Undertow

by Desmond Cory

  “And Elsa?”

  “Bruniev’ll look after that side of things. That’s what he’s there for. Besides, it’ll make for a useful diversion just when we need it. Send the radio operator to see me at once.”

  “At once,” echoed Meuvret. He turned towards the door. “Oh, and Meuvret. . . .”

  “. . . Yes?”

  “. . . Don’t tell Moreno.”

  VALERA was a good interrogator. He had studied the books and the methods. The Communist, the Chinese, the Gestapo, the F.B.I.—he knew them all. He was careful, conscientious, and—unlike most Spaniards—very patient. He passed the heat of the afternoon in his room, taking a siesta; he had had very little sleep the night before, and he believed in starting fresh. At half-past-four exactly, he called his secretary; and the interrogation began.

  Fedora came down some forty-five minutes later to watch him at work. It was a small room, and stifling hot; Valera sat in a cane chair with his tie loose and his collar unbuttoned, his white shirt stained with sweat beneath the armpits, and behind him sat his secretary, impassive, motionless, with a shorthand notebook open on her lap. One of the Civil Guards stood by the door, right hand on his revolver holster, looking straight in front of him at the far wall. And the girl sat stiffly upright in a chair in the centre of the room, her wrists and ankles strapped tightly against the hard wood; her head had fallen sideways and the light from the angled lamp beat fiercely against her glossy black hair. Valera nodded to Johnny in the abstracted way of an eminent businessman engrossed in his work.

  “Much as we expected,” he said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing that matters. They’re well-taught, you know.” Then, as though he felt the excuse to be unsatisfactory, “These things take a little time.”

  “I see. Do you always take their clothes off?”

  “Well, usually. It lowers a woman’s resistance, you know. Or at least, it’s supposed to.” His voice sounded too dry, almost hoarse. “Not the Commies, though. They know what to expect. Why, she wasn’t wearing anything anyway, except for a bathrobe. Cheek enough for six.”

  That’s how Carmen ended up, thought Johnny. “. . . An eye for an eye.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just something I was thinking.”

  “. . . You don’t approve?”

  “It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.”

  “So it did me, at first. You get used to it,” said Valera gruffly. “Don’t you do it this way in England?”

  Fedora looked towards the painfully rigid figure in the chair, at the long lines of angry cigarette-burns on its naked arms and shoulders. “No,” he said. “If they keep their clothes, it makes them more face-conscious. It’s the face they mind the most, usually. . . .”

  He stopped abruptly. Think of the pool, he said to himself, of the turning shark, the blood spouting red to the surface. An eye for an eye. Extraordinary measures. . . .

  “Interesting,” said Valera. “Myself, I prefer to work round to the face by degrees. I’m not impatient. I don’t worry. She knows.” He began to roll a cigarette with an air of quiet satisfaction. There was a sharp rap on the door; the Civil Guard opened it, then came across to Valera with a written message in his hand. Valera took it, glanced at it briefly.

  “Telephone call,” he said. “Ah well. Lucky I was taking a break anyhow.” He got up. “. . . You want to carry on?”

  “I’m fresh out of cigarettes,” said Fedora.

  “What? Oh, that. No, she takes that as though it were sunburn. Just talk to her, that’s all. Take her through her words all over again, right from the beginning. It tires them, you know. They get cross. And besides, you’re old friends, aren’t you?” He looked back from the door and winked prodigiously. “You wanted information, didn’t you? Well, now’s your chance.”

  He walked off down the corridor; the Civil Guard closed the door after him, and with the same movement drew his revolver from its holster. Yes, all very friendly, thought Fedora; but they’re playing it safe for all that. Not that one can blame them. He sat down heavily in the cane chair, his knees within a yard of Elsa’s. At that distance he could detect the pungent smell of burnt skin, mingling with a stronger, salty smell like that of the sea and with the remnants of a dab of Vent Vert. It was curious that she wasn’t yet afraid. Fear has a smell that is all its own; unmistakable. Fedora hated it.

