A Small Death in Lisbon

Chapter XVII

20th December 1941, Serra da Malcata, Beira Baixa, Portugal The mule train had split up. Abrantes had sent the younger man on ahead. He was cursing himself for overloading the mules but there was no sense in leaving just a few hundred kilos behind for another trip. Two of the mules had broken down, one lame, the other with a snapped girth. They'd tried to spread their loads out over the other mules, but it was impossible, they risked losing more. There'd been no let-up in the weather which had turned colder, bringing ice in the rain on the back of a fierce north-easterly, while black clouds crowded the hills.

Abrantes and one of his men, Salgado, unloaded the mules. While Abrantes worked on one mule's hoof, Salgado did his best to repair the torn leather strap of the other. They were down by the river when they heard them. Men on horseback. The guarda. One of the regular border patrols. The two men looked at the wolfram, over two hundred kilos of it, nearly one hundred and fifty thousand escudos' worth. They pinched their cigarettes out and calmed the animals.

Abrantes jerked his head at Salgado and they picked up a sixty-kilo sack of wolfram each and staggered to the edge of the freezing river. Salgado wanted to drop his in at the edge but Abrantes urged him out into the faster flowing water in the middle. They went back. Salgado couldn't manage the second one, so they picked up the next two sacks between them and waded out. They went back to the mules and coaxed them into the water and back out again. They could still hear the horses of the guarda closer now but not making progress, assessing the situation.

They didn't see them at first, the acoustics of the river valley playing games with the sound of the hooves on the rocks. The guarda appeared directly above them, their peaked caps silhouetted against the lighter distant sky. One of the men pointed down to their position. Two of the guardas unholstered their sidearms, the third took out a rifle from the back of his saddle. They shouted down to them. The rifleman levelled his weapon and aimed. Abrantes and his man put up their hands. The two guardas with pistols galloped along the ridge and came down into the gully. Their horses trod carefully over the rocks towards the two mules. The guardas dismounted. The man on the ridge lowered his weapon, stuck it back in his saddle, and reined his horse round to join the party down by the river.

The chefe da brigada approached the two men still with their hands up. He adjusted the grip on his gun in his gloved hand. He looked over the mules.

'What are you doing out here?'

'We've had trouble with the mules,' said Abrantes. 'This one's lame and the other's girth has broken.'

'Where's your cargo?'

'We don't have one.'

'Where have you come from?'

'Penamacor.'

'Where are you going?'

'Foios,' said Abrantes. 'We're taking the mules back to their owner. They've been used for work outside Penamacor.'

'What sort of work.'

'Transport.'

'Transporting what?' said the guarda, getting frustrated.

'You know, working around the mine.'

'Wolfram?'

'I think so. I think that's what it was.'

'Were you carrying any wolfram?'

'No, we're just taking the mules back.'

'You're wet. Up to your waist, you're wet.'

'We've just brought the animals across the river.'

The chefe pointed them over to the mules with his pistol. He slapped the mules' bellies, satisfied himself that they were wet. He went to the riverside. The guarda with the rifle arrived and dismounted. He tore a branch from a tree and joined the chefe. They walked along the side of the river dragging the branch along under the water.

It was late afternoon now and the light was failing. Abrantes didn't know where the guarda were from, but they had a two-hour ride ahead of them, wherever. The chefe and the rifleman talked out of earshot. They came back to their horses, all three mounted and rode back out of the river valley without exchanging another word.

Abrantes brought Salgado to his side and they sat and watched the river for some minutes, the rain driving into their backs. He took out his Walther P48 and checked that it was loaded and still dry. They made a fire. Abrantes worked on the mule's hoof again, Salgado repaired the girth. Night fell and they slept around the fire, having eaten some stale bread and ham.

