The Lisbon Crossing (6 page)

My eyes shot open,
but I didn’t move. I lay there on my pillow, holding my breath, listening closely. Had I been dreaming?

No…There it was again. The soft rattle of somebody trying to jimmy a lock. I slipped out of bed, felt my way past the bedroom door, and stood in the dark living room, half-asleep, wondering who the hell was trying to break into my suite, and why. I didn’t have time to ponder it, though, because the latch gave way and the door eased open, allowing a thin shaft of ghostly light to fall across the floor. I glanced around for a weapon, spotted a bottle of malt whiskey, and reached for it—too quickly, because I misjudged the distance and knocked it over, straight into a set of glass tumblers. It all hit the floor with a resounding
crash!

I waited a beat, and so did the intruder. Then the door slammed shut and I could hear footsteps escaping down the hall. I shot across the room, fumbled around in the dark, found the door handle, and was halfway up the corridor before the pain hit. I fell against the wall, saw the trail of blood I’d left behind, and lifted my bare foot to find a cluster of crushed crystal embedded in the heel. I let out a low whistle.

Christ, it hurt!

I retreated to the bathroom, where I sat on the toilet and plucked the larger fragments of glass out. After flushing the wound with warm water and wrapping it in a towel, I limped out onto the narrow balcony that overlooked the hotel pool. The predawn air was fragrant and still, the only sound the waves crashing onto the beach in the dark distance.

That was no hotel thief, I thought. Those guys work the day shift, when the guests are busy lolling around the pool. And besides, with all the fat cats in residence, no decent second-story man would take an interest in me. No, I couldn’t say what this guy was after, but it sure as hell wasn’t the family jewels. I’d have to watch my back from now on.

A hazy pink light started to emerge on the eastern horizon. You could almost smell the heat of the day coming on. I decided to get dressed and go down to the lobby.

I
t was too early for breakfast, so I headed to the bar where a stone-faced waiter set me up with a pot of coffee. I lit the first Lucky of the day and picked up a dog-eared copy of the London
Times
. It was a week out of date, but so was I.

The front page looked like this:

And so on. More of a pep talk than news, which was about what you’d expect under the circumstances. I flicked through more of the same until I came across a more intriguing item buried on page twelve:

Interesting. Not so much that there was a faction in Britain that wanted to make peace with Germany—I would’ve been more surprised if there hadn’t been one—but interesting that an item like that would appear in the
Times
at all. Treason isn’t the sort of thing you want to be peddling to a jittery public on the eve of an invasion, yet the “informed spokesmen” source in the lead sentence suggested that the item had been planted by the government itself. If Whitehall was concerned enough about the rumors to plant a denial, then there must’ve been some truth to the “undercover moves” claim on German radio. In fact, the denial went a step further than the report by implying that the ambassador in Madrid was the go-between. It looked to me like a public warning to the plotters, a “we know who you are” kind of thing.

Not surprising that Churchill would be worried about his rear flank. Sure, the Brits were defiant now, but “blood, toil, tears and sweat” might not sound so good when the panzers were rolling through Kent. Even if the British people were willing to fight on, you could be sure that there’d be more than a few Honourable Members of Parliament—not to mention Lords and Ladies—who would happily jump ship rather than go down with it. Churchill would be out the door as quickly as he’d come in and the great British public would wake up to find their morning papers featuring snapshots of Herr Hitler sightseeing in Piccadilly.

I poured a second cup of coffee and put the paper aside. Like pretty much everyone back in the States, I saw the war in Europe as tragic and crazy but, most of all, far away. And nothing to do with me. The tragedy was a bit closer now—the faces of those refugees had done that—but it was still crazy and it still had absolutely nothing to do with me. I was sorry that Europe was going to hell in a handbasket but they’d have to make the trip without me.

I knew a kid named Andy Dent, a horse wrangler on the Warner lot, who went over to Spain in ’36 to fight the good fight. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, a nice, quiet cowboy from Wyoming and nothing short of a genius with horses. I don’t know if
he wanted to save the world or if he was just looking for adventure, he never said, but all he got was shot in the head the second week he was over there. Not much of an adventure and the world didn’t get saved. Sure, I thought Hitler was a nutcase and every time I saw him in a newsreel I shook my head, but the bottom line was that it wasn’t my fight. And if I’d learned anything in my first twenty-five years on this crazy planet, it was that only suckers get involved in somebody else’s fight.

That was how it looked to me that morning, anyway, as I sat alone in the bar at the Palacio, drinking coffee and contemplating the fate of the world.

T
he wind had picked up by midmorning, pulling the sea onto the rocks, making the job of the small fishing boat next to impossible. Catela wasn’t on the scene yet when we arrived, so I joined Alberto on the hillside with a loaf of bread, a wedge of hard cheese, and a basket of fruit that he’d brought from home. Across the way, I noticed that the Cape Cod–style villa on the promontory overlooking the cliffs looked a bit more lived in today. The shutters were open and there were a number of cars parked in front of the main building.

