Law of Return (20 page)

“At your service, Monsieur. How may I help you?”

For a moment, Tejada thought that the man had misunderstood his request. “Alain Yves?” he repeated.

“Yes, Monsieur. I am the manager of the hotel.” The man produced a card from his breast pocket.

Tejada read it, feeling stupid. He had not really believed that he would find Yves, much less that Yves would smile and identify himself as soon as Tejada asked for him. Faced with the totally unexpected, he flailed about for something to say. “I obtained your name from a man called Manuel Arroyo,” he managed. “Perhaps you recall him?”

“Arroyo? A Spanish gentleman?” The manager thought for a moment. “Arroyo? Ah, yes, I know the name. An older gentleman, a professor, no? He and his wife have been our guests several times. Not, alas, recently. The recent disturbances in Spain, you understand.”

“Yes,” Tejada said, disappointed. He had, he realized, been foolish to think that simply because an address was foreign it connoted something sinister. Yves had probably provided Arroyo with a card during his last vacation in France, and the lawyer had happened to copy down the name and address.

“It is always an honor to receive a new guest recommended by a former patron,” Yves continued, smiling. “I do hope you will remember the Hotel Miramar kindly to Monsieur Arroyo.”

“Yes, certainly.” Tejada’s mind had been occupied, and he had only followed the manager’s speech with difficulty. He appeared to have hit a dead end in the Arroyo case and there was nothing more he could do that night. He was tempted to turn around and go back to the border. He was sick of speaking foreign languages, and sick of things that made no sense. But having come this far, it would be lax to ignore the other part of his mission. Once again, he fell back on a simple phrase. “Also, I am looking for a woman. A brunette, with long hair.”

He was expecting a denial, or at best a demand for more particulars. Once again, Yves surprised him. “The Spanish lady? Whose luggage was mislaid at the station? But yes, she is in the lounge, with her father. A shame their bags have not arrived yet.”

Tejada felt slightly dizzy. “Oh. Good,” he managed. “Could you show me where, please?”

“But of course.” The manager led Tejada across the parquet floor and into the lounge. Tejada followed, hardly knowing what to expect. It was possible, and even likely, that the Spanish lady Yves had referred to was
not
Elena. After all, there were lots of women with long dark hair. And “with her father” was puzzling. Tejada was fairly sure that Professor Fernández was still in Salamanca. An unpleasant thought occurred, that Arroyo might be masquerading as Elena’s father. But
why?
Tejada thought. It doesn’t make sense.

The lieutenant reflected unhappily that if Professor Fernández or Professor Arroyo were in Elena’s company he would be obliged to arrest both of them and Elena as well if he wanted to avoid Rodríguez court-martialing him for incompetence or worse. He was still pondering what to do or say when Yves gestured to a secluded corner of the lounge, where a white-mustached man whom Tejada had never seen before sat staring at them from over the top of a Spanish newspaper. He certainly was not Guillermo Fernández and even allowing for ten years and a disguise Tejada did not think that he could be Manuel Arroyo. He heaved a sigh of relief. It was merely a question of mistaken identity. Some compatriot, traveling with her father, who had lost her luggage at the train station. He was already framing a civil apology for intruding when Yves spoke again. The woman who had been half hidden in a wing chair started forward.

Elena looked up at him. There were smudges under her eyes and her lips were trembling slightly. Tejada stared down at her, stricken, horribly aware of what he should do, and of his own reluctance to do it. He almost missed the import of the hotel manager’s cheerful salutation. “
Voilà, Madame. Votre
mari est arrivé
.”

Chapter 17

E
lena was the first to break the tense silence. “What are you doing here?” Her voice had the deceptive quietness that Tejada knew was her particular prelude to hysteria. But since she had spoken in their native language, neither Yves nor Meyer understood her.

“I might ask you the same question,” Tejada replied. He became aware that the hotel manager was hovering at his elbow, turned, and added firmly, “
Merci bien de votre assistance.
”

There was little the manager could do in the face of Tejada’s determined politeness but bow and move away. Elena started to rise. The lieutenant seized her elbow, and pressed her back into the chair. “Don’t move,” he ordered. “You either,” he added to Elena’s unknown “father.” He glanced around. It was past the hour for evening drinks and the only people lingering in the lounge were in the far corner. There was another set of vacant chairs nearby, set around a low glass table. He seized one of the empty chairs, and dragged it over to face Elena’s. Then he dropped into it, and said quietly, in Spanish, “Now suppose you tell me just what the hell is going on?”

Elena chewed her lip for a few seconds. Then her mouth opened and closed several times, silently. “I . . .” she began finally. “I thought you were in Salamanca.”

“I’m sure you’d rather I was,” Tejada retorted with considerable anger. “But as I recall I gave you permission to travel to San Sebastián, not outside the country. Monsieur Yves informs me that you’re here with your
father
, which this gentleman manifestly is not, and he seems to have mistaken me for your husband, who as far as I know doesn’t exist, unless I owe you congratulations?”

