300 Days of Sun (17 page)

This was serious. She had started by wanting to show Michael that she was not just his little woman, sitting alone while he engaged in his war games, that she was as strong as he was, if not more so. But it was a foolish game.

Mayer led her up some steps. It was only when they entered the building that she realized it was a church. He propelled her into a side chapel watched over by a statue of the Virgin Mary, her hand stretched out as if in benefaction. They sat on simple wooden chairs.

Silence.

She stared ahead, tensed for whatever would fall. Instinctively, she began a mute prayer.

“Thank you,” he said at last.

Still she would not acknowledge him.

Mayer shifted in his seat. It was too small for such a big man. “It was brave of you to come. I did not think you would.”

“You gave me no choice.”

“I mean, that you came to Faro.”

She twisted round at that. “I came to the Algarve to get away from Lisbon—­and Estoril, for that matter. I am here of my own choosing. Whatever you seem to think, you are mistaken if you believe this has anything whatsoever to do with you, Herr Mayer.”

“That is very interesting.”

Alva stood up. “I have no idea why that should be. I am going to leave now, if you have no reason to detain me.” She made for the carved wooden screen that separated the chapel from the nave.

He didn't get up or try to stop her. “You really don't know?” he asked.

“Know what?”

“I have been trying to get the British in Lisbon to trust me. For entirely understandable reasons, they do not. So I tried the Canadians, but their man was a liability. So the only way to prove myself was through the amateurs. You understand what I am saying?”

“Really, I do not, Herr Mayer. Why should you be so surprised that the British don't trust a German in Lisbon?”

“A German may have Nazi connections, and not be a Nazi.”

“Too many games are being played.”

“Indeed there are, Mrs. Barton.”

“But I don't want to play, Herr Mayer.” She turned to go.

“Yet you have been outplayed—­and you don't even know it.”

Again, she was pinned down on the point of leaving. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why do you think you came to Faro?”

“I came because it sounded like an interesting place where a woman might travel alone.”

“And who told you about it?”

“A friend in Lisbon.”

He shook his head, giving a disconcerting smile. “Interesting choice of words. A friend.”

“I wish you would stop speaking in riddles.”

“That's how the British refer to their intelligence officers: as ‘friends.' It wouldn't have been a man called Bagshaw who cleverly suggested Faro as a destination, would it?”

She said nothing.

“And how did you travel to the Algarve? Would it have been made easy for you in some way to make the journey south?”

“My husband didn't want me to make the trip,” she said more firmly than she felt.

“And yet he arranged for some more acquaintances to facilitate it. You did not come on the train because too many of the conductors on the trains out of Lisbon are in the pay of the Abwehr and can be relied upon to report the movements of any foreign nationals. Tell me, Mrs. Barton, do they have diplomatic connections, the ­people you came with? Can you be absolutely sure that your husband did not want you to make this trip?”

She was speechless.

“He has been very clever. If a little . . .”

Sneaky, that was the word, thought Alva. Michael knew her so well. He had used her determination and turned it against her. Oh, he had been clever, all right.

“It sounds as if you know a great deal, Herr Mayer. Unfortunately for you, this is where it ends, because I do not. I have nothing to do with whatever my husband might be involved in, and I know nothing that could be remotely of consequence to you. So there we have it. A wasted journey on both our parts.”

“Far from it, Mrs. Barton. Lies and expectations. They work best when they conform. I am an officer of the German Abwehr, that is true. I work very diligently and I believe I am respected by my fellow officers in Lisbon and Berlin. But then, not all of us are Nazis.” He paused, and then repeated it slowly and softly, this time holding her stare. “Not all of us are Nazis.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because I have to prove it. I have to prove it to you. A person who really doesn't have any preconceptions or any interest in the games being played.”

Alva clenched her hands together. “What if I'm a fool, though? Someone who believes everything she is told?”

“No one, least of all your husband, thinks you are a fool, Mrs. Barton.”

They sat in silence for a while. Faint remnants of incense floated on the cool air.

“The British are suspicious,” Mayer went on. “They are right to be. They have been bitten already by infiltrators claiming to be agents working against the Third Reich. The Americans and Canadians take the same view, though they at least threw me to their amateurs and collectors of rumor in the press corps. Which is how I had the pleasure to be acquainted with your husband.”

“Don't tell me anymore. I want no part in this.”

He rose, and bowed his head. “Any evening, you can find me at the Café Aliança at six o'clock. If you change your mind, if you decide that I am to be trusted—­or if you need help, of any kind . . .”

The heels of her sensible shoes echoed from the aisle as she took her leave.

S
omehow she found her way out of the maze of streets. Then she kept on walking until she could hear the applause of the sea pounding the pebbly shore.

