Message From Malaga (34 page)

It was the easiest time of the week for a drive over the mountain highway. There were no trucks, no farmers’ carts, today; and, as yet, only some early-rising tourists (the busloads would come later) and a few Spaniards in compact Simcas setting out for Sunday visits to their families. The olive groves sloping down to the wide valleys were empty of workers, and from the bleached walls of distant hilltowns came the occasional ringing of bells, far off and dreamlike. The road was narrow—a two-lane job—but well surfaced and beautifully engineered. Ferrier kept to a safe forty on its higher reaches, made up a steady seventy on its flatter stretches once he reached the high plateau that led towards Granada. Now and again (very much now and again), there was a small roadside village with one short dusty street closely lined by simple houses, a large church, a sleeping café, an unobtrusive police station on its outskirts. Here, he dropped his speed to a polite fifteen miles an hour, avoided
all yelping dogs and straying chickens, didn’t alarm the black-clothed women making their way to early Mass, didn’t attract any evident interest from the couple of grave-faced men of the Guardia Civil who were already on duty. But the car—make, colour, vintage—would be noted; its number remembered. The way of the transgressor was not made easy in this part of the world, thought Ferrier. Here, church and state never slept.

His spirits rose like Granada’s three hills as he saw them come into view with their background of snow-tipped mountains in the distance and their clustering Moorish palaces, Christian towers and spires, woods and walls and ramparts and cliffs. Overhead was blue sky, a mounting sun, but the air was still fresh and cool. In every way, the day had begun well. He was almost half an hour early, he had not been followed. He would have plenty of time for a real breakfast (he had broken his fast with a handful of grapes and a hunk of bread, picked up in his hurry through Concepción’s kitchen) and an intensive study of his map of Granada. He never liked feeling baffled by a place; get to know its layout and it became friendly. Even now, from his last visit here, he could find his way through the half-old, half-modernised town, trolley-car lines threaded through narrow streets, coloured electric lights strung in garlands overhead, medieval squares and plane trees and flowers and Moorish-style courtyards, to start climbing up towards the high ground where the Palace Hotel stood. There, in front of its entrance was a large slope of triangular space where he could park his car among a hundred others. He noted the mixture of registration plates, as well as the markings on some giant Europa buses of the opulent-tour type arranged neatly side by side like a row of howdahed elephants. Dutch,
German, English, Swedish, French. Two of them were being packed with overnight baggage, preparing to leave. So he would find a room, all right, and that worry was over. He put on his jacket, buttoned his collar, tightened his tie, gave his bag to a uniformed boy, and entered the large discreetly busy lobby. First stage completed, he thought. I’ve arrived.

* * *

He telephoned Tavita. She was half awake at first, and sharply annoyed. Then there was a moment of absolute astonishment, disbelief. And after that, excited and tremulous, a touching welcome. When could she see him? Soon—soon? How wonderful, how marvellous. Come and have breakfast and look at the view she had promised him. In half an hour? She’d be waiting. “But of course I ought to have known,” she ended. “It’s the fourteenth, isn’t it? Fourteen always makes me happy.” If anyone had been listening to their talk, he would have thought it only meant two people were planning a most enticing Sunday. A pity, thought Ferrier as he left the hotel and took the quiet road south from the giant triangle, that it wasn’t true. The trouble about this kind of job was that—quite contrary to popular opinion and movie scripts—it played hell with your sex life. In between crises, no doubt an intelligence agent relaxed and enjoyed himself; but among the harsh realities of physical danger and intellectual tension, the passionate lover became a romantic myth. When too much was at stake, a man sobered up. He had to. Strangely enough, he was perhaps more of a man for doing just that. Which, decided Ferrier, was an uncomfortable truth for someone who had always been set on his own pleasures. You’re miscast, he told himself; you are too damned selfish for this type of work.
All right, all right, let’s get it done. Second stage completed. You are on your way.

