The noise which had seemed a part of Black’s dream resolved itself into a car accelerating in the street below, and he turned over on his side and pulled the bedclothes up over his head to shut out the sound. Then he realised that it was daylight and he looked at his watch. Nearly eight o’clock. His head felt heavy and when he stood up nausea swept him. He touched the back of his neck and his hand came away moist with sweat.
On the bedside table there was a bottle of water and a thick glass. The water was tepid because the bottle had been standing in sunlight, but it took the dryness from his mouth. God, he thought, I shouldn’t have drunk so much. He stretched and thought of the long night behind him: La Terra, Clive’s Bar, the Delfin Verde, the Savoy Bar, Bud’s Bar, the George and Dragon, Mariano … she’d not been in any of them but he’d filled in time drinking at most, hoping she’d turn up. Later he’d gone into the old town … to La Carbonera, but she wasn’t there. He’d tried El Bistro, Antonio’s, Los Pajaros … and still no luck and he was getting pretty high. He had a hunch and went down to The Paseo Vara de Rey and took a taxi out to the Mar-Blau. She wasn’t there either but Ilse Berch was, and after she’d told him he wasn’t walking too well and a few other things, she gave him Manuela’s phone number. That hadn’t helped. A woman had answered after a long wait, a Spanish woman, and she’d said Manuela was out and anyway what was he doing ringing a respectable house at such an hour. So he’d given up and gone back to his room.
It had been a crazy night anyway, but he’d known that it was in a sense his last chance for Hassan was returning from Palma the next day. Thus it was a night on which he’d been able to let his hair down without risk of encountering the Arab.
As for this day, he must spend it in the campo, both to be out of the way while Werner Zolde and Lejeune dealt with Hassan, and because there was important work to be done in the hills round San José—and for that to-day would be as good as any, and better than most.
Now he filled the porcelain wash basin with cold water and bathed his face, spluttering and snorting, drying his head and face roughly as if to rub away the pain.
In his notebook he found the number Use had given him. He put on a dressing gown and went down to the landing where the phone was and dialled the number. The Spanish woman of the night before answered. He held his fingers against his mouth to distort his voice and asked for Señorita Valez. There was a long wait before Manuela came on the line.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Who is it?’
‘Charles Black.’
‘Oh, Charles.’ She sounded pleased. ‘How did you know my number?’
‘Ilse gave it to me.’
‘How are you?’
‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘I want your help.’
‘Is there something wrong?’
‘Yes. My head.’
‘Your head? I don’t understand.’
‘I went looking for you last night. In just about every bar on the island. When I couldn’t find you I drowned my sorrows.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ she laughed. ‘They all say you drink too much. I heard this before I met you.’
‘They lie. Will you help me?’
‘How can I help you?’ There was laughter in her voice,
‘Come and spend the day with me. In the campo.’
‘In the campo? What for?’
‘To clear my head. Get back to nature.’
She laughed again. ‘You can do that without me.’
‘Much nicer with you,’ he said.
At first she refused, said she must paint, that she had many things to do. But he persisted and at last she gave in and they agreed to meet outside the tourist office at eleven.
‘Wear heavy shoes,’ he said. ‘I’m going to make you walk and climb.’
‘Oh. It will be an awful day, I’m sure.’
‘No‚’ he said, ‘it will be fabulous. But don’t wear bright colours. I want to show you some birds.’
Back in his room he made a syrup of sugar and water, smeared the bottom of an empty Kodak carton with it, and put the rest in a saucer which he placed on the window ledge facing the terrace. Then he opened the window and went to the bathroom.
After his bath he soaked a spill of cotton wool in ink and rubbed it on his left ankle. While it was drying he sat watching the bees at the saucer. Then he rubbed over the inked ankle with a wet handkerchief, leaving a blue stain.
When he crossed over to close the window, the bees buzzed angrily but stayed at the saucer. Using tissues, he caught four and transferred them to the empty carton, the lid of which he’d punctured with small holes. If that doesn’t work, he thought, there’s always the snake-bite serum.
She was wearing blue denim slacks and a shirt to match when he met her outside the tourist office on the Paseo Vara de Rey. He thought she’d never looked more attractive.
‘Do you approve?’ she asked. ‘Not too bright?’
‘Not bad. Got a jersey?’
She patted the straw bag hanging from her shoulder. ‘Here.’