“No,” Elena flushed. “That is I . . . I mean . . .”

Tejada turned his attention to the unknown gentleman. “Perhaps you’re a little less tongue-tied, Señor?” he suggested. And then, as he received no reply except an anguished stare, “Answer me, damnit!”

Elena got a grip on herself. “He can’t . . . He doesn’t speak . . . he doesn’t hear.”

“Deaf ?” Tejada thoughtfully picked up an ashtray that was resting on the low table in front of him, and turned it between his fingers. “He doesn’t read lips?”

“Not well,” Elena said with tremendous relief.

“Interesting.” Tejada hurled the ashtray to the ground with as much force as he could muster. Elena, whose nerves were already on edge, started violently at the thud. So did Meyer. Tejada smiled, a little grimly. “You heard that,” he said to Meyer. “And something tells me you’re hearing me perfectly now. So let’s stop playing games, shall we? Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

“
Pourquoi demandez-vous comment il s’appelle
?” Elena demanded, desperately switching to French. “
Vous n’avez pas le droit, ici
. . . .”

Tejada, who had been narrowly watching Meyer, blinked suddenly. “Jesus, Elena, doesn’t he even speak Spanish?” he exclaimed. “Who is he? What is he doing with you?”

Elena did not reply. Tejada shrugged and turned back to Meyer. “I’m sure you don’t want to get the young lady in trouble,” he said in French. “Tell me who you are, and what you’re doing, or I promise you, she leaves here as a prisoner.”

To the lieutenant’s relief, the unknown man did not call his bluff. He sighed, and then said slowly, in heavily accented French, “Helena has broken no laws. She was helping me.”

“Professor—” Elena began.

He gestured her to silence. “Let be, Helena. I am tired. Perhaps I am not so much like Admetus after all.” He turned back to Tejada. “My name is Joseph Meyer.”

Tejada had already realized that the white-mustached man spoke with the same guttural consonants as the soldiers who had directed him, so his surname did not come as a surprise. But the information puzzled him all the more. “You’re a German?” he asked, pitching his voice low to match Meyer’s, and wondering why Elena was involved with a foreigner from a country which—it occurred to him for the first time—she would probably regard with hostility.

“Not exactly.” The old man smiled, a little bitterly. “I was born there. But I have no country now.”

Tejada thought over the statement for a moment. Then he put his head in his hands and groaned. “Elena! Tell me he’s not a Communist.
Please
tell me you haven’t mixed yourself up with a Red.”

“I am not a Communist.” To his surprise, the answer came from the man who had identified himself as Joseph Meyer.

“Merely an internationalist?” Tejada asked sarcastically.

“Merely a Jew.”

The lieutenant gaped, and then felt a sudden rush of hope. Perhaps Elena was not really helping a Red after all. It was almost too good to be true. He inspected the man before him more closely: a full head of white hair, completely uncovered; a neatly trimmed white mustache; a dark suit that was a few years out of fashion, but in no way remarkable. He did not look anything like the portraits of Maimonides and Abravanel that the lieutenant had seen. “You’re sure?” he demanded suspiciously.

It was Meyer’s turn to look surprised. “Sure? Why . . . yes.”

“And that’s all?”

“It’s usually enough.”

“Prove it.”

“What?”

“Prove you’re a Jew,” Tejada commanded. “Or I’ll assume you’re a Communist and act on that assumption.”

There was a brief, tense silence. Then Meyer began to laugh. It was a high, wheezing, choking sound and it went on for too long. Elena leaned forward, concerned, and placed one hand on his arm. “Professor. . . .”

Meyer took a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped his streaming eyes, and murmured a few unintelligible sentences, still chortling slightly. Tejada’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll have to do better than mumbling Hebrew.”

“That was Greek.” Meyer gave a final wheeze, and then dug inside his coat. He handed over a rumpled traveler’s wallet to the lieutenant, translating into French as he did so. “
Why ask my
birth? Very like leaves upon the earth are the generations of men. . . .
”

Elena mentally translated the French into Spanish as Tejada opened the wallet. “Is that the
Odyssey
?” she hazarded, smiling a little at the professor.

He shook his head. “The
Iliad
, actually.”

Tejada stared down at the passport in his hand. It had been issued only two years previously. The photograph unquestionably matched the man in front of him, and the name given was Joseph Meyer. Stamped across the place and date of birth was a yellow J in gothic script, and the bearer of the passport was clearly identified as a Jew. He folded the passport shut, and handed Meyer’s wallet back to him. “All right,” he said to Elena. “He’s a Jew, even if he doesn’t look like one. Now how does he know you?”

Elena looked at her hands. “He’s a colleague of my father’s.”

“You traveled north to meet him?”

