The Lisbon Crossing (14 page)

He gave me a long, desolate look. “Can’t it wait?”

“Would I be here if it could?”

He sighed. “What do you want?”

“Do you have a car?”

“My driver will pick us up in an hour.”

“You’ll have to call her a taxi, then.”

“Jack…” He shook his head, tossed his napkin onto the table, and excused himself in French. I followed him into the restaurant’s small lobby.

“She’s a Hapsburg,” he whispered loudly.

“No shit?” I said. “A Hapsburg?”

“That’s right. And Hapsburgs don’t take taxis.”

I laughed.

“I’m serious, Jack.”

“Look, Dick…I don’t care if you put her in a goddamned golden carriage drawn by six white stallions. Just get rid of her.”

He wanted to punch me, but he swallowed his pride. “This better be damn good. I’ve been working on her for two months.”

A
few minutes later, Brewster slid into the backseat and offered me a smoke. I already had one going. “So what the hell’s so goddamned urgent?” he said.

“I need to find someone.”

“Sure, Eva Lange. So what else is new?” He lit himself up.

“I’m looking for somebody else now.”

“What happened with Eva?”

“She’s dead,” I said. “At least officially.”

He blew a cloud of smoke in my direction. “Just tell me what you want, Jack.”

I gave him the bare bones of the story, about Popov’s ruse with the dead girl and Lili’s quick-thinking performance that fooled Catela. I also told him that I thought it had been set up to get the heat off Eva for Kleinmann’s murder.

“Okay,” he said. “So she’s off the hook. What’s the big emergency?”

“She’ll try to leave Lisbon before anyone can figure it out,” I said.

He shrugged. “Maybe. But what makes you think you can find her now when you couldn’t before?”

“I know what I’m looking for now.”

“And that is…?”

“Lisa Foquet.”

“Who the hell is she?”

“The lady at the funeral parlor.”

“What lady?”

“The dead lady,” I said. “Thirty-two years old, medium height, short, dark hair, carrying a Belgian passport.”

Brewster thought about it for a moment. “You think Eva Lange is going to use it?”

“So you’re not just a pretty face, after all.”

He shrugged it off. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“Popov had two good buyers for Eva—you and Ritter. Why would he go out of his way to help her escape?”

It was my turn to shrug. “I don’t care about the why. What I need is the when and the where.” Brewster impatiently flicked an ash onto the floor. “I need passenger lists. Ships, planes, anything that’s leaving the country. Can you manage that?”

“Sure. First thing tomorrow.”

“Not good enough.”

“Just what the hell did you think I could do at”—he checked his watch—“nine forty-five on a Wednesday night?”

“Make some calls.”

“Make some calls? At this hour?” He snickered. “It doesn’t work like that, Jack.”

Strangely enough, I didn’t really dislike Brewster, but I was moving in that direction. “Let me explain it to you again, Dick,” I said, trying to keep cool. “I’m handing you a golden opportunity here. A once-in-a-lifetime offer.”

“Knock it off, Jack…”

“I’m serious. This is your chance to get noticed by the top guy. How often does an opportunity like that come along? Give me a couple hours tonight and you can save years of kissing ass and scheming your way up the ladder. Come on, Dick, be smart. Once you’re on top, you can fuck all the princesses you want.” I let it sink in for a minute. “So how about it? You can either sit here all night, listing the reasons why there’s nothing you can do, or you can use your brain and make something happen.”

There was a fairly long silence before Brewster cleared his throat and said, “There is one guy I could call.”

I
leaned against the back of the car and peered into the darkness.

There wasn’t much to see. The black sedan carrying Jesós Chaves, a fat detective in Catela’s Guarda Nationale, had pulled up some time ago. I’d watched from my perch above the docks as he and the two uniformed cops he’d brought along approached Brewster, who’d been waiting alone on the quay. After a short conference, they’d all boarded the SS Avoceta, whose departure had already been delayed for an hour.

It hadn’t been easy—or cheap—to find Detective Chaves. A sergeant at Guarda headquarters had been willing to provide his home address in return for twenty bucks. Mrs. Chaves directed us to the
local bar for five, and the bartender there soaked us for ten just to bring the detective’s brother, Jorge, into the discussion. Jorge made out with fifty bucks for taking us to an apartment around the corner, where we finally found our man sharing a bathtub with his triple-D-cup mistress. It took a hundred to convince him that it was worth drying off and heading into the office to check the passenger lists. We’d agreed that if he found Lisa Foquet on one of them, he’d phone Brewster at his apartment.

After two whiskey sours, served by the wary Luiz, the phone rang. Lisa Foquet was on a list all right, but, of course, she wouldn’t come cheap. The
Avoceta
was scheduled to sail for Liverpool in roughly twenty minutes and Chaves felt that stopping her was worth five hundred. I only had two bills left on my roll, which was scoffed at, but Brewster got him to accept three as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and donated the extra hundred himself. Brewster was all right, in the end.