‘Raincoat?’
‘Also.’ She touched the bag again.
‘Good. I have the lunch.’ He showed her the fisherman’s bag. ‘We’ll take a bus to San José. Then walk.’
She touched his arm impulsively and her eyes shone. ‘Oh. It will be fun. I haven’t done anything like this for years.’
They had reached the end of the pavement and started across the paseo when she said in a low voice, ‘I think we’re being followed.’
Black felt an involuntary contraction of his muscles, a jangling of alarm bells in his ears, and in his mind’s eye an image of Hassan loomed like a wide-screen close-up.
‘By whom?’ he said quietly.
‘Man in a black beret. I saw him come down the road behind you when I was waiting. He sat on a bench on the paseo while we talked. Now he’s behind us.’
‘It may be coincidence. We’ll soon see. In here.’
They stepped into a shop where Black bought a box of matches. When they came out the man in the beret was looking in the window. With enormous relief he saw that it was not Hassan.
Black saw that she was worried. ‘Right. Now for test number two.’
They turned left and started towards the hill, then left again into a dusty road which led to the fish market, then right until they had described a circle and come once again to the tourist office. Black looked back over his shoulder. The man in the beret was behind them, looking into the toyshop window.
‘Clever girl. He’s following us all right.’
‘Why?’ Her face screwed up with surprise.
‘Haven’t a clue. But let’s give him a neurosis. You go into the Montesol. Spend five minutes in the loo. Then out through the back entrance and down to Aviaco’s office. Near the bus stop. Know it?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes. In a taxi.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘See which of us he follows.’
She walked across the paseo towards the Montesol while Black watched the man in the black beret who was fidgeting with his hands and showing other signs of nervousness. There was a line of taxis opposite. Black took the head of the line. ‘El Corsario,’ he said. As they pulled away he saw the man in the beret move across towards the rank.
Black took two one-hundred peseta notes from his wallet and tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘At El Corsario,’ he said in Spanish, ‘ask for Señora Alba. Bring her to the Montesol. If she is not there, don’t wait for more than five minutes.’
The taxi turned right into Conde Rosellon, then left along Calle Anibal. Two cars ahead slowed down for people on the corner who were waiting to cross.
Black looked through the rear window. There was no taxi following. He thrust the peseta notes into the driver’s hand. ‘Turn right and drop me,’ he said. As the taxi turned into Calle Montgri, scraping by the people on the corner, he slipped out and joined them outside the shoe shop. He looked back to see a taxi begin its turn into Calle Anibal.
Before it had rounded the corner he went into the shoe shop. Through the glass of the shopfront he saw it go by, the man in the black beret leaning forward, engrossed in the pursuit. Funny, he thought, if there is a Señora Alba at El Corsario. He rejoined the shoppers on the pavement and made for the harbour. Minutes later he stopped a passing taxi and asked the driver to take him to Aviaco. On the way he thought of what had happened, and it left him worried. It was he and not Manuela who was being tailed. And then, as if one shock, one complication, were not enough, his thoughts went to Werner Zolde and he wondered how the German was dealing with Hassan: had he started yet, if not at what time would he, and how? And would he and Lejeune have followed up his suggestion?
They must be discreet, he thought, my God they must be discreet. Failure on their part could destroy the whole operation. He knew what Kagan would have done once Hassan’s presence on the island had been known, and it was precisely for that reason that Black had not informed ZID. Kagan would have called the operation off at once rather than have it compromised. ‘We can wait,’ he would have said. ‘Another month, another year, what difference? We can wait, so long as in the end we succeed.’
But Black knew that if the operation were to fail now he wouldn’t get a second chance. If Hassan were here this time, he could be here next time. Kagan would choose someone else. Someone who could not be compromised in that way. No one knew better than Black himself the element of recklessness which was so much a part of his nature. Well, he thought, that’s the way I am and that’s the way I’ll always be, and we are not going to call off this operation.
The bus put them down outside San José and they walked back along the road towards Ibiza until they reached the dirt road which would take them into the hills.
It was well past noon and sun from a cloudless sky had warmed the earth. The road led through terraces of almonds and caribs and as they walked the air vibrated with the hum of bees and the high note of cicadas.
The terraces were carpeted with marguerites and poppies, charlock and pea flowers, and their warm spring perfumes were overlaid by the aromatic scent of rosemary and sage. On the stone walls of the terraces little green lizards came suddenly into the sunlight to watch them, throats palpitating, before slipping back into crevices and shadows.
