Message From Malaga

by Helen Macinnes

  O’Connor had. “Sounds good. What’s the Granada airport like?”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right,” Waterman said. “It used to handle light planes, but no longer. It was closed down a couple of years ago.”

  O’Connor’s shock changed to frustration. “Are you sure?”

  Ferrier said, “Why else do you think I had to rent a car to get here from Granada?”

  O’Connor shook his head as he took a map of Spain from his pocket and unfolded it. Goddammit, he thought, this really will slow everything up: no easy escape. Twice as difficult, twice as dangerous. For we’ll be on our own—no help from the authorities here—in a city of over one hundred and fifty thousand people, and no airport. And the nearest airports seemed to be either at Málaga or at Seville. And of course there was Cádiz, still farther away from Granada but only a few miles east of Rota, where there was an American naval base. Too far perhaps, but an interesting speculation, at least. “Ben,” he asked, “how long does it take to drive from here to Granada? Three hours, with all these mountains?”

  “Less if the traffic is light. Depends on the time of day.”

  “And from Granada to Seville?” From the map, the road was longer but possibly easier. “It’s well over two hundred miles.”

  “Around four hours if you put your mind to it.”

  “Thanks, Ben.” O’Connor folded the map, shoved it back into his pocket. “Now what about getting Mike to the airport here? We’re in a bit of a rush.”

  “Oh?” Ben put down his glass, rose to his feet. “Sounds an important young man,” he said as he looked over at Mike.

  “Don’t put ideas into his head. And I want you to hurry because I expect you back here. To collect me and drive me to our hotel and let me stretch out on a nice flat bed. Dammit, Ben, don’t you ever need to sack out? I’ve been travelling since—”

  “Sure, sure,” Waterman said. “Time zones. That’s what kills everyone.”

  Ferrier said, “Use my car and save yourself walking a couple of blocks for yours. Come on, Ben, I’ll see you out and lock the back door after you.”

  Mike called to Waterman, “I’ll meet you down near the front gate.” He waited until both Ferrier and Waterman had left the room. “So you’ll be in Granada. Palace Hotel. Reinforcements make contact with you there.”

  O’Connor nodded. Strange how talk of a nice flat bed made him realise how tired he actually was. He got hold of himself. “Max will be in charge of them. They’ll be his hand-picked men.”

  “Special action?” There was a touch of envy in Mike’s voice.

  “You never can tell. I want them in Granada by noon tomorrow.”

  “That’s pressing hard.”

  “Max can manage it. He has connections in Seville; some good friends there. And in Granada. Tell him to head back there once he sees you safely transferred at Torrejon.” That was the American air base just south of Madrid.

  Top security and high speed combined, thought Mike. “No problem,” he predicted. “The problem would be if you tried to keep Max out of Granada. He has had a pretty disappointing evening.” Max had stayed on board their plane at the Málaga airport, kept out of sight from any inquisitive eyes. Which would make him, of course, doubly valuable in Granada: a fresh face, non-identified and unexpected, was always a definite asset.

  “We didn’t need him here, as things turned out. But we do, in Granada. Tell him that. We’ll need him. And three cars, with Spanish registration. And one light aircraft, capacity for six or seven, waiting at Seville.”

  “That’s how you are getting out of Granada?”

  “It’s the surest way.” The road to Seville might take longer to drive than the one back to Málaga, but it was straighter and simpler, with no high mountains to face, and less chance of an unexpected ambush. Hell, thought O’Connor—listen to me putting in the orders and I don’t even know if we are going to deliver. But certain basic arrangements had to be made; they couldn’t be left to wild inspiration at the last minute. “Okay, Mike. That’s all. On your way.”

  “What about your flight across the Atlantic? I’d better warn them, when I transfer at Torrejon, to expect you and some friends—when?”

  “Just tell them to expect us.” He had almost forgotten that hop back across the Atlantic, perhaps because it seemed such a small problem compared with reaching Seville and getting safely away from there. Somehow, Seville worried him: it might be too obvious, and the opposition could be as well organised there as they were in Málaga. Our one hope is speed, he decided. If we could be in and out of Granada before the opposition even learned we were there, then Seville would be no trouble at all.