I checked my watch—almost midnight. My name was too bound up with Eva Lange’s to tag along, so I’d decided it would be better to stay in the background, a decision I was starting to regret. They’d been on board the better part of forty minutes. What the hell was taking so goddamn long? She was in a first-class cabin. All they had to do was knock on the door, grab her, and bring her ashore. Five minutes, in and out. What could go wrong?

Someone called out. A man’s voice, deep and resounding, echoing around the wharf. Then all hell broke loose—the ship’s engine burst forth with the rumbling explosion of vibrating metal, heavy chains scraping against the ship’s hull, men yelling back and forth across the darkness…

I took a step forward, straining to see any movement. Nothing at first, but then I saw them, coming down the ramp. Three, four men and—yes, another silhouette, a woman’s figure, hidden behind one of the larger figures. As they stepped onto the concrete berth and passed under a dim lamp, I got my first shadowy look at her. I couldn’t make out much more than the short black hair of her disguise, but there
was something about the way she walked—the way she held herself—that made me know it was Eva. There was a grace about her that just fit, though I couldn’t say why.

I thought she looked up at me, but they were still a good hundred yards away and I was standing in total darkness. She couldn’t have known that I was waiting there.

At fifty yards, the group stopped moving and one of the uniformed cops removed a set of cuffs from Eva’s wrist. Chaves shook Brewster’s hand, then followed his men back to the coupe to be driven away, a much richer man than he’d started the evening. Brewster said something to Eva, then took her arm and started walking her toward me.

For some inexplicable reason my heart started beating like crazy. It was totally unexpected and the closer she got the harder it beat. I couldn’t control it. When she got close enough that I could see her face, I realized she was looking straight at me. Or maybe straight through me was more like it. Her expression said everything about her. Tenacious, compassionate, smart, combative, playful…it was all there, all in that one look.

“Meet Lisa Foquet,” Brewster said as he set her in front of me. I wasn’t sure that I could get any words out, so I just stood there looking at her. She returned the gaze for a moment, soft brown eyes meeting mine head-on in the darkness. Then she allowed a hint of a smile to cross her lips.

“You almost let me get away,” she said in a rich, warm, gently mocking voice.

Once I got
my heart out of my mouth, I turned to Brewster and grumbled, “What took you so damned long?”

“The ship’s captain,” he shrugged. “Said we couldn’t take her without paperwork.”

“They took me anyway,” Eva chafed.

“So I see.” I met her implacable gaze again. It was more than a bit unsettling. I’d never felt tongue-tied or awkward with a woman before, and I didn’t much care for the feeling.

“I’m Jack Teller,” I managed.

“Yes, I know who you are,” she said in a refined English accent. “I’d like to say what a pleasure it is to meet you, but I’d be lying.”

“Do you know why I’ve been looking for you?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I do.”

“Lili would like to help you.”

Eva cocked her head and looked at me sideways. “To do what?”

“You’ll have to talk to her about that.”

“Ah…You’re just doing your job.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, then, I suppose congratulations are in order. You’ve bagged your quarry.”

I wasn’t sure if she was angry or teasing. Maybe both. I never could figure out how to read Eva—there was too much going on. And as soon as you thought you had her pegged, she’d change direction on you.

“Are we done here?” Brewster chimed in. “Because, as interesting as this is—”

“We’ll drop you off,” I said, opening the car door for Eva.

“Where are we going?” she said, standing firm.

“Don’t worry—”

“Easy for you to say! The Gestapo isn’t looking for you!”

“Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“For the moment they do.”

She was right, of course. The body swap had been an effective deception, but there were too many ways for the story to fall apart to be sanguine about it. Popov might get talkative, Baptista could run scared, or our fat detective might even put two and two together. Eva had planned her exit very well and I had just wrenched her back into the very danger that we were supposed to be saving her from. No wonder she wasn’t gushing with gratitude.

The ship’s horn blew off a parting shot. A look of quiet distress flashed across Eva’s face as she watched her escape vessel pull away, but she didn’t dwell on it. Swinging quickly back around on me, she gave me a hard, measured look, then calmly slipped into the backseat.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.

W
e dropped Brewster off and continued on in silence, leaving the city and driving west, into the dark, pine-scented mountains. I was aware of Eva’s soft breathing beside me and I sensed her staring out the window into the void, but she didn’t stir until the car pulled onto the bumpy dirt track that led to the farm. It was pitch-black, but I remembered the layout from our visit the previous day. The
road curved around to the right, along a steep ridge that opened onto a clearing where the small stone-and-tile house stood overlooking a long, green valley. It had occurred to me while I’d been waiting at the dock that Alberto’s cousin’s place would be the perfect spot to stow Eva for a few days. Aside from a goat, a donkey, and a couple of pigs, no one would be the wiser.

