A Small Death in lisbon (26 page)

'What are you doing out here?'

'We've had trouble with the mules,' said Abrantes. 'This one's lame and the other's girth has broken.'

'Where's your cargo?'

'We don't have one.'

'Where have you come from?'

'Penamacor.'

'Where are you going?'

'Foios,' said Abrantes. 'We're taking the mules back to their owner. They've been used for work outside Penamacor.'

'What sort of work.'

'Transport.'

'Transporting what?' said the
guarda,
getting frustrated.

'You know, working around the mine.'

'Wolfram?'

'I think so. I think that's what it was.'

'Were you carrying any wolfram?'

'No, we're just taking the mules back.'

'You're wet. Up to your waist, you're wet.'

'We've just brought the animals across the river.'

The
chefe
pointed them over to the mules with his pistol. He slapped the mules' bellies, satisfied himself that they were wet. He went to the riverside. The
guarda
with the rifle arrived and dismounted. He tore a branch from a tree and joined the
chefe.
They walked along the side of the river dragging the branch along under the water.

It was late afternoon now and the light was failing. Abrantes didn't know where the
guarda
were from, but they had a two-hour ride ahead of them, wherever. The
chefe
and the rifleman talked out of earshot. They came back to their horses, all three mounted and rode back out of the river valley without exchanging another word.

Abrantes brought Salgado to his side and they sat and watched the river for some minutes, the rain driving into their backs. He took out his Walther P48 and checked that it was loaded and still dry. They made a fire. Abrantes worked on the mule's hoof again, Salgado repaired the girth. Night fell and they slept around the fire, having eaten some stale bread and ham.

In the morning they were up at first light wading into the river to bring out the sacks of wolfram. It took some time, as the river had swollen some more during the night, and they could only bring them out one at a time. They loaded the sacks on to the mules, giving the lame mule the lighter load. The rain had stopped, but the cold wind was still blowing and there was more on its way down from the
meseta.
They moved out of the gully and up on to the ridge to start the climb across the
serra
to Spain. That's where they were waiting for them, on the other side of the ridge.

The
chefe de brigada
raised his gun and told the men to stop. Abrantes fell to one side as if he'd taken a bullet in the side of the head. The
chefe
instinctively squeezed the trigger and Salgado open-mouthed took the bullet high in his chest where it shattered his clavicle. Salgado's mule took off. The second bullet hit Salgado in the stomach before he'd reached the ground.

Abrantes dragged his mule down to the floor, he tore the gun from his waistband and shot the
chefe
in the chest under the armpit. The man fell to the ground. The rifleman was trying to keep his rearing horse calm and Abrantes let off two shots, the second hitting him in the head. The third
guarda
wheeled his horse round in time to take a bullet between his shoulderblades. He fell backwards with a crack and his horse ran back down into the gully.

Abrantes tethered his mule and approached the
chefe
who was still breathing but bubbling blood out of his mouth. He shot him in the head. The rifleman was already dead. The third
guarda
had a broken neck. Abrantes went to Salgado who was lying on his back so flat that it was as if the ground had already claimed him. He was panting, scared and in pain, his lips and face white. Abrantes tore open the man's coat and shirt and saw the mash of bone and flesh at his clavicle and the dark hole in his stomach. Salgado whispered something. Abrantes put his head down to his mouth.

'I can't feel my legs,' he said.

Abrantes nodded at him, stood back and shot him in the eye.

The
chefe's
horse had stayed. Abrantes loaded two
guardas
on to it and took them down to the river. The other two horses were down there and he tethered them to a tree. He went back and loaded the
chefe
and Salgado. He filled the dead men's clothes with rocks and dragged each one of them out into the river.

Riding the
chefe's
horse he picked up his own mule and found Salgado's grazing in a hollow, still fully loaded with the wolfram. He spread the loads from the mules over the
guardas
' horses and set off once more across the
serra
for Spain.

It was the afternoon of Christmas Eve and Felsen was still in Abrantes' house, waiting with his cleaned and loaded pistol. It had been a long wait and one he had not been prepared for. There was only so much time he could spend thinking about Abrantes, the missing wolfram, and how he was going to manoeuvre the Portuguese across the border and leave him out there, amongst the rocks and broom, with a bullet in his brain.