  After a while, her head came up and she looked at him. Her eyes were utterly devoid of thought: they seemed to see him not as a man but as part of the furniture; she sat as though drugged by the remembrance of pain. All the same, she knew who he was. “. . . Tell me about Moreno,” he said. Her eyes remained unwaveringly in focus on his face. It was like talking to a wall, except in that something behind the eyes was almost frighteningly human. More than human. Feminine. “. . . Elsa,” Fedora said. “Tell me about Moreno.”

  Her lips opened, moved. “. . . Surprise.”

  “What?” He leaned forward.

  “. . . Surprise to see you here.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose it must be.”

  “British Intelligence. We live and learn, I suppose you knew.” Not all the words were coming out; Johnny could see her making a conscious effort to speak clearly, as a drunken man might “No, but you couldn’t have. You wouldn’t have let him do it.”

  “Who? Moreno?”

  Something came down to curtain off whatever expression there had been behind her eyes: she looked down at the floor. Damn, thought Fedora, I had a chance there. He let his hands relax, curl up in his lap. “Would you like to get dressed?”

  Again her lips moved for a moment before she spoke. “I’ve only got a bathing-robe. It doesn’t make much difference.” A pause, then, “. . . I’m sorry if it makes you feel uncomfortable.”

  “Did you hear me say that?”

  “Of course.”

  “You heard it all, did you?” Well, then she must think I’m working in with Valera. Obviously she must. Yes, I’ve gone and underestimated Valera again. He’s a clever basket. “I thought you were taking a nap.”

  She looked up at him again. “One rests when one is allowed to,” she said. “I don’t think I’m particularly afraid. I’m not ‘face-conscious’, as you put it. We’ll continue as soon as you like.”

  Johnny shook his head. “I don’t use those methods myself.”

  “You merely recommend them?”

  “Moreno made a very thorough job of Carmen,” said Johnny savagely. “And Carmen was my housemaid. And so I want Moreno. And you’re in the way. Just what do you expect me to recommend? If you tangle with people like Moreno, you damned well deserve all you get.”

  He leaned forward, unbuckled the straps at her wrists and ankles. The Civil Guard took an anxious pace forward, stopped when the secretary raised her hand. “You can’t hide any poison capsules in a bathrobe,” said Fedora. “You may as well put it on again.”

  Elsa stood up, swayed, fell forward on to her hands and knees. Fedora made no attempt to catch her, though her face missed colliding with the arm of his chair by a matter of an inch. He looked down at her, curled up on the floor; at the dark cascade of her hair almost touching his shoes, at the rounded upward thrust of her raised hip and at the shadows beneath the tilt of her lifted breasts. In the chair, her nakedness had been evident and yet impersonal, untouchable; the suddenness with which, in falling to the floor, she had become entirely and provocatively a woman had taken him by surprise, had caught unexpectedly at his throat, leaving him with a nervous, quivering ache at the pit of his stomach. He watched her slowly recover, push herself up from the floor and regain her feet; his hands remained folded against his thighs, relaxed, unmoving. “Thank you,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “For not touching me.”

  “I know how it is,” said Johnny gently. “After this sort of a session, one isn’t in the mood. I know. Eve had some myself.”

  She stood in front of him beside the chair, her whole
being concentrated on the simple act of staying on her feet. Fedora picked up the crumpled blue bathrobe from the floor, handed it to her; watched her as she struggled her way into it. She didn’t wince, he noticed, when the rough material brushed the raw burns on her upper arms and shoulders; she was tough, all right. But that he had guessed from the first . . There,” she said, turning back towards him. “Perhaps now you’ll feel more at ease.”

  Fedora smiled. “I doubt it,” he said. “You were right. It doesn’t make much difference.”

  She sat down again in the chair, crossing her legs with an attempted casualness that Johnny admired. “Now,” he said. “Now tell me about Moreno.”

  “I don’t know anyone called Moreno. Sorry.”