In the morning they were up at first light wading into the river to bring out the sacks of wolfram. It took some time, as the river had swollen some more during the night, and they could only bring them out one at a time. They loaded the sacks on to the mules, giving the lame mule the lighter load. The rain had stopped, but the cold wind was still blowing and there was more on its way down from the meseta. They moved out of the gully and up on to the ridge to start the climb across the serra to Spain. That's where they were waiting for them, on the other side of the ridge.

The chefe de brigada raised his gun and told the men to stop. Abrantes fell to one side as if he'd taken a bullet in the side of the head. The chefe instinctively squeezed the trigger and Salgado open-mouthed took the bullet high in his chest where it shattered his clavicle. Salgado's mule took off. The second bullet hit Salgado in the stomach before he'd reached the ground.

Abrantes dragged his mule down to the floor, he tore the gun from his waistband and shot the chefe in the chest under the armpit. The man fell to the ground. The rifleman was trying to keep his rearing horse calm and Abrantes let off two shots, the second hitting him in the head. The third guarda wheeled his horse round in time to take a bullet between his shoulderblades. He fell backwards with a crack and his horse ran back down into the gully.

Abrantes tethered his mule and approached the chefe who was still breathing but bubbling blood out of his mouth. He shot him in the head. The rifleman was already dead. The third guarda had a broken neck. Abrantes went to Salgado who was lying on his back so flat that it was as if the ground had already claimed him. He was panting, scared and in pain, his lips and face white. Abrantes tore open the man's coat and shirt and saw the mash of bone and flesh at his clavicle and the dark hole in his stomach. Salgado whispered something. Abrantes put his head down to his mouth.

'I can't feel my legs,' he said.

Abrantes nodded at him, stood back and shot him in the eye.

The chefe's horse had stayed. Abrantes loaded two guardas on to it and took them down to the river. The other two horses were down there and he tethered them to a tree. He went back and loaded the chefe and Salgado. He filled the dead men's clothes with rocks and dragged each one of them out into the river.

Riding the chefe's horse he picked up his own mule and found Salgado's grazing in a hollow, still fully loaded with the wolfram. He spread the loads from the mules over the guardas ' horses and set off once more across the serra for Spain.

It was the afternoon of Christmas Eve and Felsen was still in Abrantes' house, waiting with his cleaned and loaded pistol. It had been a long wait and one he had not been prepared for. There was only so much time he could spend thinking about Abrantes, the missing wolfram, and how he was going to manoeuvre the Portuguese across the border and leave him out there, amongst the rocks and broom, with a bullet in his brain.

Occasionally Maria came in with coffee and then later food and drink. She wanted his attention but he wouldn't give it to her. Her presence irritated him. She triggered strands of thought that he'd rather have left dormant. He remembered a look she'd given him when they were burying the Englishman in the courtyard, and that would start him thinking about that afternoon in the old mine, and he'd have to shake his head and pace the room to get rid of it. He wondered why he'd had her now. How could it have been to spite Abrantes when he was going to kill the man anyway?

At that moment she'd appear again, and the word 'rape' would climb into his brain, and he'd remember the thrill as he rammed gently into her, her eyes darting afraid above the knuckles of his hand over her mouth. But then it had turned into something else. He'd felt that heel on his buttock. She'd come back the next night and it had sickened him. He told her to stay in the kitchen.

He thought about other women. He thought about the first woman. A girl who was supposed to be out in the field working for his father, but who he'd caught sleeping in the barn. She'd seen the way he'd looked at the flesh between her stocking top and skirt, and had let him have her to keep him quiet.

She was still the only one by the time he arrived in Berlin as a young man. A girl picked him up in the railway station. He'd thought that this was all part of the wild city life until he'd finished, and she'd demanded her money He'd asked, what for? And her lips had hardened to chisel tips. She'd called the pimp, who'd taken one look at the size of the farmboy and produced a blade. He'd paid and backed out and then heard the pimp beating the girl. Wilkommen in Berlin.

