Lisbon Crossing, The

by Tom Gabbay

  At fifty yards, the group stopped moving and one of the uniformed cops removed a set of cuffs from Eva’s wrist. Chaves shook Brewster’s hand, then followed his men back to the coupe to be driven away, a much richer man than he’d started the evening. Brewster said something to Eva, then took her arm and started walking her toward me.

  For some inexplicable reason my heart started beating like crazy. It was totally unexpected and the closer she got the harder it beat. I couldn’t control it. When she got close enough that I could see her face, I realized she was looking straight at me. Or maybe straight through me was more like it. Her expression said everything about her. Tenacious, compassionate, smart, combative, playful…it was all there, all in that one look.

  “Meet Lisa Foquet,” Brewster said as he set her in front of me. I wasn’t sure that I could get any words out, so I just stood there looking at her. She returned the gaze for a moment, soft brown eyes meeting mine head-on in the darkness. Then she allowed a hint of a smile to cross her lips.

  “You almost let me get away,” she said in a rich, warm, gently mocking voice.

  CHAPTER 13

  Once I got my heart out of my mouth, I turned to Brewster and grumbled, “What took you so damned long?”

  “The ship’s captain,” he shrugged. “Said we couldn’t take her without paperwork.”

  “They took me anyway,” Eva chafed.

  “So I see.” I met her implacable gaze again. It was more than a bit unsettling. I’d never felt tongue-tied or awkward with a woman before, and I didn’t much care for the feeling.

  “I’m Jack Teller,” I managed.

  “Yes, I know who you are,” she said in a refined English accent. “I’d like to say what a pleasure it is to meet you, but I’d be lying.”

  “Do you know why I’ve been looking for you?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “I do.”

  “Lili would like to help you.”

  Eva cocked her head and looked at me sideways. “To do what?”

  “You’ll have to talk to her about that.”

  “Ah…You’re just doing your job.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, then, I suppose congratulations are in order. You’ve bagged your quarry.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was angry or teasing. Maybe both. I never could figure out how to read Eva—there was too much going on. And as soon as you thought you had her pegged, she’d change direction on you.

  “Are we done here?” Brewster chimed in. “Because, as interesting as this is—”

  “We’ll drop you off,” I said, opening the car door for Eva.

  “Where are we going?” she said, standing firm.

  “Don’t worry—”

  “Easy for you to say! The Gestapo isn’t looking for you!”

  “Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

  “For the moment they do.”

  She was right, of course. The body swap had been an effective deception, but there were too many ways for the story to fall apart to be sanguine about it. Popov might get talkative, Baptista could run scared, or our fat detective might even put two and two together. Eva had planned her exit very well and I had just wrenched her back into the very danger that we were supposed to be saving her from. No wonder she wasn’t gushing with gratitude.

  The ship’s horn blew off a parting shot. A look of quiet distress flashed across Eva’s face as she watched her escape vessel pull away, but she didn’t dwell on it. Swinging quickly back around on me, she gave me a hard, measured look, then calmly slipped into the backseat.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.

  We dropped Brewster off and continued on in silence, leaving the city and driving west, into the dark, pine-scented mountains. I was aware of Eva’s soft breathing beside me and I sensed her staring out the window into the void, but she didn’t stir until the car pulled onto the bumpy dirt track that led to the farm. It was pitch-black, but I remembered the layout from our visit the previous day. The road curved around to the right, along a steep ridge that opened onto a clearing where the small stone-and-tile house stood overlooking a long, green valley. It had occurred to me while I’d been waiting at the dock that Alberto’s cousin’s place would be the perfect spot to stow Eva for a few days. Aside from a goat, a donkey, and a couple of pigs, no one would be the wiser.

  Alberto was barreling along when, out of the blue, he hit the brakes. The car swerved left and I went right, bouncing my forehead off something hard. It hurt like hell and I came up cursing.

  “Jesus Christ!” I yelped, which was met by heartfelt laughter from Eva.