Later the road steepened and they took to the hillside, making their way through undergrowth which grew denser as they climbed.
At times he would stop and point to a bird, then watch it through binoculars, describe it to her and sometimes make an entry in the book he carried in the bag. It seemed to Manuela that he knew a great deal about these things.
Once he stopped and listened. ‘Hear that?’
At first she could not, then beneath the complex hum of insects she heard a low ‘tec, tec.’ She nodded.
He whispered, ‘Icterine Warbler, I think. Keep still. We may see it.’
She looked in the direction from which the noise came, saw movement in a shrub, and a bird appeared. Small and undistinguished, a pale earthy brown.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s the Olivaceous Warbler. Hippolais pallida. See the long bill and pale stripe above the eye.’ He passed her the binoculars and while she was using them he was trying to free his mind of the nagging picture of the man in the black beret leaning forward as the taxi passed the shop window.
Farther up the hill she stopped, touched his arm and pointed to a small bird perched on a dried stem. It had a black crown, grey upperparts and white undersides. A distinctive white line, like a moustache, ran from the bill. Its eyes and legs were russet.
‘My bird is prettier,’ she whispered.
He nodded. ‘Ruppell’s Warbler. Handsome little chap.’
The bird made a diminutive rattling noise and whisked away. Black looked at Manuela’s flushed face. Her eyes were brighter than he remembered them. ‘Enjoying it?’
‘Very much. It is for me something quite different.’
He said, ‘I wonder how many men have told you you’re beautiful?’ She stopped and tossed her black hair back so that she could see him better. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you are. And the thought just crossed my mind.’
She stared at him as if she were seeing him for the first time, then she looked up the hill towards the pines. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You say we lunch in the woods. I am hungry.’
They sat under the trees on a carpet of pine needles to a late lunch of bocadillos, long crusty rolls filled with cheese and tunny, a bottle of red wine and some oranges. When the meal was finished, Black put the empty wine bottle and crumpled paper into the fishing bag. ‘Had enough?’ he said.
She was lying on the pine needles, her hands clasped behind her head. ‘Yes. The bocadillos were marvellous. Where did you get them?’
‘At the market.’
He lay on his side next to her, chin in hand, elbow on the ground, examining her face feature by feature, approving it. He put his little finger on her lips. They were soft and moist. He took the finger away and examined it.
‘No lipstick,’ he said.
She nodded, her eyes half closed. ‘All my own work.’
‘Nature’s,’ he said, and saw the dark hollows under her eyes and ran his finger gently over them and examined it. There was nothing on it. ‘That nature too?’ he asked and there was an edginess in his voice.
‘My liver. That is nature.’
You’re lying, he thought. It’s those bloody drugs. He wanted to take her roughly and shake her as if he could physically empty out the nonsense.
He asked her about her life, her family, her hopes and fears. She told him of her childhood in Puerto Rico, of her schooldays there and her two years at a university in Southern California where she’d taken fine art.
Yes, there had been some men in her life. No, she had never married. She was twenty-five, she said. She had lived in Paris for three years, painting, then gone back to her family in Puerto Rico when her mother died. After some time in Seville where she’d joined an art colony, she’d come to Ibiza.
So he had to tell her about himself: his life as a boy in England; the death of his father, mother and sister in a car accident towards the end of his time at school. He’d stayed with an aunt after that, and his father had left enough money for him to study politics and philosophy at London University. But he’d not graduated because he’d found too late that his real interest was art. On the money left him he’d travelled and in later years his interest in art had led him into journalism, first on the staff of a provincial newspaper, then in London, and finally as art critic on a Montreal newspaper. Tiring of newspaper life he had free-lanced, travelling widely and making just enough money to raise his income to a level which supported his independence.
When he’d finished he thought, well a good deal of that’s true though a lot’s been omitted. I wonder how much of her story’s true and how much she’s omitted? That’s life, isn’t it? We’re always putting on an act. There’s always a hidden motive. And who can say which motive is good, and which is bad.
‘Are you married?’ Manuela watched him through half-closed eyes.
‘No. Never.’
‘No women in your life?’
‘A few. Nothing remarkable.’ That at least was true.
‘That is strange for thirty-five.’
