I said: “His kind of man. In his world, everyone’s against him, it’s important to remember that, and human life is the cheapest thing there is. It just doesn’t matter a damn to him. The only thing that worries me, because it doesn’t make sense, is why he waited so long. He was seen on the street, Loveless, more than a week ago, and yet it wasn’t till tonight that he made his move, a quick, easy, and callous move to remove someone who could just possibly stop him from doing what he came here to do by merely knowing that he was here. Why did he wait so long? It’s a worrisome question because it doesn’t make sense at the moment, it’s not logical. It’s not even likely. But there’ll be a reason for that too, somewhere, and it’ll turn up sooner or later.”
The car was turning steeply up the bill towards Sintra, the road twisting and turning as it wound slowly up towards the little town that Lord Byron called “a glorious Eden,” winding in sharp hairpin bends with a splendid panorama of the shimmering sea at every curve as it climbed up the edge of the Sierra. There was the sound of muted music coming to us as we passed a low and rambling building that hung on the edge of a steep escarpment, with grapevines hanging over the trelliswork of its patio. In the headlights we caught a glimpse of white-jacketed waiters serving drinks there, at little tables under the trees, and there was a sign in ornamental tiles, in the azulejos the Portuguese love so dearly: RESTAURANTE ALENTEJANO. I turned and stared at it as we drove slowly past, a charming, secluded nightclub tucked into a fragrant corner of the hills.
We climbed higher and higher. A poet’s refuge, this. Robert Southey described it as “the most blessed corner of all the habitable globe,” and maybe he was right at that. The red volcanic rock was covered along the roadside with hanging moss, and the moon was shining on the sea far below us. The little white villas were bright in the car’s headlights as I got to my knees to see where we were going, with bright bougainvillea and honeysuckle trailing over them.
Hearing me move, Pereira turned round and smiled. He said: “Just a short way now, Senhor Cain, a house where you will be safe. I am sorry it should be so uncomfortable for you in the back there, but it is better no one sees you, no? I would have brought my good car, it is more comfortable, but better we play the masquerade, is it not? And in the house...in the house, you will like it much more.”
We turned off almost immediately, and passed through a pair of wrought-iron gates set in high stone walls. Someone swung them to behind us, a shadow moving among the trees and vines with scarcely more than the glow of his pipe in the darkness to show that he was there. We drove for a hundred yards through high laurel bushes; and found a small white house with a tiled portico and a faint light burning beside it.
And Fenrek was there. He was even thinner than usual, and pale and drawn, and as I got down from the car and shook hands, I said: “What the hell are you doing out of the hospital, Fenrek?”
He said: “Chasing you. I had to find out what it is that you’re up to.” He showed no surprise at all when Astrid stepped out of the car, but kissed her briefly and let her feel his forehead in a proprietary sort of way. She clicked her tongue at him and he paid no attention at all. We stood for a moment looking out across the dark hills to the still sea. Down there; far away, the waves were washing on the Baia do Guincho; the Shriek Bay so called because of the howl of the southwest wind that blows such havoc at the Bocca, or perhaps because of the Shriek Bird that’s supposed to come there once in a while, though no one’s ever seen it.
He said at last, impatiently: “Well, let’s go inside, shall we? And then you can tell me, Cain, just what the hell’s going on.”
I said: “A nice house, who owns it?”
He turned away with an exaggerated kind of vagueness. “I’d introduce you to the owner, but she’s not here for the moment.” The secret mistress he was supposed to have tucked away here somewhere? I wondered; I just thought it would be nice to meet her one day.
The door closed behind us, and Fenrek turned to Pereira. He said, looking at his watch: “You’d better get home now, and thank you.”
“If you need me again, Colonel.”
“Of course. Again, thank you.”
Pereira made a little bow to Astrid, took her hand and: kissed it, accepted my thanks, smiled a cheerful goodbye, and was gone.