  “You think that’s funny?” I snapped.

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t!”

  “You don’t have much of a sense of humor, then.”

  I was deciding how to respond when my vision came back into focus and I saw what she was laughing at. Standing in front of the car, bathed in our headlights, was a man pointing a two-gauge shotgun at us. The funny part was that, aside from a pair of unlaced black dress shoes, he was buck naked. I recognized him as Alberto’s cousin Fabio. He took a step toward the car and squinted into the light.

  “Quem é?!” he demanded.

  “Não dispare!” Alberto cried out from his position on the floor below the dashboard.” Don’t shoot!…“Don’t shoot!…É o teu primo, Alberto!”

  Fabio lowered the weapon. “Alberto?…Que está fazendo aqui nesta hora?”

  Alberto grabbed the steering wheel and pulled himself back onto his seat as Fabio’s face appeared in the driver’s-side window. “I bring my friends to stay with you,” he said, gesturing toward us.

  “Olá.” Eva smiled.

  “Olá, senhora,” Fabio politely replied.

  “Desculpe que fizemos esta surpresa,” she said, in what sounded to me like reasonable Portuguese.

  “Nada, senhora. É o meu prazer.”

  Fabio looked over at me and smiled with recognition. “Ah, good evening, senhor!” he said. I was about to respond, but before I could get the words out, a quizzical look came over him.

  “Why is this blood all across your face?” he said.

  Fabio’s agreeable wife, Rosalina, was reticent about dousing my injury with a painful dose of iodine, but Eva had no such qualms. In fact, she seemed to enjoy watching me squirm as she administered the caustic torture.

  “It’s just a scratch,” she reassured me as she deftly wrapped my head with a strip of old linen. Fabio had quickly disappeared back to bed (never mentioning his state of undress) while Rosalina provided Eva with a cup of tea and medical supplies, then said good night, too. Alberto was fast asleep in the next room.

  Eva had removed the black Lisa Foquet wig, revealing dark, chestnut hair that swept past her cheek with a stylish kink before falling lightly onto her shoulders. Her face, lit by a single candle on the kitchen table, where my treatment was taking place, had changed surprisingly little in the fifteen years since the boat photo. More defined, perhaps. Certainly less naive. She leaned forward to pin the bandage, close enough that I could feel her breath on my face and smell the lilac-scented soap she’d used to wash that morning. The top two buttons on her shirt were undone and I could see the white line of her bra pressing against her breast.

  “How does that feel?” she said.

  “I guess I’ll live.”

  “You’re lucky you have such a hard head.” She stepped back to review her work. “It’s a bit overdone, but at least you won’t bleed all over Rosa’s pillow.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  She rolled the remainder of the towel into a ball, placed it and the scissors she’d been using onto the table, then sat down beside me. “I don’t suppose you told them how much trouble they’ll be in if I’m found here.”

  “We’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” I said. She nodded, but I wasn’t sure she’d been listening.

  “You should have let me go, you
know.”

  “Lili wants to—”

  “Save me?” She gave me a dubious look. “I’d have been safe in England.”

  “You probably said that about Amsterdam and Paris.”

  A delicate crease appeared in her brow. “I haven’t heard from Lili in thirteen years. Why now?”

  “You can ask her tomorrow,” I said. “Alberto will have her here first thing in the morning.”

  “I will ask her,” she said. Then, cocking her head, she gave me a coquettish look and served up a mischievous smile. “I suppose that makes me your prisoner tonight…Would you like to tie me up?”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Eva threw her head back and laughed, a full, throaty, honest laugh, and it made me smile, too.

  “Well, if I have to be someone’s prisoner, I suppose I’d just as soon be yours. But I’m too tired to be tied up tonight.” She got to her feet, placed a hand on my shoulder, leaned over, and kissed me on the cheek. “Pleasant dreams,” she said, then she picked up the candle, smiled sweetly, and swept out of the room, leaving me in the dark.

