He was quite offended, which I’d rather expected. But I had to know. He said tartly: “You are presupposing an extraordinary degree of irresponsibility in the army, Senhor Cain. And we don’t have a bacteriological arsenal, in any case.”
“Not even for Angola?”
“Emphatically not,” he said smoothly—and there was no gentleness apparent now. “It’s only the major powers who are building up arsenals of these terrible weapons. We’ve neither the ability, nor the wish to do so.”
“I just wondered. And it’s Fenrek’s problem anyway, not mine.”
He wasn’t so easily fooled. He said slowly, watching me very carefully: “Though why Interpol should be interested in what is surely a medical question, I can’t imagine. Can you?”
The way to acquire knowledge, sometimes, is to exchange what you know for something you don’t know.
I said: “There was a similar case in the Farne Islands, off the coast of Scotland three months ago. Mussel poisoning that turned out to be something else, and they never found out exactly what the something else was. Eight or nine sudden deaths, and one of them not so sudden. One man, a truck driver, lived long enough to make one cryptic comment that brought the police, and then Interpol, into it. He said: ‘It’s all my own fault, if I’d left the stuff where it was...,’ and, then, he lay down and died. Same symptoms. But everyone wanted to know, what stuff? They found out that the driver was the kind of man you hired if you wanted stolen goods moved from one place to another, with no questions asked. It seemed to indicate enough evidence of some illegality or other to justify criminal investigation. So, when much the same sort of thing happened here, Colonel Fenrek came to take a look. Just a watching brief, really, while he took a much-deserved holiday. There’s already an Interpol man here who’s looking into it—banker, I believe. Fenrek knew I’d just arrived to work for you, and came to say hello. Then we learned that Astrid, who’s a trained nurse, had scurried down to the beach to see what she could do.”
“An impetuous young woman.”
“Yes, indeed. But we stopped her in time. What’s the African population in Lisbon?”
He shrugged. “Who knows. We don’t keep records of that sort. If they’re not from Angola, or Mozambique, they’re Portuguese citizens like anyone else. What’s on your mind?”
“It might be easier to find newcomers from Angola than a European hardly anyone has seen. Unless there are any photographs of Captain Loveless around, and I don’t suppose there are likely to be many.”
“None. Just Nacimento’s description, which you already have.”
“And which could apply to almost anyone.”
The General said, worrying: “If we only knew how long he’d been here, that would be a help of some sort.”
I told him: “Less than four months, that much we know.”
“Oh?”
“There was a report in Jeune Afrique four months ago. According to them, Loveless is a bit of a hero. They said he’d left Angola some time back, was then fighting for the Biafrans in Nigeria, and about to leave West Africa on a ‘special mission.’”
The General said instantly: “Biafra. A good cause to fight for.”
“Perhaps. It seems he led a raid on a bank in Lagos, to get funds for the Biafran army.”
We were sipping our drinks together, and suddenly the General remembered his manners again. He said, leaping up: “And I didn’t even offer you a cigar. I don’t smoke, myself, and I sometimes forget.”
I said: “And neither do I. A foolish habit, I’ve always felt.”
“Ah, good then.” He sat down again and asked: “Did the report say whether or not the Biafrans had actually benefited by the raid?”
“It did indeed. Roughly a hundred thousand dolars’ worth of local currency was stolen, and the Biafrans got half of it. The rest, according to Jeune Afrique, was being ‘held back,’ whatever that means, for a ‘special project.’ Whatever that means too.”
He said thoughtfully: “Nigeria. So Angola’s been made too hot for him. Is that a small triumph?”
“Not really. The only triumph will be when we get him. If we can persuade him to talk enough to clear you. And that’s a moot point, isn’t it?”
“And Biafra’s liable to be too hot for him soon, too. Not many places left for the mercenaries to work, are there?”
Well, he was quits wrong there.
I said: “Out of all the new countries in Africa that have emerged in the last ten years, there’s fighting going on in ninety-nine percent of them. That means plenty of scope for the professional fighter, on one side or the other. And if Africa ever settles down, there’s always Central America, with South America about to go the same route, too. And by the time that’s all finished, they’ll have started over again in Africa. If, indeed, they ever stop. If you know how to use a gun, and you’re short on scruples and long on toughness, there’s always someone to hire you. Loveless presumably speaks good Portuguese?”
“Yes, apparently he does.”
“Well enough to fool a Portuguese?”
“Well enough to fool an Angolan. There’s the question of accent, of course, it’s quite distinct.”
“We can assume that he’s traveling either without a passport or with a forged one.”
He shrugged. “A landing somewhere along the coast, a small boat from Tangiers, it wouldn’t be difficult.”
Now I wanted the quid for the quo.
I said: “Now tell me, General, why the Army doctors are interested in Fenrek’s red tide.”
“Oh, that...”
It didn’t seem very important to him, and, to tell the truth, it wasn’t very important to me either. But I’m a curious kind of man, and anything that seems even a trifle out of kilter, I want to know about. It’s strange how far apart cause and effect can apparently be and still be part of the same pattern, I recalled that Goethe had made that point once. On the surface, Fenrek’s little problem had nothing at all to do with mine, but...Well, you can’t just let the oddities slip by without inquiring about them, or you’ll go through life in an intellectual vacuum.
He looked at me sharply all of a sudden, and asked: “You think there’s a connection?”
“A connection? How should there be?”
He shook his head. “It occurred to me that you’re concerned with a soldier, a professional fighting man, and Fenrek is dealing with the Army, you’re both here in Lisbon at the same time...Is there a connection?”
