300 Days of Sun (19 page)

Then, longing to hold fast to exultation even as it was wrenched away, they were at the railway station. They found the platform. Too soon came the farewell kiss and the promise, and the train to Lisbon.

It was only when she arrived in the city that Alva remembered—­with a dart to the heart—­what she carried in her handbag. Only a month ago, she would have shown it to Michael first, allowed him to make the decision. But she was no longer that person. For security, Alva took a cab to the American
Embassy and asked to speak to the chief intelligence officer. Then she handed over the letter from the Serbian double agent, with the writing between the lines clearly visible, just as Klaus had asked.

 

vii

A
lva returned to Michael. He seemed pleased to see her. But he was delighted—­gleefully, outrageously delighted—­to hear that she had made contact with Klaus Mayer.

Two nights later, she went with her husband to an apartment in a nondescript building in Cais do Sodre where Ronald Bagshaw was waiting with a bottle of brandy. Two other men were present; they were introduced as Mr. Jones of the British Embassy and Mr. Miller of the American. She answered their questions and explained in close detail what she had witnessed in Faro. The letter had been examined by both sides and pronounced authentic. Alva recounted what she had witnessed of the distribution of the gold, showed the photographs she had developed. She passed on the information Mayer had revealed in order to be believed and lied only by omission, when she was asked how he had behaved toward her. “He behaved like a perfect gentleman,” she said.

So now they were all pretending. I am now a liar and a cheat, too, thought Alva, thinking unrepentantly of her husband. We know where we stand then.

To everyone who knew them, Michael and Alva had had their difficulties, but these had apparently been resolved. Alva wrote optimistic letters home and was careful not to include anything that could imply otherwise.

I
n December, everything changed. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States was officially at war. Michael and Alva were no longer neutrals.

The AP office grew more crowded, and more rooms were rented. There was still a party every night of the week. They began to forfeit the Café Eva to spend evenings at the Nina Bar nightclub with other inveterate talkers and rumormongers. “Dedicating our livers to the Allied cause,” said Michael cheerfully, and now Alva had proved her mettle, she was one of them.

At the Nina all nationalities gathered, watched over by its Austrian owner and ringmaster, a sleek young man named Danielski. Freddy Danielski hated the Germans, but he let them in to dance and shout over a Cossack band with all the rest. He had a girlfriend, a merry Scottish-­American blond named Marjorie, who seemed to enjoy her work as a go-­between who passed disinformation to journalists and other listeners.

Alva was initiated into the world of “sibs” and “midweek specials”—­short for “sibilant,” these were false pieces of “information” whispered into the right ears. She even began to enjoy coffee at the Café Eva, where she would chat and laugh with the vivacious Marjorie, whom she liked. They might have been better friends but Marjorie was always so busy. After twenty minutes, when she stood up to go, Alva would carelessly leave her copy of a newspaper, always the Portuguese
O Seculo
,
which Marjorie would pick up, equally carelessly. Inside was a sheet of flimsy paper containing the notes for stories to be disseminated that night.

For Freddy Danielski was a magician with a piece of gossip. Around all the tables at the Nina Bar he went, having been briefed exactly which fiction should be dropped into which willing ear. Freddy Danielski worked so hard he had black rings under his eyes, so marked that he looked like a panda.

With the blessing of her husband, Alva met Klaus Mayer once a week at a small nightclub on the edge of the rundown Alfama district, well away from the river where the sailors and the foreign visitors went. Unknown to Michael, when she danced closely with Klaus, it was no act. The Latin rhythms insinuated into her body and a kind of elation filled her, slow and sensuous. They danced to the music of North Africa, to jazz, and shuffled close to the slow ululations of a
fado
singer as they exchanged information carefully crafted to mislead the Third Reich and corroborate other fictions.

“What if one of your ­people sees us?” Alva asked the first time. She was more frightened now, but it was for him,
not herself.

“If they did, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. As far as von Kartshof is concerned, you are the one who is betraying your country and I am the clever operative. You are a valuable asset, and like me, you will be protected because you are helping to deliver him a safe yet productive war waged from flower-­filled villas in the sun, nights at the casino, and drunken parties with willing women.”

As the weeks and months went by in Lisbon, the night at Maria de Saldanha Oliveira's house had taken on a dream quality. Had it even happened? The touch of his hand as he led her to the tiny dance floor told her it had. Until I met Klaus I experienced life but I did not feel it, thought Alva.

On the nights when she was not expected to meet Klaus, she remembered Ronald Bagshaw's explanation of how Portuguese married women conducted their affairs while their husbands were out for the evening, and found it most useful.

