by Robert Moss
“I think I will,” Bailey said. He watched Karl’s back until he had ducked out of sight behind the Arthurian’s funnels. “I can do without the salted codfish,” Bailey went on, regaining his aplomb. “But Lisbon’s a splendid city. Shall we take in the sights together?”
The Arthurian dropped anchor at Lisbon, dwarfing a school of sardine boats, and the passengers who were going onshore started to assemble along the railings. Bailey had changed into a lightweight suit and a panama hat. It wasn’t quite as warm here as he had expected, and there was a brisk wind coming in from the Atlantic.
With mounting nervousness he watched Karl boarding one of the ship’s boats among a crowd of second-class passengers. Bailey knew, from Johnny and other sources, that there would be a Comintern liaison office near the docks, as in all major European ports, probably disguised as a seamen’s club. He did not know whether Karl was still a member of the Apparat. It was conceivable that the young German had finally burned his boats with the party and was running off in search of a new life in the New World. But Bailey didn’t much believe in coincidence. It seemed more likely that Karl was on the Arthurian for reasons related to his own: that Karl, too, had an assignment in Rio. If Karl headed for the Comintern bureau on shore, that would settle the matter.
It might also blow Bailey and his mission out of the water. There were more sophisticated minds in Stalin’s secret service than the ones Bailey had had to contend with outside the Casbah restaurant in Paris, and they were unlikely to set any more store by coincidence than he. If Karl reported that he had sighted the same British Intelligence officer who had approached him in Paris en route to Rio, an inquisitive chekist — perhaps Max Fabrikant — would start making connections. Almost inevitably, the inquiry would lead to Johnny. Bailey realized that more than his own mission was at risk. Johnny’s life was at stake.
Maitland appeared at his elbow.
“Ready?” the younger man asked nonchalantly, nodding towards the boat that was filling up with first-class passengers.
“Oh, yes, of course.” But he detained Maitland for a moment before they climbed down into the boat. “I may have a spot of bother,” he began.
Maitland heard him out and seemed to take it in his stride, even though the sum of his knowledge of Colin Bailey up to this point was that he had been at school with his father, held a presumably boring civilian job in the War Ministry and was an amateur naturalist who was spending his holiday in Brazil to look at birds and animals.
Karl had a long head start, and, when they reached the docks, Bailey feared they had lost him. The steep, narrow streets leading away from the harbour were crowded with people. A horse-drawn cart lumbered past, blocking the view and spattering a fresh load of dung over the toes of Bailey’s brogues. He swore softly and jumped up on a packing crate to get a better look around.
There. He spotted the German’s sandy, close-cropped hair and navy-blue coat. Karl was ambling along a street lined with shops and honky-tonks like a man without a care in the world.
“Give me a good start,” Bailey told Maitland. “There’s no need for you to get involved. I just want you to watch my back. All right?”
“All right.” Maitland grinned at the prospect of an adventure.
Bailey trailed Karl as the German followed a circuitous course through snaky side streets. At one point Karl turned left towards the harbour, then rounded a corner and walked back parallel to the way he had come. He was either lost, or enjoying a simple outing — or checking whether he was being followed.
Bailey hung back, hugging the doorways and trying to stay out of sight.
Then Karl broke into a half run and dashed around another corner. Bailey quickened his stride, anxious not to lose him.
He rounded the same corner. Karl was nowhere to be seen. But two blocks away, in the direction of the port was a down-at-the-heel seamen’s club, a likely cover for the Comintern office. Could Karl have reached it already? Even taken at a sprint, the distance seemed too great.
Bailey hesitated. There were alleys off to both sides of the street. He peered down one of them. There was a smell of rotting fish. He heard a faint scuffle and the clang of metal and advanced a few steps. Probably nothing more than an alley cat scavenging the rubbish bins.
He turned on his heel and saw Karl, face tensed and pale, lunging at his belly with a knife.
Bailey flung himself to one side, twisted his ankle and came down in a sprawling heap.
