A Small Death in lisbon (15 page)

'You didn't say why you were in Lisbon, Mr Felsen.'

'What happened to your friend? Edward, I think, Edward Burton.'

'He had to go up north. He's one of these Anglo-Portuguese from up there around Porto. The Allies use them a lot for buying things, you know, they understand the people. He told me it was all very important, but I think he might be a bit silly,' she said, diminishing him for her nearer purpose.

'Why did you ask him to help you?'

'He's young and good-looking and well-connected...'

'But not with the lady in the American consulate visa office.'

'He tried. She likes them young and good-looking.'

'But with money.'

She nodded dismally and looked back at the gaming rooms. The band released Madame Branescu from the next number and she walked past Felsen and gave him a little roll of her eyes.

'Who was that?' asked Laura van Lennep.

'Madame Branescu,' said Felsen. 'She runs the visa office in the American consulate.'

Something like love came into her face.

An hour later Felsen was removing the pearled stud from his
throat and stripping away the collar from his shirt. He unthreaded his monogrammed gold cufflinks and put them on the dressing table next to a letter he'd written on Hotel Parque stationery for the attention of Madame Branescu. He undid a shirt button.

'Let me do that,' said the girl.

Her borrowed evening dress lay on the chaise longue where she'd thrown it with her small, tight purse. She knelt up on the bed in her black slip and stockings. He stood in front of her with the first tingle of adrenalin shivering up his legs in his voluminous black trousers. She undid his shirt, drew the braces down off his shoulders and tugged the tails out of the waistband of his trousers. He eased her towards him and felt her stiffen against his front. She undid his trousers which dropped straight to the floor. Her head trembled on her neck at the jib of his undershorts. She drew them out and over, and put her fingers to her lips. She was flushed crimson and not with whisky and soda.

In the bathroom she found something among the bottles of perfumes and unguents provided by the Hotel Parque that would suit her purpose. Jasmine oil. Back in the room Felsen stood in his opened shirt. Her careful and thorough lubrication of him brought out the desperation of a chased man. He frightened her as he pulled her round on the bed, rucked up her slip and tore at the already flimsy lace-edged knickers.

'Careful,' she said nervously, and stretched back a hand to try and slow him down.

He stood between her bald heels showing out of the holes of her overused silk stockings. She shouted out as he entered her and her elbows collapsed. Felsen grabbed at her haunches and pulled her back on to him. Her hand flailed behind. Her face was screwed up with pain, her throat contorted by the way her head bent under her as he drove in.

Felsen was shocked to find himself thrilled by her every wince, at her fingers stretching out to push him back, at the white knuckles of the other hand which gripped the rucked counterpane on the bed. He didn't last long.

They lay on the bed in the light and cold air from the open windows. She was under the covers huddled and shivering and trying not to cry. This part always made her cry. The shame of it. How many times had this been in three months?

Felsen smoked. He'd offered her one but she hadn't answered.
He was irritated because he'd expected satisfaction, but in emptying himself he'd done just that, and found his head full of Eva.

He slept badly and woke early, alone in the room which was now freezing and damp from the sea air. He closed the window. The letter he'd written for the girl addressed to Madame Branescu had gone and the pair of gold KF cufflinks Eva had given him on his last birthday weren't on the dressing table.

Later in the day he caught a lift into Lisbon and went to the Pensáo Amsterdão in Rua de são Paulo. At the front desk they'd never heard of Laura van Lennep and no one answered to the description he gave of her. He worked the other
pensions
in the street and drew a blank. He went to the American consulate and walked the line of faces but there were no single women. Finally he went down to the shipping offices but they were closed and the docks were empty. The
Nyassa
had gone.

15th March 1941, Guar da, Beira Baixa, Portugal

It had been raining in Guarda all night. It rained throughout breakfast and it rained during the strategy meeting Felsen had convened with his fellow-agents to decide on the necessary tactics if they were to buy and ship in the region of three hundred tons of wolfram per month for the rest of the year.

