Len Deighton - Harry Palmer 02 - Horse Under Water

by Horse Under Water(Lit)

Jean said, 'He ripped the bumper off my Mini-Minor yesterday morning. Don't mention it - he's still very touchy.'

  'It's a wonder he didn't make you use the car pool.'

  'We've been having a little argument with the car pool since you headed into the sunshine.'

  'Don't say it,' I said. 'What was it that Bernard's file on the C.I.A. estimated they spent per year? And we are having difficulty with the car pool.'

  'Never mind,' she said, overtaking a post van, squeezing past an oncoming bus, tuning the radio and lighting a cigarette. 'How are things in Portugal?' She glanced at me. 'You don't seem any more relaxed.'

  'I was all right until I entered this car; anyway I've been up since three a.m.,' I said. The rain beat heavily against the windows. Outside Woolworth's a woman in a plastic raincoat was smacking a child in a Yogi Bear bib. Soon we stopped at Admiralty Arch.

  'Admiralty Library,' said Jean. 'You must leave here by three forty-five at the very latest if you are going to get that BE 072 back to Lisbon this afternoon.'

  Inside the library it was jumping with books. A girl read a Daily Express headed 'A Commonwealth Tour for Tony?'

  'You remember all that stuff I sorted through for the Weapons Co-ordination Committee last year?' I asked.

  'Yes sir,' she said. She folded up Woman's Realm and the Daily Express and tucked them under a pink cardigan and a bottle of hand-lotion in a little secret shelf under the desk.

  'I'll want some of it again,' I said. The whole place smelt of damp melton overcoats. 'I'm trying to trace details of a scientific discovery made by a high-ranking officer, or perhaps a scientist who sailed from Germany during March or April 1945. Also I'll want to see the Assessment Board Reports during that period.' There was a lot to be done before I caught the plane back to Lisbon. [Assessment Boards judged the claims of Allied ships and aircraft in the matter of U-boat sinkings. They were remarkably accurate.]

  14 Portuguese O.K.

  Albufeira: Wednesday Giorgio worked exactly on schedule. He began the search of the control room. The hull was badly silted up and Giorgio decided that looking around haphazardly wouldn't do, so he began at the control bulkhead, port side. I'd told him to look for currency of any sort, or any documents, the log book or the metal cases that German naval ships' papers were kept in.

  Within a few days we had a comfortable routine. We would rise about 7.30 to watch the sun come up and have coffee. Then we would go out in the boat and Giorgio would do forty minutes. Singleton would go down for another forty, then Giorgio would do about twenty or so before they came back. By that time mud had been raised so badly that the beam of light wouldn't penetrate the water. We'd get back for lunch about noon and Charlotte would have been to market, tidied the house and fixed lunch.

  Singleton had been pressing for a second dive in the afternoons; but I thought it would look too odd, and Giorgio said that it would bring the air consumption over a twenty-four-hour period up to a point where slow surfacing would be necessary in order to be safe from 'decompression sickness'. So afternoons everyone sunned themselves on the beach by order. But the following Saturday clouds were flitting around the sun like moths around a candle, and there was a bite in the air whenever the sun vanished. Charlotte said she'd go up to the house and make tea, when I noticed someone walking towards us up the beach. He was a muscular figure, perhaps a little overweight. His black hair was cropped close to his skull and his chest featured more hair than his head. A small gold crucifix dangled from a hair-fine chain around his neck. He wore a small pair of yellow swimming trunks and carried a white towel which he rubbed against his head as he walked. It was only the towel and shorts that marked him as a visitor, for he was tanned to the same ancient-furniture colour as were the local fishermen.

  He shouted, 'Is that a little piece of old England I see there?'

  'Little piece?' said Charlotte, and she wrinkled her nose and pouted her mouth.

  'Kondit,' he said, and extended a large, hairy-backed hand to Giorgio, who said, 'Kondit?'