D
uring the day, Alva found work with the American Joint Distribution Committee in Rua do Áurea helping Jewish refugees, supporting those in need and finding routes out of Europe to sanctuary. What the world did not see until after the war was known from the beginning in Lisbon. The city took in ­people who had run west for their lives, and heard their accounts of harrowing train journeys and unexpected stops and trucks that were equipped with hissing poison showers. Most of them knew it might take years for them to reach their
destinations. Meanwhile they attempted to trace loved ones left behind in the horror.

Wherever he could, Klaus provided any information he could to rebalance the cruel demonstrations of power that had halted their progress.

From time to time, Ronald Bagshaw would question her about Klaus Mayer's motives and whether she was certain of his continuing sincerity. Alva would reply that he seemed to have a genuine abhorrence of Hitler and the Nazi party. He had feared what they could achieve in the event of a German victory in Europe.

But what assurances could there be? They were all making judgments about each other's honesty, all the time; doubting, then deciding to trust but always wary, the dealers in loyalty and love no better that the traders in lethal arms and diamonds, platinum and leathers, carob and oranges. They were all slippery opportunists, in their way.

Then, in 1944, as the tide turned in the Allies' favor, a sober assessment by Nazi intelligence concluded that its Abwehr station in Lisbon was dangerously immoral and lazy. Their building on the Rua Buenos Aires was a den of vice. It was discovered that several high-­ranking officers were behind foreign currency scams that allowed them to live high on the hog. Von Kartshof himself, whose judgment had been impaired by an affair with a French
vicomtesse
, was sent to the Eastern front. The rope was tightening.

One night in April, Klaus didn't show up for their assignation at the nightclub.

M
ichael was also fully occupied. In his head he was preparing a book he was going to write after the war. With the end in sight, pressure in Portugal eased. No one seemed to be worried about Klaus Mayer; it appeared their side had no more need of him. Observant as he was when driven by his own needs, Michael did not guess his wife's true feelings, that, worried raw, Alva feared the worst for Klaus. No one had heard from him, and it seemed impossible to find out what had happened.

When Michael finally booked them a passage home, Alva refused to go.

He was incredulous. “Alva, I need to get you home, back to New York. You're coming home. That's what you want!”

She shook her head so rapidly it was more like a quiver. “Not anymore. Too late, Mike. I need to find out—­”

“Alva—­our berths on the ship are booked.”

He looked her up and down, as if he was checking she was actually the same woman he had brought with him to Portugal.

“Don't do that,” she said. She went over to the window. Rain streaked down the glass, leaving a watery cracked mirror.

Michael was an indistinct reflection behind her. It occurred to her that she was standing in the doorway between two lives, a Janus, the double-­headed Roman god of beginnings and endings; as if she had never stood in the Catholic church in Washington Heights and promised to love, honor, and obey Michael, till death did they part; as if he had never promised to care for her for the rest of their lives.

“I can't do it, Mike, and I won't.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe I am.”

“I did the best I could for us, Alva. You know that.”

She knew that was the truth, however painful. “You did, Mike. But it still worked out wrong for us.”

“And so now—­what?” He was losing his temper. “You stay on here—­still complaining I don't look after you?”

They went round in circles, in generalizations. It was such a truism to say that the war had changed ­people. So self-­evident it would have been crass to put it into words; Michael, the wordsmith, simply opened his shoulders and made a gesture with his hands that was half helpless, half as if he was releasing her. Then he cried, great gulping sobs. And she watched him, unable to offer the slightest comfort. Neither did she quite tell him the truth.

“It was just the war,” she said.

The Bartons were far from unique, after all. Of course she felt guilt and embarrassment. It occurred to her that the way Michael had behaved toward her might also have been born of those two tormenting emotions. But it was done now. In the end, it was agreed. She would sail back across the Atlantic with him, and while he would do his best to persuade her otherwise, if he did not succeed in changing her mind, they would see a divorce lawyer in New York and she could return.

The letter to Alva arrived, via Freddy Danielski and Marjorie, two days before they were due to sail. It was post-­marked Faro.

 

viii

K
laus always said it was the happiest day of his life when Alva arrived at the railway station in Faro.

When he saw how close he was to being discovered in Lisbon, he had run to the one place he felt safe. One by one his imaginary group of agents went silent. He sat out the rest of the war working alongside the fisherman Palhares, accepting the help and protection that was freely offered in the town. A Gestapo officer who came to investigate why the town's suppliers of the Nazi black market were no longer willing to cooperate was mysteriously shot. Subsequently no witnesses could be found, even to the German's presence in the town. Word was he had been asking whether anyone had seen Klaus Mayer.

