The Man from Lisbon, page 42
After publicly dining in any of Lisbon’s finest restaurants she was delivered to the hotel, seen entering the elevator. An hour later the great Hispano-Suiza would appear at the rear service entrance, where she would quietly reappear, unobserved with the cooperation of the manager, and be whisked off to the Menino d’Ouro for the night.
“Well, my darling,” she said after a week of such trysting, “what are we to do?” She had gone past the need to apply pressure, and Alves was grateful. “We meet, we laugh, you tell me about your scheme and I tell you about my film contracts and Outward Bound … and we ignore the subject of your wife. Is that what you want?”
“I want a life with you, knowing you’re always there. … You leading your life, I leading mine, together when we can be.”
“The point is, is that a dream? Can we make it happen?”
She soothed his temples with her fingers. He sighed. “I’m sometimes afraid that you cannot bring it all to an end, you and Maria. I’m not blaming you, you must believe that. You are the way you are and in my heart I know we ought never to have begun. … For your sake, not mine. If you put me behind you, you could quite possibly repair your marriage. … She’d come back to you.” She smiled at him as he opened his eyes. The night outside was quiet, clouds across the moon. “You should try, Alves, one last time. …” She fumbled with a cigarette, lit it, flung the match at a cutglass ashtray on the bedside table.
“When she hears about my visiting Lisbon, she’ll do something … you can be sure she’ll hear. Listen to me, I’m more experienced in these things than you. …”
“Yes, I suppose you are,” he said, producing a self-deprecating groan. “If she will come, I’ll take her to Africa with me. That should give us enough time to see where we’re going. …”
“Remember, you’re not deciding if you love me or your wife. I know you love me, just as I know you love her. But Maria and I offer very different ways to live. … It’s the rest of your life, that’s what you’re facing, the rest of my life and hers.” He watched her stub out her cigarette and snap out the light.
The remainder of Greta’s stay in Lisbon was spent driving out into the countryside for picnics, visiting the castle at Sintra, to Estoril, to Cascais. Alves knew he was being gossiped about; he didn’t mind. The beautiful blond actress made heads turn wherever they went, and he enjoyed it.
Maria’s father called. “Is it wise, Alves? Being seen with a woman who is not your wife?”
“My wife has abandoned me. The woman is visiting José. I cannot help seeing her. Frankly, I like her.”
“But people are talking. You know that.”
“You know what Maria replied when I asked her to come back. My being seen with Greta may bring her back.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. If she cares, she’ll come back? It’s a strategy. … You are a clever fellow!”
At last Greta had to return to Paris. Rehearsals were beginning.
“I shall miss you,” Alves said self-consciously on the morning of her departure.
“You’ll be back from Angola in no time. And think, by then your mind will be clear. … You’ll know what you need, we’ll all have had time to think.”
“It seems too much like goodbye,” Alves said. “I’m afraid. I don’t want you to go.” He kissed her. They were sitting in the back seat of the Hispano-Suiza. The glass was up. José and the chauffeur chatted silently.
She said, “Well, my darling, we’ve had a lovely time, haven’t we?”
She pulled away, tears on her face. She licked them from the corner of her mouth. He pulled her close, tasted the saltiness. Then she pulled away for the last time, opened the door and was standing outside with José. She didn’t look at Alves. She turned and went into Rossio Station, José following, the chauffeur directing the men with her bags.
Maria was back in Lisbon a week later. She had indeed read the Lisbon papers sent her by her friends. Their marriage was a farce. She was through with him and it. No, she had not had an affair, but she had not been without tempting suitors.
When she ran out of breath and energy, Alves began to talk. He talked for hours, about their years together, her parents’ feelings, the pressures of business he’d been experiencing. He spoke of the beach at Cascais, the pride she’d felt in Luanda and the joy he’d taken in her, the beauty of their children, her loyalty to him during his agonies in Oporto. … He said that they could not smash all those years to pieces over the confused events of the past few months.