  'Yes, Harry Kondit.' He laughed. 'I'm from the United States - I was hearing that Albufeira had gotten itself some winter visitors. Look, that's the end of sunshine for today, why don't you nice people join me for a drink? I'll go back to the house and scramble into some clothes and I'll knock you up in thirty minutes. Knock you up in thirty minutes - isn't that what you say hi England? Ha, ha, ha.'

  Charlotte was all for it, of course, and Giorgio seemed keen to break the monotony of handstands. Joe said, 'He's a bulldozer, that man; he's the American I mentioned.'

  I said, 'He's very nice: check on him.'

  The Jul-Bar is the most modern bar in Albufeira. It has plastic, chromium, and mosaic, a G.E.C. refrigerator as big as a phone booth, and an Espresso machine. It is situated half-way down a wide stairway that leads to 'the Gardens', which is the main market place and square. As we walked Harry Kondit ('just call me Harry') explained to us.

  In the market place was a huge 'transport collective' diesel bus. It had brought farmers and their produce into town. They sat by little heaps of mauve sweet potatoes, green lemons, cabbages, eggs, brown speckled beans and tomatoes.

  The black peasant garb is being relinquished from the feet upwards. Few people wear all black, but almost all have a black trilby hat. The old women wear one on top of their head-scarves. A horse with an embroidered harness set with broken mirror and tinkling bells tapped and tinkled past us like a Salvation Army tambourine. Under the trees local lads kicked their Perfectas and Dianas into angry roars and they cavorted in angry bravado across the steep cobbles.

  One passed us with a noise like a Cup Final rattle, and Harry Kondit, who seemed to know everyone in this town, shouted to him, 'George Porgy - how's about a drink, kid?'

  The little motor bike popped to a halt. On it there sat a white-faced man with a wide moustache and very light blue eyes. He wore the inevitable black trilby with bow at the back, and a grey Spanish-style waistcoat with long sleeves and pointed front.

  Almost before the bike stopped he had whirled his hat off and held it across his chest like a shield.

  'Let me do the introductions,' said H.K. 'This here is Senhor Jorge Fernandes Tomas. Do I have that right, Fernie?'

  'Sim,' said Fernie.

  Fernie was a thin, neurotic man of perhaps forty years.

  Although it was late afternoon Fernie was newly shaved, as is the custom in southern Europe. He wore his hair long, and one sideburn half concealed a small scar noticeable around his ear.

  'We're going to the Jul-Bar, Fernie,' and H.K. walked on, taking it for granted that he would follow. Fernie propped his two-stroke against the baker's shop. Through the doorway I saw rosy men, lop-sided loaves and flaming tinder.

  We walked up the stone stairway to the cafe. Brightly painted metal chairs shrieked their protest as H.K. arranged them on the pavement.

  H.K. had Charlotte under his wing by now. It took him no time at all to discover that Charlotte had been called 'Charly' at school. From that moment on, no one called her by any other name.

  H.K. was in no way bashful about describing himself. 'I said Harry you'll soon be nudging fifty and what are you? A small-time publishing exec, making twenty-five grand and not much chance of pushing it past thirty. And what are you getting in return? Three weeks in Florida once a year and a hunting trip to Canada if, repeat, if you're lucky. So what did I do?'

  I could see Charly was still converting twenty-five thousand dollars per annum into pounds per week.

  'Were you here in Europe in the Army, Mr Kondit?' she said, cutting across his narrative with feminine disregard.

  'No, I was not. You remember how General MacArthur told the people of the Philippines "I'll be back"? Well I was back about eight hours before he was. They weren't waiting on the beach with dry pants when I hit the surf. No sir. You're not drinking - I'll order some more wine! - Chefe dos mocos! Estas Senhoras desejam vinho seco.' I saw the young waiter catch Fernie's eye, for, quite apart from the extraor
dinary pronunciation, he had used pompous phrase-book Portuguese. We got the wine.

