Message From Malaga

by Helen Macinnes

  “Why, there you are!” Bianca said with a delighted, two-rows-of-teeth smile. In spite of her name, she was definitely American.

  “Yes, aren’t we?” Amanda said blandly.

  “Amanda—” warned Lucas. But Amanda was already out into the sunlight, walking quickly toward the car. Bianca wasn’t quite as simple-minded as she seemed. She turned and ran, passing Amanda, dropping roses but reaching the car first.

  Ferrier was grinning widely as he and Lucas followed. “Two pieces of advice: don’t mix your drinks, and never mix your women.”

  “So I’m learning,” Lucas agreed. “A little discipline is what is needed,” he added, frowning in Amanda’s direction.

  “Happy picnic. I begin to wish I were coming with you.”

  Lucas saw nothing funny in that. “We’ll keep our contacts to a minimum. Phone me at that number I gave you—it’s my answering service—but only leave your name. That will tip me off to get in touch with you.”

  “Do you really expect to hear from me?” Ferrier asked lightly, determined to keep everything as casual as possible. He hadn’t yet made up his mind about Lucas. At first, he had almost accepted him—perhaps because he had been hoping for someone to arrive quickly and take charge. Then he had begun to think Lucas was a fraud—until he had asked the girl for her “silly pencil”. If Lucas knew about that, he could be authentic. Lucas and Amanda, a very neat team, staging a quarrel as an efficient little smoke screen. These two working together? And yet, there had been something in the girl’s manner, in the expression in her eyes when she had handed Ferrier the pencil, that puzzled him.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll have nothing to tell.”

  “You know what I think?” Lucas said softly. “I think you could tell me right now. Martin really won’t like this delay one bit.” His voice sharpened “Not one bit.”

  Threats always angered Ferrier. He let go. “The hell with this Martin, whoever he is. The hell with you, too. I’m not in your line of work. You must be really out of your mind if you think Jeff Reid would pass on information to me. I’m a weekend guest. That’s all. So shove it.”

  “You aren’t the usual weekend guest,” Lucas said stiffly, but he wasn’t quite so sure of himself. He even became politely persuasive. “If Reid is lying trussed up in a hospital bed, can’t phone, can’t get messages out, who else would he use but his old reliable—”

  “Shove that, too.” You try too hard, he thought as he stared angrily at Lucas. Then he changed gears. “You know,” he said too innocently, “you’re lucky. I might just have gone on drawing you out, and then turned in a nice piece on how the CIA spooks go chasing their shadows. Life might print it. Or what about Ramparts? It’s just their idea of what the American public should know. Your Martin really wouldn’t like that one bit, either. Now would he?” Ferrier’s smile broke into a laugh. It sounded authentic, even to his own critical ears. Lucas moved quickly away, urging his friends to get into place. Bianca, of course, was already there, well settled into the seat next to Lucas.

  It was an odd scene: a car overloaded with determined gaiety, heavy witticisms and light giggles, beads and flowers—there had been quite a rape of Reid’s garden—and the faded, crumpled shirts denying their Dior and Cardin labels. Amanda wasn’t joining in. She stood outside the car, her arms folded. Then she turned away, began picking up the roses that Bianca had scattered in her haste. Concepción had appeared—perhaps she had been watching all along from a distance—and took a firm stand at the corner of the house, brows down, eyes in an intense Spanish stare.

  “Amanda!” Lucas called. He was angry.

  “In a minute.” She was carrying the roses to Concepción. “These have to go into water or they’ll die.”

  Lucas swore, turned on the engine, went savagely into reverse, and backed the car down the driveway. Amanda stood looking after it. There was amazement on her face, a dejected droop to her slender shoulders. Lucas, giving her one last glance, must have been delighted.

  So he has left her to work on me, thought Ferrier. But there are less crude ways of doing it. He’s a son of a bitch. That little bickering act in front of me was one thing; this snub in front of a carload of gossips is quite another. Ferrier went over to the girl, touched her arm. She came back from her own thoughts, looked at him worriedly. She wasn’t angry. Worried. She said quietly, “The problem is how do I reach the dock in time to get on that boat?”