Occasionally Maria came in with coffee and then later food and drink. She wanted his attention but he wouldn't give it to her. Her presence irritated him. She triggered strands of thought that he'd rather have left dormant. He remembered a look she'd given him when they were burying the Englishman in the courtyard, and that would start him thinking about that afternoon in the old mine, and he'd have to shake his head and pace the room to get rid of it. He wondered why he'd had her now. How could it have been to spite Abrantes when he was going to kill the man anyway?

At that moment she'd appear again, and the word 'rape' would climb into his brain, and he'd remember the thrill as he rammed gently into her, her eyes darting afraid above the knuckles of his hand over her mouth. But then it had turned into something else. He'd felt that heel on his buttock. She'd come back the next night and it had sickened him. He told her to stay in the kitchen.

He thought about other women. He thought about the first woman. A girl who was supposed to be out in the field working for his father, but who he'd caught sleeping in the barn. She'd seen the way he'd looked at the flesh between her stocking top and skirt, and had let him have her to keep him quiet.

She was still the only one by the time he arrived in Berlin as a young man. A girl picked him up in the railway station. He'd thought that this was all part of the wild city life until he'd finished, and she'd demanded her money He'd asked, what for? And her lips had hardened to chisel tips. She'd called the pimp, who'd taken one look at the size of the farmboy and produced a blade. He'd paid and backed out and then heard the pimp beating the girl.
Wilkommen in Berlin.

The weather closed in again over Amêndoa. The rain raked die tiles. Felsen smoked and continued to amuse himself by trying to remember all the women he'd ever had in the right order. If he missed one he had to start again. It took him some time to work his way to Eva.

He didn't want to think about her, but in the near darkness of the house and after their brief encounter back in Berlin, he found he couldn't prevent his mind from drifting back over the shards of the affair like gunsmoke over a battlefield. He began to discern her slow dismanding of their relationship. From the moment she'd taken him back in after they'd split up over his accusation that she was acting, to that last sexual act in his apartment before the Gestapo removed him in the morning. But even in that period he could still find moments when they'd reconnected, and he could still feel that point of contact when their knees had touched under the table in the club only a few nights ago. He rubbed it as if it was still burning.

He lit a cigarette and the draught in the room battered the smoke this way and that, whipping it away to nothing. He asked himself if this was what love was—this strange acid in the stomach that burns a constant ulceration, this airlock in his pipes that could send shudders around his system and stop the flow of everything. But that was not how he'd ever heard love described and, like a man taking a short leap over a high drop to white water, he lurched to a sudden conclusion. He'd gone from intimacy to loss without ever having experienced love. It choked him and he had to pace the room again to try and free himself of the notion. He took long hard draws on his cigarette until he was dizzy with nicotine and he reeled to the door and let himself out into the blustery afternoon.

The wind gusted needles of sleet into his face. He breathed it in as if it would somehow clean him out. He had no idea how long he stood there. The afternoon had already darkened with the weather and his face had instantly numbed. The only way he knew that there was ice in the rain was the way it spiked his tongue.

When finally he turned to go back into the house he saw that he wasn't alone in the street. Some way off two figures approached, heads bowed against the wind. Felsen came level with the steps up to the house. One figure split away and headed for the side of the house as if for cover. In profile now, he saw it was a mule. The other figure came doggedly forward and he knew from the gait and the hat that it was Abrantes. He felt the hardness of the gun in his waistband. He unbuttoned his coat in the middle. The figure didn't hesitate until he was about five metres away.

Felsen's fingers flipped open another button. Hands appeared from the clothing of the man opposite. Felsen slid his hand into the opening of his coat and gripped the handle of the gun. Abrantes' left hand came up and removed the scarfing from his face. The right hand hung limply. When it happened it was quick, too quick for Felsen to move. Abrantes covered the five metres in a fraction of a second, threw his arms around the German and smacked two hands on his leather back.

'Bom Natal,'
he said. Happy Christmas.

