Message From Malaga (19 page)

“You know,” she said slowly, “it could just be that the piece of information Lucas wanted was about those two men: Laner and Tomás—what was it—Tomás Fuentes.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your hearing, even when you’re lost in admiration of bougainvillaea. But cross off Laner. He was found with a knife in his back this morning. Spanish Security thinks he was eliminated. They are curious. But I don’t think he was connected with Fuentes.”

“Why not?”

“Captain Rodriguez didn’t mention that name, didn’t even hint at it sideways. That’s his technique. Quite effective.”

“Fuentes,” she said thoughtfully. “Jeff Reid didn’t speak of him when he handed you the identification pencil?”

“No.” But he thought of Tavita, dark eyes under long dark lashes, cream silken skin with a soft blush over high cheekbones, shining black hair as tightly brushed and knotted as any ballerina’s, and he wondered about her Tomás. He almost mentioned him, but he could see her dark eyes were smouldering ready to burst into fire, the blush on the cheeks had sharpened with anger, the smooth head was held high ready to denounce such a betrayal of her secret. That’s what Tavita would call it. Less dramatically, he could admit it was perhaps an indiscretion, possibly a piece of foolishness on his part: Fuentes was only a guess in his mind. “This is as far as we go, I think,” he said, looking for some place to park in the little plaza where the street ended and the water front began.

“Drop me here. The dock is only a minute away.”

“In this crowd?” Besides, he thought as he edged the car
into a free space, she may find Lucas and his merry crew have already set sail or chugged off. “What kind of boat does Lucas own?” In the rear-view mirror, he saw the blue Fiat coming cautiously into the plaza.

“It looks like a fishing boat, but he put in a souped-up engine. When he’s in the mood, he can slip over to Tangier. That doesn’t happen too often, nowadays, not since Tangier has become a little suspect. Hashish,” she added. She nodded in the direction of four new-style Americans straggling past. “That’s where they go, by the Algeciras ferry, to pick up what they need.”

“You can tell them by sight?” True, they fell into a pattern, a new kind of mucker pose. Behind him, the blue Fiat was searching for a parking place. Let it, he thought.

“They are so obvious,” she said. “Hashish must really do something to the mind, or they wouldn’t all be so stupefied. Six years and a day—that’s where they are heading.”

“Six years and a day? Is that what they get when they’re arrested?”

“Standard minimum. No favourites played. And they can’t believe it will happen to them.”

“That’s an old American weakness.”

“I used to joke about it. Not any more.” She was out of the car and walking fast, as if to work off some of her bitterness. He caught up with her. “Who pays for all this?” she asked angrily. “I don’t mean
now
—that’s just a matter of easy money from some deluded parent. I mean, who pays for it in the future?”

The future... He had his own nightmare about that, and there were so few he could share it with and ease some of its weight. Last night, he had almost unloaded part of it on Jeff
Reid in the courtyard of El Fenicio. Strange how it had slipped out as if it was a relief to talk with someone you could trust, someone who wouldn’t retreat into disbelief or leap right into panic. “The future really worries you, doesn’t it?” he said sympathetically. He looked at her and wondered. She wasn’t so much older than these kids pushing her right now, was even younger than some.

“Why else did I take this kind of job?” she asked. Then she shook her head sadly, almost pathetically. “I thought I could play one small part in helping my country against her enemies. But what happens when Americans become their own enemy.”

“Only some of us,” he reminded her. “And only some of the young are dodging reality. Not all.”

“I know, I know,” she said with a touch of impatience. “Plenty of them are going to beaches to do no more than swim and sun and have a two-week vacation. It’s a minority who have bugged out completely, or throw filth at cops, or scream dirt at college presidents, or set the libraries and the banks on fire, or make the bombs and collect their arsenals. But it’s—oh, look—if you were a doctor and had a patient with cancer, would he really be consoled if you told him that it was only a minority of his tissue cells that had gone haywire? He would want to know what danger there was of the cancer spreading, wouldn’t he?”

“We aren’t just a collection of tissue cells. We’re people. With minds of our own.”

“After looking at some of the collection on these beaches, you won’t believe that. We are such natural joiners and the drug people are such missionaries. Everyone must try it, come along with them. Spread the joy, man. And it spreads. That’s
why I’m so—so depressed.” She was, in fact, pretty close to real tears.