  “I’ll give you a lift down there, if that is what you want.”

  “It isn’t. But it might be the best idea.” She remembered the roses. “Let me give these to the housekeeper. She can put them in a vase.” She turned to Concepción and spoke rapidly in Spanish. Ferrier watched her curiously; she really had meant what she had said about keeping flowers alive. A strange one, this. He reached his car, started the engine, and had the door open for her as she came running to join him. Concepción had melted, and even waved goodbye to them. “I apologised for my friends,” Amanda said by way of explaining that small miracle.

  “Your friends?”

  “Thank you for that doubt in your voice. No. They come and they go, and Lucas groups them around himself while they are here. The affluent vagabonds.” She sighed and shook her head. As they neared the street, she became practical again. “Back out to your left,” she told him. “We go south.”

  “Do you really want to go sailing with that bunch?”

  “No. But I’d better. For your sake.”

  “Mine?” That amused Ferrier. So did the plain-clothes policeman who stood patiently in the shade of a large plane tree. “There’s a Security boy—the one who is trying to read a newspaper.”

  “Whose?” she asked quickly.

  “Spanish.”

  Her eyes widened. “There is another back there, along the street. He seemed to be having trouble with his car. And he isn’t Spanish. Lucas was much too pleased to see him when we arrived.”

  Ferrier adjusted his rear-view mirror. Yes, there was a man farther up the Calle San Julian. His car must all right now. He was getting into the driver’s seat. “A blue Fiat? It’s taking off. After us, do you think?”

  She nodded. “You’re it. Now we’ll have to drive to the dock.”

  “Why? I say the hell with Lucas and his giggle of lotus eaters.”

  “I wish I could. But if I don’t turn up for the picnic, he might start guessing that I had picked a quarrel just so as to arrange some time alone with you. Which I did, of course.” She smiled as she saw she had forestalled his next remark. “But it won’t be much—only a matter of twenty minutes or so. And it is perfectly logical that you would offer me a lift. It wouldn’t be quite so explainable if we shook off that car on our tail—it is, isn’t it?—and headed away together for some place unknown. Perhaps even a quiet rendezvous? That’s the way Lucas thinks. He has the most intricate suspicions.” She looked at Ferrier quickly. “You didn’t fall for his act, did you? I mean, you didn’t tell him anything? I must say I was scared. I stood outside the doorway within comfortable listening distance, but there is just so long one can admire a bougainvillaea without attracting attention. When the others started to explore the garden, I thought I’d better come inside and start interrupting. For a very bad moment, I thought you were going to produce a silver pencil.”

  Here it comes, Ferrier thought: the question about Jeff and what else did he give you or what did he did tell you, what did he discover.

  But she was looking at the busy intersection they were approaching. “Keep on going. When you reach the big street, turn left. Again keep on going past the long stretch of park and flowers. Then past the bull ring—you can’t miss it, it’s as big as the Colosseum—and follow that avenue for about three miles. Then you make a right—I’ll give you the sign when—and you’ll be on the water front. There’s a kind of a place there—boats and docks and restaurants and beaches, all kinds of fun and games. The dock we’re aiming for is bang in the middle of it all. Got it?”
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  He nodded, kept his eye on the thickening traffic.

  “Now,” she said, “let’s concentrate. I’m Amanda Ames. You are Ian Ferrier. You sent Reid’s mayday message to Madrid early this morning; 21-83-35 was the number you called. And you asked that the message be delivered to Martin.” She paused. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She had been quick to notice, he thought. He identified himself solely as Ferrier over the phone. “Just wondering where you picked up the Ian. Are you a friend of Reid’s?” But if so, why hadn’t Reid told him to telephone her?

  “No. We’ve never met. Any contact we have is made through Madrid. It was Martin who gave me your name. He would check on you, of course; probably through the Embassy. They know you there, don’t they?”

  Damned idiot, he told himself. He was so busy trying to find the complicated pieces of an intricate puzzle that the obvious things were escaping him. Of course Martin would be curious about him. “I only hope,” he said, trying to reassert his intelligence, “that when Martin phoned you he didn’t use that 21-83-35 line. It has been tapped, obviously. Unless, of course, Lucas is working with you.”

