reach your office. If I'm lucky.'

Krafft regarded Luis thoughtfully over his arched fingers. 'Is there a moral to all that, d'you think?' he asked.

'Perhaps nobody expects a spy to be honest.' Luis was amazed at the calm and competent way he was handling this discussion. Evidently that skirmish with those unprofessional buffoons in the British Embassy had done him good.

'Do the British have a secret weapon called "Elephant"?' Krafft asked.

'I haven't the faintest idea. But I'm perfectly willing to find out.' Luis buffed his fingernails on his sleeve and glanced about him at the furnishings of the room, trying to disguise his mounting exhilaration. Now he was out of the shallows and into deep water. Nobody had made him do it; nobody would try to save him. It was a hell of a long way down, and that knowledge made his loins tingle with joy and dread. Terrific. Onwards!.

When he looked again, Krafft was leaning back, hands cupped behind his head. This time he spoke in English.

'You wish to spy for Germany,' he said.

'It has been my ambition,' Luis told him, also in English, 'ever since I was a toddler.'

That enormously amused Krafft. 'A toddler! Imagine that!' He jumped up and dragged open a filing cabinet. 'And now, Mr Cabrillo, you want to toddle over to England and toddle around their army camps and toddle lots of lovely secrets back to us. Is that right?' He came back with a thick buff form.

'Oh no,' Luis said. 'Certainly not. I'm not a toddler any more, Mr Krafft. I might slink, I might snoop. I might even, at a pinch, sneak. But let me assure you, Mr Krafft: my toddling days are over.'

Krafft chuckled. 'Surely you wouldn't sneak, Mr Cabrillo. That would be very un-English.'

Luis gave himself the luxury of not smiling. He then gave himself the extra reward of not even replying. He merely looked at Krafft: an I'm-ready-when-you-are look.

'I take it you have previous experience in the intelligence field, Mr Cabrillo.'

'During our own civil war, of blessed memory, I made my living as a spy.'

'For whom?'

'For the Nationalists, naturally.'

'And you reported to . . .?'

'To Colonel Juan de la Vega,' Luis said flatly. Vega had died in an air crash in 1938.

'Humm. You must then be skilled in the use of shortwave radio, invisible inks, and so on.'

'No. I always reported in person. One of the luxuries of a civil war, you see.'

Krafft asked him several more questions: family background, marital status, education, where he learned such good English, police record, state of health, experience of firearms.

'Not much,' Luis said. 'They're too noisy and too messy. You can't pick a lock with a gun, and -- '

'Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.' Krafft rapidly completed the form, blotted it briskly, and slapped the pages shut. 'And it doesn't matter in the slightest, because nobody ever looks at these things.' He slung the form into a wire basket. 'I don't mind telling you, the German reputation for thoroughness can sometimes be a pain in the head.'

'Neck,' Luis said. 'Pain in the neck.'

'So? You suffer from it too.' They laughed, and Krafft opened the door for Luis. 'You don't know it, Mr Cabrillo, but you arrived here at exactly the right time. We need a man with your qualifications,' he said, as they strolled along the corridor, 'and we need him urgently.'

'I'm glad to hear it." Luis had been considering how much money to ask for; he doubled his estimate. 'I'm ready to start work as soon as we can reach an agreement.'

'Splendid.' Krafft led him down two short flights of stairs and around a corner. 'Wonderful. I can't believe my luck. This morning I was very, very worried, but now . . .' He opened a steel door and signalled Luis to go in. A plump, middleaged man in new white overalls got up from a steel chair behind a steel table. The whole room was steel. 'This is Mr Cabrillo, Franz,' Krafft said in the same optimistic voice. 'He is a British spy. Shoot him.'

He went out and closed the door. It shut with a firm, well-made chunk.

It was a joke, of course; Luis saw that at once from the expression on Franz's face: a gentle, reassuring smile, like that of a father about to take his child down a toboggan run for the first time. He reminded Luis of the railway official who had brought him the news of his parents' death: both men blinked too much.

'Now please don't worry about anything young Otto may have told you,' Franz said, fumbling in a deep desk drawer. 'He gets carried away sometimes. This won't hurt a bit, I promise.' He came up with a black automatic pistol so heavy that it bent his wrist.