  We went back to H.K.'s for pre-dinner drinks. He lived a long way down the Praca Miguel Bombarda. It was a simple house with a red-and-white tiled entrance hall. The dark furniture did a heavy dance as we walked across the uneven plank flooring. From the entrance hall one could see right through the house to where the light-grey sea, dark clouds and whitewashed stone balcony hung like a tricolour outside the back door. From the kitchen emerged a smell of olive oil, pimento, cuttlefish, and a wizened woman of sixty who did for H.K. I could detect her feminine hand in the hydrangeas that stood around in terracotta bowls.

  'Hi there, Maria - this way folks,' said Harry, 'I'm the only American in the world that doesn't have an icebox.' He had fixed the patio with green plants and a parasol. From his balcony one could see the new hotel that was being built. H.K. swirled his drink and looked across at it regretfully. 'This place is going to be way outside my tax bracket when they get that baby finito.'

  Fernie, who hadn't spoken much until now, asked Giorgio for a cigarette and Giorgio pressed a black cheroot upon him. Fernie's few words were in clear, fluent Italian, and H.K. noticed me listening. 'And he speaks German and Spanish just as well as you and I speak our mother tongue, don't you, Fernie?' He patted him affectionately on the shoulder. 'Used to own three boats, Fernie did, but the Government took them away from him. One morning he goes down to the wharf, there's a padlock on his office door and two men in grey standing by his boats. No law court - nothing - just seized.'

  Singleton said, 'What reason did they give?'

  'None,' said H.K.

  'They must have said something.'

  H.K. laughed. 'You've not been long in Portugal, sonny. The day the Government hands out explanations is the day after husbands start telling their wives where they've been. No sir, there's nothing like that in this country.'

  'Do you think there was a reason?' Singleton asked.

  'Me? Now that's a different thing entirely. Sure it was because Fernie here fought against that son-of-a-bitch Franco in the Spanish business. He was at the siege of Malaga.'

  'Really?' I said. 'There weren't many Portuguese fighting in Spain.'

  'They've fought everywhere, these Portuguese,' said H.K. 'They say, "God gave the Portuguese a small country as their cradle and all the world as their grave."' Fernie Tomas gave no sign of understanding the conversation.

  Singleton said, 'If he fought in Spain I suppose that explains it.'

  'Explains it,' said H.K., 'you mean makes it understandable.'

  'In a way it makes it understandable,' said Singleton.

  'It does, eh?' said H.K. softly. 'Let me tell you something, kid. A lot of my buddies were in the Abraham Lincoln brigade and they weren't Commies either. They were just guys getting themselves dead so that you wouldn't have to wear a black shirt and kick hi the window of a Jewish candy-store on the way to school. Nuestra guerra they call it over there in Spain, but it wasn't their war, it was his war, my war and, whether you know it or not, your war. It was their war too; the ones that came back Stateside and found a lot of people who'd like to do to them what Fernie's people did to him - and more. But they didn't - which was lucky all round - because in 1942 people who would prepare Fascists for wooden overcoats were back in fashion again. So don't be so tolerant and understanding, you just never know when you might be out of fashion.' H.K. was still speaking quietly but all other conversation had stopped. The evening Nortrada began to shuffle the leaves of the little palm tree. H.K. touched Singleton on the shoulder in avuncular fashion and said in a different voice, 'We're getting a little serious, aren't we -how's about another drink? Come and help me fix it, Charly.'

  They disappeared into the kitchen. Fernie began talking Italian to Giorgio across the far side of the balcony.

  'What do you know about that?' said Joe quietly.

  'Ask London for an S.8 on him, and check Singleton again. You can't be too careful, and that Singleton's just not for real.'

  I watched the waves moving down on to the shore. Each shadow darkened until one, losing its balance, toppled forward. It tore a white hole in the green ocean and in falling brought its fellow down, and that the next, until the white stuffing of the sea burst out of the lengthening gash.

  Charly and H.K. emerged from the kitchen with a big tray of glasses and a jug with can-can girls and vive la difference painted on them in gold.

  As they came through the door H.K. was saying,'... it's the only thing I really miss of the New York scene.'

  'But I'll do them for you,' Charly said.

