Undertow

by Desmond Cory

  “Trout?” the Professor was saying. “Your name is Trout, yes? Is interesting. Forelle, we say in German. I have some very fine trouts, in fact, in my little aquarium near Hanover. I have examined the pigmentation. The surface-swimming predators have the underparts frequently colourless, as you will know, and this in order with the surface film of the water to blend that the beast be thus invisible to enemies in the deeps. Is true of penguins, even, and of water-shrews. I think my researches will in part this strange problem elucidate, if problem so it is that has this natural explanation. I have examined the pigmentation of the eye in a large number of trouts and I find there exists a relationship. . . .”

  He went on and on, his heavy beard twitching with excitement, the wine in the glass he held bobbing crazily from side to side. There could be no denying his enthusiasm, thought Fedora; a bleak look-out for Tiddler if the girl suffered from the same kind of virus. Obviously she did, to some extent, or she couldn’t possibly have put up with the Professor day in and day out. That was if she really was his assistant and not the other thing. She certainly didn’t look very scientific. But then not all of them did.

  What a thing to be mad about, though. Fish. Obviously Tiddler would get off to the hell of a good start with her, with a name like his. Mrs. Trout, marine biologist. That would be a bit too good to be true.

  Fedora sat back, folded his hands on his lap. A good start, he was thinking; exactly what the name had given her. She’d knocked her glass over. Except that it hadn’t been Trout’s name. It had been his own. Of course, accidents did happen; that went without saying. But then why was he now feeling so suddenly, so inexplicably alert? Could she really be that?

  A bit too good to be true?

  IT was the first time that Elsa had seen Feramontov completely furious and, moreover, not bothering to conceal it. “There will, of course, be hell to pay for this. I’ll see to it personally. I’ll have someone’s guts hanging from the clothes-line before this dam’ business is over.” He drummed with his fingers on the tabletop. “A complete and utter failure where we can’t afford failures at all. I’ll have to see Bruniev about it, I’ve got no alternative. I’ll take a taxi into Malaga this afternoon.”

  “It changes the situation?”

  “Of course it does. Radically. We hadn’t allowed for British Intelligence, because we’d no reason to suppose they were even interested. Result, they plank two operatives down to wait for us and as near as a toucher we walk straight into the trap. All I can say is that their information service has to be about six times better than ours, and I’m just not prepared to work under those conditions. Damn it, it scares me.”

  “The thing I don’t understand is that those two men have been there for weeks. We didn’t get orders ourselves—”

  “I know, I know. That’s it. It’s a leakage. A top level leakage. And it’s too late to do a thing about it. We have to push on as planned, we haven’t any choice. And of all the people it could have been. . . .” His voice died slowly away, returned disconcertingly at full strength. “. . . It has to be Trout and Fedora. Fedora. I mean, it’s Moreno they’re after, it sticks out a mile.”

  ‘Their cover story is so good,” said Elsa hesitantly, “I was almost beginning to wonder if it mightn’t be sheer coincidence. I mean, he is Adriana Tocino’s boy friend. It got into the papers, if you remember. It doesn’t seem—”

  “Well, I can’t deny that one comes across the most amazing tricks of fate in this line of business—and all the time. But I’m just not prepared to accept it. In just the same way as he probably won’t accept your having spilt that glass over the table. You’ll have to watch those nerves of yours, Elsa, you really will.”

  She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “It gave me a shock when he said it right out like that You’d think at least he’d use a . . . a nom-de-guerre. If he’d said anything else, we’d never have suspected.”

  “And that’s the thing I like least of all. He must have done it just to test your reactions, and that must mean they’d suspected the Professor already, I can’t imagine why. When you spilt that bloody glass, you may have given the whole dam’ game away.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”

  “It’s hardly enough to be sorry, is it?” said Feramontov; and hit her, unexpectedly and very hard, with the back of his hand. Her hair jolted back with the blow, and her fingers dug suddenly into the deep foam-rubber arms of her chair; stayed there while she stared at him, while the red flush of the impact died slowly out along her left cheekbone. “It doesn’t help, you know,” she said, almost with contempt. “It doesn’t help at all.”