* * *

La Soledad, like the rest of the scattered houses along this road, was almost hidden by its high wall. Only its tiled roof was visible. If the name had not been delicately scrolled on an elaborate iron gate, he would have passed it by. There was a driveway, straight and steep, swerving sharply as soon as he passed through the gate, descending right below the wall to reach a small turnaround for cars in front of the main door. Magdalena was there, waiting for him, pulling him into a hall before he had even taken his bearings. All he had time to note was that the house was of one storey, with no windows on this side, and smaller than he had expected. The entrance hall was small, too, semi-circular in shape, panelled with elaborate wood carvings, and fairly dim. But the room into which it curved was large and flooded with light from a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside was a narrow terrace, the tops of trees from a lower terrace, and, beyond all that, a view—down over a fall in the land to the cluster of small roofs far below, to foreshortened church towers and bald patches of little plazas; across that and up to another rise, covered with trees. And then, to his right, all the sharp slopes eased out into a plain that stretched to the horizon, meeting blue with dusty gold.

“So you approve,” Tavita said behind him. She held out both hands to him as her greeting.

He took them, stood looking at her. “And of you, too.” She had dressed simply, in a long white caftan, soft and loose. No jewellery. Little make-up. Smooth hair brushed to a gleam of dark silk, heavily knotted at the nape of her neck.

“I kept you waiting,” she said.

“I was five minutes early.”

“Come inside. We can talk better there. Sounds carry.” She led him back into the room, one hand still in his. She faced him again. Suddenly, her magnificent eyes were filled with tears. “Oh, Ian—what went wrong? He was such a strong man, so—”

“I know. I know. But we must talk later about Jeff. Now there is urgent business.”

“What?” She was shocked. She drew her hand away.

“Tomás Fuentes.”

That was all he had needed to say. She drew a deep breath, steadied her emotions. Intensely, low-voiced, she said, “I hate that man. He is a spoiler. Of grief and of love and of all that is true and honest.” Angrily, she kicked aside a floor cushion, sat down on a couch. “All right, then. Business. What business?” She began pouring coffee from a pot on the brass tray on the low table at her side. “Magdalena!” she called sharply to the hall. “You’ve forgotten the honey. And what are you doing by the door?”

“I asked her to watch it,” Ferrier said quickly. “There is a man who is coming to see you. He wants to enter quietly without any waiting. As I did.”

“To see me?”

“You. And Tomás.”

She stopped pouring the coffee, set the copper pot down on the tray with a crash, almost upsetting the cups.

“Careful,” he said, taking the pot from her hand. “This table doesn’t look as if it could stand many shocks like that one.” Mother-of-pearl inlay balanced on four wood-lace legs. He finished the pouring, set the cup in front of her. “Drink
this.” To Magdalena, who looked as if she were deserting her post, he called over, “Stay there! Tavita can do without honey this morning.” He looked at Tavita with a grin. “Can’t you?”

She nodded, half smiling. “So you just walk into my house and take charge, do you?” But she drank the coffee obediently, ate half a slice of cake, took the cigarette he had lighted for her, relaxed. “Who is this man?” she asked quietly.

“He comes from Washington.”

“But so soon?”

“He had come over here to see Jeff. He saw me instead.”

“So that is why you did not have to go to Washington? But where did you meet him? And how?”

“I’ll tell you about that later,” he said, trying to keep his voice easy, curb his impatience. There was no time for any explanations, only time enough to make her trust O’Connor. “He is going to help you. He will solve all our problems.” I hope, I hope...

“Did Jeff trust him?”

“He would have trusted him.”

“And you?”

“Yes.”

She thought about that, watching his face. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Then I suppose I must.”

Thank God, he thought; no questions that have to be parried, no tactful evasions to be made.

But then she said, “Surely he is not here alone?”

“I think we’ll just trust him to arrange all that, too.”

“Is he an important man in Washington?”

“His enemies think he is.” Why else would Tomás Fuentes have picked out O’Connor for help? “Where is Tomás’ room,
by the way? Can he hear us talking?” This was a strange house, not small and one-storeyed, as he had at first imagined. There were other floors beneath this one; that much he had guessed from the layers of terraces outside.

She shook her head solemnly.

“He is downstairs?”

She shook her head again, crumbled the remaining half-slice of cake, ate a small mouthful. “It’s so dry without honey,” she told him.

“Tavita! Where is Tomás?”