  “Can’t have you taking a commercial flight,” Mike said with a grin.

  “Not you, either,” O’Connor said quickly. “We don’t want either of us being hijacked to Cairo or Cuba.” The idea appalled him: that would really muck up every goddamned thing. But he smiled, opened the door. “Take care.”

  Mike patted the lighter, deep inside his pocket. “It’s part of my skin.” Not even Max would be told about it. “See you in Washington.”

  O’Connor watched the young man ease his way out on to the steps, vanish into the shadows of the garden. He stood there for a brief minute, listening to the silence of the night. And he thought of all the recent argument and uncertainty about America’s youth. Well, that was one worry he didn’t share. He had met too many young men and women—not connected with his work, either—in the last ten years, who knew some history, recognised some facts about the world, and didn’t cop out from responsibility. Good luck, Mike. He closed the door.

  Perhaps the trickiest part of Mike’s journey might be boarding the plane at Málaga without being spotted. (He had restrained himself from giving Mike instructions about that; they would only have been a demonstration of a lack of confidence. Mike was good, or he wouldn’t have been brought along on this trip.) Certainly, if Ian Ferrier was to be believed—and he was inclined to believe him at present—the opposition was very much alive in Málaga. “All over the place,” Ferrier had said. “And we’ve been nowhere.” Well, decided O’Connor, I’ll hear Ferrier’s story, all of it; whether his head aches or not, he has to spill it out tonight. No more delays. We’re leaving the nowhere behind and getting somewhere.

  Quickly, he went into the study, picked up the receiver, consulted Mike’s slip of paper. It was a special number at the airport, connecting with the plane itself. As he waited to get through, he wondered if Ferrier had read much of Lord Acton. He would know the usual quotation that was bandied around frequently, these days: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. But there were other passages in Acton well worth remembering, and one particularly applicable to the events in Málaga that had so depressed and angered Ferrier. Do not overlook the strength of the bad cause, or the weakness of the good. Yes, thought O’Connor sadly, that just about covers everything. Do not overlook...

  * * *

  Ferrier heard O’Connor’s quiet voice in the study as he returned from locking up behind Waterman. More telephoning, he thought, and dropped into the nearest chair. He wished it were his bed upstairs: a long cold shower and then cool white sheets, deep deep sleep and complete forgetting. At least, things seemed to be in some control now; that was an improvement. He glanced at his watch. Just after half past ten, and all was—if not well—certainly better than expected. Even his head had stopped feeling like a lump of clay balanced uneasily on top of his neck. It was tender to touch, sharp to remind him to treat it gently. But that was little enough. Considering. Two seconds slower, just one hesitation lasting an intake of breath, and that blow would have caught him full on the back of his head. Which proved one thing: when you move, move. And no wasted argument.

  “Now,” said O’Connor, coming into the room and drawing up a chair across from Ferrier, “I’d like your complete story. We have just about three quarters of an hour befo
re we can expect Ben back here. Time enough?”

  “If I stick to the essentials.” Ferrier had been over them so often in his own mind, today, that there was no problem about marshalling them into order. “They begin at El Fenicio. I was sitting at Reid’s table, waiting for his return.” Clearly, quietly, without emotion, Ferrier began as concise an account as possible. Apart from the subject, it might have been one of his reports back home on recent developments in the Soviet fractional-orbital bomb system.

  O’Connor listened well. No interruptions, no raised eyebrows or politely repressed amusement, no quizzical comments or half-veiled criticisms. He really listened. And the result was that Ferrier, his confidence in O’Connor growing steadily, finished his report well within the time limit.

  “And that,” said O’Connor after Ferrier ended, and he had caught his breath, “is a considerable that. Isn’t it?” He looked at Ferrier for a long minute, then rose and poured a couple of Scotches. “Reid did a fine job. That recorded conversation with Fuentes is absolutely vital. Our thanks to you, Ian, for making sure it reached safe hands.”