Bailey rarely carried a gun and had not deemed it necessary to go armed on board a cruise ship. As he rolled to avoid Karl’s plunging knife, he realized that the omission was likely to prove fatal.
He managed to seize hold of the German’s wrist and wrestled with him for control of the knife. It was a losing battle. The point of the blade nicked his ear.
Then another figure irrupted into the alley. Harry Maitland charged at the German like a bull, knocked him to one side and twisted the knife out of his hand.
But Karl wasn’t easily dispatched. Bailey had felt his strength; his sinews were tempered steel. He lashed out at Maitland, dealt him a terrific blow on the chest and went gouging for the eyes, his fingers spread like claws.
Maitland was breathing hard, and Bailey saw him go down as he scrambled to his feet, ready to take on the German again.
But before Bailey could make his move, Maitland struck out with his feet, one after the other. He made an amazing sight, suspended above the ground on the palms of his hands, his legs driving high into the air. His right foot connected with the side of Karl’s jaw, and the German dropped like an ox under the slaughterer’s mallet.
“Are you all right?” Maitland inquired, dusting himself off.
“Thanks to you.”
Bailey limped over to where Karl was lying.
“My God,” Maitland said. “I haven’t killed him, have I?”
“I’m not sure,” Bailey said mildly, pressing his ear to the German’s chest. He heard an irregular flutter.
He squatted on his haunches, took Karl’s head between his hands and wrenched until he heard a distinct crack. “I’m afraid there’s no hope for him,” Bailey said blandly. Maitland stared at him.
“I saw what you did,” Maitland said.
“You saw nothing.”
“We have to do something.”
“I agree. I think we have both earned a stiff drink.”
“Look, I don’t want to be boring, but we have to go to the police.”
Bailey was still crouched over the dead man’s body, rummaging through his pockets, inspecting the lining of his coat. He picked up Karl’s knife, slit a seam, and extracted a small square of linen that had been stitched inside. He gave no sign of having heard Maitland’s last statement.
“I said, we must go to the police,” Maitland repeated.
“Listen to me, Harry.” Bailey got to his feet and looked the younger man squarely in the eyes. “I am engaged in a secret mission for the War Office. Do you understand what that means?”
“I — I think so.”
“That man—” Bailey jabbed his foot at the body “—was a Russian agent. These are his credentials.” He held up the linen square covered with minute characters. “Aut disce, aut discede. Have you forgotten the last bit?”
“Manet sors tertium caedi,” Maitland recited dutifully.
It was the Latin tag that was framed on the wall of the ancient hall at Winchester College that was known simply as “school.” The translation was even more awkward than the original: “Either learn or leave. There remains a third lot, to be beaten.”
“Exactly,” Bailey said.
Maitland still appeared unconvinced.
Bailey put his hand on his shoulder and said quietly, “Harry, are you ready to serve your King?”
Maitland stiffened. “Of course.”
“Good. Then help me get this fellow out of the light.”
4
Bailey had seen enough of killing on the battlefields of France to det
est the idea of taking life. Karl’s death weighed on his conscience. He told himself that what had been begun in self-defence had ended with the plain acknowledgment of necessity; it was Karl’s life or Johnny’s. He had no means of holding Karl as a prisoner. He could imagine the prunefaces that would have greeted him at the embassy in Lisbon had he turned up with a wounded Bolshevik and asked them to lock him up. He could not afford complications with the Portuguese authorities. And of course there was no question of releasing Karl, once he had shown his colours.
His reasoning was flawless. But it couldn’t screen out the image of the downy hair on the German’s face, the remembered pulse of his failing heart, the echo of the sickening crack as his neck was broken. It is hardest to kill when the enemy has a human face.