He took her arm. “Come on, Amanda,” he said gently, “I wasn’t arguing with you; I was only trying to make cheerful noises. In all honesty, I’m depressed too. Only, we’d better not let these bastards grind us down. Is it Lucas? Has he been pressuring you with his kind of talk? Loaded words, propaganda phrases?” He lowered his voice, tried to make one small joke to lighten her load. “New hazards for our undercover agents.”

She found that comic. Briefly. Then she looked at him. “Yes. As a matter of fact, yes. Like me to give you a small imitation? Lucas and his political pals gloat over these beaches. Oh, not publicly—they praise the kids at every party they attend, say they are the brightest and best, and blame everything on the system. But privately, they gloat. It’s the only word to describe it,” she told him anxiously, as if he were already disbelieving her.

“Okay, okay. They gloat.”

“The beaches are symbolic, they say. The new American life style, squalid and sleazy and soft. Capitalist self-indulgence, imperialist decadence; it’s all on the point of collapse—with calculated violence and the threat of terror to help, of course. A push here, a shove there, and it all falls apart. America is up for grabs. The tough-minded will win, and it is no longer fashionable for America to be tough. There’s only one thing that worries Lucas and his friends. They have done the undermining, the preparing, the hard work for years. And their problem now is to keep the wild men—the Maoist revolutionaries and the militants, black and white—from trying to grab, too. Final control, as always, must be in Moscow’s hands.” She paused. Her voice became bitter. “And who says the Cold War is over?
God in heaven, whenever I hear that, I begin to wonder if Lucas is right. He predicts America’s future as one big cop-out.”

Ferrier’s face was tight and grim. “Is it?” he asked. He pushed their way impatiently through a density of beads and fringes, kinky hats and headbands, uncertain smiles and searching eyes.

“Newcomers,” Amanda said, looking away from them. “Once they find a group to join, the eyes develop a sullen stare. Some will move on after a few weeks, go searching for a bigger and better beach. Others just let the weeks pass, into months, even into years.”

“And the Spaniards?” This was their beach, wasn’t it?

“Fewer and fewer. They are the dispossessed.”

“Lucas and his crowd must enjoy that a lot.”

“You know your Lucas,” she said.

“I’ve met his type.” We’ve always had some of them around, he thought. The only difference now was that they were so confident and cocky, pushing their own particular brand of dope quite blatantly. He stopped, let go of her arm. They had come almost to the water’s edge, blue sea sparkling far out into a misted horizon. The dock lay in front of them, an enclave of jetties with moored pleasure craft. On one side of this little harbour, the fishing boats—real, as yet unconverted to the tourist trade—had been pulled up on to a narrow shore, their nets set to dry in front of the street where the bars and small shops crowded together. On the other side of the harbour were several acres of tightly packed bodies. Day after day, week after week, months into years of sitting, standing, lying around...

Ferrier looked quickly away from two different worlds, each ignoring the other: the fishermen intent on finishing the work that had started before dawn, with a concentration that was
in itself a disdain; the self-made exiles, linked together in their flight from reality, beginning a road without end. “Any sign of Lucas?” he asked abruptly.

Amanda had been studying the dock. At first, she didn’t answer. Then, “Yes. They are just boarding.” She averted her eyes from the two-masted, unrigged fishing boat, with its boldly painted prow. “See them? Let me know when Lucas notices us.”

Ferrier nodded. “So we arrived right on their tail. We made good time after all.” And a pity, he thought. He had hoped they would be gone.

“That should please Lucas.” She kept her back turned to the boat. “He will take it as a sign that I regretted my little tantrum. It was quite a performance, wasn’t it? Too bad we had to meet that way.”

“Too bad this is the way we say goodbye. Any chance of—?”

She shook her head definitely. “And I’m sorry. It was wonderful being able to talk, just to talk. That’s the hardest part of my job—keeping silent when opinions that make me mad are flying around.”

“It’s hard,” he agreed, and wondered how she could ignore danger so coolly. He stared with increasing hostility at the man who had taken a stand on the prow of the boat to get a better view. It also made a nice dramatic gesture. “He has just caught sight of us,” Ferrier said quietly. He let his own eyes slide away to the jumble of people moving around the dock.