  She was playing me. I knew she was playing me. Of course she was. And she was doing a damn good job of it, too. Why else would I be sitting there with an aching head and a silly grin plastered across my face? I got up, stumbled into the next room, and curled up on a bed of ceramic tiles, where I eventually drifted off to the melodic strains of Alberto snoring like a pig.

  I sat up with a start, thinking that someone was coming toward me, but there was no one there. Just Alberto, mumbling something unintelligible. I wasn’t even sure if I’d been asleep or awake. Probably somewhere in between. My head was throbbing, but it was more than that and the hard floor that kept me turning over. It was Eva.

  Women were never far from my mind, and they’d had various effects on me, never predictable. Glamorous movie stars had left me stone cold, while a well-placed smile from the Sunday-school teacher in Davenport, Iowa, had once given me a new sense of religion. I sat through a month of very long Sundays before I finally snapped out of it.

  But my reaction to Eva was a new one. I was pent up, that’s for sure—it had been over two weeks since my last encounter with Mrs. Wexler—but there was more to it than that. Hell, I hadn’t even set eyes on Eva before I started going loopy. And what I really wanted—what kept going through my mind as I lay there not sleeping—was to kiss her. That’s all. Just a kiss. Not a hard, passionate, give-me-everything-you-got kiss, either. Just a soft, brush-against-the-lips kind of kiss. Strange. Not my usual brand of fantasy. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking straight.

  I couldn’t shake the image of her eyes. The way they looked at you, thoughtful, wary, self-assured, but with tenderness and, I thought, some sadness, too. And the lovely curl of her upper lip when she—

  I was smiling again. That would have to stop. There were too many questions hanging over Eva Lange to wade into those waters, let alone to go off the deep end.

  Questions like—Who the hell is she?

  An artist escaping the repression of Nazi Germany, or a loyal party member dispatched to prepare for the Reich’s imminent invasion and occupation of England? Was she no more than a talented musician who found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a cold-blooded killer who shot Eddie Grimes twice in the heart, then pushed his car off a cliff? And what about Hans Kleinmann? Had she been mistress to the murdered head of German intelligence in Lisbon? Had she been working for him? Or had she been playing him, too? Playing him right up to the moment that she put a bullet between his eyes. The only thing I knew for sure was that, whoever she was, and whatever she was, Eva Lange wasn’t a lady that you’d want to underestimate.

  I realized that I wasn’t smiling anymore.

  The sound of a car approaching roused me from a deep sleep. I opened my eyes and was met with bright, midmorning sunlight streaming in through the open front door. I poked my head out just in time to see Alberto pull up in front of the house. He leapt out from behind the wheel and raced around to open the passenger door, but Lili didn’t wait. Dressed in tan slacks, an emerald-green scarf tied over her head, and oversize sunglasses to hide her face, she stepped onto the dusty track and stood there, looking nervous and out of place.

  I saw Eva before she did. Standing in a field away from the house, she’d been feeding carrots to a donkey. She didn’t move at first, covertly watching the arrival from a distance for as long as she could. It wasn’t until Lili started to turn in her direction that Eva fixed a smile to her face and began striding toward the car.

  Lili froze. I don’t think she was even breathing as she watched Eva glide through the long grass, sunlight striking her gracile form, a smile radiating out to greet her long-lost friend. When she was within a few feet of the car, Eva stopped. The two women shared a long look that seemed to say whatever it was that needed to be said, then Eva opened her arms and accepted Lili into a close embrace. They stayed that way for a very long time—lost, motionless, holding firmly on to each other.

  “We’ve heard all sorts of stories about you.”

  Lili smiled nervously and reached into her bag, fishing for a fresh pack of cigarettes. She’d been chain-smoking all through lunch, which had been served in the shade of a big oak tree at the edge of the mountain. The view was spectacular, across a lush river valley that wound its way down to the sea about four miles away, but I’d been watching the two women circle each other, playing with childhood memories while carefully avoiding anything that might shed light on all the questions that hung in the air. Now, finally, Lili seemed ready to broach the subject.