Below us, a couple of teenage boys were making dives into the Mouth of Hell, trying to attach a line to Eddie’s car, which was lying just below the surface. Once the line was secured, the idea was to float the car with buoys and let the navy trawler that was waiting offshore tow it a couple of miles west to the beach at Casçais, where it could be hauled ashore. That was the plan, anyway. The divers were having a tough time of it, though, disappearing under the waves for long periods of time, only to surface twenty or thirty yards away, dangerously close to the rocks. They’d fight their way back to the boat, clamber aboard, and, after a few minutes’ rest, go through the whole routine again.

I was beginning to have my doubts about the whole operation
when a long black car pulled up behind us, accompanied by a half-dozen motorcycle cops. After a moment, Catela stepped onto the road, followed by a very somber-looking SS Major Ritter. I’d been wondering if he would make an appearance and wasn’t surprised that he had.

“Seig Heil,”
I muttered to Alberto, who gave me a very nervous look as we stood up to greet the uniforms.

“Good morning, Senhor Teller,” Catela offered with a strained smile. “A fine day, yes?”

“If you’re going sailing,” I said, looking out to sea. The sky was clear cerulean blue and there were whitecaps as far as you could see.

“Do you enjoy sailing?”

“Not particularly.”

“I see,” Catela said curtly, confirming that the small talk was over. “Major Ritter has expressed an interest in seeing o Boca do Inferno, so I suggested that he accompany me this morning.” Ritter hung back and eyed me suspiciously.

“Sure,” I said. “Plus he wants to find out if his missing diplomat is down there with my missing detective. That right, Major?”

Ritter cracked a smile that I thought might crack his face. “You have adapted to the ways of Lisbon in a short period of time, Mr. Teller.”

“Information is power, isn’t that what they say?”

“My interest is strictly casual.”

“I would’ve thought a missing state secretary would rate more than a casual interest.”

“You misunderstood me,” Ritter said with a patient sneer. “I’m quite interested in locating Dr. Kleinmann, of course I am. What I meant to say was that I have no reason to believe that he has been involved with your detective. I am, however, obliged to investigate every possibility. I’m certain you understand.”

“Sure, I understand,” I said. I understood he wasn’t out there on a hunch any more than he was on a sightseeing tour. I wondered what connection he thought there was between Eddie Grimes and
Dr. Kleinmann, and if Eva Lange had anything to do with it. I considered mentioning her name in passing to see how he’d react, but decided against it. If it turned out she was still alive, then she was in hiding and this was the guy she was hiding from.

Catela excused himself in order to dispatch one of his motorcycle cops along the bluff, presumably to threaten the men in the fishing boat, but I could see that they’d already spotted Ritter’s car and didn’t need any additional incentive. A couple of the older guys were already stripping off, ready to make the dive.

“Well, I hope your man’s not down there,” I said, which was true enough. Ritter was staring intently down at the boat and for a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me. When he finally looked up, he smiled.

“And I hope also that Eva Lange is not down there. For Fräulein Sterne’s sake, of course. I understand they have been lifelong friends together.” He let it hang for a moment and I didn’t say anything, only because I didn’t know what to say.

“Captain Catela is always very forthcoming with me,” the major added.

“I’ll have to remember that,” I said.

“You needn’t worry. I have no interest in this woman,” Ritter stated flatly. “Unless, of course, she has knowledge of Dr. Kleinmann’s whereabouts.”

“Why would she?” I said.

He shook his head slowly. “I can see no reason that she would.”

Catela reappeared and assured Ritter that he wouldn’t have to wait long. He was right because the new divers had the car secured and floated in a matter of minutes.

A
n hour later, we stood on the beach in Casçais as they pulled Eddie Grimes out of his rented red coupe and laid him out on a blanket in the sand. I’d seen dead men before, but Eddie was worse off than most. Swollen by two weeks in salt water, his skin a shriveled
pasty white, he looked more like a beached walrus than a human corpse. A long open gash across the top of his head revealed a shattered skull and there were so many broken bones that his limbs twisted around like a plate of fat spaghetti. Most of his front teeth were missing and his eyes were open but rolled up inside his head. But as bad as he’d been knocked around in the fall, Eddie wouldn’t have felt a thing because it was obvious that he’d been very dead before he took the plunge. Two nice neat bullet holes in his chest testified to that.

There was no Eva Lange in the car, and I wondered how long it would take Catela to get the story of the lady and the gun out of Fabiana. I also wondered how much it would take to buy him off. It should be easy enough, I thought. No one was gonna raise a fuss if Eddie Grimes was quietly laid to rest in an unmarked grave, and with Lili working on him, maybe it wouldn’t even cost a fortune.

Ritter, who’d been standing back, chain-smoking his French cigarettes while he kept an eye on the proceedings, came up behind me.

“Curious,” he blurted out.

“What?”

“That this woman would shoot the very man who has been sent to save her. It has been this man’s mission, has it not? To save Eva Lange?”

“What makes you think she shot him?” I said.

“Who else?” Ritter’s eyebrows flitted up.

“There are some pretty desperate people around here,” I said. “An American driving around in a flashy car. Maybe somebody looking for money.”

“What is your view, Captain?” Catela stood up from his inspection of the body, carefully folded the handkerchief he’d been holding over his nose, and placed it into his pants pocket.