The size of his task had only just crystallized in his head on seeing the British Beralt mine in Panasqueira, near Fundão in the south of the Beira. The mine and buildings were extensive, the colossal slag already part of the landscape. To have created that quantity of slag there had to be a small city of hundred-metre-deep shafts and kilometres of galleries under his feet. There was nothing remotely comparable in the rest of the Beira. This feat of engineering was ripping two thousand tons of thick horizontal wolfram veins from the earth each year. All the other mines in the area were nothing but scratches and nicks on the earth's crust by comparison. His only hope was total motivation of the people. The galvanizing of thousands to the task of gleaning the surface. And, of course, theft.

The strategy meeting had started off badly. These men were already working at full stretch and had never achieved anything close to three hundred tons in a month. They started off by complaining that the Portuguese concession-holders had sensed which way the market was going and were stockpiling. Then they railed against the British who had instituted some pre-emptive buying operations which had forced the price up and encouraged the Portuguese to sit tight.

'Price is no longer an issue,' said Felsen, which quietened the meeting. 'Our job now is to get our hands on the product by any means we can. My intelligence briefing in Lisbon indicates that the UKCC has a slow decision-making process, that they are active in the market only for short periods, that they are frightened of high
prices because their managers are cautious and are buying with borrowed money. They have shot themselves in the foot. They've driven the prices up and now they've started to lose labour from their own mines. Their miners have begun to see that they can earn more fossicking than by taking wages to go underground. We don't have any of these problems. We have money. We can be aggressive. We can be consistent.'

'What do you mean by consistent?'

'It means we never fail to buy. The British can't do that. They work in fits and starts. They disappoint. We will never disappoint. We'll develop close relationships with people on the ground, people who control the local communities and we'll make them loyal to the German buying cause.'

'And how do we make them loyal?' roared one of the agents. 'The British give them tea and cakes and kiss their children. Do we have time for that, chasing three hundred tons a month?'

'They're only loyal to one thing in the Beira,' said another agent, grimly.

'That's not true,' said the first agent. 'There are concession-owners who will
only
sell to the British, some of them have British blood. They will never come over to us.'

'You're both right,' said Felsen. 'First—I've seen the people here, the ordinary men. They are living like we did in the Middle Ages. They have nothing. They walk twenty miles with fifty kilos of charcoal on their back to sell in town. They make enough money to fill their stomachs so they can make it back to their villages. These are very poor people. They can't read or write. They have a hard life ahead of them. And it is these people who will scour the Beira for us and bring in every rock of wolfram they can find. In time, people will see how easy the money is up here and more will come up from the south. The Alentejo is full of the same victims of poverty, and they'll work for us too.'

'And what about the mines who sell to the British whatever the price?'

'My second point—the people who work in those concessions live in villages. We will move into the villages and encourage them to do some night shifts. We will buy from them at market rates.'

'You mean stealing?'

'I mean distributing wealth. I mean taking from the enemy. I mean waging war in the Beira.'

'They're difficult people in the Beira.'

'They're mountain people. Mountain people are always difficult. They have hard, cold lives. Your job is to understand them, to like them, to befriend them ... and to buy their wolfram.'

Felsen divided the region up, putting a group of agents in Viseu, Mangualde and Nelas, another group in Celorico and Trancoso, one further south in Idanha-a-Nova and he took for himself the area south of Guarda to the Serra da Malcata from the foot of the Serra da Estrela in the west to the Spanish border. Most of the product would travel on the Guarda/Vilar Formoso road and cross the border at that point. He needed the
Guarda Nacional Republicana
in one pocket so that the trucks would get there and the
alfândega
in the other so that it would cross the border into Spain without any trouble. The town of Guarda was the central point of the wolfram area. It was the obvious headquarters.

The rain had stopped by the time he'd finished the conference. His driver came in to say that he'd delivered the two bottles of brandy to the
chefe
of the GNR and that he should go to the GNR post now, preferably before lunch, for a meeting.