Abrantes guided Felsen back up the stairs and into the house. He shouted for Maria and told her to take care of the mule. She disappeared out of the back of the house. They went into the parlour room and Abrantes threw logs on to the fire. Felsen's face came back to life, raw and aching. Abrantes went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of
aguardente
and two glasses. He poured the liquor and they drank to Christmas. He was happier than Felsen had ever seen him.

'I heard you were in Foios,' he said, as if Felsen had dropped round there for a drink and found nobody in.

'The
chefe
at Vilar Formoso said we could be in for a hard time. I thought I'd take a look at the mules.'

'And you saw that I'd been running them for months.'

'Months?'

'I've got more than fifty tons over there.'

'Where?'

'In a warehouse in Navasfrias.'

'You should have told me. I've had a hard time explaining the shortfall in Berlin.'

'I'm sorry for that. I was only reacting to rumours.'

'Which rumours?'

'That now you've invaded Russia and that campaign is ... continuing, Dr Salazar is not so concerned about an invasion here. The Germans are too stretched, they say.'

'You remember the
Corte Real
going down in October?'

'And the
Cassequel
,' said Abrantes. 'The
Cassequel
was one of our best ships, seven thousand tons.'

'So you don't think this is a Lisbon problem?'

'I think we should go to Vilar Formoso tomorrow,' said Abrantes. 'Take the
chefe
another Christmas present.'

'I was there only a few days ago.'

'They have short memories,' he said.

'And we could cross over and take a look at the product in Navasfrias,' said Felsen. 'Is it secure?'

'It's secure.'

Secure meant men with shotguns. Felsen suddenly saw himself lying amongst the rocks and broom with his face blown apart, but he couldn't back down from Abrantes now. He nodded and checked Abrantes, but all he saw was weathered skin stretched over large bones with eyes concentrated on the task of pouring more alcohol.

What was it Poser had said to him, or someone else in the legation, about the Portuguese? Two things. The first, that there wasn't a law in Portugal that couldn't be got around, and the second, was that the Portuguese never came at you head-on. They got you looking straight ahead and then they stuck you from behind. It had been Poser. He remembered pointing it out to him that this, of course, would never happen in Germany and the Prussian had walked off sick of his irony.

The two of them ate a Christmas dinner of a large hen and some roasted
bacalhau.
They drank two bottles of pre-war Dão which left the warm, rounded taste of a less complicated summer at the back of the mouth.

Felsen went to bed early and smoked and drank
aguardente
from his metal flask in the dark. He kept his gun under his pillow. After an hour he went across the courtyard and listened at the door of the house with the gun dangling from his hand. He heard Abrantes' familiar grunt and Maria's strange hiss.

In the morning he drank coffee and smoked a cigarette and ignored the stone-faced girl. He had a problem. He didn't want to cross the border with Abrantes and walk into a team of shotguns in Navasfrias. At nine o'clock, this problem was solved by a driver who'd come up from Guarda with a telegram from Lisbon:
Dutch and Australian troops invade E. Timor. Return to Lisbon immediately. Poser.

He liked Poser's use of the word 'invade'. He knew that Salazar would see it exactly like that, an invasion of Portuguese sovereignty.

'Is there a problem?' asked Abrantes, suddenly anxious.

'Our border difficulties are over,' said Felsen. 'The Allies have made a mistake. I have to go to Lisbon now. You will arrange for the one hundred and nine tons you have stored in Navasfrias to go to the compound in Ciudad Rodrigo and no more smuggling until I authorize it.'

'One hundred and nine tons?'

Felsen gave him the calculations. The numbers flickered through Abrantes' head, his face impassive and grey as hoar frost from not shaving. At that moment Felsen realized what Abrantes had been doing. He hadn't been stealing, but playing the price difference over the border. Selling high in Spain to come back and buy cheap in Portugal and pocket the difference. But he'd been caught out, the price in Spain had dropped, maybe there were no buyers at the time. He didn't have the money to replace the stock in Foios. All he could do was try to recoup the situation by underestimating the tonnage he'd smuggled. The good mood of last night had been the start of a bluff, a man playing for time to control his losses.