Wednesday, 19th July 1944, Monserrate Gardens, Serra de Sintra, near Lisbon.
Voss sat alone in the dark palace. Rose and Sutherland had run for their cars and headed back into Lisbon. The agent from the colonnade came in, lowered the flame on the lamp and picked it up. He waited while Voss applied his fingertips to his temples, trying to force in the energy to think.
After a minute of the agent swinging the lamp and watching the effect on their shadows, Voss stood. The agent led him up through the trees to his car. Voss stared at the steering wheel, the agent looked in on him.
‘You have to put the key in the ignition, and turn it, sir,’ said the agent. ‘That way the motor starts. Good night, sir.’
Voss pulled out and drove back to Sintra, past the palace of Seteais, blue and silent in the moonlight. He took the high road above Sintra town and drove through the unlit village of São Pedro heading south to Estoril. Check Wilshere first, he thought, there was a chance that Lazard would go there if they were in this together, and check Anne, too. Then go back to Lisbon.
In the open country between the serra and the coast he pulled off the road under some pines trees. Another thought: whatever Lazard was doing had been a carefully planned operation; Voss would represent a threat to that plan. He went to the boot and lifted out the tool box. From the cloth bag he removed the Walther PPK, well-oiled and loaded. He checked it, laid it on the passenger seat and drove into Estoril from the north, heading down to the sea and the casino square.
He walked up the garden, the night air full of barking dogs that had been set off by Wilshere’s shot. He heard Mafalda put both barrels into Wilshere. He was running by the time the next two barrels were emptied into the ceiling. He hit the lawn at a sprint and slowed, checking the windows of the house. Light in the study only, then light in the drawing room and Mafalda holding the twelve bore with the cartridge belt still over her shoulder, sweeping the room like a hunter in a copse.
He ducked, ran across the lawn and hit the wall close to the last window. Mafalda had got up on a coffee table and was looking amongst the furniture.
‘Judy,’ she said in a little voice, coaxing a kitten. ‘Judy.’
Now he could see Anne hiding behind the sofa at the far end of the room, crouched with a dark stain around the neck and shoulders of her dress. He ran to the back terrace, eased open the doors of the french windows and stood in the doorway of the sitting room. Mafalda had her back to him. He raised the Walther PPK.
‘Put the gun down, Dona Mafalda.’
Mafalda turned slowly, the twelve bore at her hip.
‘Put it down, slowly,’ said Voss, checking her face.
He stepped behind the corridor wall as the shot crashed through the open doorway and ravaged the plaster beyond. Voss stepped back into the frame as a large vase hurled from the far end of the room shattered on the edge of the table on which Mafalda was standing. She lost her balance, fell, the gun slipped off her hip, the stock thudded into the floor. The blast ripped into her nightdress, rolled her off the table – a crack as she hit the floor. Voss was on her in a second, pulled open the shredded nightdress, her left breast gone, the blood – thick, arterial, important – flooded into her ragged lungs, drained out.
Anne crashed across the room. Voss tucked his gun into his waistband. Outside, the ringing bell of a police car started up in the distance. Anne, oddly calm, seeing everything slowly now, walked quickly back into the study. She opened Lazard’s briefcase, slapped the envelope on top of the velvet bag of high-quality gems, scraped the contents of the safe into it, which included a few white paper sachets of other diamonds and some documents, shut the briefcase and left the safe open with the gold bars still in it. Headlights flashed through the front door into the hall. She and Voss ran out on to the back terrace and on through the hedge to the perimeter wall at the back of the property. Over the wall they walked briskly downhill and back towards the casino, which they avoided because a crowd had gathered outside. The town dogs were still barking and howling into the night.
They drove down the Marginal without exchanging a word. Voss hung on to the wheel as if it was a cliff face, Anne pulled her heels up on to the seat, jammed herself into a corner and hugged her knees, shaking. Lisbon was fogbound and strangely cool. They went to Estrela, parked and walked up to the apartment. He ran a bath, lit cigarettes, poured out some harsh bagaço he kept in the kitchen. He took her into the bathroom, stripped off her dress and put it in the basin to soak. He bathed her as he would a child and towelled her dry. He put her into bed, where she cried for an hour; the images of the burning woman, the innocent burning woman with love and petrol in her throat in the furnace car, refused to go out. He washed her dress, hung it up by the window. He stripped, got into bed behind her, pulled her back to his chest. They stared into the dark corner of the room. She told him everything that had happened.