“Safe. Completely safe. But not here. See”—she added delightedly—“I can produce surprises, too.”

“Not here?” He was horrified.

She relented. “We can reach him easily. Within ten minutes, fifteen at most.”

“How?”

“By walking.” She watched him with amusement. “Ian, Ian—you must trust me as much as I trust you. Did you really think I would keep that monster in the same house as myself? I would never have slept at all last night if I knew he was here. In any case, it was a bad-enough night. I was only beginning to sleep when I was awakened at nine. The telephone. A call from—from the International Associated Press, yes, that’s who it was. They are writing some articles about Granada, and are interviewing several people. Photographs, too. How we live. That kind of thing. They want to photograph me here—in the studio—dancing, of course, and in my best costumes.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told them it was impossible for the next four or five days. After that, I would be delighted.” She looked at him anxiously.
“Why not? The articles will be published in London and New York, perhaps even in Paris. Important for me, Ian. Truly.”

At least, he thought, she had put them off for four or five days—keeping them away from this house as long as she had expected to wait for him.

“Of course,” she went on with a touch of regret, “if I had known you were coming here today, I could have arranged for them to photograph me tomorrow. Even tonight. Tomás will be out of Granada, by then, won’t he?”

He didn’t answer that question, For one thing, he did not know O’Connor’s plans; for another, the less Tavita knew, the safer she would be. “They telephoned you at nine? From where?”

“I don’t know. Long-distance, I think.”

“Early for Sunday morning, wasn’t it?”

“But they are arriving in Granada today. They wanted a—a preliminary talk—preliminary?—yes, that’s what they wanted this evening. You understand,” she added placatingly, “they must look at the studio, see if it has suitable lighting, all that kind of thing.” She saw she was worrying him somehow, so she changed the subject. “Now you see why I was so cross with you when you called—until I realised it was you, actually you. I was trying to fall asleep again. Such a hideous night. And yours? You must have had an early start. More coffee?”

He glanced at his watch. “No, thanks.” And now he was worrying why O’Connor was late. Six minutes. Not much. But later than expected.

“We’ll go out to the terrace, and I shall point out the view. And you can tell me all about your own work. Or is it very secret? Is that why you don’t talk about it?” She had risen,
coming on to her feet in one lithe movement from the soft cushions of the couch, not even needing the hand he had put out to help her.

His own work... He hadn’t given it more than five minutes’ thought in the last thirty-six hours. If a vacation was measured by absolute change, then his trip to Spain scored high. “Not so secret. Not usually, at least.”

“Then tell me about it.” She walked slowly, gracefully, each step almost in the motion of a dance, towards the terrace door.

Command performance, he thought, and smiled as he shook his head. “No. It isn’t the kind of job that interests most people, not unless they are doing it.” Or could understand the basics. But it always seemed a bit pretentious to emphasise its intricacies; specialisation was usually boring to the uninitiated.

“So dull as that?”

His smile broadened. Hers was the usual reaction. “Well,” he said lightly, “it keeps me from confusing shoptalk with conversation.”

“Shoptalk?” That was a new word to her. She swirled round to face him, her wide caftan billowing out.

“Talking about one’s work.”

“Oh,” she said. That was a new idea to her, too. She thought about it, didn’t like it. “But what is wrong with that? Why shouldn’t I talk about dancing and audiences and performances I have given?” she demanded.

“No reason why you shouldn’t. And no reason why you should. You don’t need to talk about yourself. Every movement you make tells me who you are.” Even the way she was stepping on to the terrace, right now, was pure Tavita.

She swirled round again, her eyes laughing. And then, they
glanced past him, they became cold and appraising. He turned round, too. Robert O’Connor was standing at the threshold of the room. In the hall behind him, old Magdalena was locking the front door. Hell, thought Ferrier, I never even heard him come in.

O’Connor took a few steps into the room, glanced around it quickly, selected a corner far away from the windows. “Sorry about the delay. And we’d better keep away from that terrace. There’s a fine view of it from the trees on the opposite side. That’s one of the reasons I’m late. I was over there just about twenty minutes ago. Saw you standing outside, Ian.”