  'Willya really honey? I sure would be grateful. Just one a week would be great. My girl can do the cotton ones O.K., it's the synthetic fibres that they burn. They have the iron too hot, y'see.'

  Then Charly said in a loud clear voice, 'Mr Kondit -Harry I mean - has made us all a special Martini, and he has got a refrigerator after all.'

  'Now you promised that that would be a little secret between the two of us,' H.K. said in a mock stern voice, and he pinched Charly's bottom.

  'That's an un-American activity,' said Charly.

  'Oh no,' said H.K., 'we still got a couple of things that have to be done by hand.'

  Outside, the waves were tripping over, crashing on to and falling through the foamy, hissing scar-tissue of their predecessors. I wondered how long before we would begin doing the same.

  15 Reaction in the market

  It was another hot sunny day on Monday. I stayed behind in the house, which Charly described as 'just cosy'. I said I thought that she had her hands full of H.K. and Giorgio and she said how did I know it wasn't the other way about. I didn't. Charly borrowed my comb, fixed her hair and returned the comb within one minute and a half. We walked down to the market place. She had established terms of easy familiarity with the men while not alienating the women. She spoke Portuguese with a natural fluency, even knowing the local names for some of the vegetables and fish. The women saw in her the emancipation they all sought, while the men watched her and wondered if she was something they could deal with over either table or pillow.

  She wore a pale-pink sleeveless dress that made her arms look very tanned. Her hair was an unbleached white, the colour of Portland stone. She paused to pat a dog that sat in the middle of the hot road. She whistled after the gas man, and the vegetable boy let her work the shredding machine, piling cabbage into heaps of wire wool and sending razor-blades of carrots and pumpkin to join the hairpins of beans.

  She cleaved the yellow hands of bananas with a jab of the knife, criticized the garlic, prodded the tomatoes and put nail marks into the beans. They liked her.

  We walked through the fish market The flat concrete benches were ashine with bream and gilthead, pilchards, sardines and mackerel. Outside, the sun reflected off the sea with a million flashing pinpoints of light, as though every bird was sitting there on the ocean top flashing angry white wings.

  The painted fishing boats were drawn up high from the water's edge and packed as densely as the finish line at Ford's. Most of them were a vivid ultramarine-blue inside. Outside were bands of light green, faded pink, black, and white. On the prows signs were painted: an eye, a horse or a name. Some carried a big mop of animal hair for luck. The boats that had been out in the rain on Sunday night now, their headsails slackly raised, made an encampment of pointed canvas shapes. Here and there were men checking the nets for holes or rearranging them under the hot sun.

  As we left the fish market the little bell clanged for the tax assessor. In the sunlight moray eel was drying, and on the cobblestones a man in a shirt either dark-blue with light-blue patches or vice versa was scrubbing the big wooden fish-weighing machine. Charly asked him if he had sold out. He said 'yes', and when she called him a moderately rude Portuguese name he ran off to fetch the spider crabs that he was pretending he hadn't saved for' her.

  Even the policeman hitched up his patent-leather belt and smiled, and Charly's stock went
even higher. No one had seen him smile before.

  Each year the building with the bell is painted a mustard colour and the bar next door a deep tomato red, but the sun bleaches them lighter every day until the colour all but disappears. Inside the bar the star-patterned tiled floor joins the star-patterned tiled walls. The sunlight that lies inside the doors like two white mats reflects coolly among the marble-topped tables and crippled blue chairs, and framed colour pictures of Glamis, the Tower of London and the Queen with Salazar. In happy co-existence is a big sleepy ginger cat and a noisy white cockerel named Francois. The sailors were calling, 'Sing, Frangois' to make it crow for Charly when Joe Macintosh came in. He said, 'We've raised one canister - are you coming?'

  Fernie came into the bar just as we were leaving. He watched us with unblinking gaze.

  16 One too many

  The window shutters were closed. In the dark front room Giorgio was sitting waiting for us. Singleton was tidying the boat and gear. He'd be back any moment. Joe said, 'We decided to wait for you, sir.'