The weather closed in again over Amendoa. The rain raked die tiles. Felsen smoked and continued to amuse himself by trying to remember all the women he'd ever had in the right order. If he missed one he had to start again. It took him some time to work his way to Eva.

He didn't want to think about her, but in the near darkness of the house and after their brief encounter back in Berlin, he found he couldn't prevent his mind from drifting back over the shards of the affair like gunsmoke over a battlefield. He began to discern her slow dismanding of their relationship. From the moment she'd taken him back in after they'd split up over his accusation that she was acting, to that last sexual act in his apartment before the Gestapo removed him in the morning. But even in that period he could still find moments when they'd reconnected, and he could still feel that point of contact when their knees had touched under the table in the club only a few nights ago. He rubbed it as if it was still burning.

He lit a cigarette and the draught in the room battered the smoke this way and that, whipping it away to nothing. He asked himself if this was what love was-this strange acid in the stomach that burns a constant ulceration, this airlock in his pipes that could send shudders around his system and stop the flow of everything. But that was not how he'd ever heard love described and, like a man taking a short leap over a high drop to white water, he lurched to a sudden conclusion. He'd gone from intimacy to loss without ever having experienced love. It choked him and he had to pace the room again to try and free himself of the notion. He took long hard draws on his cigarette until he was dizzy with nicotine and he reeled to the door and let himself out into the blustery afternoon.

The wind gusted needles of sleet into his face. He breathed it in as if it would somehow clean him out. He had no idea how long he stood there. The afternoon had already darkened with the weather and his face had instantly numbed. The only way he knew that there was ice in the rain was the way it spiked his tongue.

When finally he turned to go back into the house he saw that he wasn't alone in the street. Some way off two figures approached, heads bowed against the wind. Felsen came level with the steps up to the house. One figure split away and headed for the side of the house as if for cover. In profile now, he saw it was a mule. The other figure came doggedly forward and he knew from the gait and the hat that it was Abrantes. He felt the hardness of the gun in his waistband. He unbuttoned his coat in the middle. The figure didn't hesitate until he was about five metres away.

Felsen's fingers flipped open another button. Hands appeared from the clothing of the man opposite. Felsen slid his hand into the opening of his coat and gripped the handle of the gun. Abrantes' left hand came up and removed the scarfing from his face. The right hand hung limply. When it happened it was quick, too quick for Felsen to move. Abrantes covered the five metres in a fraction of a second, threw his arms around the German and smacked two hands on his leather back.

'Bom Natal,' he said. Happy Christmas.

Abrantes guided Felsen back up the stairs and into the house. He shouted for Maria and told her to take care of the mule. She disappeared out of the back of the house. They went into the parlour room and Abrantes threw logs on to the fire. Felsen's face came back to life, raw and aching. Abrantes went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of aguardente and two glasses. He poured the liquor and they drank to Christmas. He was happier than Felsen had ever seen him.

'I heard you were in Foios,' he said, as if Felsen had dropped round there for a drink and found nobody in.

'The chefe at Vilar Formoso said we could be in for a hard time. I thought I'd take a look at the mules.'

'And you saw that I'd been running them for months.'

'Months?'

'I've got more than fifty tons over there.'

'Where?'

'In a warehouse in Navasfrias.'

'You should have told me. I've had a hard time explaining the shortfall in Berlin.'

'I'm sorry for that. I was only reacting to rumours.'

'Which rumours?'

'That now you've invaded Russia and that campaign is… continuing, Dr Salazar is not so concerned about an invasion here. The Germans are too stretched, they say.'

'You remember the Corte Real going down in October?'

'And the Cassequel,' said Abrantes. 'The Cassequel was one of our best ships, seven thousand tons.'

'So you don't think this is a Lisbon problem?'

'I think we should go to Vilar Formoso tomorrow,' said Abrantes. 'Take the chefe another Christmas present.'

'I was there only a few days ago.'

'They have short memories,' he said.

'And we could cross over and take a look at the product in Navasfrias,' said Felsen. 'Is it secure?'

