Message From Malaga Read online

  “And what about your friend who is now sitting at your table? How do you get away from him?”

  “He will be delighted to spend a couple of hours with Tavita. Who wouldn’t?”

  “She tells me his visit has been long planned. True?”

  “Yes.” So, he had actually questioned Tavita about Ian. But of course he would. Ian was the unexpected, the unknown factor.

  “Is he connected with the CIA?”

  “No.”

  “Tavita said something about your Space Agency. She was vague, of course. And our time together was brief. Ferrier—isn’t that his name?—what is his job there?”

  “Something to do with tracking.”

  “Tracking? You mean keeping an eye on the things that are flying overhead? What does he do—simply record them, or analyse?”

  “It is none of your damned business. Come on, let’s move. I’m late.”

  “So he is in some kind of space intelligence? In a way, it is my business. Such a man has a trained mind. The type who asks questions and—even more dangerous—finds answers.”

  “He isn’t in your line of work,” Reid said sharply. “Keep him out of this. And Tavita, too.” And that, my friend, is why you are leaving El Fenicio tonight—before tomorrow, certainly.

  “That would be difficult. I stay close to Tavita until you produce action from Washington. She is my insurance.”

  Blackmail? “I wouldn’t threaten Tavita, if I were you. She won’t be pushed.”

  “She wouldn’t denounce me.”

  “You’d better not risk that if she finds out you are a Soviet agent—”

  “She won’t. I am simply a communist who is travelling through Spain, and asks her for help. She will give it. She has to.”

  “Because of her brother?”

  “She owns me two debts. One is her brother’s life; the other is my silence about his past.”

  “But you said he was a changed man.”

  “He is changed. But what he did in Málaga in 1936 can never be changed. If the Spanish government knew the full facts, they would not have welcomed him home. They would have brought him to trial.” Fuentes watched the younger man’s face. “That comes as a shock, does it? You didn’t know this when you helped Tavita’s brother get established back here? Disconcerting.”

  And highly dangerous, if all this was true. And if Fuentes had no real damning facts, he could invent them. “You’ll leave here before dawn,” Reid said. “And don’t worry about your safety. I shall make sure of that.”

  “You do not sound too happy about it.” Fuentes was highly amused. “And it is I who decide when I leave El Fenicio.” Reid turned abruptly to the door, unlocked it, looked out into the corridor to make sure it was empty. “Why the hell did you have to choose Málaga?” he asked bitterly, and thought he had the last word.

  But he was wrong. “Who would expect me to come back here?” Fuentes asked derisively. “Walk right into the arms of my oldest enemies?” He slipped past Reid, turned right, and vanished around the corner at the far end of the corridor.

  Reid picked up his jacket, made a last check of the room. If any of Tavita’s admirers came up here after the performance, they’d find everything as usual: pink lights softening white plaster walls decorated with clusters of photographs and bright artificial flowers, lush silk curtains, satin mats, a plethora of chairs. He went to the centre table to pick up his cigarettes and lighter. The lighter was gone.

  He drew a deep breath. The substitution had paid off. He had little fear of detection—the missing lighter was an exact duplicate, outwardly at least, of the one now safely in his pocket. But the whole thing had been so quick, so close, that he couldn’t even enjoy this small sense of triumph. Next time, he wondered, will I be able to outmanoeuvre Fuentes? I had luck tonight. Tomorrow?

  He left the placid room. Fuentes, by this time, would have skirted the courtyard, following the long narrow passage that ran on this level inside the blank wall behind the stage. The passage had no windows, no doors to other rooms. It was bleakly lit, bare of furniture except for a large wardrobe at its end. But inside the wardrobe was a concealed door. Once through that, Fuentes would be in the ancient warren of Esteban’s house.

  On impulse, Reid moved to the corner and made sure that Fuentes was not loitering. The passage was empty; the wardrobe was closed and innocent. Fuentes was safe on his own side of the courtyard, in a top-floor room where one small window looked out on a narrow street. It wasn’t the most luxurious accommodation, but it was well insulated from the rest of the house. On the floors below, Esteban’s usual guests were some not-too-successful bullfighter and his nondescript entourage. Esteban, like Tavita, was strong on old loyalties.

