'Or more difficult if you start losing.'
'We have good relations with Dr Salazar. He understands us. The British are relying on the strength of their old alliance, 13 86 I think it was, you wonder which century they're living in. We, on the other hand, are…'
'…frightening him?'
'I was going to say that we are providing him with what he needs.'
'But he's aware of the Panzer divisions in Bayonne, I'm sure.'
'And the U-boats in the Atlantic,' said Poser. 'But if you want to play the harlot and bed both sides you might expect to get slapped about. Sweet?'
'Excuse me?'
'The lobster.'
'Very sweet.'
'Portuguese lobster… small but perfectly sweet. The best in the world.'
'I thought I'd go for a walk after my nap.'
'The Jardim da Estrela isn't far and it's very pleasant.'
It was 5.00 p.m. and the Chave d' Ouro cafe in the Rossio square at the top end of the Baixa grid, in the heart of the city, was full to capacity. It was still warm and the windows were all open. Laura van Lennep sat by one of these open windows and looked into the square repeatedly. She fingered the single coffee she'd ordered in the hour and a half she'd been sitting there, but the waiters didn't bother her. They were used to it.
She was half-listening to a table of refugees speaking French with thick accents. The two men had seen army trucks in the Baixa first thing that morning and were expounding some fantastic invasion theory. It did nothing to calm Laura van Lennep down. She couldn't bear the inertia of these people, who she knew came from a pensao three houses down from her own in the Rua de Sao Paulo behind Cais do Sodre. She'd heard them in the street correcting each other about aristocrats they'd met at parties as if it had been only last week, when it had been in a different country, in a different decade. She was desperate with no cigarettes and the man who was going to change her life, who'd promised that he could change her life, wouldn't arrive.
A man appeared at the top of the stairs and looked around. He walked slowly around the room and finished up at her table. He wasn't short but his width and bulk made him look shorter than he was. He had short dark hair, cut en brosse and blue-grey eyes. He made her tremble inside. She looked away into the Rossio again, to the same groups of dark-suited men standing about on the black and white calcada, to the same lines of taxis, to the same kiosk where the cabbies drank coffee and talked about football. Sporting were going to be champions this year. She knew that by now. She turned back and he was still there. She felt those eyes on her. She gripped her handbag which contained her papers. Was he the police? She'd been told about the plain-clothed ones. He didn't look Portuguese but he had something of authority about him. She rearranged her claret dress which did not need rearranging but should have been thrown away last year.
'Could I join you?' asked the man in French.
'I'm waiting for someone,' she said, also in French, letting her blonde head slip around to the window again.
'There's nowhere else to sit and I only want a coffee. You're a single person sitting at a table for four.'
'There's someone coming.'
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean to…'
'No, no, please,' she said suddenly, her nerves setting her hands off like the pigeons in the square.
He sat opposite her and offered her a cigarette. She refused but had to hold on to her hand to do it. He lit one for himself and seemed to enjoy more than the smell of his own smouldering tobacco. The waiter came to his side.
'Your coffee looks cold, may I…?'
'I'm fine, thank you.'
He ordered one for himself. She looked out into the square again. He'd spoken in Portuguese but not Lisbon Portuguese, more open, like slow Spanish.
'He won't come any quicker, you know,' said the man.
She smiled a sort of relief that she'd begun to feel that he wasn't going to ask to see her papers.
'I can't bear waiting,' she said.
'Have a cigarette, some warmer coffee… it'll pass the time.'
She took a cigarette. He looked at her empty ring finger and the tense shake in her hand. She puffed on it and left a red mark on the white end. She blew out the strange, strong smoke.
'From Turkey,' he said.
'You can get anything here if you can pay,' she said.
'I wouldn't know. I brought these with me. My first day in Lisbon.'
'Where have you come from?'
'From Germany.'
That's why he'd made her tremble.
'Where are you going?'
'I'm staying here for a while and then… who knows? And you?'
'From Holland. I want to go to America.'
Her blue eyes flickered out over the balcony again and then searched the room behind where the man was sitting. His coffee arrived. He ordered one for her. The waiter took her old stained cup away. Her eyes settled back on to him.
'He'll come,' he said, with a reassuring wink.
The four refugees on the table behind had started running down the Portuguese. How uncivilized they were. How uncouth. How all the food tasted the same and have you tried to eat that bacalhau? Lisbon, oh Lisbon was so boring.
She'd heard it all before and she leaned away from them. She knew it could be dangerous to speak to the man, but after three months in the Lisbon refugee world she thought she'd developed some instinct.
'I can't bear not knowing,' she said.
'Like the waiting.'
'Yes. If I know… if I knew…' she drifted off. 'You don't know what it's like yet, you've only just arrived.'
'Where are you staying?'
'In the Pensao Amsterdao on Rua de Sao Paulo. And you?'
'I'll find somewhere.'
'Everywhere's full.'
'So it seems. Perhaps I'll go out to Estoril.'
'It's more expensive out there,' she said, shaking her head.
He didn't seem bothered by that. She let her head fall over her shoulder again to look out of the window. This time she leapt to her feet and started waving. She dropped back into her seat and closed her eyes. Her table companion twisted around to view the top of the stairs. A man in his early twenties with blonde, reddish hair came striding through the tables. He faltered when he saw the older man but pulled a chair out and pushed it close to the girl. Her eyes snapped open. Her face fell. He took her hands. She stared into the tablecloth as if her own blood was growing a stain in the middle of it. He leaned into her ear and whispered in English.
'I did everything I could. It's just not possible without… The woman in the visa office…' he stopped as the waiter put a coffee down in front of her, he looked across at the man at their table who was looking out of the window. 'It takes money. A lot of money.'
'I haven't got any money, Edward. Do you know how much the tickets are now? You used to be able to get one for $70, now it's $100. I was there today at the ticket office. A man paid $400 to get on the Nyassa. The longer I stay here…'
'I got as far as the guichet… but then she comes to the window. She doesn't recognize me. She doesn't know me. She won't even take the application unless… unless you can come up with the money, or the right invitations, or…'
The German called for the waiter and paid for the two coffees. He stood and looked down at the young couple. The Englishman was suspicious. The woman had a different look than before-a hungry intensity in her face. The German put on his hat and tipped it at her.
'Thank you for the coffee,' she said. 'You didn't tell me your name.'
'You didn't say yours. I don't think we got that far.'
'Laura van Lennep,' she said. 'And this is Edward Burton.'
'Felsen,' he said. 'Klaus Felsen.'
He put out his hand. The Englishman didn't shake it.
Chapter IX
8th March 1941, the German legation, Lapa, Lisbon The ambassador didn't make the reception or the dinner that night. Felsen sat between two wolfram exporters, a Portuguese with three concessions in the Trancoso area in the Beira Alta, and a Belgian aristocrat who wouldn't tell him anything other than that it was his group who was providing a shell company through which Felsen was going to export his wolfram.