  “Then I’ll tell you about him,” said Fedora. He spoke heavily, but a little more evenly than before. “Moreno is a man who has killed four people in two days. Four innocent people, if that word means anything. He’s clever but he’s not normal. He’s a psychopath. And whatever game it is that your people and our people are playing, he shouldn’t be allowed any part in it. That’s how I feel about him, anyway.” Elsa was watching him intently now. “Who are your people, exactly?”

  “To tell the truth, I’m on my own in this. Let’s say the Spaniards, then.”

  “Someone told me your father was a Spaniard.”

  “So he was.”

  “And your mother was English?”

  “No. Irish.”

  “All the same, you have to be English.” Elsa sighed. “Only the English ever talk of playing games.”

  “Just a way of putting it,” said Johnny, “like any other.”

  “My parents were German Jews and the Nazis murdered them both. That wasn’t a game.”

  “My parents were murdered, too,” said Fedora. “By the Falangist police, in the Civil War. In a room probably not very different to this one.”

  A moment’s silence. Then the girl said, with a certain contempt, “What sort of a man does that make you?”

  “I sometimes wonder,” said Johnny.

  “I don’t understand. You ought to be on our side. Not theirs.”

  The secretary coughed. Fedora looked round. He had almost forgotten about her. But there she was, her ballpoint pen sliding silently over the pages of her notebook. “Our side? Their side?” he said, returning his attention to Elsa. “Now you’re talking as though it were a game. You haven’t got a side, not any more. You’ve been arrested. That makes it just a matter of which of them gets you first. Hadn’t you thought of that?”

  “Yes. I had. I’d been thinking that it might be. . . “Yes?” said Johnny. This time, he didn’t lean forward.

  “. . . Moreno.”

  WELL, it won’t be Moreno,” said Valera. “It won’t be Moreno because the damned ship’s sailed. Without a clearance. So we’ve put the wind up them anyway, which is what we were planning to do, and now I’m just hoping to hell we can keep a tag on them. Anyway, no need to worry about the other thing; we don’t make a habit of losing our prisoners, once we’ve got them. Not her nor you, either .. Mister Fedora.”

  THREE men were at that moment walking down Larios in Malaga. They had little in common, in so far as outward appearance went: two were middle-aged, while the third was aged about twenty and looked rather younger. One of the elder men wore a moustache and long Valentino sideburns; the other had bushy eyebrows and a mournful expression. All three were dressed in dark suits of more than ordinarily good quality, though the boy wore no tie.

  They entered a bar at one side of the Avenida and talked for a while in low-pitched voices. They were all expert and conscientious workmen, and—although they had been well briefed already—certain points of detail remained to be ironed out amongst themselves. Their conversation lasted for perhaps twenty minutes. At the end of it, the boy got up and went out.

  The other two men finished their beers and talked about boxing until a car drew up outside; then they, too, left the bar. The car was a Renault Dauphine, almost new but not especially noticeable. It carried a Sevilla numberplate. They climbed into the back and the boy at once drove off, turning sharp right to mount the bridge and take the Marbella road.

  Nobody said anything further until they had passed Fuengirola village. Then, near the old castle, the car pulled into the side of the road and stopped. The boy got out, unloaded a heavy leather case from the boot. He passed it through to the men in the back seat, went back to the driving-seat and set the car going again.

  The man with the bushy eyebrows opened the bag, began to fit together the component parts of a Sten machine carbine. The man with the moustache took the grenades from the side pocket and primed them carefully, later unbuttoning his jacket and clipping them securely to his belt. The hands of both men moved smoothly, automatically, with casual efficiency. They were well-practised. Until two months ago, they had been fighting against the French in Algeria; tonight they had been given a new and different target, but their methods would be much the same as always. The car drove on, meanwhile, through the pine woods. The men in the back seat lit cigarettes, and after a while the interior of the car began to reek of the softly pungent smell of marijuana.

  The boy drove on without looking round. He didn’t need the help of hashish or of anything else. His name was Mariano. He had melting brown eyes and steady hands and he was good with both the pistol and the knife. Moreover, he knew that he was good. He alone of the three was something more than a conscientious workman; he had pride. He smoked four cigarettes a day, one after each meal; when, as sometimes happened, he didn’t eat, he didn’t smoke either. He never drank intoxicants and he never took drugs. He didn’t much like women. He was a good boy, was Mariano.