A stork waded into the shallows, picking up its spindly legs delicately as a prudish maiden aunt, and with the same distaste for show. With a dipping motion of its head it pulled up some delicacy from the flooded grass. There were no flamingos.

Out where the breakers formed, there was land; in the near distance, fields of white snow at the edge of the ocean. Nothing was what it should be. Michael had used her. The lucky ones no more. For miles, she walked through wind and tears toward the snowfields. She reached the intense white brilliance as it started to glow in a beam of sunlight from the strange mauve-­black sky. A solitary man straightened his back from raking the white flakes.

They were the only two ­people in sight. She raised her arm in feeble greeting and he returned the gesture.

“What is it?” she asked, pointing to the snow crystals.

The man did not seem to understand.

She pointed again, and looked puzzled.

He bent over and put a pinch in his palm, then offered it, pointing at his tongue. When she hesitated he put a flake in his mouth. She did the same. It was salt. He was a salt-­panner. Salt of the earth—­that was one of her father's favorite phrases, the greatest compliment he could give.

The man fluttered his hands, trying another mime. He pointed at her, and the town along the coast. Then he blew out a great gust of air and looked to the scudding clouds.

She nodded. She could feel the wind getting stronger. Go back, go back, he motioned, but with a toothless grin. It was good advice, and she took it.

The waves were getting higher with each crash against the seawall, and the wind was pulling the sea and the sky out of shape by the time she made it.

She was exhausted when she reached the hotel, nauseous with anger at Michael and Ronald Bagshaw. Mostly Michael.

So who am I, she wondered, now that I am no longer Michael Barton's unquestioning wife? I am the descendant of fishermen and ropemakers and sailors and carpenters, and women who were lace-­tatters and cheesemakers and vegetable-­growers and mothers in the old country; the daughter of merchants in the New World.

Nonna Alva, her grandmother, saved the money she made by raising goats and making cheese, and kept it in a china box decorated with flowers. Then her grandfather found it and drank it all away when the carpentry business did badly. After a while, Nonna Alva stopped making cheese. That was the only choice women had then, to refuse to go on. It was different for Alva; she was an American. But she couldn't get back home. We cannot go back to what we once were, she thought, none of us can.

 

v

T
he next day the wind was violent. Clouds clustered like purple grapes.

In the breakfast room at the hotel, a stout businessman from Porto spoke to her in English and showed her the morning newspaper.

“Lisbon has declared a state of emergency. There is great destruction in the north where the storm broke.”

“My husband is in Lisbon. I must telephone,” she said automatically.

“The telephone here is not working. Maybe the wires are down.”

“I didn't know there was one here.”

“There's one in the office, but as I say, it's not working. I have tried.”

“Will it get bad here, too?”

“The storm is coming. At low tide this morning the sea was already risen to the top of the seawall when it would normally have been forty meters out.”

“I should go now, then.”

“Be careful. Would you like me to come with you?”

“I'll be fine—­thank you.”

When Alva ventured out she was pushed back immediately into a doorway. The force of the storm was horizontal, sweeping rain and seawater through roiling streets.

Church bells were tolling, hardly audible above the howling gale.

A man flapped his hands at her. “Go back!” he shouted. “It's dangerous close to the sea.”

But it was not far to the Aliança. She had reached the top of the Rua Dr. Francisco Gomes when a flowerpot fell from a balcony and smashed in front of her on the road. The wind was funnelling due north from the sea.

“Perigoso! Perigoso!”
yelled a man who was helping to haul a fishing boat up into the streets for safety. Dangerous. “Go back!” he motioned.

Through driving rain she saw more boats upended and secured behind the houses in the lanes that ran east to west. Under her feet, the pavement was flooding. Waves were reaching further up into the town, smearing wet sand over cobbles and doorsteps. The sea was pushing at the cracks under doors and windows.

Alva stopped to catch her breath, gulping in saltwater as the wind almost knocked her off her feet. She turned back, and felt as if she was picked up and thrown in the direction she had come.

That night there was no electricity supply. The Cardosos fetched smoky tallow candles and lit a fire in the main room. They all huddled around it, Senhora Cardoso gripping the beads of her rosary and her lips moving in silent incantation.

It wasn't calm enough to venture out until lunchtime the next day. The businessman from Porto—­his name was Senhor Ferraz—­donned an English tweed coat and insisted on accompanying her to the Aliança. Alva did not dissuade him on the basis that she might be grateful for his translation skills. The newspaper headlines carried words she could understand, though, alongside photographs of wrecked boats and fallen trees:
“Um Ciclone sobre Lisboa,”
“Grandes Desastres,”“Tragicos.”

