The members of the legation, who were without their ambassador to remind them of their own insignificance, spent too much of their time extending their own importance into areas which were none of their business. Felsen was left with the impression that all the real work would be done in the corridors of power and hotel lounges of Lisbon rather than in the bleak mountain ranges of the north. He didn't improve his popularity by asking how their oblique bargaining was going to translate into tons in trucks crossing the border. They patronized him back. They hinted at intricate negotiations but offered no substance. They said that he would feel the results. Felsen reinterpreted all this to himself. The Abwehr and Supply Department resented the intrusion of the SS into their territory. He was on his own.
After dinner, as they gathered on the steps waiting for the cars to take them out to Estoril, Felsen still couldn't help being unnerved by the unembarrassed flagrance of light everywhere. All the windows of the palacio, each one or two metres high, glowed from reckless chandeliers of glittering incandescence. As he'd left the Baixa by taxi in the evening the Nyassa was still at anchor, unconcerned in the heart of the docks, blazing with light as the loading continued. Berlin had been widowed for two years. You could end up in a concentration camp for lighting a cigarette in the street after dark. Cars moved around at night with slit eyes, blind as moles. The rest of Europe was like a coal hole and Lisbon its furnace mouth.
A crack and crump of small-arms fire started up around the city. One of the younger legation members with a glass too much of wine inside him shouted: 'The invasion!' and roared.
The Portuguese was stone-faced as they got in the cars. Felsen sat with Poser again in the back of the leading Mercedes. They dropped down the steep hill to Alcantara and headed west out of town.
'What was "the invasion"?' asked Felsen.
'A nightly reminder of who's in charge,' said Poser, looking out of the window as if he was expecting crowds. 'Salazar only allows the Lisboans to beat their carpets after nine at night.'
They drove through Belem, past lit buildings and monuments.
'Not used to the light yet, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer?' said Poser. 'Still jittery after Berlin, the flak towers and the air raid warnings? This is last year's Expo site. While London burned and France fell, Lisbon showed off its eight hundred years of sovereignty to the world.'
'I'm not sure what you're getting at, Herr Poser.'
'You went walking today.'
'You told me to go the gardens in Estrela and I just kept going, over the top of the Bairro Alto, down to the Chiado and then into the Baixa.'
'Ah, the Bairro Alto,' said Poser. 'And did you see the market in Praca da Figueira-it doesn't smell too bad at this time of the year; and that rat hole-the Mouraria, or the stinking, crumbling Alfama?'
'I walked up to the Castle of sao Jorge and took a taxi back.'
'So you've seen some of Lisbon,' he said. 'Now when you see Salazar's capital after dark perhaps you understand my point about the harlot. Lisbon's a whore, a peasant Arab whore, who wears a tiara at night.'
'Perhaps you've been here too long, Poser.'
'Ach, Salazar, he says one thing, he does another, he leans one way and sticks a foot out the other. He takes our Swiss francs and gold bars and then extends unlimited credit to the British. He rails at them for blocking his imports from the colonies and… ach… The man's a Moor and he's making the beast with two backs with anyone he pleases,' Poser finished bitterly.
'Now you're thinking that because you pay the whore she should be faithful. Next you'll be wanting her to fall in love with you.'
'Quite so, Felsen,' said Poser, coolly. 'I forgot your expertise in these matters.'
They hit the new coast road, the Marginal. The lights of the dormitory villages of Caxias, Paco de Arcos, Oeiras, Carcavelos and Parede glittered by the black heave of the unseen Atlantic. Poser was still sulking as they pulled up outside the lit facades of the Hotels Parque and Palacio. The high heads of the Washingtonian palms in the gardens in front were just out of the light. Poser pointed out the Casino at the top of the long square which sloped several hundred metres down to the sea front. Music came from the low modern building. Queues of cars stretched down the side of the gardens. The bellboy fetched the bags from the boot and Felsen and Poser went through the high Roman arch which made up the front of the Hotel Parque.
There's somebody you should meet,' said Poser, heading for the concierge's position.
'This is Felsen,' he said to the sharp-faced man behind the counter.
The concierge flicked through his register. He rattled something off to the bellboy without taking his eyes off the book.
'You don't need to tell him anything,' said Poser, of the concierge. 'He knows it before you do. Isn't that right?'
The concierge didn't say anything but Felsen could tell from his attentive stillness that he was a man of some hotel experience.
'Install yourself in your rooms, Felsen, and I'll show you around,' said Poser, and laughed looking at the concierge. 'Don't talk to the flowers. Or use the phone. Isn't that right?'
The concierge blinked once, slowly.
Felsen rejoined Poser in the bar. They left the boorish company of the other members of the legation and walked up the gardens in the balmy night to the Casino.
'The concierge knows when we talk like that it's what we want everybody to hear.'
'Is that why the bar's empty?'
'You'll see, it'll fill up as the night wears on.'
'Maybe they should make themselves more interesting-invite some women across, they all seem to be going in here.'
They entered the lobby of the Casino at the same time as a small, dark-haired, highly-manicured woman who slid out of a fur coat and an expensive hat before being escorted to the bar by two men, younger and firmer than herself. She wore nylons and more than half the room turned as she came in.
'Is she the Queen of somewhere?' asked Felsen.
'That's the Queen of Lisbon,' said Poser.
'The daughter of the Arab whore?' asked Felsen, and Poser roared.
'Her name is Madame Branescu. She runs the guichet of the visa office at the American consulate. You saw all those people who wanted to get on the Nyassa this evening?'
'She took a percentage off every one of them.'
'You wouldn't have recognized her eighteen months ago. She was half the size and you could read a newspaper through her clothes but… she speaks fourteen languages and, I don't know whether you walked past the American consulate, but she needs those fourteen languages and a few more besides.'
They went into the bar. The waiter was already standing at her table as the woman and her blonde escorts sat down. Despite the clothes, the coiffure and the make-up she was not an attractive woman. Felsen saw her in a previous life, in the office of an important lawyer. A short, plain woman in grey clothes, ignored by all but, like the Hotel Parque's concierge, she missed nothing and had learned everything-the languages, the control, the art of power. And here she was, an improbable, little person conferring life or despair on the thousands atticked in Lisbon's pensions. Men and women approached her and spoke small obsequious words, bowing from the waist. Some were allowed to brush their lips across the dimpled knuckles of her puffy hand, others scuttled back to their seats blanched and quivering.
Felsen excused himself from Poser and presented himself at her table. The escorts' eyes bored into him. He asked her in perfect English if she wanted to dance. Her eyes roved over his face trying to work out if she knew him, then glanced down at his clothes and footwear, expert on quality.