The lieutenant’s voice was almost gentle. Elena felt a strong urge to cry. She thought she had done so well. Perhaps the fishermen had betrayed her. But at least it was Carlos who had found her, and not some stranger. She nodded slowly, without raising her eyes, wondering what he would do. Make a quiet phone call from the hotel, probably. And sit with her until the police came to pick up Professor Meyer. And then he would take her arm, as courteously as if he were helping her across a street, and escort her back over the border, to await trial and sentencing.

“Why?”

Both Elena and Meyer looked at the lieutenant in surprise. This was not the question he was supposed to ask.
How did you
expect to get away with it?
or
Do you know what the penalties are?
would have been reasonable questions. But he seemed to be conducting the interview along unique lines. Elena glanced at the professor. “I’ve told him you’re a friend of papa’s,” she said, in French. “And that I came here to meet you. He wants to know why.”

The Jew turned to Tejada. “I hoped to cross into Spain,” he said quietly. “To avoid deportation to Germany.”

Tejada was torn between relief at the plausibility of the explanation, and annoyance at the kind of man who would involve a misguided and quixotic young woman in a fatally reckless enterprise. “What were you doing here?” he asked softly.

“Helena wished to find some place to rest until—” Meyer stopped abruptly, discovering too late that evasion and prevarication are difficult in a foreign language.

Tejada was grateful for the pause. “Never mind,” he said. “I don’t want to know how you planned to cross the border. The question is—”

Elena, who had been listening intently, suddenly coughed and said loudly in Spanish, “But I am so tired of sitting here
in public
.”

Tejada and Meyer both took warning from her tone, and neither was startled when, glancing around, they saw Alain Yves approaching their corner. “May I be of assistance?” he asked smoothly, when he reached them. “Madame informed me that your baggage was lost due to a faulty train connection. I take it that you still have not found your suitcases, Monsieur?”

Suddenly it seemed as if the three people in the armchairs were sitting inside a little circle of silence where the sounds of the lobby and the rest of the lounge reached them only as distant cries. Meyer sat quietly, his hands resting on his knees. His face reminded Tejada of the face of a man facing a firing squad; a man to whom the worst has already happened, and who merely waits for the physical execution of an irrevocable sentence. Elena leaned forward and took one of the professor’s immobile hands between her own, chafing it slightly as if to keep it warm. But she turned her face towards the lieutenant. “Carlos?”

Tejada pushed himself to his feet. “Unfortunately not,” he said. “But my wife is exhausted, and I doubt that anything more will be achieved tonight. If one of the porters could show her and my father-in-law to their rooms, I’ll come and register.”

“Of course, Monsieur.” The manager bowed again, and Elena found herself following a bellboy up the sweeping marble staircase on Meyer’s arm before she had fully realized what had happened. It was impossible to discuss the strange turn of events with the German as long as the bellboy was present, and Elena was not sure what she would have said in any case. Her strongest feeling was a wish that the lieutenant, who had remained at the reception desk filling out the necessary papers, would rejoin them as soon as possible.

The bellboy led them to the third floor, and unlocked a door at the end of one corridor. He glanced a little uncertainly between the two guests, and finally decided that since the gentleman was deaf, the key should be presented to the lady. “It’s a suite, Madame,” he explained, stepping through the door, and flicking a light switch as he did so. The glow of a lamp with a Tiffany-glass shade illuminated a small foyer with two doors, each ajar, leading to a bedroom. Elena, comparing the suite with her room in San Sebastián, ruefully thought that the uniform of the Guardia Civil insured better service, even in a foreign country. The bellboy stepped into each of the bedrooms and turned on the lights, to allow the guests a view of their surroundings. Heavy drapes hung to the floor at the far wall of both rooms. “You have views of the ocean,” the bellboy explained. “And the master bedroom has a little terrace. Perhaps if the rain has stopped tomorrow you may use it.”

He left, and Meyer and Elena stood alone in the foyer. Automatically, Elena moved toward one of the bedrooms, and sank into the first available chair. The professor followed her, looking slightly stunned. He was the first one to recover his voice. “Are all Spaniards like that?” he demanded.

“No. Lieutenant Tejada is exceptional.” Elena found that she was grinning foolishly.

“You know him?”

“He’s . . .” Elena considered. “He’s my father’s parole officer,” she explained finally, feeling vaguely dissatisfied with the designation, but unable to think of a better one.

“How did he find you?”

“I don’t know.” Elena frowned. “He looked surprised to see me.”

The sound of a key in the lock prevented further discussion. A moment later, Tejada entered. He hung up his cloak and took off his holster and jacket in silence. Elena reflected irrelevantly that it was the first time she had seen him unarmed. He sank onto a corner of the bed and rubbed his eyes. “I hope you’re happy,” he commented.

“Lieutenant.” Meyer’s voice was awkward, and slightly choked. “I-I cannot thank you enough. . . .”