Klaus had hidden the letter he wrote to Alva for several weeks while deciding whether to risk sending it. He had seen the Germans who remained in Lisbon, those who had not fled to South America, becoming not less but more dangerous. They called themselves the Iron Nazis, making a pact to keep alive their vision for German dominance in Europe. The Lisbon Pact was sealed as Berlin was reduced to ashes and rubble.

All this was forgotten as Alva stepped from the train.

T
he day they saw Horta das Rochas for the first time, they had set out to find Maria de Saldanha Oliveira's house again. No limousine this time, only a third-­hand Peugeot to rattle them over the rutted roads. So many of the paths into the pine forests looked the same. When they finally stumbled across it, the gates were locked and there was no other entry to the grounds. At the inn where more than four years previously they had been sent to the estate led by the boy on the bicycle, they found the same boy, ever helpful, and now a youth with an incipient moustache. The noble old lady had died, he told them.

“The estate is being sold,” he said. “You can buy the house if you want!”

They all laughed at the absurdity.

“We could go look at it, just to see it again,” said Alva.

“Darling, could we?”

“I suppose so.”

That afternoon, accompanied by a land agent, they went and stood in the courtyard. The coach house and the stables were empty. Looking up at the magical place that had brought them together, they caught hands. Alva gave silent thanks once again to their late benefactress (could she have known what she was doing?). Then they were shown to the less imposing corners of the estate.

One of the abandoned farms, full of olive groves and orchards, could have been made viable. Another was close to dereliction. Its name was simply the Garden of Rocks, Horta das Rochas. The land was no good for agriculture; it was rocky and too close to the shore. It was barely sufficient for the raising of goats and the keeping of bees, which had been the tenant's last failed venture. Pine woods grew thickly over this outpost of the estate, giving way abruptly to red cliffs above the ocean.

Torches of cynara lit the way in electric blue, down the sea path. A carpet of pine needles cushioned their steps down to the beach.

On the high ground, a thick-­walled farmhouse was smothered by the weight of oleander blossoms on trees that grew too close. But the air inside was cool, and when they opened the windows upstairs they framed a sea of lapis lazuli.

 

 

i

I
f the police were making progress finding Terry Jackson there was no hint of it in any of the news reports of Rylands' murder. Detective Gambóias was now certain it was murder. The booking for Villa Eleven at Horta das Rochas had been made using a stolen credit card. A car with false registration plates had arrived at five o'clock on the day Rylands died. The public was asked for information regarding the movements of the car, but nothing else. No mention was made of the throwaway mobile phone used to send Nathan a text, apparently from Jackson.

After a few days, the story slipped down the schedules as fresh tragedies, wars, and epidemics pushed it from public consciousness. We were allowed to return to Faro, so long as the local police knew exactly where to find us.

I went back to the language course. There didn't seem anything else I could do, especially as I had told the police that that was my reason for being in Portugal. Sometimes Nathan was in class, too; sometimes he wasn't; without him, the atmosphere would become oppressively businesslike. I found it hard to concentrate. My thoughts wandered incessantly, and though I smiled politely at the others and took coffee with them in the breaks, the early sense of student camaraderie had gone. Even Enzo the jolly Italian shoe salesman had became earnest and somewhat disapproving when Nathan deigned to join us, telling him, on more than one occasion, that he thought Nathan should take his studies more seriously.

“You read the book?” I asked Nathan on one of the days he did come in.

We were walking back to the centre of town, just the two of us. He was remote, as he'd been for most of the week. He'd either rushed away or made it clear he didn't want company—­my company, at least. That hurt, as it seemed to suggest that all he had wanted from me was my journalistic expertise. I'd thought I meant more to him than that. Though, to be fair, on the days when I didn't see him I had often checked in with a text and he always replied. This felt like the first chance I'd had for a while to have a serious conversation with him.

“I read it.”

We passed a bar on the Rua de Santo António. He went in, no discussion, and he ordered a ­couple of vodka shots. I declined. He threw back both, with ostentatious defiance.

“I called the PR office at Holz-­Rocha, the company that owns Horta das Rochas,” I said.

I reckoned that in the days after official confirmation that the death of Ian Rylands was murder not suicide, it was routine stuff for a journalist to call the resort's spokeswoman and ask about the history of the hotel.

“I mentioned the name Walde casually, as an established fact. No one denied it. The woman I spoke to confirmed that the company grew out of the hotel founded in an old farmhouse on the land there by a German called Karl Walde in 1947. Apparently the Walde family no longer runs the resort on a day-­to-­day basis, though they retain a controlling interest in the company. They've diversified into transport and property.”