'It's secure.'

Secure meant men with shotguns. Felsen suddenly saw himself lying amongst the rocks and broom with his face blown apart, but he couldn't back down from Abrantes now. He nodded and checked Abrantes, but all he saw was weathered skin stretched over large bones with eyes concentrated on the task of pouring more alcohol.

What was it Poser had said to him, or someone else in the legation, about the Portuguese? Two things. The first, that there wasn't a law in Portugal that couldn't be got around, and the second, was that the Portuguese never came at you head-on. They got you looking straight ahead and then they stuck you from behind. It had been Poser. He remembered pointing it out to him that this, of course, would never happen in Germany and the Prussian had walked off sick of his irony.

The two of them ate a Christmas dinner of a large hen and some roasted bacalhau. They drank two bottles of pre-war Dao which left the warm, rounded taste of a less complicated summer at the back of the mouth.

Felsen went to bed early and smoked and drank aguardente from his metal flask in the dark. He kept his gun under his pillow. After an hour he went across the courtyard and listened at the door of the house with the gun dangling from his hand. He heard Abrantes' familiar grunt and Maria's strange hiss.

In the morning he drank coffee and smoked a cigarette and ignored the stone-faced girl. He had a problem. He didn't want to cross the border with Abrantes and walk into a team of shotguns in Navasfrias. At nine o'clock, this problem was solved by a driver who'd come up from Guarda with a telegram from Lisbon: Dutch and Australian troops invade E. Timor. Return to Lisbon immediately. Poser.

He liked Poser's use of the word 'invade'. He knew that Salazar would see it exactly like that, an invasion of Portuguese sovereignty.

'Is there a problem?' asked Abrantes, suddenly anxious.

'Our border difficulties are over,' said Felsen. 'The Allies have made a mistake. I have to go to Lisbon now. You will arrange for the one hundred and nine tons you have stored in Navasfrias to go to the compound in Ciudad Rodrigo and no more smuggling until I authorize it.'

'One hundred and nine tons?'

Felsen gave him the calculations. The numbers flickered through Abrantes' head, his face impassive and grey as hoar frost from not shaving. At that moment Felsen realized what Abrantes had been doing. He hadn't been stealing, but playing the price difference over the border. Selling high in Spain to come back and buy cheap in Portugal and pocket the difference. But he'd been caught out, the price in Spain had dropped, maybe there were no buyers at the time. He didn't have the money to replace the stock in Foios. All he could do was try to recoup the situation by underestimating the tonnage he'd smuggled. The good mood of last night had been the start of a bluff, a man playing for time to control his losses.

'When do you want the product moved?' asked Abrantes, anxiety showing through.

'It's supposed to be in last year's accounts which should be finalized by the end of January.'

Felsen went into the kitchen. Maria was there holding her baby, looking pathetic. He strode past her, crossed the courtyard and packed his clothes.

In the back of the Citroen he wrote a note to the manager of the compound in Ciudad Rodrigo and gave it to the driver. As they drove down the hill they caught up with a procession. There were men he recognized carrying a body wrapped in cloth and women walking behind. He dropped the window.

'Who has died?' he asked.

The men didn't answer. A woman spoke up.

'It is Alvaro Fortes,' she said, 'and this is his widow and son.'

Felsen blinked and told his chauffeur to drive on. 27th December 1941, German legation, Lapa, Lisbon 'Salazar,' said Poser, who hadn't referred to him as a cheating Arab for over twenty-four hours now, 'was in such a lather… still is… about the invasion, that we thought it expedient to open our wolfram negotiations for 1942 immediately. It's been a marvellous sight. Sir Ronald Campbell, the British ambassador, has been staggering about like a concert pianist with broken fingers. The good doctor has spent the whole year in a state of irritation with the British, who've put an arm around his shoulder and whispered the old alliance in his ear and taken advantage of his credit, while with the other they blockade him and sweep troops into Dili. We, on the other hand…'

'…have been sinking his ships.'