“How is his mood?” she asked tensely.

“He looked too goddamned pleased for my taste.”

“That could be a good sign.” She relaxed. “And now I start being sorry, properly subdued and contrite. Will this suit him?” Her face became hesitant, remote. “No, no—don’t come with
me. Let’s show him a quick parting, polite, no more. Goodbye, Ian. And my thanks.” She turned away, gave him a casual wave, hitched her bag more securely over her shoulder. She pushed her loose dark hair from her brow, raised her hand to signal the boat. “Gene!” she called, and increased her pace. “Wait for me, Gene!”

For a moment, Ferrier watched the neat swing of her hips, and then started off for the plaza as if he had lost interest. He kept seeing Lucas’ handsome face with its confident smile, and cursed the man silently all the way back to his car.

It was almost five o’clock when the message came from the hospital: Señor Reid was awake and ready, an hour ahead of time. Could Señor Ferrier come now? Señor Reid was most eager to see him.

“Fine,” said Ferrier, both surprised and delighted. “Tell him I’ll be there in—in about fifteen minutes.” That, he thought hopefully, would allow five minutes for actual driving, five minutes for making sure of the right street, and roughly five for leaving and parking. He picked up his jacket from a chair in the study, along with a green cloth bag (a sentimental survivor of Jeff’s undergraduate days) which he had already stuffed with dictaphone, radio, razor and soap and toothbrushes, engagement pad, and a small cassette player with half a dozen packaged tapes of classical music. The four books, which he had spent the last half hour selecting carefully from Jeff’s shelves, were equally guaranteed to provide real pleasure;
nothing aggravating or nauseating. A hospital bed was not the place to start your stomach churning with wild talk or furious sound. Within a couple of minutes, Ferrier was on his way.

People were now stirring on the Calle San Julian. The heat had been turned down slightly, the glare was cut by the plane trees, but Ferrier didn’t envy the police guard on duty outside Reid’s house. He saw no sign of the blue Fiat, which had followed him back from the beach up to the old Arab fortifications—where he had lunched leisurely and thoughtfully—and then had disappeared. Perhaps it had been replaced by that red Porsche or the grey Renault which just happened to be leaving San Julian along with him. It didn’t matter much to Ferrier. Not now. Jeff Reid had recovered more quickly than expected. Eager to see me, thought Ferrier. Not half as eager as I am to hand over the lighter and pencil and all the rest of the paraphernalia, give the messages, and ask a few questions of my own. And after that, curiosity at least partly satisfied and my guesses proved either wild or well aimed (that’s important to no one except myself, but I’m the one who has wasted all this bright summer day trying to grope for meanings and rational explanations), I can bow out. And head for Granada. There’s a little business to be completed there, of course; about a couple of sentences of business. And the rest is pure pleasure. Perhaps I might even leave for Granada late tonight. A drive over these mountains by cool moonlight, snowcaps pointed against a starlit sky...

He was in high spirits in spite of the sun-baked streets as he parked his car near the hospital. It was a less lonely place by day: the visitors, whole families of them, all ages, all sizes, were beginning to pile in. The hall was crowded, the waiting room already half full. He pulled on his jacket, gathered together a
few Spanish phrases, and approached the busy desk. In this part of the world, a foreigner who made an effort to speak its language was given politeness in return. A pert young nurse took him in charge most willingly, parted a way for him through the turmoil of people and pointed him in the direction of Jeff’s room. It was easy to find, the fourth door along the red-tiled corridor. His heel almost slipped from him on the high polish, and he entered with a joke ready on his lips about cleanliness preceding plaster casts, and then fell silent instead.

The place was filled with roses. Red roses, masses of them, brilliant against stark white walls. On a narrow high bed, leg suspended, swathed in plaster and bandages, was Jeff Reid, watching him with hollow eyes in a strangely drawn, startlingly bleached face. He shouldn’t be seeing me at all, thought Ferrier; he should have taken some sleep producers and be dozing out of the reach of pain. I’ll keep this short, and goodbye to any long talk with a hundred questions and all and all. “Hello, Jeff. Quite a setting you’ve got here. What do you think you are—a film star?”