  Reid retraced his steps, headed back down the corridor. Old Magdalena was now in Tavita’s dressing-room, the shutters slightly ajar to let her hear the guitars and castanets and the deliberate rhythm of slow-moving heel beats. Her hands struck crisply together in perfect timing. Once, she too had danced the sequiriyas. She looked at him as he stopped briefly at the door. “Tell Tavita this one is important. Keep him safe. I’ll get him away from here by dawn.” She nodded. As he hurried on his way, her fingers began that sharp hard clapping again.

  Reid increased his pace. His guess was that Tavita was almost two thirds through the dance: he could hear Pablo’s feet now, stamping, dominating; then dominated in turn by Tavita’s own rattling heels. He’d have time yet to see the climax. Perhaps it would inspire him a little, give him some idea of how to combine the entertaining of Ian Ferrier with the necessary arrangements for Tomás Fuentes. How much could he be believed, that fellow? The hell was, one couldn’t afford to disbelieve him.

  Reid pulled on his jacket, straightened his tie, started down the stairs at a light run. Halfway, he stopped abruptly. He stared at a pile of wine barrels in the storage room below. A shadow had formed, was moving, came into the half-light at the foot of the staircase. It was the American called Lee Laner.

  Laner put a foot on the bottom step, looked up at Reid with a friendly face. He was slightly built, of ordinary height; a man in his mid-twenties, with hollow chest and hunched narrow shoulders. A tangle of long lank hair, indeterminate blond, sun-streaked, swept heavily across his brow and covered his ears. The eyes were bright and intense, and watchful. The grin on the gaunt face had widened, become even friendly. The voice was friendly, too. Gentle, hesitant, disarming. “Thought I’d look around, you know. Take some notes. I’m a writer. This place, you know, is weird, man. Really weird.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I got lost, you know—yes, got lost all over this place. Weird, man, weird.” He had mounted the first four steps, casually, as he talked; he halted there, one foot splayed slackly on the next tread. In one limp hand he held a small notebook; in the other, a heavy fountain pen. Casual and relaxed, that was Laner. He stifled a sneeze, exchanged the notebook for a crumpled handkerchief in his hip pocket, blew his nose. “Must be a thousand years old. You know. Beautiful, man, beautiful. And up there?” He gestured vaguely with the pen toward the landing, his eyes looking past Reid. Swiftly, as he swung his weight up one more step, his arm straightened. The pen’s direction shifted straight for Reid’s face.

  Reid moved, in the only direction there would be safety, swirling on the ball of his foot to vault sideways over the railing that edged the staircase. He felt its weak supports quiver under his weight, and then he was plunging down on to the floor below. It was an ugly fall, off balance because of his desperate speed, and he landed with a leg crumpled under him. There was bad pain in his arm, too, and a jarring sensation through his whole body as if everything had been shaken loose. But that was nothing compared to what he had evaded. On the staircase where he had stood, there was a small cloud of vapour from Laner’s spray gun. One mouthful of that, and he would have dropped dead. Of a heart attack, it would have been said.

  He lay motionless, his face set in a grimace as he tried not to groan, not to call out. He wondered if the s
ickness he felt was caused by the agony of his leg—of course he would have to fall on the leg that had been smashed once before—and did this coldness, suddenly clamped to his body, come simply from shock? Or as he had turned aside, up there, face averted, breath held, eyes closed even before he made the leap, had he even then been a fraction of a moment too late? Obviously he hadn’t caught much, if any, of the cyanide vapour or he wouldn’t be alive. But he was sick and cold and pain-racked, losing consciousness. He thought he heard footsteps. He couldn’t be sure. Perhaps someone had come down to stand over him, and then gone away. He couldn’t be sure. He clamped his teeth tightly, lay there, as still as death.

  3

  In the courtyard, the dance was exploding into a swirl of sound and movement. No one had heard Reid’s fall, far less Laner’s own light jump, back down the staircase, to the threshold of the open door. He drew into its side, keeping out of view from the nearest table, uncovered his mouth and nose, slipped his handkerchief along with the spray gun and its spent ampoule into his trouser pocket. He drew a deep breath of fresh clean air.