At least a hundred and thirty ­people had died in the storm. There were always more casualties during a daytime storm. More ­people were outside when debris was falling from roofs and chimneys, and trees were uprooted, and loose objects were bowled along flat ground by ferocious winds. There was still no telephone connection to the north; too many telegraph lines were down, the manager informed her. How urgent was it that she place her call?

“My husband is in Lisbon.”

He did all he could, which was to bring her a coffee on the house.

The café was filled with survivors and heroes. The checkerboard floor was wet with mud marched in on men's boots. The local news was bad, too. Whole fishing fleets along the coast had been sunk or badly damaged; men had died trying to rescue their boats. A four-­thousand-­ton Greek freighter, the
Mimosa
, had flashed an SOS at the height of the storm but was now believed lost. Its cargo of cork was starting to wash up on shore.

Ferraz passed on what he heard. Some of the beaches had assumed completely different shapes. Praia de Faro on Ancão peninsula and Culatra village were flooded. The houses there were destroyed—­the waves had helped themselves to the foundations—­and precious contents had floated out to sea. About a hundred ­people on the Ihla de Farol had waited, standing on the beach, for rescue to come: twelve hours without food and water in the wind and the rain. Boats were reduced to driftwood. The tuna fishing camp on Barreta Island at Cape Santa Maria was decimated by the waves. A new inlet had been carved at Ancão, gouged by the elements; Cabanas Island had completely disappeared. Other channels had vanished. But there was nearly a riot when one man said loudly that everyone knew the islands were not sensible places to live. Even inland, olive and fruit trees had been felled and stripped of their branches. A quarter of the cropping trees had been lost in Moncarapacho, Pechão, Fuzeta, and Tavira.

Alva stared beyond the window into the mist. Three men emerged from the whiteout. Two looked like fishermen, bringing the brackish scent of the sea in with them on damp, stained clothes as they came inside and brushed past her. They struck up an urgent conversation with a man in the far corner, and they all looked toward the revolving door.

The next man in was Klaus Mayer.

Alva pulled herself back behind the crowd and watched as the German pushed his way to the bar. He was as bedraggled as any of the men who had been battling the sea. The barman nodded and poured him a brandy. No money changed hands. Something in the manner of both men told her that they were well acquainted.

Alva stayed where she was, tracking Mayer across the room to the table in the corner. He sat without waiting to be invited, then reached inside his coat and extracted a package the size of a book, which he placed on the table in front of the original occupant. The later arrivals seemed to gather closer to Mayer as the wrapping was pulled away. An arm patted Mayer's shoulder. A toast was raised. The conversation continued in a closer huddle.

Was he to be believed when he said he had offered his ser­vices to the British and Canadians and been turned down? What exactly was he doing here? He was clearly known by these men, was obviously involved in some local activity. But there was no one with whom she could discuss any of it.

“Excuse me, Senhora.”

The waiter startled her. “Yes?”

“The man over there. He ask you to go to his table.”

Klaus Mayer raised a hand in half-­greeting.

“Please to follow.”

T
he other men were introduced as two fishermen, and a man who ran the trades in the local market. She didn't catch the names.

“Is this a social event, Herr Mayer?”

“It is not. It is a lucky chance for me that you happen to be here. I want you to see what I have brought these good fellows.” He was serious.

The other men seemed to await her reaction as Mayer flipped up the brown paper wrapping on the item she had seen him pass over, briefly held it open, tapped it, then covered it again. It was not a book. The material was a hard dull yellow. It looked like gold, a bar of gold.

She looked at him quizzically, waiting for him to confirm it. He did not. “I assume you know about the trade in gold for wolfram, Mrs. Barton?”

“I'm afraid I don't even know what wolfram is.”

One of the men, who clearly understood English, gave a snort of derision, and uttered what sounded like a curse or two in Portuguese, as if he could not understand why Mayer had brought this woman over into their private cabal. Alva felt increasingly discomfited as Mayer placated him.

Then he spoke to her in a bright tone that she suspected was intended to be insulting. “Wolfram is another name for the chemical element tungsten. It is used in weapons manufacture. Portugal happens to have some of the most extensive deposits and mines in the world. There is a great deal of competition for this product between the Allies and the Axis powers. In order to secure it, the German gold arrives in diplomatic bags, on planes, in trucks arriving through Spain, and by sea. Paper currency is not much trusted anymore, after so much that the Third Reich was sending proved to be counterfeit.”

She tried to spot Ferraz, hoping he would linger in the café. She would feel more confident if he would.

“Please try to concentrate, Mrs. Barton,” Mayer said more pleasantly than the words were intended. He seemed nervous, and she wondered what justification he had given the men for speaking to her in front of them.