  “There’s one footnote I should add. It’s Jeff’s own impression of Fuentes. He said you should be wary of the man’s over-all strategy. His tactics, meanwhile, are to give you just enough information to tease you along, get your help; and once he reaches wherever he wants to go, he is cutting himself off from you, lying low, clamming up, waiting. Waiting until his enemies in Cuba are discredited. Then he hopes to be reinstated. He is only a temporary defector, who will give nothing away that could really damage his return to Department Thirteen. That is his real aim.”

  O’Connor was thoughtful as he handed Ferrier his drink. Then he repeated grimly, “Give nothing away that could really damage his return... Well, let’s see what we can do, shall we?” He raised his glass, and they both drank to his promise. O’Connor’s voice came back to normal. “Frankly, there were some parts of your story I didn’t like at all.”

  Ferrier’s sense of accomplishment left him. He looked at O’Connor, his eyes narrowing.

  “They got Tavita’s Granada address. Right out of your wallet. Not good, not good.”

  Ferrier relaxed. “I know,” he agreed. “It links her too closely with me. Could be dangerous for her.”

  “Or vice versa. It was in her handwriting, too. That’s going to interest them—they’re probably checking on any autographed photographs of her, right now.” O’Connor rubbed his brow worriedly. “And I didn’t like that whole silver pencil bit. Reid’s was lifted from his hospital room—they are probably taking it to pieces looking for microfilm—and Lucas knows the girl Ames carries an identical pencil. That’s danger right there for her.” He looked at Ferrier, said carefully, “Unless, of course, Martin’s suspicion about her is right.” He still kept his eyes on Ferrier. “No comment?”

  “I don’t believe she has sold out.”

  “Why not? Because she cut loose from the Wild Left at Berkeley when she found her group was being manipulated by communists?”

  Ferrier shook his head. “That’s a good story—always has been—but there was more than that to her. It was the way she reacted when she saw the kids at the beach. The lost ones, the lotus-eaters, searching for the never-never land. It hurts her to watch them. It hurts me. Blown minds, unhappy eyes, sullen mouths. All of them crowding together for the only courage they know. If Amanda had been just another version of Lucas, either she would have walked past them without a qualm—accepted the scene as one proof that America was on the skids, that her theories about the West were right—or she might even have risked a little gloating just to see me squirm. But no. The scene hurt her. Hurt badly. She’s worried about the future of the country. Really worried.” Ferrier took a deep breath. “So the hell with Martin. He has been infiltrated and he chose the easiest excuse. That’s all.”

  “Martin must have had good reason for whatever he said.” O’Connor was playing stranger to all this: the dispassionate observer who did not want to trespass on a colleague’s responsibility.

  A reason, certainly; but I might not call it good, thought Ferrier. “Is Martin important?” he asked frankly. “Is his section, department, group, whatever you call it—is it important?”

  “Everything is important in this kind of work, big or small.”

  Ferrier had to smile. “Well, is his particular set up important in a big or a small way?”

  “I’d imagine,” O’Connor said cautiously, “that its significance is growing, now that the Soviet fleet is all over the Mediterranean.”

  “In that case, infiltration is really something to worry about.”

  O’Connor broke his neutrality with a definite nod.

  “Then,” asked Ferrier angrily, “why doesn’t he go after the man who delayed sending you my telephone message? I phoned Madrid from the hospital before three in the morning, Málaga time. You didn’t hear about it until dawn, Washington time. There’s a six-hour summertime lag between Spain and our eastern seaboard. Whatever happened in all those extra hours to a simple little message that didn’t even need decoding? You could have received it last night.”

  O’Connor said nothing at first. I was in the office until ten o’clock last night, he was thinking; I could easily have received that message from Málaga before then. “I take it you don’t think much of Martin’s efficiency?” he asked with a smile. But his own feelings were bitter. He masked his worry. “Well, Martin is out of our present operation now. We don’t need his assistance. I have other sources.” Max, for instance. Max won’t drag his feet, or let others loiter, either. “As for the Ames girl—Martin could be right about her, you know. To be quite frank, he has a reputation for being cautious. Not imaginative, not daring. But quietly capable. He has been in this kind of work for twenty years. One of the old hands.” Too old? wondered O’Connor. That delay in the delivery of the message from Málaga could have been absolutely disastrous. As it was, there had been irreparable loss: an agent dead. And there was now a feeling of emergency that was too tight for comfort. So let Martin clean up the mess in his own back yard—no doubt he was already investigating who was asleep on the job and why—and we’ll concentrate on our own problems, O’Connor decided. He glanced at his watch. “I’ll need your help in Granada, Ian. Will you give it?”