‘By no means unique,’ he said. ‘I’ve never wanted to give up my independence. Besides, I’ve moved about a lot.’
‘I can understand that. About independence.’ After a while she said, ‘Love is possible without marriage.’
He tickled her forehead with a spur of pine needles. ‘Yes. For a time. But it never really endures, does it? I mean that is the sadness. Falling in love is sublime. The moment of truth, without cynicism. But it doesn’t last.’
‘The grand passion doesn’t last,’ she said. ‘But there are other things. Children, companionship, affection, shared experience.’
He laughed. ‘Manuela! You sound like Godfrey Winn.’
‘Who is he?’ she asked.
‘A bachelor who writes about marriage.’
‘You mustn’t laugh at me when I am serious.’ Her eyes were sad and reproachful.
He bent over her and she put her arms round him and held him tight.
She had finished doing her hair and repairing the damage. ‘Really,’ she said putting her comb and compact back into the grass basket. ‘The things you men do to us girls.’
He was looking at his watch, worried and preoccupied, assuring himself that she really meant nothing to him. She was good to look at, sympathetic, intensely feminine. It was no more than that. Proximity. Physical. Ephemeral. She was essential to his plans and this was a means to an end. Besides she was Kyriakou’s girl. Neat and rational as all this was, he knew he was not convinced. And so he frowned. ‘It’s nearly three,’ he said. ‘We’re about half-way.’
She stood up, hanging the basket over her shoulder. ‘Will we make San José before dark?’
‘We’ll make it all right,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
They set off through the wood, crossing obliquely from left to right, climbing steadily, the line of sunlight ahead widening as they approached the firebreak. He got there first and stood waiting for her. There was a ravine on the right and below them the dirt road snaked up the valley, crossing the ravine and losing itself in the folds of the hill. Above them, on the far side, the sun picked out the white walls of a finca set in the hillside.
Black pointed to it. ‘Know that house?’
She shook her head. ‘Fabulous site.’
‘When we get higher you’ll see more. It’s some place. You can’t see from here, but beneath it the ground falls away in terraces. The view is open to the sea beyond San José.’
‘Whose is it?’
‘It’s Altomonte.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Van Biljon’s?’
‘Yes.’ He stopped to tie a shoelace.
‘Have you been there?’
‘No, never.’
‘Then how do you know?’
He straightened up. ‘It was pointed out to me some time ago when I was climbing here. With friends.’
‘Friends?’ she challenged. ‘Which ones?’
He didn’t answer, and she saw that he was looking down the valley with the binoculars.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Look.’ He put a hand on her shoulder and pointed to where the road edged into the foothills. In the distance she saw a cloud of dust. Immediately ahead of it a car was coming up the valley.
He pulled her into the trees.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘Look at the car now.’ He passed her the binoculars. ‘We can’t be seen in the shadows.’
Before she could use them it had disappeared, but the sound of the engine grew in intensity and when next it appeared she saw that it was the powder-blue Buick. Kyriakou was its only occupant.
‘Kyriakou,’ she said, as if this were remarkable.
Black looked at her, wondering. ‘I didn’t know he was on visiting terms with van Biljon?’
‘How d’you know he’s going to see him?’
‘It’s a private road. Leads only to Altomonte.’
The car was lost to sight again where the road turned to the east, away from the ravine.
He said, ‘Does Kyriakou know van Biljon well?’
‘I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me everything.’
‘I’m told you’re close to him. I thought you might know.’
She flushed and he knew he was being a swine. ‘Well, you thought wrong.’
‘There’s a buzz that you’re his girl friend.’
‘Yes,’ she said defiantly, her dark eyes shining. ‘I am. So you’d better be careful. He’s jealous and he’s a Greek.’
Black reined himself in. Why was he quarrelling with her? He needed her help. This wasn’t the way to get it. When he’d caught up, he took her arm gently and pulled her round. ‘I’m sorry, Manuela. I didn’t mean it.’
She shook him off. ‘Go to hell,’ she said.
It hadn’t been a good day. The man in the black beret, and Kyriakou’s arrival on the scene were enough to worry about without this.
And Hassan? Black had almost forgotten about him. Compulsively he looked at his watch. Had Werner Zolde gone into action yet? And how? And for God’s sake, was he going to be discreet? And, what was more, discreet and successful.