Would she consent to giving it one final try? They could return in triumph to Angola together. …
In the end she agreed. She still loved him, and she didn’t understand what had gone wrong, only that it had happened. She cried. Alves comforted her. It would all turn out for the best.
Alves set sail for Luanda firm in the knowledge that everything he was leaving behind was going beautifully and in good hands. He felt as if the great plan were very nearly humming along under its own steam. José and Marang would be picking up another five million dollars from Sir William, and José was scheduled to push ahead with the purchasing of the Bank of Portugal shares.
The only cloud on his personal horizon was the question of what to do with Maria and Greta; the smell of the sea and the freshening tradewinds even brought him a new optimism on that front. The right solution would become apparent; he would recognize it and grasp it. And ahead of him lay what he knew would be a joyous return to Angola. He was at the top, the top of everything.
He even overcame his tendency to seasickness. He walked the sunny decks with Hennies, sent an occasional cable to his headquarters in Lisbon. Albano da Silva, one of the department heads at the Bank of Angola and Metropole, and Jaime Mendosa, his private secretary, completed the Reis party.
Maria harbored no overt bitterness; she was, in fact, calm and pleasant, even vivacious. She had learned to drive the Hispano-Suiza, which lay now in the hold of the ship. She had lost during these past months the girlishness, the dependence she had always felt toward her husband. She seemed to have made the passage to adulthood. Alves watched her, saw the changes in the seasons of her life. Now she was cooler, more reserved, less vulnerable. On balance, the changes struck him as beneficial, though he observed her from a distance, without the warmth they had once shared.
After dinner in the lounge one night she mentioned their prospects.
“I admit that I would rather have things the way they used to be. Life was very sweet then, when we were just ourselves. But it isn’t possible now. …” The lamps glowed warmly on the brass fittings, the leather couches. A waiter brought coffee and bowed over them, fussing with silver cream and sugar dishes. Maria stirred the mixture with a tiny silver spoon, handed a cup to her husband. “We are different people now. How do people go backward in time?” The more he saw of her short, sleek hair the more he liked it. He watched her mouth on the rim of her cup.
“You can’t go back and there are no guarantees about the future.” Alves was enjoying the gentle roll of the ship, the civility of the lounge and the stewards. The blood of an admiral flowed in his veins.
He reached for her hand. “I feel as if we have been tested. It’s right that you should come back to Angola with me.”
“You always enjoy the grand gesture.” She patted his hand. “I learned more about you, just thinking by myself in Carlsbad, than I ever knew before.”
As the days passed a hint of the old warmth, a gentleness grew between them. It was as if the greater the distance from the shores of Europe, the greater the closeness between them. It took him by surprise.
“Perhaps one day,” he said the night before they were to reach Luanda, “we will come back to live out our days in Angola, on a great plantation with old friends around us, beautiful horses to ride. …” He laughed softly. “Maybe even Arnaldo would come and settle nearby with his Silvia, the three of us together again.” He added self-consciously: “Well, it could happen. …”
He was up early and walking the deck when he caught the first sight of the Luanda harbor. He stood at the rail alone as the Lower Town took shape and the cliffs with the silhouettes of the buildings marching along emerged from the morning fog. The sun painted the scene pink as it had that first day, and Alves felt himself fighting off the impulse to weep. Maybe he should never have left. … Life would have been so much simpler. But it had been only a place to start. And it would make a fine place to finish life’s journey. But not now. … Still, he had never felt his own roots so deeply. Maria slid her arm through his, said nothing.
In London, Marang and José lunched at the Carlton with Sir William and his two aides, Goodman and Springall. Five million dollars in five-hundred-escudo notes changed hands. Expressions of hope that they would all be getting together again soon filled the air. It was a beautiful London autumn, warm and sunswept.