  “What did you hear?” Eva inquired with an easy smile.

  “A lot of nonsense, really.” Lili waved it off as insignificant. “I refused to believe a word of it.”

  “Some of it might be true.”

  Lili gave her a look but softened quickly. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, reaching across the table for Eva’s hand. “All that’s over. The only thing that matters now is that I’ve found you…We’re together again.”

  “It’s lovely to see you, Lili.” Eva squeezed Lili’s hand, but only so she could withdraw hers. Lili covered by putting a cigarette between her lips.

  “Jack will arrange passage to New York as soon as possible,” she said, getting down to business. “We’ll spend a few days there—you’ll adore New York—then on to Los Angeles. You’ll stay with me, of course. For heaven’s sake, I have twelve bedrooms, eleven of them empty!…”

  Eva looked to me, but I was staying out of it.

  “I know,” Lili continued as I lit her up. “You’re thinking, Hollywood, how dreadful! But there’s more to it than you might think. There are even signs of culture starting to take hold. Do you remember Bruno Walter? Of course, you do. Director of the Städtische Opera until he left Berlin, two years ago. That’s when I should have got you out, but there’s no point in worrying about that now. Well, he’ll be conducting the Philharmonic this season. I know him quite well. We’ll give him lunch as soon as we get back so he can meet you. I’m sure he’ll be delighted—”

  “Lili…” Eva moaned.

  It stopped her cold. She must have known that she’d gone too far. “Yes, darling?”

  “I know that you want to help, and I appreciate it, really, I do, but I won’t be going with you. I can’t…”

  “Of course you can.” Lili flicked an ash onto her plate. “You can if you want to.”

  “There are things I have to do here.”

  “Eva…darling…” Lili tried a lighthearted laugh, but it fell flat. “Be sensible. There’s no reason for you to stay here. It’s—”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Eva said flatly. “I don’t know why you did.” I could see that she was struggling to keep her emotions in check. Lili leaned forward and spoke in a whisper, the way a mother would speak to a child.

  “I want to help you, darling. I want to help you get away from all this…this insanity.”

  “Yo
u don’t belong here.”

  “For God’s sake, Eva! Who does?!”

  “I do.”

  Lili hesitated, frustrated with Eva’s obstinance, unsure what to say next, but unwilling to give up. “You need time. Time to think it over. It’s all very sudden, I know, but—”

  “Stop it!”

  Eva exploded onto to her feet, causing Lili to recoil. She was frozen, unable to so much as blink. Eva stood her ground for a moment, then exhaled, her anger dissipating.

  “Go back to Hollywood, Lili. Please. You can indulge your fantasies there. There’s no place for it here.”

  Then she turned and walked away, without looking back. Lili just sat there, in shock, unable to move. She’d exposed her dream, laid it out on the table in a moment of unguarded enthusiasm, and in an instant, it was gone, evaporated. She had nothing to hold on to now, no ridiculous fantasy to shield her from that heartless enemy, reality. I felt sorry for her. She looked sad and defeated and, suddenly, so much smaller.

  CHAPTER 14

  I found Eva lying in the tall grass on the other side of the farmhouse, hands behind her head. She sensed me standing over her, and opened one eye.

  “I was pretty tough on her, wasn’t I?”

  “She got the message.” I crouched down beside her, and Eva met me halfway by propping herself up on one elbow. She picked a blade of grass and absentmindedly stripped the stalk as she spoke.

  “I didn’t want to leave any ambiguity.” She looked me in the eye. “I don’t want to be saved, Jack. I intend to fight this war, in whatever way I can.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  I shrugged. “Probably not.”

  “I need your help,” she said. “And I think you owe it to me.”

  I didn’t answer right away because I was preoccupied with the way she twisted the stripped blade of grass around on itself, then tied it in a knot. She lowered her head so she could catch my eye.