The
chefe
of the GNR had recently been transferred to this post from Torres Vedras. He was a big man with a small face encased by a fat head. His moustache was thick, black and luxuriant as mink with ends tweaked to points, making him look as if he was permanently delighted, which most of the time he was. His hand felt small and soft in Felsen's peasant grip and not one that was in the habit of coming down with the full force of the law. Felsen sat on the other side of the man's desk which looked as if it had seen heavy skirmishing during the Peninsular Wars. The
chefe
thanked him for his gift and offered him a glass of absinthe. He poured the green liquor into two small glasses. Felsen's mouth crinkled at the bitterness of the wormwood as he laid a piece of newspaper down in front of the
chefe.
He tapped an article near the bottom of the page. The
chefe
read it, sipping his absinthe and thinking about lunch. He took one of Felsen's cigarettes.

'You're making the front page in Lisbon,' said Felsen.

'Murder,' said the
chefe
looking out of the window at the clearing sky, 'is very common now in this area.'

'This is the third murder in two weeks. The bodies were all found in the same area and they were all stripped, bound and bludgeoned to death.'

'It's the wolfram,' said the
chefe,
as if it was nothing to do with him.

'Of course it's the wolfram.'

'They've all gone crazy Even the wild rabbits are collecting wolfram.'

'How is your investigation coming along?'

The
chefe
shifted in his seat and drew on the strange Turkish tobacco. The fire hissed in the chimney.

'There's since been a fourth death,' he said.

'One of your officers?'

He nodded his head and refilled the glasses. The absinthe was smoothing the creases out in his fat face so that the schoolboy was beginning to come back into it.

'Are you pursuing the matter?'

'A state of lawlessness exists in the land,' he said, dramatically, sweeping his hand over his desk. 'We have found the body.'

'In the same area?'

The nod was slower this time.

'Where did the officer start his enquiries?'

'In a village called Amêndoa.'

'Perhaps you will be going up there with a larger force?'

'The area I have to cover is large. The present circumstances—difficult.'

'So you'd like this lawlessness to stop without using up your manpower.'

'This is unlikely,' he said, sadly, 'there's a lot of money at stake here. These people have been living on five
tostoes
here, five there. For them a single escudo is a fortune. When a small rock of wolfram is worth seventy-five, eighty, a hundred escudos, it's like a fever in their brains. You can't imagine. They go mad.'

'If I could ensure that your law is upheld, that there'll be no more violence, perhaps you'd be able to help me with some of my difficulties?'

'No more violence,' he said, repeating this back to his glass of absinthe as if it had put the idea to him. 'None?'

'None,' said Felsen, repeating the lie.

'What would be the nature of your difficulties?'

'As you know, there'll be a lot of my trucks moving product around the mining areas and out to the border at Vilar Formoso.'

'Customs is a separate organization.'

'I understand that. Where you can help is with the papers, the
guias
that we have to present when we're moving the product around.'

'But the
guias
are very important for the government. They have to know what's going where.'

'That is true and ordinarily there would be no problem ... but the bureaucracy.'

'Ah, yes, the bureaucracy,' said the
chefe,
suddenly feeling trussed in his uniform. 'You're a businessman. I understand. Businessmen like to do what they want, when they want.'

They lapsed into silence. From the
chefe's
facial expressions it appeared that there was some internal struggle going on, as if there was something indigestible going down or a painful wind ballooning in his bowel wanting to get out.

'I'll find out what happened to your officer too,' said Felsen, but that wasn't it. The
chefe
was not wildly overconcerned at that.

'The
guias
are a very important government mechanism. This would be a serious breach of...'

'There will, of course, be a commission for you on every ton we move,' said Felsen, and he realized he'd hit the point. The creases unfurled. The belly quietened. The
chefe
took another of Felsen's cigarettes and skewered him with a look at the same time.