'True. Minor, but necessary, corrective measures or should we say reminders of his neutral status.'

'As far as Salazar's concerned, Christmas happens once a year and he gets all the presents. What are you offering?'

'Steel,' said Poser, brimming with confidence. 'Steel and fertilizer. We'll be making an offer in two weeks' time. Salazar will give us guaranteed export licences for 3000 tons and, once we have that, these other negotiations about who will get what from the Metals Corporation will be immaterial. We will get what we want and the British can learn about sweating for 1942.'

'And do I continue my operations?' asked Felsen.

'Of course you do, unless you receive orders to the contrary. I think a more clandestine approach might be in order, but you should have an open field.'

'Where's this intelligence from?'

'Not intelligence, just an observation about British character. You probably don't know much about cricket, do you? Nor do I. But I'm told it's all about fair play. They'll play by the book and report all your indiscretions to Salazar like the good boys they are. And Salazar… if we keep stroking his fur the right way, will ignore them.'

Poser took one of Felsen's offered cigarettes, lit it and stuck it in his prosthetic hand. He sipped his coffee, licked his lips and applied his handkerchief to them as if they were sore. He sat back patting his chest as if that was where he had his winnings.

'Is that it?' said Felsen. 'You brought me all the way down from the Beira just to tell me how brilliant you are?'

'No,' said Poser, 'just to smoke some of your cigarettes. I like the brand.'

Felsen checked him over.

'Yes,' confirmed Poser, 'I've been learning from you, Felsen. A joke. A rare thing in diplomatic circles.'

'When are you and Salazar getting married, Poser?'

'The wedding, I fear, is still some way off,' he said, grinning.

'Happy Christmas, Poser.'

'And to you, Felsen,' said the Prussian, raising his prosthetic hand in a half salute. 'And by the way, there's someone to see you in my office.'

For an irrational moment, caught up in Poser's good humour, Felsen thought that it would be Eva. But he was distracted by the smell of burning in his nostrils and Poser tearing the cigarette out of his prosthetic hand, the glove burnt through and ruined.

'Shit,' said Poser.

'Another rare thing in diplomatic circles?' asked Felsen.

In Poser's office, sitting with his back to the door and his feet up on the window sill, looking out at the weak, winter sunshine filtering through the Phoenix palms in the gardens, was Gruppenfuhrer Lehrer.

'Heil Hitler,' said Felsen. 'What a surprise, Herr Gruppenfuhrer, what a wonderful surprise.'

'Don't waste any of that Swabian charm on me, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.'

'Sturmbannfuhrer?'

'You've been promoted. So have I. Now I'm Herr Obergruppenfuhrer if you can manage that. And as from next March we'll be operating under the auspices of the Wirtschaft-und Verwaltungshauptamt or the WHVA if that means anything to you?' said Lehrer, who paused for a sign. 'Clearly not.'

'Now we get promoted for failing to achieve our targets…'

'No, for getting close to impossible ones. The circumstances have not been easy, I know, and you haven't had full control of the campaign, but despite all this you've made considerable progress and more important, the Reichsfuhrer Himmler has been able to shine in front of the Fuhrer and annoy Fritz Todt. The latter being the most gratifying.'

'I can only thank you for coming all this way to confer the honour, sir.'

Lehrer whipped his feet off the sill and swivelled his chair to face Felsen. Promotion had worked on him, there was a greater and harder authority emanating from under the black eyebrows.

'Do you know what temperature it is in Russia?'

'Now?' asked Felsen, unnerved. 'Well below zero, I imagine.'

'Minus twenty if you're in Moscow. Minus thirty if you're out in the wilderness somewhere… and it's going down not up. It's not so easy to remember that in plus fifteen with the blue sea and the Estoril casino and the champagne…'

'The blankets…'

'Forget the damned blankets. The quality was complete shit anyway. I'm glad, you know this, I'm glad the British pre-emptive campaign was so successful. Now they've got all those blankets rotting in their own warehouses instead of them stinking out ours.'