'I don't understand,' Luis said. His voice was calm but his stomach was twitching. 'I told Otto that I have no use for firearms. None at all.'

Franz made a wry, apologetic face, and began screwing a silencer onto the pistol. 'It's my fault,' he said, 'I should have had everything ready for you. Would you like to shut your eyes?'

Involuntarily, Luis did shut his eyes for a second, but he opened them wide, and stared. 'This is insane!' he cried. 'You're behaving like lunatics!'

Franz thumbed a clip of ammunition into the weapon, wincing at the effort. 'I merely do as I'm told,' he said. 'Now if you wouldn't mind stepping over --' 

'Listen, I'm not a goddam British spy!' Luis told him furiously.'

'Well now,' Franz said mildly. 'You would say that, wouldn't you?' He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, and Luis realised  --  with a jolt that made him inhale sharply  --  that Franz was inspecting him for execution.

'But I'm not!' Luis insisted; and even to his own ears the claim sounded childish. 'For God's sake, I came here to work for your people!'

'That's as may be, my love.' Franz carefully disengaged the safety catch, and Luis felt himself slipping and sliding helplessly to his doom. Why didn't you knock the silly bastard down before he got that thing loaded! he asked himself, bitterly and uselessly. 'I just do what they tell me,' the German said. A touch of heartburn made him beat a chubby fist against his breast. 'Would you mind standing up against that wall?'

'But what good does it do you to kill me?' Luis pleaded. He was acutely conscious of his clothes thinly protecting his body, of his skin shifting wretchedly under his clothes.

'I can't see that a British spy is any use to us alive.' Franz pointed out. 'Can you?' He braced his legs and bent at the knees.

Tell him anything, Luis's brain ordered frantically. Tell him you're a British spy, tell him you know all their secrets, tell him anything, everything, don't let him kill you! But the rest of his body seemed to be locked in paralysis. He stood with his chin up and his teeth clenched, and counted the pulse beating in his head, booming away like a clock that was trying to strike infinity. Franz held the pistol in both hands, at arms' length, raising it steadily to shoulder height. 'You really should stand against the wall,' he murmured. Luis clenched his teeth until the muscles hurt. He was afraid, but he was also stiff with rage at the colossal stupidity of these people. He saw the barrel stop climbing. It wavered fractionally. The German closed one eye. Luis felt sick. There was a bang like a book falling off a shelf. Something smashed Luis in the chest and he fell backwards, arms flailing; but already darkness had driven out light. Franz had been right: it didn't hurt a bit.

'All right, then, I didn't get a bulls-eye,' Franz said. 'But I got an inner. Definitely.'

Otto made a thoughtful, noncommittal noise and drummed his fingers on Luis's ribcage. 'You're quite sure the heart is all the way over there? Almost in the middle?'

'Yes, of course it is.'

'So why do most people think their heart is on the left, I wonder?'

'No idea. Does it matter?'

'Probably not.'

Luis was stretched out on the steel table, face upwards, his feet overhanging the end. A wide dribble of saliva was rapidly drying on his chin and neck.

'Come on, come on,' Franz said. 'I've got work to do.' He took a pin from his lapel and pricked Luis on the wrist. A shining seed of blood grew on the spot, Luis twitched and his throat made a gruff growl. After a moment he opened his eyes and turned his head.

The two Germans appeared to be standing horizontally, with their feet attached to the wall. They were fuzzy in outline and shimmering, as if seen through water. He watched Franz lift one foot from the wall and take a pace forward without falling on his head. Clever people, these Germans. Very well organised. Then he remembered the pistol, the bang, the smash in the chest, and he sat up. Otto and Franz swooped through a quarter-turn and stood erect, less fuzzy now but still wavering whenever the breeze ruffled the water. He looked at them and they looked back. Already a part of him was in panic, screaming at his brain to wake up and start running, because he was late for the race and the others wouldn't wait, they'd race off and leave him lumbering behind, lumbering like this stupid brain, which was too stupid to know how stupid it was, so he could never win, which made him wildly angry with it, and with them, and with everyone; and at last the blood came pumping vigorously up into his head, driving the panic away and clearing his senses like a flag slowly unfurling. 'Now I expect you could do with a glass of brandy,' Krafft said.