Dawn came early with a faint mist by the window and woke them up out of short, deep sleep and back into hard fact. Her forehead was pressed against his back, her arm over his chest. His hand was resting on her hip. She knew he was awake, could hear his brain ticking.
‘Lazard and Wilshere knew you were a double,’ she said, the words reverberating up his spine. ‘Lazard told me last night. Does that mean Wolters knows?’
He didn’t reply but brushed his thumb over her hip bone, back and forward. He was staring at the briefcase under the table. He imagined Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg going into the Wolfsschanze situation room (or would it be in the new bunker, whose five-metre thick walls he’d never seen), positioning his briefcase, being called out to the telephone, the explosion and then the end of all this and a return to real life – which, of course, would not be possible, to go back, to return. There was only one direction in this life and that was relentlessly forward, away from old states of comparative innocence and on to new states, the images collecting in the brain to be shown in one horrific flash should you be unfortunate enough to drown.
‘Did you hear me?’ she asked. ‘You can’t go back.’
‘Back?’ he asked, momentarily confused.
‘To the legation,’ she said. ‘They know you’re a double.’
‘I have no choice,’ he said. ‘I have to go back.’
‘If you come with me now to the embassy…’
‘I can’t. I have my duty.’
‘What duty?’
‘With any luck, tomorrow will be the beginning of the end and I have to be there for it. I have my part to play.’
‘Take the case,’ she said. ‘It’s got everything in it…the diamonds…the envelope with the plans, everything you need to survive.’
‘I can’t take the case. I can’t do that. If Wolters gets those plans, everything I’ve worked for will have been for nothing.’
‘Then take the case and leave me the envelope. At least you’ll salvage the diamonds.’
‘If I take the case I place myself at the scene. They will know I was at the house. There are three dead bodies there including Lazard, who was supposedly brokering a deal for us. It will be difficult.’
‘You invent something. If you go back empty-handed I don’t know how you’ll be able to survive. You’ll have nothing to bargain with. Nothing that proves you’re not a double.’
‘It won’t make any difference. My only chance to hold Wolters off, if he knows I’m a double, would be if I gave the briefcase to him complete and saved his intelligence coup from disaster. I won’t do that.’
He got up, made coffee which they drank without sugar because he hadn’t picked up his ration. They shared a dry biscuit. It felt like the spare meal of a condemned man who no longer had an appetite for life. Voss looked at his watch and then out of the window.
‘The sun will burn this off in no time.’
‘When do I see you?’ she said, suddenly made desperate by his insouciance.
‘That will be difficult. You’re going to be in trouble, too. There’ll be a lot of explaining. I’ll be here in the evenings, if you can come…come, but not tomorrow. I will be here at five thirty on Friday. If something happens…if I’m not here…call this number and ask for Le Père Goriot. He’ll tell you.’
He gave her a number and the lines of code. She didn’t want to hear them. They made her feel dark, cavernous. He gave her keys to his apartment. They kissed, a brushing of the lips, and he handed her the briefcase. He followed her out of the room, watched her go down the stairs, looking up at him as she went, until her face disappeared in the dark well.
He went to the window and waited for her. She walked up the short hill behind the basilica and at the top she turned and waved, one straight arm salute, which he returned.
She went straight to work and a one-hour debrief with Cardew, who pushed her to tell him everything not just about the débâcle in the Wilsheres’ house but about Voss as well. Once Wallis had lost her, Rose and Sutherland had been on to him, and now he wanted to give them as full a picture as possible about her movements. He was annoyed.
At 9.30 a.m. she was sitting in the room of the safe house in Rua de Madres in Madragoa. Rose and Sutherland were there and two Americans, OSS men from the American consulate.
The men took up their positions around the room, Sutherland and Rose in the chairs, the Americans standing by the walls. No explanation was given for the Americans’ presence.