  “It relieves my feelings,” said Feramontov, already moving away from her. He placed his hands on the table and leaned heavily over it, his head bowed down as though awaiting the axe. “You say they’re coming here?”

  “In an hour’s time or so. The Professor invited them . . . naturally, just the way we’d agreed. I couldn’t find any way to tip him off.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We have to continue with the plan, because we’ve got no option. I’m going to Malaga, as I said; I’ll be out of the way. Moreno had better stay below decks while they’re here. I’ll tell him.” He turned his head round sharply. “Above all, don’t let him know. About Fedora.”

  “I’ve never met anybody quite like those two before,” said Elsa, saying for once exactly what she felt and regardless of its relevance. After all, she had seen Fedora; a pleasant-faced man with nice hands and with eyes that crinkled at the corners in the sunlight. Only a certain alertness, a certain aura of dangerousness to indicate that he was anything at all out of the usual. Fedora had no business, she felt, to look like that. And as for Trout. . . .

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well . . . Fedora . . . There’s no sort of . . . of urgency about him, you know what I mean? Is he really as good as they say he is?”

  Feramontov turned, resting the back of his thighs against the table. “You haven’t much experience, have you, Elsa, of people on the other side?”

  “Not much. No.”

  “They have quite a few people rather like Fedora. And you sum them up rather well when you say that there’s no sense of urgency about them. They seem to lack a spirit of dedication. In a word, seriousness. They’re not like us. And they certainly aren’t like Moreno. All I can tell you is that appearances are deceptive and that many of those people are very good indeed, though perhaps no one of them is quite as good as Fedora. Fedora doesn’t kill because he likes it, or even because he’s an idealist. He kills the way other people kill mosquitoes . . . absent-mindedly, as it were . . . in a kind of self-defence, preventing anyone else from getting bitten. He doesn’t blame the mosquito for wanting to bite, you see; he doesn’t get worked up about it at all, the way some of our people do. And that means he comes as near as anyone to having no weaknesses whatsoever.”

  “He has one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He likes women. I’m sure of it.”

  Feramontov smiled, though a trifle tiredly. “Whenever I hear a woman say that of anyone, I know that she thinks that he’s been attracted to her. In the majority of cases, it’s pure wishful thinking; but in this case, it conceivably mightn’t be. The fact that he guesses you’re a Communist agent would add immensely to your attraction. One of the most hackneyed themes of popular Western fiction is that of the beautiful Russian who falls for, as they say, some bronzed and rugged symbol of the capitalist countries. Before the beautiful Russian, it was the kind-hearted prostitute; the principle of a satisfying redemption remained the same. Were you thinking, Elsa, of reversing this process and converting Fedora to the joys of genuine democracy?”

  “I wouldn’t mind trying. He looks like more of a man than most people I’ve met, and there’s not much wrong with the other fellow’s build, either . . . if it comes to that“

  “I don’t think it will come to that,” said Feramontov. He took two quick steps to stand
in front of her, leaned forward to speak with greater deliberation. “In the first place, our present expedition has no room for proselytes. In the second place, I’ve no reason to think that Bruniev would trust you sufficiently. You lack experience, Elsa. That is always unfortunate, and it has been known to be fatal. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “I have experience. And so I know that those stupid books have an element of truth. The men on the other side are always attractive—that was what Juliet liked about Romeo. And look what happened to her. She was stupid, too; a stupid girl in what is really a very stupid play, though the poetry I grant is not without merit. Don’t confuse literature and life, Elsa. That’s a typically bourgeois failing.”

  Elsa looked contemplative. She was thinking, in fact, of the library in the University of Moscow, with the collected wrorks of Vilyami Shekspira, edited by Vengerov, bound in brown leather on the middle shelves; she thought of the wide shuffling silence, of the paper-strewn tables, and was conscious of something that she might have thought was nostalgia, had not that also been stigmatised as a hopelessly bourgeois attitude. She had never thought Juliet particularly stupid, oddly enough. She doth teach the torches to shine bright. . . . Elsa felt suddenly and strangely lost, as though Moscow and Vilyami Shekspira had never been so far away from her. That w~as, of course, literally true. But all the same. . . . She spoke to Feramontov. trying to keep this new sense of desolation from her voice.