Alberto was barreling along when, out of the blue, he hit the brakes. The car swerved left and I went right, bouncing my forehead off something hard. It hurt like hell and I came up cursing.

“Jesus Christ!”
I yelped, which was met by heartfelt laughter from Eva.

“You think that’s funny?” I snapped.

“Don’t you?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t!”

“You don’t have much of a sense of humor, then.”

I was deciding how to respond when my vision came back into focus and I saw what she was laughing at. Standing in front of the car, bathed in our headlights, was a man pointing a two-gauge shotgun at us. The funny part was that, aside from a pair of unlaced black dress shoes, he was buck naked. I recognized him as Alberto’s cousin Fabio. He took a step toward the car and squinted into the light.

“Quem é?!”
he demanded.

“Não dispare!”
Alberto cried out from his position on the floor below the dashboard.” Don’t shoot!…“Don’t shoot!…
É o teu primo, Alberto!
”

Fabio lowered the weapon.
“Alberto?…Que está fazendo aqui nesta hora?”

Alberto grabbed the steering wheel and pulled himself back onto his seat as Fabio’s face appeared in the driver’s-side window. “I bring my friends to stay with you,” he said, gesturing toward us.

“Olá.”
Eva smiled.

“
Olá,
senhora,” Fabio politely replied.

“Desculpe que fizemos esta surpresa,”
she said, in what sounded to me like reasonable Portuguese.

“Nada, senhora. É o meu prazer.”

Fabio looked over at me and smiled with recognition. “Ah, good evening, senhor!” he said. I was about to respond, but before I could get the words out, a quizzical look came over him.

“Why is this blood all across your face?” he said.

F
abio’s agreeable wife, Rosalina, was reticent about dousing my injury with a painful dose of iodine, but Eva had no such qualms. In fact, she seemed to enjoy watching me squirm as she administered the caustic torture.

“It’s just a scratch,” she reassured me as she deftly wrapped my head with a strip of old linen. Fabio had quickly disappeared back to bed (never mentioning his state of undress) while Rosalina provided Eva with a cup of tea and medical supplies, then said good night, too. Alberto was fast asleep in the next room.

Eva had removed the black Lisa Foquet wig, revealing dark, chestnut hair that swept past her cheek with a stylish kink before falling lightly onto her shoulders. Her face, lit by a single candle on the kitchen table, where my treatment was taking place, had changed surprisingly little in the fifteen years since the boat photo. More defined, perhaps. Certainly less naive. She leaned forward to pin the bandage, close enough that I could feel her breath on my face and smell the lilac-scented soap she’d used to wash that morning. The top two buttons on her shirt were undone and I could see the white line of her bra pressing against her breast.

“How does that feel?” she said.

“I guess I’ll live.”

“You’re lucky you have such a hard head.” She stepped back to review her work. “It’s a bit overdone, but at least you won’t bleed all over Rosa’s pillow.”

“That’s a relief.”

She rolled the remainder of the towel into a ball, placed it and the
scissors she’d been using onto the table, then sat down beside me. “I don’t suppose you told them how much trouble they’ll be in if I’m found here.”

“We’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” I said. She nodded, but I wasn’t sure she’d been listening.

“You should have let me go, you know.”

“Lili wants to—”

“Save me?” She gave me a dubious look. “I’d have been safe in England.”

“You probably said that about Amsterdam and Paris.”

A delicate crease appeared in her brow. “I haven’t heard from Lili in thirteen years. Why now?”

“You can ask her tomorrow,” I said. “Alberto will have her here first thing in the morning.”

“I will ask her,” she said. Then, cocking her head, she gave me a coquettish look and served up a mischievous smile. “I suppose that makes me your prisoner tonight…Would you like to tie me up?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Eva threw her head back and laughed, a full, throaty, honest laugh, and it made me smile, too.

“Well, if I have to be someone’s prisoner, I suppose I’d just as soon be yours. But I’m too tired to be tied up tonight.” She got to her feet, placed a hand on my shoulder, leaned over, and kissed me on the cheek. “Pleasant dreams,” she said, then she picked up the candle, smiled sweetly, and swept out of the room, leaving me in the dark.

She was playing me. I knew she was playing me. Of course she was. And she was doing a damn good job of it, too. Why else would I be sitting there with an aching head and a silly grin plastered across my face? I got up, stumbled into the next room, and curled up on a bed of ceramic tiles, where I eventually drifted off to the melodic strains of Alberto snoring like a pig.

I
sat up with a start, thinking that someone was coming toward me, but there was no one there. Just Alberto, mumbling something unintelligible. I wasn’t even sure if I’d been asleep or awake. Probably somewhere in between. My head was throbbing, but it was more than that and the hard floor that kept me turning over. It was Eva.