They asked for her story, the same story she’d given Cardew, from the moment she left the Shell building the previous afternoon. It meant she had to start where she didn’t want to – with Karl Voss. Sutherland was still annoyed after receiving Cardew’s report. Rose was prurient. The Americans were baffled.
‘How long were you with him?’ asked Sutherland.
‘Five hours or so.’
‘Part of the time in his apartment but we went for a walk in the Bairro Alto, too. Then he drove me back to Estoril.’
‘How long were you in the apartment?’
‘Two to three hours.’
Silence while the Americans’ boredom settled. This was not why they were here.
‘Did you have…relations?’ asked Rose.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, bold now, and one of the Americans raised his eyebrows, smirked, straightened his tie. ‘We are lovers, sir,’ she added.
‘Was that all it was?’ asked Sutherland.
‘What else could it have been, sir?’ asked Anne.
They moved on to Estoril. They went through what had happened in Wilshere’s house four or five times until the Americans were satisfied and got to their feet.
‘Do you mind?’ asked one of them to no one in particular.
He opened the briefcase, removed the envelope, looked it over and tapped it on his fingernail.
‘Pity,’ he said, and the two Americans left the room.
Rose took the empty chair, played a quick piece up and down the arms, not chopsticks, more Mozart. It annoyed Sutherland.
‘Pity?’ asked Anne.
‘The OSS were running an operation without telling us,’ said Sutherland, more drained than ever before. ‘When I heard Lazard wasn’t on the Dakar flight I contacted them. By then they had permission to talk to us about Hal and Mary Couples. They asked what you were doing and I told them that you were an observer. Their only comment was that you should “maintain that status”.’
‘And what were the Couples doing?’ she asked.
‘Hal Couples worked for Ozalid. He was spying on military installations while selling them Ozalid machines. The OSS turned him and he cleaned out the American IG stable for them. This was his last job. They put one of their agents with him and sent him to Lisbon with a set of plans. I think I told you that Bohr was being debriefed by the Americans about the German atomic programme. He had with him a sketch that Heisenberg had given him the year before. He thought it was an atomic bomb. The American scientists saw something different – not a bomb but an atomic pile…something that could make fissionable material for use in a bomb in quantity.’
‘Wilshere called it the core to the atomic apple.’
‘Artistic mind, that Wilshere,’ said Rose.
‘The Americans have been worried by the quality of the physics coming out of Germany in the last five years. After debriefing Bohr they were concerned about Heisenberg’s loyalties. Was it to physics or the Führer? They decided that, although he might not be a fanatical Nazi, he was sufficiently drawn to the excitement of progress that he might be developing a bomb. With the German rocket capability this became a somewhat worrying prospect.’
‘So if the Couples were working for the OSS, what did they have for sale?’
‘Some cleverly constructed plans that would have built a very dangerous atomic pile. The intelligence the Americans would get back after the documents were received would have given them a clear indication of how close the Germans were to including unconventional explosives in their rockets.’
‘You mean Karl Voss could have taken the case, he could have given General Wolters the envelope, that was what the Americans wanted, that would have been the perfect solution?’
Sutherland and Rose said nothing. Anne’s eyes filled with tears which rolled down her face, bit into the corners of her mouth and dripped off her jaw on to her still damp dress, silent as soft rain off the eaves.
Voss had been right. By the time he arrived at the legation the sun had burnt off the mist and the temperature was already in the high twenties centigrade. He called Dakar airport and asked them for a report on the Rio flight. It still hadn’t taken off. He went straight in to see Wolters with this diversionary piece of information and was astonished to find him cheerful and expansive.
‘So maybe it will be a little cooler today, Voss,’ he said.
‘I don’t know about that, sir,’ he said. ‘Just to let you know, sir, the Dakar/Rio flight still hasn’t taken off.’
‘Thank you, Voss, I had that checked. I hope that wasn’t a report you received.’
‘No, sir, I cleared all our men away from the airport.’
‘Keep it that way.’
Voss was dismissed. He went to his office light on his feet again, threw himself into his chair. Happy.
‘You in love, sir?’ asked Kempf.
Voss whipped round, hadn’t seen him there in the corner of the room, leaning up against the window.
‘Just had a good night’s sleep, that’s all, Kempf. First cool night in weeks. You?’