Later in the afternoon they reached a clearing above Altomonte and climbed on to a rock. From it they looked back over the valley and beyond to the Mediterranean. Black focused the binoculars on the sea.
‘What are you looking at?’ she said.
‘The ferry. From Formentera.’
She’s beginning to thaw, he thought, and passed her the binoculars.
She took them, and he saw that she Was looking at Altomonte.
‘I can see his car,’ she said. ‘Parked just inside the gates.’
With forced obtuseness he said, ‘Whose car?’
‘Kirry’s. I wonder what takes him to that house?’
‘Expect they’re buddies.’
She shook her head. ‘How can they be? Van Biljon has no friends. Won’t have visitors. Anyway, the last man he’d have anything in common with is Kyriakou.’
‘Why do you say this?’
She held up her little finger, measuring off its tip. ‘Kirry hasn’t that much culture. Money, power, a good time. I guess these are the things that interest him.’
‘And yet——’
She interrupted. ‘Yes, I know—and yet I like him. I am often with him.’
‘You said it.’ He smiled thinly.
‘He has some good things. He is kind. No one is all bad or all good.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Let us talk about something else.’
Black focused the binoculars on Altomonte; the plan in Haupt’s office was in his mind.
In the centre of the patio the pool reflected the light of the dying sun, and the pergolas cast irregular shadows. On its western side the long gallery ran back into the slope of the hill, its extremity lost in shadow. He identified van Biljon’s suite in the west wing, and the guest-suite in the east, and below and in front of them, the long hall off which led the reception rooms. He noted again the high barred windows along the length of the gallery, and the break in the stone wall surrounding the finca where the drive led in, the wrought-iron gates shut across it. Kyriakou’s car was parked immediately inside them. As he watched, two dogs crossed the terrace in front of the house and disappeared into the shadows.
‘It’s a fine house,’ he said. ‘Van Biljon has good taste.’
‘And lots of money,’ she said. ‘But I would not like to live there alone.’
‘He has his pictures. I imagine that long building running back on this side of the patio is the gallery?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘It’s big enough.’
He drew a deep breath, exhaling noisily.
‘Why do you sigh?’ she asked.
‘I was thinking of those pictures. So close and yet I can’t see them. I wonder what he really has? What they’re worth? Can you imagine?’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I can’t.’
‘At Sotheby’s the other day a Pissarro fetched three hundred and fifteen thousand pounds. In that gallery there are Pissarros, Cézannes, Renoirs, Monets, Degas, Manets, Sisleys, the lot. God knows how many. There they are, within five hundred yards of us. But nobody, not one solitary soul, is allowed to see them.’ With a snort he added, ‘Except Mister bloody van Biljon.’
She felt his frustration and was worried because she liked him more than anybody she’d met for a long time. But she was afraid because she sensed the pattern of his thoughts and remembered the man in the black beret. Charles Black was being tailed, and he knew it. Yet he’d said nothing about the incident after he’d picked her up in the taxi outside Aviaco, other than to dismiss it as not worth worrying about. Somebody making a mistake somewhere, he’d said—you know what the Spanish police are like. Pretty good, she’d said, and he’d not looked pleased.
He was silent now, the binoculars still trained on Altomonte.
‘You know, Charles, nobody could steal those pictures and get away with them. They’re internationally catalogued. There’s not a dealer worth the name who wouldn’t know them.’
He put down the binoculars and turned towards her, and she couldn’t make anything of his smile.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘There’s no future in that. And for your information, young woman, my interests are artistic and journalistic’ He patted her knee and she felt foolish. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
She stood on the rock. ‘Good. The light will be gone soon.’
‘Not to worry. It’s a quick journey down. Once we’ve made the road it won’t matter if it’s dark.’
To the west the sun was a copper disc, its lower rim balanced on a strata of cloud stretched tenuously across the horizon. The temperature had fallen, and in the south-east dark banks of storm cloud were massing. She shivered. ‘I need my jersey.’
He slid down from the rock, took the jersey from the basket and threw it to her. When she’d put it on, he reached up, pulled her into his arms and kissed her. ‘Am I forgiven?’
She looked at him doubtfully, pushing him away, and said ‘Yes.’
They had not gone far when there was the sound of a car starting. Altomonte was no longer in sight, but a few minutes later the Buick showed up on a turn of the road, making down the valley.
Black felt some of the tension go out of him. That was one complication less.