Back on board the Arthurian, he set to encrypting a telegram to London. He preferred the easy-to-remember Playfair system to book codes or any of the more elaborate ciphers. It was based on a single word. He selected one that he liked — “Phantasmagoria” — from the short list he had committed to memory. He took a sheet of paper and wrote it out as two sides of a square with the initial P in the top left-hand corner, omitting duplicate letters as he went along. This gave him the following construction:
P H AN T S M G O R I
H
A
N
T
S
M
G
0
R
I
He proceeded to fill in the letters of the alphabet, as follows:
P H A N T S M G O R I
H A B C D E F G H I J
A K L M N O P Q R S T
N U V W X Y Z A B C D
T E F G H I J K L M N
S O P Q R S T U V W X
M Y Z A BC D E F G H
G I J K L M N O P Q R
O S T U V W X Y Z A B
R C D E F G H I J K L
I M N O P Q R S T U V
Using this table, he could turn each letter of his cable into one of several grid references. The letter A, for example, appearing several times inside the box, could be cross-referenced as HH, or NG, or OR. He translated the words of his message directly into the code, without making an original. When he had finished, he tore the sheet of paper bearing the table into tiny pieces and tossed them out to sea on his way to the ship’s radio room. As the cable would be presented to C., it began: “I have to inform you that an unfortunate incident at the start of the voyage set the operation at risk. It has been happily resolved.”
When he had satisfied himself that the telegram had been safely transmitted to a cover address in London, he went looking for Harry Maitland and found him in the saloon.
“I gather that Veuve Cliquot is your blood group,” Bailey said, signalling the bartender. “Now I want you to tell me where you learned kick boxing. I saw something similar in the Orient. But you’re the first white man I ever saw fight like that.”
“In Brazil they call it capoeira. I’m not really very good. You should see the moleques — the street kids — foot fight in Bahia. It’s a ballet.”
As he listened to Maitland talk, Bailey reflected that the two of them were now committed to each other. It struck him that Johnny would probably like Harry too.
5
“You smell the land before you see it,” Maitland remarked.
They had spent nearly two weeks crossing the Atlantic. Now the sea breeze had dropped away, and in place of the tang of salt water, Bailey breathed in the ripe, heavy scent of the tropics. It was intimate and overpowering, like a moist palm pressed over his face. It carried the sweet-sour odour of the jungle, the whole relentless cycle of germination and decay.
The blue haze ahead of them slowly resolved itself into the profile of islands and mountains. On the port side Bailey could make out red-roofed villas and royal palms along a white crescent of sand overhung by the riotous greens of virgin forest.
“Your hotel is over there.” Maitland pointed at a palatial building facing the sea. “It’s extraordinary to think that Copacabana was almost undiscovered ten years ago. It’s hard to conceive of a city so rich in natural beauty that it could turn its back on a glorious beach like that.”
Frigate birds escorted them through the mouth of the vast Guanabara Bay, guarded by the twin forts of Sao Joao and Santa Cruz, where antique cannon poked their muzzles through the sturdy sea walls. Maitland drew Bailey’s attention to the changing colours around them. As the water grew deeper, it turned coppery, like a river.
“That may explain why the discoverers called the place River of January,” Maitland observed, enjoying his new role as guide. “They thought they had entered the mouth of a great river.”
Bailey was fascinated by the mountains that framed the city and its circling beaches. They rushed down at the water like horses reined in at the last moment, before toppling in. Each had a personality of its own. Maitland pointed out some of the landmarks: the smooth, steep peak of the Sugarloaf; Gavea, flattened and windswept like the mainsail of a caravel; the hunched back of Corcovado, where the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer, arms outstretched, kept vigil over the city; the ominous Fingers of God stabbing the sky away to the north, ragged cloud streamers trailing from their tips.
Nothing in that skyline stayed constant for long. Bailey watched the coastline open and close and open again like a fan, as the Arthurian steamed on past the tributary bays of Botafogo and Flamengo and the baroque green filigree of the old customs house towards the docks.
“From one corner to the next, from one day to the next,” Maitland said, “Rio is never the same. She’s a beautiful woman you can never own. Or predict.”