‘What, sir? Sleeping well?’
‘Or in love?’
‘Not that sort of love, sir. Not the sort that makes you happy.’
‘What sort, Kempf?’
‘The sort that makes the first piss of the morning absolute agony, sir. Think I’ve got myself a dose.’
‘Take the morning off, Kempf.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Voss lit a cigarette, stretched his feet out and saw the cello of Anne’s body at the window and the thick black sash of her hair over one shoulder. The phone rang. He listened, hung up and left the legation, buying his usual newspaper as he went.
He walked down to the Pensão Rocha with nothing on his mind apart from the blue Tagus in front of him and ships easing past, visible though the gaps in the buildings heading for the Atlantic.
He took his usual table in the courtyard, laid the newspaper in front of him, saw a small item at the foot of the front page. The PVDE announced that a communist cell had been captured in a safe house in Rua da Arrábida. The same place where Mesnel had been visiting and he’d sent Paco to check. Paco, thought Voss. You have to be careful of Paco. He has only one loyalty – money. A few minutes later Rui lowered himself into the chair opposite.
‘Your Frenchman was shot last night. Dead,’ said Rui.
‘Tell me.’
‘We followed him to the caves, as usual. He went off to do his business and we left him to it, except we heard a shot, two shots. We went back up there this morning. Somebody found the body around six o’clock. The PVDE were up there because he was a foreigner, so I didn’t get too close. He’d been shot in the head at the viewpoint of the Alto da Serafina.’
‘That’s it?’
‘I heard he was found with a gun on him,’ he said, ‘and some PVDE men were talking about a triple killing up in a big house in Estoril. Two foreigners and a Portuguese woman from a big family.’
Voss drummed the tabletop, gave Rui a cigarette which he pocketed without thinking.
‘Do we do anything?’ asked Rui.
‘You wait,’ said Voss, and left the newspaper on the table.
The PVDE had been hard at it since they arrived at Quinta da Águia at close to 2.15 a.m. They were working conscientiously to hide the fact that they had been unimpressively late on the scene. The first phone call about gunshot noise from the Wilsheres’ house had come in around 1.50 a.m. and had been discounted as carpet beating. By 2.00 a.m., however, there’d been another four calls, each reporting the same thing, gunshots – one quite loud, followed by two very loud and then two not so loud – and so it was that two PVDE men and two GNR men reluctantly got into a car and drove up to the Quinta da Águia with the bell on, just so that everyone in the neighbourhood would be woken up and they could feel important.
At 6.00 a.m., because of the names of the dead found in the house, Captain Lourenço was informed and once he took a personal interest in the investigation the servants were rounded up and later in the morning a search began for the Englishwoman, whose address on her visa application was given as Quinta da Águia. They were waiting for her at the Shell building when she came back from Rua de Madres. They put her into a car and drove her to the PVDE headquarters on Rua António Maria Cardoso where there was intense activity as the reports of three other murders were being filed.
Sutherland and Rose had gone through Anne’s story and come up against a serious difficulty – the hours spent in the café after Voss had dropped her placed her in Estoril. They had hoped to be able to hide her at the Cardews’ house – dinner and then too tired to go home, stayed the night. The time at the café made this impossible. They toyed with the idea of the truth, omitting her presence at the Wilsheres’ house but confirming that she spent the night with Voss – but it would compromise Voss. They’d hammered away at the problem until Anne put the idea of Wallis.
Jim Wallis was found. He’d spent the night alone. A story was plugged into him – that Anne had dined with the Cardews, been dropped at the quinta, gone to the café, waited and waited for him, left, met him outside and gone back to his apartment in Lisbon. There were some shaky elements, not least of which was that Anne had never been to Wallis’s apartment and Wallis had a landlady. Anne was instructed to play her interrogation coy and reticent until the murders were disclosed and then, well, natural instincts would prevail. As she walked to the Shell building she elaborated the germ of the lie until it was an infection of perfect reality in her mind. She was desperate for it to work, her fear being that they would keep her locked up without charge for as long as they wanted to.