  “It has been tapped,” she said curtly. Then she was lost in her own thoughts, and they worried her. “But that’s another problem,” she said at last. “And not yours.”

  “At least you’ve learned it exists,” he said consolingly.

  He hadn’t been much comfort. She nodded her agreement, but she frowned down at the bag on her lap as if she were seeing it as a cluster of possibilities, and none of them pleasant. “Let’s get back to us,” she said, becoming business-like again.

  “Delighted.” But not this way, Ferrier thought. Here I am with a pretty girl, a really pretty girl, face and figure perfect according to my taste, bright eyes, soft lips, and obvious intelligence. We are driving through a pleasant foreign town, heading for some beaches and the blue Mediterranean. It’s Saturday, and there’s a sunny weekend ahead, and all the traffic around us is showing it, everyone going somewhere with nothing but pleasure on his mind. And we are being businesslike.

  “If you weren’t driving,” she said, “I’d ask you to write down the time you telephoned Martin. But I’ll do it for you—if you’ll lend me a pencil.”

  “What’s wrong with yours?” he asked. But he fished for the silver pencil in his trouser pocket and handed it to her. “That makes me okay?”

  “It’s reassuring.” She examined the pencil closely, handed it back. “Thanks.”

  “What else did it tell you?” he asked. He pocketed it carefully.

  “It is Reid’s. He must trust you a lot.”

  Here it comes, he thought once more. The question.

  But it didn’t. She said, “Martin got in touch with me this morning. He instructed me to get his reply to Reid. Will you take it? It’s simple. Tell Reid to stop worrying. Martin has sent for reinforcements. They are on their way—arriving tonight. They will make contact with him. Definitely. So not to worry.”

  “Is that all?” No questions, he thought in surprise, no probing...

  “Isn’t it enough? Help is coming. And in this game, that’s all you want to hear when you are in a jam like Jeff Reid. Whoever arrives will get in touch with him and learn what all the sore trouble is about. It must be big. It must be fantastic.” She lingered over that last word, dropping her voice, her eyes widening. “Ah,” she said quickly, “there’s the bull ring! Got your bearings?”

  “Yes. And no.”

  “No?”

  “What’s your connection with Lucas?”

  “I share the same courtyard with him. I have two rooms and a small balcony opposite his studio.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “And Lucas?”

  “He was well settled in three years ago.”

  “How did he know about the pencil?”

  “By accident. At least, I hope it was an accident. He was searching for some matches one night at a party, started looking through my bag, emptied it all out on a table with the usual masculine jokes about the things women carry around with them. The pencil was there among all the litter. He admired it. So you see why I nearly panicked today when I thought you might have believed him enough to offer him yours. It would have been an easy two and two for him to add together. He’s no fool, even if his style is flamboyant American—the young, get-with-it, look-at-me crowd. It’s good cover.”

  “Cover for what?”

  She didn’t seem to hear that quiet question. “Of course, today he was trying to act Establishment. But the truth is he has no real conception of how the American Establishment behaves.”

  “And how does it?” he asked jokingly. Establishment...a word imported from England along with the Beatles and miniskirts. Over there, it had validity: an army of permanent civil servants, nonpolitical, nonpartisan, outlasting all governments, a formidable block of quiet, unobtrusive, continuing power. But in the United States, where every change in administration brought new faces as assistants and advice-givers, where every cabinet member brought in his own men for guidance and counsel? Where most career civil servants were bypassed, sometimes for a four-year stretch, sometimes for even less, by the lawyers, journalists, professors, business-men, and image makers? It was a very remarkable Establishment that rose to the top levels of power so swiftly and then dropped just as speedily out of sight. “How does it behave?”

  She thought about that. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But I do know that Lucas is quite sure he has the answer; and he hasn’t, any more than those trendy movies—you know the type? Let’s pull everything to pieces, leave no beliefs intact, ignore the good, emphasise the bad, down with the system, up with us.” She shook her head sadly. “All these bright little boys and their intellectual pretensions...” She paused, tried to laugh. “I do know about that, at least. Once upon a time, I was one of the bright little girls.”