  He was inclined to be contemptuous of his companions. He knew them hardly at all, but he knew well enough the lines on which they would be thinking. Their thoughts would always move in grooves, along Party lines of military orthodoxy. Straightforward textbook methods, tried and trusty; find, fix and strike; the sudden, irresistible application of violence to a chosen end, the unimaginative trial of strength. First the slow, cautious approach, localising the enemy; then the grenades in through the window—one, two—and the sharp sickening blasts; then the door kicked open, the quick unflustered dart to left or right, the staccato rattle of the tommy-gun, the room suddenly stinking of cordite, full of smoke, splattered with blood. . . . That was the military mind for you, thought Mariano scornfully. His own methods were rather different. Flitting from room to room as silently as a ghost, the four-inch blade flickering briefly with each noiseless thrust. No stabbing, no needless expenditure of energy; just slipping the blade into place, resting the arm’s weight against it. A gasp, maybe, and a jerk; but that would be all. Discreet, effortless. Instead of that, Chicago stuff. Hand grenades, machine pistols, shouts, screams, bodies contorted in death. It would be effective, of course. The operation would be successful. But all so unnecessary. Mariano’s upper lip curled slightly as he pushed the Renault up the final rise that took them into Marbella village; and he glanced once, quickly, down at his wristwatch. Half past eight, and twilight beginning to fall. Dead on time. He spun the wheel, turned the car towards the hills, up the narrow road to Ojen.

  They were talking now, the two on the back seat. He didn’t bother to listen. He lifted his right hand from the wheel, twisted his fingers up towards his wrist and felt the tips touch the bone handle of the knife strapped to his forearm. The curl of his lips became happier. He drove on, listening absently to the whisper of the tyres on the dry asphalt. The mountains grew around him.

  The men behind him became silent. Ten minutes later, he heard cloth rustle as the man with the moustache leaned forward.

  “Craches-nous ici, Mariano, lei a la gauche ”

  “D’ac,” he said.

  He let the car’s speed die away slowly, as though he were strangling it. A space opened up between a pine clump and a patch of waste; he nosed the car into it, braked, cut off the lights. For a few more mo
ments, everything was still. Then a man in grey oilstained trousers came from the trees to stand beside the car, stooping down to peer cautiously into the windows.

  “From Malaga?”

  “That’s right,” said the man with the moustache. “From Malaga.”

  “Good. She’s still there.”

  “How many policemen?”

  “Four. And two in plain clothes. And there’s a woman— some kind of a secretary.”

  “Two in plain clothes. We know about those,” said the man with the moustache. His Spanish was execrable, but fluent enough. “Brigada Seer eta. Cochinos, cabrdnes. How far away?”

  “Maybe a kilometre. Just over the crest.”

  “All right. Let’s go, then.”

  They got out of the car and looked around them. It was darker in the shadow of the mountains, and the early stars were out in the evening sky. All about them was a vast silence; the man with the bushy eyebrows moved uneasily from one foot to the other. “C’est hien tranquille, merde, ici.”

  “Oui. Sommes en banlieu, quoi?” The man with the moustache patted gently at the bulges inside his jacket. “We’ll liven things up a bit before long. Come on, then. Vamonos.”

  The four of them moved off over the hard, warm earth, Mariano in the rear. He could smell the scent of the pine resin and of the distant sea; the shapes of great rocks formed about him as he walked, boulders like sleeping animals. At the top of the rise the land fell away to the right, and he saw quite near the lights of the farmhouse. They paused for a moment, then moved on again.

  He took the pistol from its shoulder holster and worked the sleeve, pumping a round up into the firing chamber. The metal slid smoothly into place, the safety-catch went forward with a barely audible click. He held the pistol in his hand as they emerged from the boulders and came to a halt in the shadows, the building now no more than a hundred yards away.