  “What about tonight? You said there’d be no time for a change of plan.”

  “Nor there is. No, tonight you can exert all the charm you wish upon them. You can even,” said Feramontov querulously, “revert for a while to the role of the good-hearted prostitute. If by some means or other we can succeed in keeping those two stuck here while Moreno gets on with the job, we’ve every chance of pulling the whole thing off successfully. Meanwhile, I’ll have to get moving. They ought to be along here any minute.”

  THE three men drove down to the village harbour together, all three jammed tight in the front seat of the Sunbeam Alpine; Trout at the wheel. Johnny to the left, and Professor Heinemann in the middle, with his whiskery features pushed forward between the two of them like the target of an Aunt Sally in a fun fair. He talked learnedly and interminably on the topic of What Makes Limpets Stick, while Trout and Fedora listened in optimistic silence. Eventually Trout brought the car to a halt on the weathered cement of the harbour mole and, one by one, they clambered out, the Professor still gassing away about adductor and depresser muscles, opercular and scutal plates. It was, as Trout had already remarked, a beautiful morning. Just sufficient breeze was blowing in from the sea to alleviate the full weight of the Spanish sun and to tip with white flecks the waves beyond the harbour wall; within the harbour itself, however, the water was smooth as glass and surprisingly clear. At the landward end of the mole were grouped a cluster of single-storey fisherman’s cottages, glaring white against the red-brown earth behind them, and a half-dozen blue-clad Spaniards, diminished by distance to Lilliputian size, sat beside the houses mending their nets. To the north-west and far in the background the mountains rose towards the sky, a clean crystalline grey, their sheer slopes spiderwebbed with fissures that cast deep, fantastic shadows down their flanks. The air smelt of salt, of olive oil and of rusty iron.

  “Is that the boat?” asked Trout, breaking dexterously into a pause in Heinemann’s monologue. The Professor blinked, followed the direction of Trout’s pointing finger as though uncertain as to what the devil he could be referring. “Yes,” he said. “Oh yes. That’s the boat.”

  Since the only other vessels in sight were fishermen’s dinghies, this had seemed fairly obvious from the first. The yacht lay moored at the foot of the steps a little to their left, a smart, rakish job resplendent with fresh white paint and polished brass; it suggested the lazy frivolities of Hellenic cruises and junketings off Capri rather than the ardours of scientific exploration, but it went well enough with Elsa Weber. “Polarlys,” said Trout, reading the name on the stern. “Very pretty.”

  “Pretty, yes. She is a very fine boat, we are lucky to have her. It is through this kind generosity of the owner, our French benefactor whose name I mention to you, denke ich. One Pierre Cazamian. A charming, pleasant fellow. Ungekunstelt, if you understand me, but a pleasant fellow and stinking rich.”

  Elsa suddenly appeared on deck, dressed rather startlingly though discreetly enough in a yellow one-piece swimsuit. “Come on aboard,” she said, beckoning. She was probably accustomed to taking the lead in this way whenever her respected chiefs ditherings grew too protracted. “This way, please.”

  She sounded rather like the brighter kind of air hostess, reflected Johnny as he walked down the steps. Health and Efficiency. Strength through Joy. All very Aryan. The usual outward imperturbability; in all likelihood, the usual devastating lack of any sense of humour. He mounted the posh grey gangplank with the highly-polished handrail and paused for a moment on deck, wondering where the fo’c’sle was and if he ought not to salute it. There seemed to be nobody about “Here we are, here we are,” said the Professor, arriving beside him and pawing at the deck in his eagerness like a bull about to charge. “You will wish to see the laboratory, yes, the specimens, the equipment. Elsa will show you all. Elsa, you have the key to the laboratory?”

  “The key will be in the usual place, Herr Professor.”