'And Poser seemed so cheerful.'

'What you don't know about Poser is that he has a prosthetic head. Nothing in there is real,' said Lehrer. 'You know who they've got fighting our boys out there on the eastern front?'

'Russians?'

'Siberians. Flat-faced, slit-eyed Siberians. Those people, they sleep in the summer, it's too warm for them. They only wake up when the temperature drops below minus ten. That is their operating temperature. Our troops are still in their summer tunics. They haven't even got gloves. And they're faced with those barbarians who dance because it's so beautifully cold, who rub rancid pig fat on to their bayonets so that when they stick our half-frozen soldiers the wound will be hopelessly infected and they'll die in agony. If their screams could carry as far as Berlin we'd be out of there tomorrow.'

'Why are you telling me this?'

'The reward for failure is a posting to the Russian front. What does that tell you?'

'We are not experiencing total victory.'

'The real winter has just started, but it's been damn cold for two months. Our supply lines are stretched over thousands of miles. The Russians have retreated and left us nothing. They've razed everything to the ground. There isn't a single thing we don't have to transport. You know what we do with our Russian prisoners of war? We stick them behind barbed wire and watch them starve and freeze to death. We can't give them anything. We can't supply ourselves. Grim, is an unimaginably slight adjective for the situation out there.'

'The first half of the liverwurst sandwich?'

'Have you been out in the Beira with your head up a pig's arse? What happened on 7th December?'

'Pearl Harbor.'

'We already have the makings of the sandwich.'

'The way we see it here, we're twenty-five kilometres from Moscow. We're in the suburbs, for God's sake. The Americans are on the other side of the Atlantic. They've still got to invade Europe. Let's be reasonable, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer.'

'I'm hopeful, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, but we must have contingency,' said Lehrer. 'Now… that peasant you work with up there in the Beira.'

'Abrantes.'

'Can he read or write?'

'No,' said Felsen, 'but he has a signature.'

'Is he under control?'

'He's under control,' said Felsen, thinking how close it had been. 'As long as he's making money he's happy. He does well enough out of the wolfram cleaning companies we set up.'

'This is a different thing altogether. Those cleaning companies are nothing, they don't have significant assets. You remember what I said to you at the beginning of the year… about private thinking.'

Their eyes connected and achieved an understanding.

'In the event of unlikely disaster…' Felsen allowed the sentence to drift.

'What I have in mind…' said Lehrer, 'we're going to open a bank, a Portuguese-owned bank.'

'Portuguese-owned?'

'If it comes to it… the completion of the sandwich, I mean. I can assure you the Allies will be vengeful. No German assets will survive in Europe. This bank will be Portuguese-owned with significant, but very discreet, German shareholders.'

'And who are they going to be?'

'You and me for the moment,' said Lehrer. 'This is our private enterprise. No one, and certainly not that Prussian idiot, should know about it.'

'Is this an SS thing?'

'In a manner of speaking,' said Lehrer, trying to get a clearer reading from Felsen. 'But I hope you understand the importance of Abrantes in this. He must be reliable… he must be a friend.'

'He's a friend,' said Felsen, holding Lehrer's adamantine look.

'Good,' said Lehrer, easing himself back into his chair. 'Now all we need is a name. A good Portuguese name. What does "felsen" translate as in Portuguese?'

'Rochedo rocha.'

'Rocha. That sounds reliable, but I think we should have something big and encompassing to go with it.'

'The sea is probably the most important Portuguese icon,' said Felsen.

'What's "sea" in Portuguese?'

'Mar.'

'No, no. Mar e Rocha sounds like a bad restaurant.'

'Oceano e Rocha?'

'I think that could be it. Banco de Oceano e Rocha,' said Lehrer, looking out into the gardens. 'I'd put my money in that.'