  And what would he say if I refused? “I’ll vouch for you,” Ferrier said with a grin. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the quickest way of approaching Fuentes. You will get in touch with Tavita, meet Tomás Fuentes, and then assure him I’m the real O’Connor and no substitute.”

  “That should be simple enough.”

  “Check into the Palace Hotel tomorrow morning. Around nine. I’ll be there ahead of you. But pay no attention to me at all. Have breakfast, read the papers, study the view, and then—soon after ten o’clock—call Tavita.”

  “Call her? From the hotel?”

  “Why not? What else would a man be expected to do if he carried Tavita’s address in his pocket? Make it a friendly call, really friendly—alone in Granada, hoping to see her as much as possible, can you spend the day with her beginning now? Right away, the sooner the better.” O’Connor stopped abruptly as he noticed the amusement on Ferrier’s face. “Sorry. I don’t need to brief you on how to talk to a woman. Okay, okay. Handle it your way. And after the call, you set out for Tavita’s address. You’ve got it?”

  Ferrier passed over the sheet of paper on which Esteban had written the full directions. “I’ve memorised it this time,” he said pointedly. “You can keep it.”

  O’Connor studied it. “How far from the hotel?”

  Ferrier repeated the directions that Tavita had given him. “A few minutes’ walk,” he ended.

  “Good. You’ll reach it easily by half past ten, and I’ll be right behind you. Ben and I will leave the hotel by car, drive around. for a little, then past Tavita’s house. He’ll drop me there quickly, and I’ll be at the front door in a matter of sec
onds. Have the old girl—Magdalena?—ready to let me in. No waiting. Ben will drive on; get back eventually to the hotel. That way, there will be no cars parked anywhere near Tavita’s house—neither yours nor mine. Got all that?”

  Ferrier nodded. “And afterward?”

  “You can relax and enjoy Granada.” Unless, of course, there were complications.

  “Yes?” asked Ferrier, watching O’Connor’s eyes.

  “That’s what I’m hoping for you, at least,” O’Connor said blandly. “Plans have always got to be elastic—strong enough to carry the load, flexible enough to stretch a little.”

  “Like the fat lady’s girdle.”

  “Just about,” O’Connor said, and broke into a broad smile. He gave one last look at Tavita’s address, took out his matches and struck one into a flame. He watched the piece of paper catch fire, curl up into a thin sheet of black ash; then he dropped it on to an empty plate, mashed it into fragments among the bread crumbs from the sandwiches. “Most determined handwriting,” he observed. “Whose?”

  “Esteban’s.”

  “Ah, yes—the ex-bullfighter. You know, that was another thing I didn’t like in your story.”

  “Esteban? A very decent man,” Ferrier said quickly.

  “Which also means a simple, honest man who sees things in strict black and white. He hates Fuentes, doesn’t he?”

  “But he’s devoted to Tavita.”

  “Then he has had a real battle raging in his mind for the last two days.” O’Connor shook his head in sympathy.

  “Should I call him? Tell him I’m on my way to Granada. No delay, now.”

  “The only wrong thing with that idea is that I don’t want anyone to know we are moving in so fast. Surprise is our best weapon.” Our only one, O’Connor thought worriedly. But where the hell was Ben? Had Mike taken off safely? Was Max now being briefed, starting to make his plans, sending some special messages of his own? “Fuentes is a tricky customer,” he said, trying to stop thinking about Mike’s journey. “He will have his own ideas about where he is going. Reid was right: Fuentes is using us, for a small quid pro quo, to reach his hiding place. He must have had this planned for months.”