Bailey looked back the way they had come and saw the horizon changing contours again, until the promontory of Niteroi looked like the head of a crocodile lazily basking in the sun.
Harry’s a romantic fool, he thought. But perhaps Maitland was right, all the same. This city was a woman, and its welcome was a dance of the veils, both tempting and deceiving.
Bailey’s hotel was a marbled palace facing the bright sweep of Copacabana, beyond an avenue lined with palms and a mosaic forecourt that looked like a Mire, canvas in black and white. A maharaja and his retinue were in the lobby. When Bailey threw back the French doors to his balcony, he had the Sugarloaf to his left, a white fortress to his right, the shining blue of the Atlantic in between. He luxuriated for a while in a bathtub as deep as a well. Then he put on his white dinner jacket and descended to the hotel terrace to wait for Maitland, who had insisted on showing him the town. The colours were all impossibly vivid. The water of the pool was turquoise. The mountains that reared up above the palms and rubber trees turned from chartreuse to curacao as the light fell. A grand old man in a pinstriped waistcoat with a long white apron below that fell to his ankles brought mineral water in a silver bucket and a local cocktail, a caipirinha, which proved to be a glass of fierce cane alcohol caressed, not weakened, by the pulp of a lime. The liquor seared its way to Bailey’s stomach, leaving a heady warmth and a sweet, slightly oily taste on the tongue.
“You can taste the Amazon,” Harry Maitland remarked, taking another seat at the table. “Do you like it?”
“I’d rather taste Loch Lomond,” Bailey smiled. “But I’m sure I will soon be acclimatized.”
There was no dusk. The sun died in a burst of flame, and the sky hung down in folds of purple velvet.
Bailey felt the throbbing before his ears became attuned to it, a steady, insistent pulse that stirred the heavy fronds of the shade trees and the slender, supple women on the terrace in their shimmering Paris gowns. It came from all directions.
“The rhythm of Africa,” Maitland said softly. “The samba schools are practicing for Carnival. Every neighbourhood, however poor — especially the poorest — has its own school of samba. We can go to one, if you like. Later the drummers will play for the candomblé.”
“The candomblé?”
“For the spirits of Africa. They came w
ith the slaves and became the masters.”
“But this is a Catholic country.”
“Oh, yes. But go to any church, and behind the plaster saint you will find a Yoruba god with his axe or his sword.”
Bailey listened to the drums and to the voices that came skirling over them down the hillsides from the shantytowns. He had hardly noticed the heat before. Now he found he was mopping his face with his handkerchief.
“Well,” he said to Maitland, “what local customs were you planning to initiate me into tonight?”
“We have a dinner invitation.”
“We?”
“Well, I do, if you wish to be precise. But you will be more than welcome. Of course, we need only go if you think it would amuse you.”
“May I ask who is the host?”
“Doctor Alcibiades.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I suppose we would call him Doctor Guimaraes in England. But in Rio everybody is known by his first name, even the President.”
“I imagine that if we had first names like Alcibiades, nobody would bother with our surnames either. At least it suggests an acquaintance with the classics. As I recall, the original Alcibiades was an Athenian drunk who tried to conquer Sicily. What is your one?”
“He’s the mayor of Rio. Which means a damn sight more than Lord Mayor of London. In terms of power, if not respect.”
“Do you know who else is invited?”
“His parties are unpredictable. There are people who dare not refuse an invitation, and people who dare not accept. You see, before Alcibiades entered politics, he was the city’s leading authority on—” Harry cleared his throat ‘—social diseases.”
“I can see why he’s an influential man.”
“He speaks excellent English. He went to medical school in Boston.”
“I see. Well, I suppose that’s as close as one comes to the King’s English in these longitudes.”
“Shall we go, then?”
“Why not? But do me one favour, will you, Harry? Just say I’m a friend of your father’s. If anybody asks, you might say I’m on holiday, looking at tropical wildlife.”