It was raining in The Hague when they arrived. Antonio Bandeira, a worried look on his slender face, met them, gave them dinner at his home. Over coffee Antonio got it off his chest.
“Is it possible your man Hennies is not what he seems?”
José looked up, startled. “What does that mean? He’s in Angola with Alves. …”
“Two weeks ago I learned that the Minister of Colonial Affairs in Lisbon applied to the Deuxieme Bureau in Paris for whatever information they had on Adolf. You don’t drag counterintelligence into it out of mere curiosity.” Antonio poured Napoleon brandy and passed it around.
“Are you saying Adolf is a spy?” José was fully roused from the lethargy the large meal had produced.
Antonio gave his brother a pitying look. “Once I spy, always a spy. …” He looked at Marang expectantly.
“Nonsense,” Marang whispered, holding his brandy up to the candlelight. “Everybody was a spy in the old days. There was a war on. I can personally vouch for Adolf Hennies. I’ve worked hand in glove with the man for a decade! An international businessman, vast acumen and considerable resources. More to the point, he is a friend.” He waggled a finger at Antonio. “You’ve been taken in by bureaucratic nonsense. … Those fanatics are always investigating somebody, justifying their own existence!”
“You will excuse me if I press this matter,” Antonio said, frowning. The rain blew against the window and for a moment the electric lights dimmed. “I mentioned nothing about that kind of spying … the inquiry was made by the colonial people.”
José grasped the point. “It’s the old thing, then, German interest in our African holdings. …”
“Exactly,” Antonio said. “Cigars, gentlemen?” He passed around a humidor.
“It’s still nonsense,” Marang said silkily.
“Nonsense or not, Karel,” Antonio said, “there are, unfortunately, certain influential ministers and officials in Lisbon who are convinced that Hennies is a German agent now. They are convinced that his job is to get a big foothold in Angola by buying companies and plantations there through your Bank of Angola and Metropole. If Alves Reis had asked me I would certainly have advised him to leave Hennies in Lisbon. Instead, he takes him to Angola, giving Hennies’ enemies more ammunition. Most unwise, I must say. …”
“It’s a straw man they’ve set up,” José said. He clipped the end of his cigar with a gold cutter dangling from his key chain. “Believe me, all of our investments in Angola have been made together … as a group. Solely business and certainly not an international plot! It’s absurd. Why should Alves Reis and I want to give Angola to the Germans? And who says the Germans would want it, even as a gift? The whole damned colony is bankrupt and all the Portuguese stuck there would give anything to get back to Portugal … but they can’t get anyone to take over their investments. Hell, the reason we’re putting money into Angola is because there are so many bargains.”
Antonio shrugged. “You know best. But, remember, you have been warned. The whole thing is being taken very seriously in Lisbon. That alone makes it worth your attention.”
Later at the Hotel des Indes Marang guided José into the bar for a nightcap.
“Don’t let Antonio unsettle you,” he said. “You know how diplomats are, worried every time a tree loses a leaf—they think it’s a hurricane.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s exaggerating,” José said.
“In any case, you didn’t mention the key to the whole business, at least from our point of view. Our masters at the Bank of Portugal have ordered these investments in Angola. Alves has made that clear time and again. We are merely agents of the bank.” He crossed his legs, arranged the crease, smiled calmly. “And the Bank of Portugal is not at the call of Germany.”
Still, the problem raised by his brother nagged at him during the night. In the morning, having decided to take out some insurance, José went to Antonio’s office in the Portuguese Ministry and withdrew from the safe the two original contracts between Alves Reis and the Bank of Portugal authorizing the issue of banknotes. He put them in a thick manila envelope and checked out of the Hotel des Indes.
Marang, for all his reassurances to José, also decided to exercise a measure of restraint. Before turning the latest shipment of banknotes over to Planas-Suarez, he placed a million dollars’ worth in his office safe. He would store them until Reis returned from Angola and talked to their masters at the Bank of Portugal. It should be simple to find out at that end just what was behind this campaign against poor Adolf.