I watched Nathan assessing the empty shot glasses and waited to see whether he would meet me halfway. “For Mayer, read Walde,” I said.

“That's what Rylands said.”

“Yes.” I was relieved not to have to labour the point.

“What about this Eduardo Walde he told us to contact? Does he even exist?”

I nodded. “He's the company chairman: head of the Walde family.”

Nathan gave me a sideways look.

“I asked about Karl Walde's wife, but didn't get anywhere with a name. But that doesn't mean much. Only that the notes given to the PR woman don't mention her. She might well not know anything beyond the version that goes on the brochures. The important part is that the name Walde is right.”

“Anything else?”

“I held fire on mentioning child abduction, if that's what you mean. One step at a time. I've tried the Internet but there's not much there—­1992 is just a bit too early to find newspaper coverage online. The name Walde does link to a few Portuguese entries that seem to concern the disappearance of children—­I was using Google Translate—­but only as a reference, no details. Other than that, from what I can see this so-­called quiet cult that has grown up around Esta Hartford's novel was probably an exaggeration by Rylands. It wasn't mentioned in any reports that I could find in the newspapers.”

Nathan raised a palm to get the barman's attention.

“So what we need to find out,” I said, with an irritated edge in my tone, “is how far the characters in the book were an accurate depiction of real life. We're working on the assumption that Karl Walde is portrayed in the novel as Klaus Mayer, and Esta herself as Alva, but we only have Rylands' word for it.”

“So far, we have Horta das Rochas—­and what else?”

The barman hovered a hand over the vodka bottle, but I was relieved to see Nathan shake his head. “Orange juice, please.”

“Well, we know why Rylands was interested in the place, and why he so wanted Klaus Mayer's story to be true, don't we?” I said, less tensely. This was the hardest part to square, the most frustrating part of Esta's novel, in which too much information was covered in a few paragraphs. “At the end of the war, Alva leaves Michael and goes to the Algarve to be with Klaus. They're happy, really happy, and they find Horta das Rochas. But they are watching their backs. He's still worried about the former Nazis who stay in Lisbon and what they might do. He thinks they are dangerous ­people.”

“He was probably right.”

I frowned and shook my head. “This Lisbon Pact business needs to be treated with caution. Clearly, Rylands lapped it up and used it to put some air under his conspiracy theories. All we know for certain is that Klaus Mayer—­Karl Walde—­moved to the Algarve after the war and went into the nascent tourist industry. And he has a son called Eduardo who inherited his business.”

“They weren't whiter than white though, were they, Klaus and Alva?” said Nathan. “She didn't go looking for an affair but they had one and obviously kept it going when they got back to Lisbon. And it's not put out there in words, but where did they get the money to buy Horta das Rochas?”

It was a good question.

“Surely the banking systems in Europe were still in meltdown in 1945 . . . how did two foreign nationals get the funds across the borders? Unless . . .”

“I see what you mean,” I said. “There might have been something put aside for him in the bank in Faro after the gold was distributed. Perhaps it was never all distributed in one go. It would have been more sensible to keep some back to use as a contingency fund.”

“But he ran to Faro when he left Lisbon. He knew he had friends here. Klaus—­Karl, whatever—­got help from the friends he made in Faro, didn't he? And after the war he wouldn't have been able to stay in the Algarve and set up a business if he hadn't had good relations with the locals.”

Not only had he read the book, he had read it carefully. Yet again, I was left thinking there was a lot more to Nathan Emberlin (or Josh Harris) than was immediately apparent.

I
could probably have approached Eduardo Walde plausibly enough as yet another hack wanting background information to the murder of Ian Rylands. However, from what I deduced from reading the news reports, the closest anyone was getting to him was a statement from the same PR woman I'd spoken to. There was no doubt that the story was bad for the Horta das Rochas brand, and from the point of view of the company, the sooner the tragedy faded in the public imagination, the better.

If Nathan and I wanted to chase the story, we were better off not drawing attention to ourselves or acting suspiciously in any way. Going through the obvious channels to get to Eduardo Walde would be like putting our hands up in public. We had to find a way in below the line—­to think laterally and to pick away at the details of any available sources of information.

It was easy to find confirmation online of the great storm described by Esta Hartford. It was the worst natural catastrophe in the Iberian peninsula for almost two hundred years. The storm broke in the afternoon of February 14, 1941, a Friday, with a direct strike on Lisbon. By the afternoon of fifteenth, it was one of the five fiercest windstorms across the whole of Europe in the twentieth century. The wind speeds at Lisbon were almost eighty miles an hour; on the Algarve coast, they reached a hundred and fifty miles an hour at Portimão. In San Sebastian in Spain, winds a hundred and eighty miles an hour were recorded.