“Last night these men and I tried and failed to rescue the crew of a trawler boat bringing gold from Germany via Spain. But this gold was not brought in to buy Portuguese wolfram. The Third Reich also needs food and other commodities to keep its expanding territories supplied. There is a powerful black market in operation. Southern Portugal is one of the best suppliers. This”—­he indicated the gold—­“is for almonds and fish and oranges to sell in Paris and Berlin at the kind of inflated prices that will line the pockets of the middlemen for life. German, French, Italian businessmen are making a killing on these goods—­and some of the worst profiteers are officers of the Gestapo.

“Every month a Nazi officer meets this trawler to oversee the secure transfer of the gold and its conversion into fruit and fish from the Algarve. This time, I came. I intended to take a sample of the gold and give it to the British along with the names of several high-­ranking Nazis in Paris who were ripe for blackmail over their racketeering. But now you are here, and the storm did its worst, my plans have changed. I don't have to take the gold to prove anything.”

“I don't understand.”

“I have sent a message to Berlin to say that regrettably the vessel went down in the storm, that the crew and the gold were lost. Though as you can see, the gold is not lost. The gold will stay here, with these men. A scheme will be implemented with the local bank to dispense the funds through the Café Aliança stock exchange, to be distributed where local need is greatest.”

“And what do you want me for?”

“You are a witness to the fact.”

“How do you know you can trust me?” asked Alva.

“May we speak alone?”

“If you must.”

She spotted Ferraz trying to read a newspaper while being jostled by the swelling crowd. So long as he was here she felt safe.

“There might be a table free in the back.”

When she did not refuse, he led her to a more quiet room beyond the bar. They had to push through a throng of customers around the telephone booth. Alva wondered whether the lines had been repaired and she ought to try again to speak to Michael.

“Here,” said Mayer.

A waiter pulled out a chair for her and she was face-­to-­face with the German across a small table.

“Do I scare you, Mrs. Barton? You must not be scared, I give you my word I mean you no harm. All you have to do is to listen to what I have to say.”

“Go on, then.”

Mayer spoke rapidly to the waiter and then gave her his full attention. “In normal circumstances, we tend to be able to make judgments based on the evidence we can see before us, and our own experience. Here, at this time, life is not normal. Many aspects are misleading, deliberately so. It is hard to know what the truth is, and what to do with it if we find it, but I am not what you think. I am an intelligence officer in the German Abwehr, that may be true, but I am no Nazi. I subscribe to no absolutes, no belief system that demands acceptance of a complete set of ideas, only what seems honest and fair in its own circumstances. Some have thought me left-­wing as I am able to argue convincingly for some of Marx's theories. Others conclude that I must naturally be a fascist. Neither is the case. For me, there can be no rigid doctrine. If I have hatred for anything, I hate ideology and those who follow one blind to the human cost. That way lies madness—­and inhumanity.”

His manner was courteously formal, the voice measured and low. His hands remained steady, lightly clasped on the table. “I know. It is hard for you to know what to believe.”

There were no outside references, no Mike to act as a sounding board. She nodded for him to continue.

“If you say nothing, it is astonishing how often ­people will assume your views are their own.”

As she allowed herself to look at him properly for the first time she saw that Klaus Mayer had blue eyes and sandy blond hair. He was an older version (what was he, in his early thirties?) of one of those jocks at high school she had never dared speak to but had admired from a distance, or through lowered lashes as they strutted between classes and the football field or track. His shoulders were broad. His skin was not good, or it hadn't been when he was younger and the marks of the struggle remained. But the chin was firm and the cheekbones high.

He continued gravely. “I studied English at the University of Heidelberg and as part of my studies I spent a year at Oxford. When I returned to Germany in 1934 for my final year, Nazism had begun to spread through the institutions. Several of my professors had been dismissed. One, who had been a mentor to me, had been deported for the crime of having Jewish antecedents. It was profoundly shocking. The university seemed to have embraced Nazism without question. The new authorities were vandals, anti-­intellectuals. I was no longer one of them.”

“And yet you
are
one of them.” She couldn't help herself. It had to be said. “You work for German intelligence.”

Silence.

“No one was surprised when I was approached by the Gestapo at the start of the war. My command of the English language was exemplary. I was chosen to play a vital role: as an interpreter of Allied communications. I was sent to Lisbon.”

“As a spy. Yet another spy in Lisbon.”

“A good one.”

Alva was grateful that the waiter chose that second to place a carafe of wine and two glasses, a basket of bread and some cheese on the table. She was still not sure how many layers of subtlety she was supposed to understand.