Women were never far from my mind, and they’d had various effects on me, never predictable. Glamorous movie stars had left me stone cold, while a well-placed smile from the Sunday-school teacher in Davenport, Iowa, had once given me a new sense of religion. I sat through a month of very long Sundays before I finally snapped out of it.

But my reaction to Eva was a new one. I was pent up, that’s for sure—it had been over two weeks since my last encounter with Mrs. Wexler—but there was more to it than that. Hell, I hadn’t even set eyes on Eva before I started going loopy. And what I really wanted—what kept going through my mind as I lay there not sleeping—was to kiss her. That’s all. Just a kiss. Not a hard, passionate, give-me-everything-you-got kiss, either. Just a soft, brush-against-the-lips kind of kiss. Strange. Not my usual brand of fantasy. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking straight.

I couldn’t shake the image of her eyes. The way they looked at you, thoughtful, wary, self-assured, but with tenderness and, I thought, some sadness, too. And the lovely curl of her upper lip when she—

I was smiling again. That would have to stop. There were too many questions hanging over Eva Lange to wade into those waters, let alone to go off the deep end.

Questions like—
Who the hell is she?

An artist escaping the repression of Nazi Germany, or a loyal party member dispatched to prepare for the Reich’s imminent invasion and occupation of England? Was she no more than a talented musician who found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a cold-blooded killer who shot Eddie Grimes twice in the heart, then pushed his car off a cliff? And what about Hans Kleinmann? Had she been mistress to the murdered head of German intelligence
in Lisbon? Had she been working for him? Or had she been playing him, too? Playing him right up to the moment that she put a bullet between his eyes. The only thing I knew for sure was that, whoever she was, and whatever she was, Eva Lange wasn’t a lady that you’d want to underestimate.

I realized that I wasn’t smiling anymore.

T
he sound of a car approaching roused me from a deep sleep. I opened my eyes and was met with bright, midmorning sunlight streaming in through the open front door. I poked my head out just in time to see Alberto pull up in front of the house. He leapt out from behind the wheel and raced around to open the passenger door, but Lili didn’t wait. Dressed in tan slacks, an emerald-green scarf tied over her head, and oversize sunglasses to hide her face, she stepped onto the dusty track and stood there, looking nervous and out of place.

I saw Eva before she did. Standing in a field away from the house, she’d been feeding carrots to a donkey. She didn’t move at first, covertly watching the arrival from a distance for as long as she could. It wasn’t until Lili started to turn in her direction that Eva fixed a smile to her face and began striding toward the car.

Lili froze. I don’t think she was even breathing as she watched Eva glide through the long grass, sunlight striking her gracile form, a smile radiating out to greet her long-lost friend. When she was within a few feet of the car, Eva stopped. The two women shared a long look that seemed to say whatever it was that needed to be said, then Eva opened her arms and accepted Lili into a close embrace. They stayed that way for a very long time—lost, motionless, holding firmly on to each other.

“W
e’ve heard all sorts of stories about you.”

Lili smiled nervously and reached into her bag, fishing for a
fresh pack of cigarettes. She’d been chain-smoking all through lunch, which had been served in the shade of a big oak tree at the edge of the mountain. The view was spectacular, across a lush river valley that wound its way down to the sea about four miles away, but I’d been watching the two women circle each other, playing with childhood memories while carefully avoiding anything that might shed light on all the questions that hung in the air. Now, finally, Lili seemed ready to broach the subject.

“What did you hear?” Eva inquired with an easy smile.

“A lot of nonsense, really.” Lili waved it off as insignificant. “I refused to believe a word of it.”

“Some of it might be true.”

Lili gave her a look but softened quickly. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, reaching across the table for Eva’s hand. “All that’s over. The only thing that matters now is that I’ve found you…We’re together again.”

“It’s lovely to see you, Lili.” Eva squeezed Lili’s hand, but only so she could withdraw hers. Lili covered by putting a cigarette between her lips.

“Jack will arrange passage to New York as soon as possible,” she said, getting down to business. “We’ll spend a few days there—you’ll adore New York—then on to Los Angeles. You’ll stay with me, of course. For heaven’s sake, I have twelve bedrooms, eleven of them empty!…”

Eva looked to me, but I was staying out of it.

“I know,” Lili continued as I lit her up. “You’re thinking, Hollywood, how dreadful! But there’s more to it than you might think. There are even signs of culture starting to take hold. Do you remember Bruno Walter? Of course, you do. Director of the Städtische Opera until he left Berlin, two years ago. That’s when I should have got you out, but there’s no point in worrying about that now. Well, he’ll be conducting the Philharmonic this season. I know him quite well. We’ll give him lunch as soon as we get back so he can meet you. I’m sure he’ll be delighted—”

“Lili…” Eva moaned.

It stopped her cold. She must have known that she’d gone too far. “Yes, darling?”