The PVDE worked on her throughout the morning as more and more information came in. The Frenchman, Mesnel, whose revolver had not been fired, had been shot twice, grazed once and mortally wounded the second time. The bullet in Mesnel’s body matched that of the Smith & Wesson lying near Lazard’s body, with his fingerprints on it, in the Wilsheres’ house. The sides and underside of Lazard’s car, found outside the casino, were covered in cement powder and sand, and the tyre tracks matched those left at the site of the half-built villa belonging to Lazard where the bodies of the Couples had been discovered. The PVDE inspector was not convinced, by the way the bodies lay, that Hal Couples had done this unspeakable thing to his wife, strangled her and then shot himself in the head. As a scenario he didn’t believe it, and he said as much in his initial report to Lourenço, who had the benefit of an autopsy on Lazard which revealed blood on his penis and undershorts.
By the end of the morning Lourenço saw it like this: Lazard had shot Mesnel in Monsanto, driven to Malveira, raped and strangled Mary Couples, shot Hal Couples with the man’s own gun. He had then driven to Estoril where there had been a disagreement, resulting in Wilshere shooting him with a gun probably kept in the safe. Wilshere had then been shot by Mafalda on the stairs and Mafalda had apparently shot herself by accident in the sitting room. There were some questions. Why did Mafalda put both barrels into the ceiling? Had she first attempted to kill her husband by dropping the chandelier on him? It seemed unlikely. Why was there the stink of brandy in the study, an empty bottle, a stain on the floor, but no stains on any of the bodies? Why, if the motive was robbery, was the safe open with four bars of gold in it? It wasn’t long before Lourenço was convinced that there was somebody missing from the scene.
None of this information filtered down to Anne, who was in Room 3 with a single interrogator who asked a lot of questions and took copious notes. She told him how she had dined with the Cardews (tomato soup, mutton stew and cheese), gone to a café for a drink and then gone back to the Wilsheres’ where she’d overslept in the morning, taken the train to Lisbon and walked to work, arriving late. He drew the story out of her again, chipping away at her for more detail and getting it, masses of it. What she wore in bed, her dreams, whether she heard anything in the night (no), breakfast with Mr Wilshere (Dona Mafalda rarely attends), the walk to the station, the beauty of the morning sunshine coming through the mist, the cool after the terrible days of swelter. It was only after she was asked for a third rendering that Anne began to appear concerned.
The PVDE man gathered the copious notes and left the room. She was there on her own for an hour (early lunch for the interrogators) and she developed some worry, which was not hard to do.
At 12.15 two men came in and it was immediately different. They had strong alcohol and coffee on their breath and the words that came out on the back of it were ugly – liar, thief, murderer. She asked for a cigarette. They hit the table with their fists. They stood on either side of her, each with one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the table in front. They hemmed her in, breathed on her and told her what had happened at the Quinta da Águia the night before. She winced, shrank, paled and looked down into her hands, her shoulders shaking, her back shuddering under the implacable eyes of the two PVDE men.
They gave her a cigarette, pulled their chairs around to the side of the table and smoked with her. One gave her his handkerchief and it was to him that she revealed her affair with Jim Wallis. Two agentes were dispatched. They picked up Wallis within the hour. During that hour Lourenço received a report in which he was informed that officially Lazard had left the country from Lisbon airport on a flight to Dakar the previous afternoon. This complicating development had the effect of clarifying everything to the PVDE chief, who treated this detail as confirmation that only foreign intelligence services could possibly have made such a fantastic mess.
Voss returned to the legation and put a call in to his contact at the PVDE who told him the names of the three murdered people in the Quinta da Águia. He went straight across to Wolters’ office and asked to see him urgently. They sat in the darkened office, shutters closed to the high sun, only cracks of intense light around the edges.
‘I’ve had some disturbing news which I don’t fully understand,’ said Voss. ‘One of the agents I’ve been using to follow the French communist Olivier Mesnel reported to me that he was shot last night. The agent went up to Monsanto in the morning to where the body was found and overheard two PVDE men discussing a triple murder in a big house in Estoril. I’ve just contacted the PVDE who’ve confirmed the names of the three dead as follows: Mr Patrick Wilshere, Senhora Mafalda de Carmo Wilshere and Mr Beecham Lazard.’