  Nothing to it, he thought. Nothing to it. I stood below the pig and fired upward. Couldn’t get a whiff even if I hadn’t had my face covered. He fell for it, he fell, all right. Sure it was a risk, but I’m here, and he’s flat on his face. Better check?

  Cautiously, Lane circled around the bottom stair, looked down at Reid but not too near. Reid might have carried some of that vapour with him. They said it disappeared at once; they said it left no trace. But they also said that before you fired that gun you had to take the antidote, a day before. A day before. As if you could always plan these things in advance, as if you were clairvoyant or something... Laner moved cautiously back to the door. You grab the chance, that’s what you do. It comes, and you grab it. That’s what I did. No pill in advance. And I’m feeling fine.

  But as an afterthought, he took the handkerchief out of his pocket and dropped it behind a barrel. And he searched in his breast pocket for the small square of gauze in which a little glass vial was concealed. He felt its hardness with his thumb, crushed it with his nail to release the vapour it contained. The post-antidote, as it were. But those made sense, left a man free to choose the right time, the right place. He held the piece of gauze close against his nostrils, inhaled deeply. It took him off-guard, nearly knocked him over. Sort of intensified smelling salts, that was all it was. He had just taken too deep a breath of it. He sniffed the gauze more cautiously, as he had been taught to do. Either it was a stronger brand than the vapour he had inhaled after practising the spray gun on the dogs, or he had been more shaken than he realised and breathed in too much too quickly too violently. His eyes and throat smarted, but his head was clear. He looked into the courtyard, judging his next step. And this was it, here in this crowded place with everyone mesmerised by the dancer on the stage. The woman up there was really turning them on. Her long black hair had escaped from its coil and fallen loosely down her back almost to her waist. Her heels rippled, smashed, beat, changed the rhythms as easily as the guitarists’ fingers. Her body circled, the flower dropped to the floor. Laner slipped out of the doorway, keeping close to the wall, moved along it slowly.

  Some people from the back tables had filtered along the sides of the courtyard, stood there trying to get a better view of the dancer’s intricate steps. They made an adequate screen for Laner as he worked his way along the wall. He stopped once or twice, briefly, to watch the stage and look interested in the show. He even called “Ole!” with the rest of them. There were only two things necessary in this game, he decided: put on an act and keep it going; choose your moment and use it. No one saw me, no one is paying me any attention, he thought in rising exhilaration.

  Gustaf Torrens and Ed Pitt were sitting silently in their back corner. Torrens was tense, worried. Pitt was bored; the black man wasn’t letting this music reach him, perhaps on principle. And he was still smarting under Torrens’ earlier rebuke about his language. Laner had been included in that rebuke, but Pitt was nursing it as his own. “Clean out your mouths!” the Swede had told them. “Cut out that talk when you’re around me.” Torrens was too damn square, thought Laner as he neared his table. Come to think of it, all those people back in Moscow were a bunch of squares. Too many regulations, too much preaching along with teaching. What did rules and orders have to do with ideals? I’ll match mine against his, any day, thought Laner as he nodded for Torrens and slid into the chair beside him. But much of his exhilaration was dying away. He hadn’t even dropped the piece of gauze at Torrens’ elbow, as he had meant to do. A nice touch of high drama. But not now. He gave Ed a small hand-clenched sign.

  “Cut that out!” said Torrens. “Where have you been?”

  “Looking around.” Laner’s exhilaration was gone. Cut that out, cut this out; that was Torrens’ way of handling things. I say nothing, Laner decided. Nothing at all. Not here, not now.

  “What have you been doing?” Torrens asked, his voice low and intense. His blue eyes were fixed in a hard stare.

  “Just proving a point.”

  Pitt was no longer bored. He knew as little as Torrens, but he knew Laner better and he sensed something interesting. “You made it, man?” he tried.

  Torrens was baffled. His worry changed into anger. “Made what?”

  Pitt’s grin split wide across his face. “Tell the man,” he mocked in his best Alabama-bound accent. “The man wants to know.”