There was major disruption of road and rail links, and electricity and telephone lines. On Sunday, February 16, all communication was lost between Lisbon and the rest of the country. A storm surge up the Tagus estuary, huge waves driven by southwesterly winds, sank a hundred and fifty boats moored close to the city. The peak of the cyclone coincided with high tide. Water was thrown up over the river's banks and protective walls, and flooded into the streets. The steamboat station was flooded, and the waves reached twenty metres high.

On the railway between Cascais and Lisbon, where the train ran along the coast on a small cliff, the retaining wall crumbled. Another seawall protecting the casino at Estoril was destroyed and the two-­hundred-­year-­old cedars between the Hotel do Parque and the Hotel Estoril were drowned in sea water.

In the south, most of the recorded damage concerned the olive groves, where thousands of trees were blown down, and the devastation of the coastal area.

I had talked to everyone I could about the storm: the owner of the language school and her secretary; João the barman at the Aliança; the helpful man behind the desk at the tourist information office; even the elderly man selling tickets to enter the cathedral—­but drew a succession of blanks. It was as if, unlike almost everywhere else in Europe, events during the Second World War had hardly figured in the lives of their parents and grandparents.

Nathan actually threw the word “obsessed” at me, before realising, as we both started to laugh, that it was equally applicable to him.

W
e wandered aimlessly towards Faro railway station. It was early evening and we were having half-­thoughts about getting on a train to Tavira for a change of scene. The train that we might or might not get didn't leave for another half an hour, so we paused outside the old carob bean factory, now a community art space. I liked the name: Fábrica dos Sentidos (Factory of the Senses). Nathan was taken by the notion that the space was open to anyone with a new idea, from art to business. Craftsmen and women could work, exhibit, and network for a symbolic nominal rent and the emphasis was on reusing and recycling materials. Everything was built lovingly with discarded items, including wood from the town's old library.

A living statue, all Victoriana and gothic lace, still and sinister, sat outside on the cobbled pavement, any expression on her face hidden behind a gold mask.

“It's not a woman,” said Nathan as we strolled up. “It's a man.”

I looked closer. He was right. At the edge of the golden face were wisps of sideburn. Nothing was what it seemed.

“Watch out!” Nathan grabbed my arm.

I sprang back, ready to protect myself from the figure in front of me. But Nathan had seen the real danger. The wheels of a car seemed to scuff my heels as he pulled me out of its path.

“Shit!” he said. “What the hell just happened?”

Heart pumping, legs shaking, I stared at the car, now screaming away down the narrow street. It was an ordinary-­looking car, very similar to the Seat I'd rented. I was still clinging on to Nathan, with a horrible feeling that the near-­miss had been deliberate, wondering how I was going to say it without freaking him out. He had put his arms around me as I looked around in a panic, checking that the car wasn't coming back from any other direction. I was just about to say something when I saw the poster on the building opposite.

It was one of the election posters: a head shot of the candidate and a tagline I could now understand: “One hundred days without ideas, one hundred days without action, one hundred days without history.”

The words dried in my mouth. “That poster. The candidate,” I managed to get out. “Look at the name.”

“Nuno Palhares.”

“The maverick political candidate who got the café reopened. Who is standing on a ticket of tradition and localism. Don't you recognise the name?”

Nathan frowned.

“Palhares was the fisherman who brought the Nazi gold in. Who worked with Klaus Mayer to distribute the funds according to local need.”

“You think it might be the same family?”

“If the book is true, I'd bet the house on it.”

“Hang on, though—­the author changed the names of the characters, she didn't use their real names.”

“Not for herself and Karl, but all the Portuguese places are given their real names. She could have done that for some of the ­people, too.”

“Not convinced. What the—­? Where are you going now?”

I was almost running, my legs burning adrenaline, Nathan reluctantly keeping pace. The Café Aliança was within sight. A few customers were gathered around the outside tables, taking advantage of another perfect day of sunshine. I pushed the revolving door and went over to João at the bar.

“Nuno Palhares . . . is he here?” I asked, not bothering with any chat about how the local electioneering was going.

“Not yet.”

I turned to Nathan. “Shall we wait?”

Nathan shrugged. We waited, over a few desultory beers, but Palhares didn't show.

“Tomorrow morning, perhaps,” said João as we left.

W
e walked back across the public garden. Nathan was quiet, as he had been all evening at the café. I wondered whether I had hurt or offended him by taking the initiative, or more likely, annoyed him with my focus on Esta Hartford's book when all he wanted to do was to find out about the child abductions.