Wolters’ face was perfectly still, the only movement in the room was the cigar smoke trailing from his fingers. The phone rang, more urgent than usual to Voss’s mind, and he sat back to admire Wolters’ collapsing world.
The call was from Captain Lourenço demanding to see a representative from the German Legation in his office in Rua António Maria Cardoso. This was how Voss came to be sitting at the hottest point of the day staring at the PVDE chief’s back as he stood looking out of the unshuttered window in the vague direction of the São Carlos theatre. Voss was still thinking about Wolters, convinced that the general was as stunned by Lazard’s murder here, in Portugal, as he was himself.
‘It’s been very hot these past few days,’ said Lourenço. ‘I’ve been glad my office faces east…not that it makes that much difference. In Lisbon, you see, it’s the humidity that throttles.’
‘You should get out of the city more, sir,’ said Voss.
‘I would. I’d love to…if people would give me the time.’
‘Surely…’
‘People like yourself, Senhor Voss.’
‘Me, Captain?’
‘What’s going on, Senhor Voss?’
‘You’ve confused me now, sir.’
‘I don’t think so, Senhor Voss. You don’t strike me as a man who confuses easily,’ said Lourenço. ‘I’m looking at six murders, five of them foreigners. I’m quite certain that that is a record for one night in Lisbon and it is one record I am not proud of holding.’
‘Were any of them German?’ asked Voss. ‘Is that why…?’
‘No, none of them were German. That is why you’re here,’ said Lourenço. ‘I find it interesting that the military attaché has been sent, don’t you?’
‘I was sent because I was on hand,’ said Voss, wondering how long his dumb show could continue.
‘This is an intelligence matter, Senhor Voss,’ he said, settling behind his desk, smoothing his moustache with his fingertips. ‘So, please, let’s not walk around each other for an hour.’
‘We are as shocked by last night’s…’
‘Yes, yes…please, Senhor Voss, the point.’
‘We were expecting some goods from Senhor Lazard, that is true,’ said Voss. ‘But we were expecting him to leave the country in order to procure them. In fact, we know he left the country and we were very surprised to find him still here and even more –’
‘What were the goods?’
‘Well, I say “goods”…what I mean is that he left with diamonds in order to buy dollars. We have a hard currency problem in Europe.’
‘So he should have had some diamonds on him?’
‘I don’t know about on him, but they should have been in his possession, unless they were being carried by the man who boarded the Dakar flight impersonating Mr Lazard.’
‘Don’t try to confuse the issue, Senhor Voss. It’s very clear in my mind. All I want to know is why Lazard should shoot a Frenchman in Monsanto, drive to the Serra de Sintra to rape and strangle Senhora Couples, shoot Senhor Couples and then go on to Estoril where I am sure he was about to shoot Senhor Wilshere.’
‘I’d like to propose the theory that Senhor Lazard was operating in his own interests,’ said Voss. ‘Have the Allies been forthcoming about Senhor and Senhora Couples?’
Lourenço’s dark eyes didn’t leave Voss’s face as they lit up with his first idea of the afternoon.
‘Ah, yes, now I see…is it possible he was using your diamonds to buy something from Senhor and Senhora Couples? Then, having got what he wanted, he killed them. The only problem is that Senhor Couples, according to the American consulate, is a salesman for a company which makes printing machines for use in the construction industry…she was his wife. There’s been gossip that she was having an affair with Senhor Lazard, which I find hard to believe. What was the value of the diamonds?’
‘Why?’
‘I would like to know, Senhor Voss.’
‘I meant why do you find it hard to believe that Senhor Lazard would be having an affair with Senhora Couples?’
‘The details of her death were not pleasant…You will have noticed that I used the word rape…that was…I was being…ach!…the man was an animal,’ said Lourenço, throwing his hand away. ‘And who is this Frenchman? That’s another thing.’
Voss dipped his head, sorry that he was unable to enlighten.
‘Have you spoken to the English girl who was staying at the house, she must…?’ said Voss.
‘She knows nothing. She wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘She said she was there. She said she had breakfast with Wilshere in the morning and went to work, but the reality…I don’t know…foreigners.’
‘Foreigners?’