  Torrens’ lips tightened, but apart from that he paid no more attention to Pitt “What are you holding in your hand?” he asked, reaching out so quickly that Laner was caught by surprise. Torrens unfolded the crumpled piece of gauze, looked at it in disbelief. Then he palmed it quickly, raised his hand to his nose, and sniffed the gauze to make sure. He dropped his hand into his trouser pocket. When it came back on to the table, it held only his pack of cigarettes. There was a long pause while he lit a cigarette. Pitt’s black eyes were sparkling with delight. “We’ll talk later,” Torrens said.

  “It’s a job you should have done yourself.” Laner was on the defensive and resented it. “What was the idea, anyway, of letting a pig live in this town, snooping around in comfort? I did you a favour.” He gave Pitt a knowing glance. “One less.”

  “Right on.” Pitt went into a sudden fit of silent laughter.

  “You complacent fools,” Torrens said. “You loose-brained—”

  “Shut it! Cool it, man, cool it. We travelled a long way without your help. We’ll start travelling a long way tomorrow.” Pitt’s low voice was contemptuous, the words spat out in a slow drawl. “Just you get us on board that ship. That’s your job, man. We’ll do ours.”

  Torrens looked at them both. “I said we’d discuss this later.” He smoked his cigarette slowly, stubbed it out thoughtfully. “We leave here as soon as this dance is over.” He made an effort and smiled for both of them. He sat there, controlling his anger, waiting for the final bars of music. Then he rose with the rest of the audience, applauding as enthusiastically as any of them. He signalled to the boy who had waited on their table, paid, applauded some more, then gestured with a nod toward the exit through the wineshop. “Slowly,” he told them, and his voice was pleasant and at ease. “No hurry.”

  Laner and Pitt recovered their cool, followed him leisurely. Pitt looked back at the stage where a new dance was starting. “They call that rhythm?” he asked superciliously. He shook his head pityingly.

  Laner felt good. The Swede had admitted, in his own way, that Laner had been smart; why else all this pleasant talk as they went through the wineshop? Was Torrens only making a smooth exit? Once they reached the street, would he start lecturing again? No, he was talking quietly, but in friendly fashion, about their plans. No questions, no inquisition. Yes, thought Laner, he has accepted what I did. He was impressed, all right. And why not? That was one for their textbooks.

  Torrens halted at the nearest corner. “Well, seeing that we lost our transportation, we’d better lo
ok as if we were saying goodbye here. I wonder where that friend of yours went?”

  “The beard? Back to the beach to play his guitar,” Pitt said.

  “Or driving nonstop to Madrid at ninety-miles an hour,” Laner said. “Don’t worry about him. He’s a five-year-old.” But why are we saying goodbye right on this street corner?

  “He had no idea of what you were?” Torrens asked. “It’s dangerous to leave loose threads—”

  “No loose threads. He’s just a spoiled baba,” Laner insisted. “He lost his temper and walked out. That’s always his solution. It’s kind of good to be free of him.”

  “We suffered him a long long way,” Pitt said. “Picked him up at American Express in Madrid.”

  “Why did you pick him up?”

  “Why not, man?” Pitt’s voice had a touch of contempt, disguising his resentment at being questioned. He looked away, studied the distant lights.

  Laner said quickly, “He had a car, he was coming south, he had a nice fat cheque from dear old mom right in his pocket. Good cover, you know. That’s what he was for us.”

  “And you had no idea that he was Reid’s son?” Torrens went on quietly, easily.

  “Never heard of pig Reid until we were driving and singing our way to Málaga. Never saw him until tonight.”

  “And what did young Reid say about his father?”

  “He just dropped a couple of sentences. He had a father who lived in Málaga, worked for the CIA. Big joke.”

  “And he was coming to see his father?”

  “Nah,” Laner said scornfully. “You don’t get the picture. He just wanted to have a look at his father. Because mom forbids it, I guess. He’s just a mixed-uptight kid.” Laner paused, enjoying his small joke. “Forget him, Torrens. He didn’t talk with his father. And he can’t—not now.” Laner paused again, hoping for some praise. He wasn’t being given any more reprimands, but Torrens might add a word of praise. Yes, Torrens was doing that in his own close-mouthed way. Torrens was holding out his hand. Laner took it, was given a warm shake, was astounded to feel a card left in his palm. Pitt was given the same treatment.