José stopped in Paris to see Greta. He escorted her to the party following the opening-night performance of Outward Bound.
“You were magnificent,” he whispered in her ear. “As always.”
“It is so good to see you,” she said. “Like old times. …” She winked playfully. “Have you heard from Alves?”
“Of course. He seems to be enjoying himself.”
“Yes. He says they are treating him like the King of Angola.”
“And well they might. Tell me, what is the situation between you two? Maria is back, of course. She’s with him.”
“Well, he must decide, mustn’t he?”
“It would be an easy choice for me.” José favored her with a wolfish grin. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “You must be very lonely.”
“Of course I am.”
“You needn’t be lonely tonight. No one would ever know, just the two of us” …
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said lightly.
“You never forget a lover, do you?”
She smiled, moved his hand from her thigh. “No one ever forgets a lover. I have certainly never forgotten you.”
“You make no sound like yes.”
“I am an actress, darling.”
He took her back to her apartment but made no effort to accompany her inside.
“Will you grant me a small favor?”
“Of course,” she said.
He handed her the folded manila envelope.
“Just keep this someplace safe. Forget you have it.”
“What is it?”
“Insurance policy. Just put it away.”
“All right.” She kissed him for a while, then went upstairs. It was very pleasant, knowing that once again you were the toast of Paris. She dreamed of her own triumphs that night. In the end, that was what counted.
Arriving in Lisbon feeling as if he had taken a wise precautionary step, José was delighted by several editorials appearing in the newspapers. The general tone was that things were booming throughout the entire country. Several financial writers on the dailies were predicting that the coming Christmas season was certain to be the most prosperous Portugal had experienced in a long time—possibly, one writer enthused, “in living memory.” The obvious prosperity and the jump in employment had impressed foreign-exchange dealers abroad. The embattled escudo was actually rising in value vis-à-vis the florin and that most sacred of all currencies, the British pound.
José could still not shake the slight sense of worry his brother had caused him about Hennies. He had been buying Bank of Portugal shares in the names of dummies, friends, relatives, even employees of the Bank of Angola and Metropole. The stock would be duly registered in their names on the rolls of the Bank of Portugal stockholders. But now that Hennies was being investigated, was it likely that the affairs of the Bank of Angola and Metropole would remain immune to the government’s snoops? Surely they would realize the actual ownership of the shares. …
With this in mind he declared a moratorium on the purchase of any more shares. There was, he reasoned, no need to worry Alves. In his long cable detailing the news in the papers, all calculated to keep Alves happy and relaxed as he bought up as much of Angola as he found available, José resorted to a white lie. He told Alves that they now controlled twenty-two thousand shares. There was no sense worrying Alves, and they could always buy the shares when they wanted them.
Old Terreira hosted a dinner for Alves, Maria and Hennies the first night in Luanda. It had been a long day but an exciting one. Alves had been officially received by the city and colonial officials, some old friends and some strangers. There had been a ceremony in the central square of the Lower Town, a band had played enthusiastically, and there were placards hailing the return of the “Hero of Angola.” He had received the cheers and the warm words with what he thought was a becoming humility. And after an hour of rest in the hotel’s largest suite, they were ready for Terreira’s dinner. Chaves, who had never believed Alves guilty of the accusations a year before, pumped his hand, hugged Maria, telling her how wonderful she looked. The editor and his blond wife were a little older; she kissed Alves’ cheek, asked him to remember who brought Hennies to his party all those years before.
“Angola is at your feet!” Chaves said between courses. “They still talk about the High Bridge. … It’s a legend now. By the way, I thought for sure you’d bring Arnaldo.”
“He had business he couldn’t leave in Lisbon,” Alves said evasively.
The editor’s wife, her cleavage deeper, her breasts fuller, leaned forward across the table. “It’s the most excitement we’ve had in years. … You must be so proud, Maria.”