  “Then take our visitors down to show them our experiments. You will explain them everything. While I must the new report from Hettering examine.”

  “This way, please,” said Elsa, dimpling.

  Trout and Fedora followed her long brown legs through the frosted-glass door and down a carpeted corridor. She stopped outside a green door about half-way down the passage, took a key from a hook placed to one side of a projection in the bulkhead, and opened the door without apparent effort. Fedora, who knew how keys tend to stick in the salt-laden atmosphere aboard a yacht, admired the organisation that allowed for a weekly drop of oil on unimportant hinges; not all scientific expeditions are run with scientific precision, but this one seemed to be. “What,” he asked, “exactly is it all in aid of?”

  “Please?” said Elsa, pausing with the door half-open.

  “Just what is the aim of this expedition?”

  “Oh, that. It is all to do with dear little baby jellyfish.”

  “I never knew jellyfish had babies. The rough periwinkle, of course—”

  “I was joking, in part. No—it seems that last summer they had an invasion of jellyfish all along this coast, and the tourist people here got fed up with it. It puts off many people from coming, obviously, if you can’t have a bathe without getting stung by a lot of jellyfish. So the Ministerio de Turismo asked the Herr Professor if he could do something about it.”

  “I see,” said Johnny. “And can he?”

  “That remains to be seen. Come on in.”

  Trout and Fedora stepped through the open door into the cabin. It certainly wasn’t large, but it was large enough to contain a full-size thirty-three-inch high bench loaded with an impressive assortment of clamps, plastic receptacles, rubber tubes, glass beakers and with what looked like a miniature model of a form-fit transformer. There were deep steel lockers to either side of what looked like an ordinary Westinghouse refrigerator, and—against the near wall—a couple of comfortable armchairs. “Oh, very nice,” said Trout. “What’s it do?”

  “Most of the equipment you see on the bench is used to analyse ordinary sea-water. We collect samples from various places and from various depths. We note the temperature, we test the salinity, we examine the organic matter it contains. Then we analyse it chemically. The results we enter into a lodger.”

  “A ledger.”

  “What? Yes, a ledger. Other samples we preserve at different temperatures and we keep ephyrae in “them.” She tapped the test-tube rack with the tip of one finger. “Medusae, you see. Little baby jellyfish. Look closely and you will see
them. Well, and from all this we discover what sort of seawater these jellyfish like the best.”

  “We know that already,” objected Trout. “They like it here.”

  “Well, they arrive here. They follow the currents of the water that they like. And when we know just what kind of water that is, we too can follow the currents, but in reverse. And so find the colonies where they breed. Because these very little jellyfish are formed from parent hydroids which do not swim at all—they’re fixed. In rock pools, in reefs, and so on. We find where the hydroids live, we destroy them, no more jellyfish.” She smiled ravishingly at Trout. “All very simple.”

  Fedora, meanwhile, had gone round behind the bench and was staring down into the three-feet-square metal tank on the far side. Beneath its plate-glass cover was a festering mass of jellyfish, orange, greeny-white and brown, hideous toadstool-like shapes writhing aimlessly to and fro, their tentacles trailing beneath them like strips of macerated flesh. “This is where you keep the big ones?”

  “Yes. Chrysaora, mostly. Those are larger than usual, of course, because they have grown under perfect conditions. I find the colouring very pretty, myself.”

  “Yes, beautiful,” said Trout, cautiously retreating a couple of paces. “And I wouldn’t want them any bigger than they are. Do they sting?”

  “Most certainly they do.”

  She leaned forward to peer down into the submersion tank, chewing her underlip thoughtfully. “Craziest damned thing I ever saw,” said Trout to Johnny, in an undertone. “Freudian-looking objects, aren’t they? Reminds me of the Queen of Sheba and her pet amoeba—we ought to try the Professor with that one.”

  “What did it do? The amoeba?”

  “It tenderly murmured, Ich liebe. Very appropriate, you see. At any rate, up to the end of the first verse. The later stanzas aren’t quite so Teutonic; d’you mean to say you don’t know it?”