A Small Death in Lisbon

‘Everybody’s a spy in Lisbon, Herr Hauptsturmführer. From the lowest refugee to the highest members of the legations. And that includes maids, doormen, waiters, bar staff, shop owners, businessmen, company executives, all women, whores or not, and royalty, real or fake. Anybody with ears to overhear can make a living.’

‘Then there must be a lot of rumour as well. You’ve said yourself that the city is full, probably with a lot of people with nothing better to do than talk. It passes the time after all.’

‘That is true.’

‘Who does the winnowing?’

‘Ah yes, your agricultural background coming out.’

Felsen stripped the white flesh out of the shell of his lobster.

‘So where do the real spies pass their time?’ asked Felsen.

‘The ones who give us advance information on Dr Salazar’s thinking about wolfram exports, you mean?’

‘Does he do any thinking about that?’

‘He’s beginning to. We think he’s beginning to perceive an opportunity. We’re working on it now.’

Felsen waited for Poser to continue but instead the Prussian began dismantling his lobster claws with some difficulty given the stiffness of his gloved right hand.

‘How many people know what I’m doing here?’

‘Those you will meet this evening. No more than ten people in all. Your work is very important and, as you’ve probably realized, somewhat complicated by a very delicate political situation which, at the moment, we are winning. It is our people here who will make your work on the ground easier.’

‘Or more difficult if you start losing.’

‘We have good relations with Dr Salazar. He understands us. The British are relying on the strength of their old alliance, 1386 I think it was, you wonder which century they’re living in. We, on the other hand, are . . .’

‘. . . frightening him?’

‘I was going to say that we are providing him with what he needs.’

‘But he’s aware of the Panzer divisions in Bayonne, I’m sure.’

‘And the U-boats in the Atlantic,’ said Poser. ‘But if you want to play the harlot and bed both sides you might expect to get slapped about. Sweet?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The lobster.’

‘Very sweet.’

‘Portuguese lobster . . . small but perfectly sweet. The best in the world.’

‘I thought I’d go for a walk after my nap.’

‘The Jardim da Estrela isn’t far and it’s very pleasant.’

It was 5.00 p.m. and the Chave do Ouro café in the Rossio square at the top end of the Baixa grid, in the heart of the city, was full to capacity. It was still warm and the windows were all open. Laura van Lennep sat by one of these open windows and looked into the square repeatedly. She fingered the single coffee she’d ordered in the hour and a half she’d been sitting there, but the waiters didn’t bother her. They were used to it.

She was half-listening to a table of refugees speaking French with thick accents. The two men had seen army trucks in the Baixa first thing that morning and were expounding some fantastic invasion theory. It did nothing to calm Laura van Lennep down. She couldn’t bear the inertia of these people, who she knew came from a pensão three houses down from her own in the Rua de São Paulo behind Cais do Sodré. She’d heard them in the street correcting each other about aristocrats they’d met at parties as if it had been only last week, when it had been in a different country, in a different decade. She was desperate with no cigarettes and the man who was going to change her life, who’d promised that he could change her life, wouldn’t arrive.

A man appeared at the top of the stairs and looked around. He walked slowly around the room and finished up at her table. He wasn’t short but his width and bulk made him look shorter than he was. He had short dark hair, cut en brosse and blue-grey eyes. He made her tremble inside. She looked away into the Rossio again, to the same groups of dark-suited men standing about on the black and white calçada, to the same lines of taxis, to the same kiosk where the cabbies drank coffee and talked about football. Sporting were going to be champions this year. She knew that by now. She turned back and he was still there. She felt those eyes on her. She gripped her handbag which contained her papers. Was he the police? She’d been told about the plain-clothed ones. He didn’t look Portuguese but he had something of authority about him. She rearranged her claret dress which did not need rearranging but should have been thrown away last year.

‘Could I join you?’ asked the man in French.

‘I’m waiting for someone,’ she said, also in French, letting her blonde head slip around to the window again.

‘There’s nowhere else to sit and I only want a coffee. You’re a single person sitting at a table for four.’

‘There’s someone coming.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’

‘No, no, please,’ she said suddenly, her nerves setting her hands off like the pigeons in the square.

He sat opposite her and offered her a cigarette. She refused but had to hold on to her hand to do it. He lit one for himself and seemed to enjoy more than the smell of his own smouldering tobacco. The waiter came to his side.

‘Your coffee looks cold, may I . . .?’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

He ordered one for himself. She looked out into the square again. He’d spoken in Portuguese but not Lisbon Portuguese, more open, like slow Spanish.

‘He won’t come any quicker, you know,’ said the man.

She smiled a sort of relief that she’d begun to feel that he wasn’t going to ask to see her papers.

‘I can’t bear waiting,’ she said.

‘Have a cigarette, some warmer coffee . . . it’ll pass the time.’

She took a cigarette. He looked at her empty ring finger and the tense shake in her hand. She puffed on it and left a red mark on the white end. She blew out the strange, strong smoke.

‘From Turkey,’ he said.

‘You can get anything here if you can pay,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t know. I brought these with me. My first day in Lisbon.’

‘Where have you come from?’

‘From Germany.’

That’s why he’d made her tremble.

‘Where are you going?’