‘She was off with her English boyfriend somewhere in Lisbon…These women…she only arrived here on Saturday. I should have been born…’
Lourenço trailed off. Voss survived the jolt, which had started out as fear, turned into a wild, irrational jealousy and finished as happiness. He lost Lourenço’s words as he stared across the street at the sun blinding the windows of the building opposite.
Wolters listened to Voss’s report of the interview with Lourenço in hard silence, his eyes blinking once a minute as if that was part of the process of taking in the disaster. A million dollars lost, the most valuable supplier of industrial diamonds dead, the plans, which would have taken them a step nearer to a secret weapon, well, where were they? Did they ever exist?
‘What do we know about this?’ asked Wolters, the process of shifting blame already starting in his head.
‘What we know is useless to us,’ said Voss, relishing this moment, wanting to be able to share it with someone – this was what happened when the SS took over Abwehr intelligence operations.
‘But we do know something?’ he asked, clutching.
‘We know that someone calling himself Beecham Lazard boarded the Lisbon/Dakar flight. According to Immigration in Dakar he arrived safely but nobody of that name was on the Dakar/Rio flight which has now taken off…’
‘Yes, yes…I know these things.’
Voss studied him, looking for confirmation of his theory, but Wolters was expressionless. There was nothing in his face to show whether he knew what Lazard had been doing, whether this had been part of the game – a bluff to the SIS and the OSS to focus their attention outside Portugal. Whatever. It had gone wrong.
‘I will write the report of this matter,’ said Wolters. ‘I will send the report personally to Berlin. Is that understood?’
Voss waited until evening to see whether a report came out of Wolters’ office. Only Wolters himself came out and that was to leave the legation for a cocktail party at the Hotel Aviz and then dinner at the Negresco afterwards.
Voss left the building at 7.00 p.m. and went back to his apartment where he knelt at the window smoking, drinking his preferred rubbing alcohol and watching the square, waiting, waiting for tomorrow to finally arrive.
Because he never took cabs it had been a long walk for Paco to the small park above the Santa Clara market in the Alfama district. He had been told that the information he was going to be given would certainly be worth the very long walk from Lapa across the city. He sat under the trees with a view over the church of Santa Engrácia, wondering whether this was a dangerous place to be. Behind him, watching him, was someone else who was also reflecting on the same building, which was still incomplete after 262 years’ work. Paco sat back and tried to enjoy the warm night air of the empty park and watched the lights of small craft inching their way across the Tagus which was as big as a small sea at this point.
The voice that came to Paco from behind him was not Portuguese. He had heard this kind of voice before. It was a voice incapable of relaxing. It was an English voice and only capable of speaking barely comprehensible Portuguese. The park was so dark that even when he turned round he couldn’t see who was speaking. He didn’t like this voice. Paco didn’t like anybody. But he especially didn’t like this voice because it belonged to someone who wouldn’t make themselves known, the type who would always be on the edge of light, just in the shadows.
‘Ah yes, Paco. Beautiful up here, isn’t it? Especially at night. Very quiet. Hardly aware of the city.’
Paco didn’t reply. These were just some of the things that Englishmen said.
‘I have something for you, Paco. A piece of information. Something that you could use at the right moment. I can’t tell you when that moment will be. It might be tomorrow or the next day. You will listen and watch as you always do and you will decide the correct moment for you to go with this piece of information to the man who will pay you well.’
‘Who is the man who will pay me well?’
‘This isn’t anything that should go to the PVDE.’
‘They do not pay me well.’
‘Then that is good,’ said the English voice. ‘The man who will pay you well is SS General Reinhardt Wolters of the German Legation.’
‘He will never see me. Why should such a man want to see Paco Gomez?’
‘There is no doubt that he will want to see you with this piece of information.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You will tell him that last night you saw his military attaché, Captain Karl Voss…you do know who I mean, don’t you, Paco?’
‘Certainly.’
‘You will tell him you saw Captain Karl Voss with the English girl…’
‘The English girl who works for Shell, who lives in the house of Senhor Wilshere?’
‘Yes, that girl. You will tell him that you saw them walking together in the Bairro Alto last night,’ said the English voice, ‘and that they are lovers. That is all.’