We went on into the small living room. A fire was burning in the grate, a wood fire of eucalyptus logs; it was cold up here in the mountains, and Fenrek went to a tall chest of beautifully carved chestnut that might have been made in Belgium at the turn of the fifteenth century, opened it, produced a bottle of cognac and three snifters, set them out on the small oak coffee table that I thought might be from the period at the end of Louis XII’s reign, just before the French craftsmen switched from oak to walnut for their prized pieces. He sat back in a red velvet armchair, indicated the glasses, and said:
“All right, do us the honors. For the moment at least, this house is yours.”
I said: “I like it.” It was a very feminine sort of place, with a minimum of furniture, all of it fine. A splendid carpet on the floor, a Tournai from Belgium, was surrounded by a border of highly-polished oak parquet, and one wall was entirely covered with a sixteenth century tapestry from Mortlake, woven in wool and silk. Opposite, the wide window was covered with velour drapes in an unusual and striking shade of dusty rose. A small bookcase in a corner, carved oak from Spain, was full of books; to my surprise they were about classic cars, mostly in French; I made a mental note to look at them more closely when I got a moment.
I said, wandering around: “If this is my house, can I take that Mortlake back to San Francisco with me?”
“No.”
“I thought not. Have you read this book on the Bugatti? It’s been out of print for nearly fifty years now.”
He said impatiently: “Will you sit down, Cain? And I want to know all about sour cream factories—what they’ve got to do with an imitation red tide.”
“Ah, good. That means you’ve found what I hoped you’d find. A long shot, maybe, but this is a long shot sort of operation, isn’t it? And we’re pulling it off all the way along the line. A nasty, dirty business.” I couldn’t get out of my mind the image of the old General ‘So much I can do for my country,’ he had said.
I poured three drinks and handed them round, then sat close to Astrid on the velvet sofa, stretched out my legs, and took a long slow sip of the cognac. There’s nothing like a good cognac to make the world seem sane when we all know it’s mad. Astrid curled up with her legs underneath her and watched me. There was a puzzled, hesitant look in her eyes.
I said: “First of all, I’m afraid General Queluz is dead.”
He stared. “What...?”
“Left hanging in the lagosteria near the Bocca do Inferno. At nine o’clock, I’d say he’d been dead about two hours. I’m afraid I had to leave him there, for reasons which will be obvious to you.”
Fenrek went to the telephone and picked it up, I said sharply: “No! Let him be found in the course of time, it’s the only way to play it. A good man murdered, and we’ve got to leave him there till someone else finds him. I don’t want it known that we weren’t murdered too, not yet.”
I saw him throw a quick and worried glance at Astrid.
She said gently: “I was in good hands, Uncle.”
He put down the phone and stood there, looking at me and waiting. I said:
“Off the top. We went to dinner with the General tonight, and found he’d been called out to the lagosteria by a man named Nacimento, the man who first reported to him that Major Loveless, the man I’m looking for, was here. A report that resulted, as you know, in my being called here by the General to find him. We wanted to clear the General’s name so that he could make a comeback.”
Fenrek said glumly: “He’d have made a damn fine Minister too.”
I said: “Only, Nacimento was on duty at the Castelo São Jorge and didn’t make that call or cause it to be made. Obviously, there was trouble about to happen, and I hoped we’d be in time. We weren’t. I’m afraid I took Astrid along because it occurred to me that if an attempt on his life were in fact being made, and if it failed, another might be made at his house. The house could have been dynamited, for example, and I wanted to make sure that Astrid was safe. I thought she’d be safer if she stayed with me. Perhaps I was wrong, but there it is.”
Fenrek said nothing. He sipped his cognac and waited.
I said: “We found him hanging there, and also found Major Loveless, with two of his men. They forced us into the lobster traps—you know them?—”
“I know them.”
“—and left us there to die. High tide would have seen to that in a matter of less than an hour, and we’d never have been found, for obvious and rather disgusting reasons. We got away, called you, and here we are.”
Fenrek took a deep breath and sat down again. He said: “All right, a couple of questions. How do you know it was Loveless?”
“There’s a good description in the file the General gave me.”
“Two other men? Who are they?”