  He waited, but there was to be no further explanation, seemingly. He said, “So Lucas has been seeing too many trendy movies?”

  “He doesn’t need to. He was writing that kind of stuff when he was a sophomore. And now he really believes his own propaganda. He cooked up plenty of it in his underground newspaper. That was in Berkeley, 1964. I was there, too.”

  “You knew him even then?”

  “Radicals together. He scarcely knew me. He was deep in the action. I was a very minor revolutionary. Then we went off—in different directions.”

  “And how did that happen?”

  “Oh, with a small incident, which he played up big. He burned his draft card, although he wasn’t in any danger of being drafted—he was a graduate student by that time. A public ceremony with TV cameras notified in advance; after which he disappeared. Driven into hiding, fear of persecution, America in the hands of Nazis, the whole bit.”

  “And you?”

  She looked at him with large and thoughtful eyes. “Are you just curious, or really interested?”

  “Interested.”

  “I had a severe case of disillusionment. You see, at first I had really believed that Lucas’ protest was honest. Then I found proof—I didn’t want to believe it, but there it was, proof—that the whole thing had been staged. On orders. It was a performance. So all our protests on his behalf became performances; we didn’t know it, but all our reactions were according to plan. That was the first shock. The second was when I learned that his disappearance was on order, too. The third was when a girl we all liked and trusted—a true liberal, an honest radical, a free and soaring spirit—was elected president of a really important student society and then announced to the newspapers that she always had been a communist. I suppose the idea was to make us think that if someone like her was a communist, then communists must be delightful people. But she had got most of the votes because she had always maintained she wasn’t a communist. When I challenged her about lying, she told me she hadn’t lied; she had only been following orde
rs. And what benefited the cause was never a lie; couldn’t be, by definition. Because truth was whatever was good for communism. Whatever hurt it was a lie.” Amanda shook her head, sighed. “And so—I faced a big moment of real truth, my own, and nothing to do with Moscow’s definition. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience—who likes to admit he has been manipulated? I had been used: that was true truth. Three shocks like that, close together, made a bolt and a jolt. And then there was a fourth shock, much worse. One of my professors had spoken out frankly against the violence that was developing on the campus. So his office was invaded, his files were looted, and the manuscript of a book he was writing—ten years of work—was burned.”

  “And that was the end of the dream?”

  “For me? Yes. It was no longer a dream, but a nightmare. And I woke up in stages. First, there were several weeks of honest reassessment. Painful. Especially when I heard two of Lucas’ friends persuading many of us that the professor had got what he deserved; he was against progress, a reactionary professor who should be driven out of the university. But he wasn’t reactionary; he was a liberal in the old-fashioned style. And the truth was that he had seen more clearly than most that the universities were being destroyed and reshaped as centres of political action. Bases for revolution, in other words.”

  “And after the weeks of reassessment?”

  “Two months of misery while I got rid of my prejudices and collected some facts. Real facts. Not half-truths, not assumptions. A lonely, lonely time.”

  “There was no one you could talk with?”

  “The old friends had dropped away. I was deep in the jungle of the New Left. I had to find my own way out.”

  “What about parents, family?”

  She looked at him, asked sadly, “My sweet, progressive parents who never said ‘No’ to me and wouldn’t face a value judgment in case it labelled them as illiberal? How could they tell me what was right and what was wrong? They never did, you know—perhaps because they had never really faced the truth themselves. They just won’t believe there is any threat against our country except from the right wing. They don’t see there is danger from the left, too. Although, in a way, that is making a value judgment—but they’d be hurt if I even suggested that to them. I don’t want to hurt them. They fed me, nursed me when I was sick as a child, clothed me, supplied me with money, affection. And so I try to forget that every book and magazine and discussion in our house steered me in their direction—to the political left. And now that I’ve fought my way back to the centre, they don’t even listen when I try to explain what happened to me at Berkeley. They just look bewildered, and retreat. They tell their friends that Amanda has become apathetic. Apathetic!” Her voice was strained. Close to tears. “Crazy, mixed-up parents,” she said softly, unhappily. “I worry about them.”