A Small Death in Lisbon

'Who has died?' he asked.

The men didn't answer. A woman spoke up.

'It is Alvaro Fortes,' she said, 'and this is his widow and son.'

Felsen blinked and told his chauffeur to drive on. 27th December 1941, German legation, Lapa, Lisbon 'Salazar,' said Poser, who hadn't referred to him as a cheating Arab for over twenty-four hours now, 'was in such a lather… still is… about the invasion, that we thought it expedient to open our wolfram negotiations for 1942 immediately. It's been a marvellous sight. Sir Ronald Campbell, the British ambassador, has been staggering about like a concert pianist with broken fingers. The good doctor has spent the whole year in a state of irritation with the British, who've put an arm around his shoulder and whispered the old alliance in his ear and taken advantage of his credit, while with the other they blockade him and sweep troops into Dili. We, on the other hand…'

'…have been sinking his ships.'

'True. Minor, but necessary, corrective measures or should we say reminders of his neutral status.'

'As far as Salazar's concerned, Christmas happens once a year and he gets all the presents. What are you offering?'

'Steel,' said Poser, brimming with confidence. 'Steel and fertilizer. We'll be making an offer in two weeks' time. Salazar will give us guaranteed export licences for 3000 tons and, once we have that, these other negotiations about who will get what from the Metals Corporation will be immaterial. We will get what we want and the British can learn about sweating for 1942.'

'And do I continue my operations?' asked Felsen.

'Of course you do, unless you receive orders to the contrary. I think a more clandestine approach might be in order, but you should have an open field.'

'Where's this intelligence from?'

'Not intelligence, just an observation about British character. You probably don't know much about cricket, do you? Nor do I. But I'm told it's all about fair play. They'll play by the book and report all your indiscretions to Salazar like the good boys they are. And Salazar… if we keep stroking his fur the right way, will ignore them.'

Poser took one of Felsen's offered cigarettes, lit it and stuck it in his prosthetic hand. He sipped his coffee, licked his lips and applied his handkerchief to them as if they were sore. He sat back patting his chest as if that was where he had his winnings.

'Is that it?' said Felsen. 'You brought me all the way down from the Beira just to tell me how brilliant you are?'

'No,' said Poser, 'just to smoke some of your cigarettes. I like the brand.'

Felsen checked him over.

'Yes,' confirmed Poser, 'I've been learning from you, Felsen. A joke. A rare thing in diplomatic circles.'

'When are you and Salazar getting married, Poser?'

'The wedding, I fear, is still some way off,' he said, grinning.

'Happy Christmas, Poser.'

'And to you, Felsen,' said the Prussian, raising his prosthetic hand in a half salute. 'And by the way, there's someone to see you in my office.'

For an irrational moment, caught up in Poser's good humour, Felsen thought that it would be Eva. But he was distracted by the smell of burning in his nostrils and Poser tearing the cigarette out of his prosthetic hand, the glove burnt through and ruined.

'Shit,' said Poser.

'Another rare thing in diplomatic circles?' asked Felsen.

In Poser's office, sitting with his back to the door and his feet up on the window sill, looking out at the weak, winter sunshine filtering through the Phoenix palms in the gardens, was Gruppenfuhrer Lehrer.

'Heil Hitler,' said Felsen. 'What a surprise, Herr Gruppenfuhrer, what a wonderful surprise.'

'Don't waste any of that Swabian charm on me, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.'

'Sturmbannfuhrer?'

'You've been promoted. So have I. Now I'm Herr Obergruppenfuhrer if you can manage that. And as from next March we'll be operating under the auspices of the Wirtschaft-und Verwaltungshauptamt or the WHVA if that means anything to you?' said Lehrer, who paused for a sign. 'Clearly not.'

'Now we get promoted for failing to achieve our targets…'

'No, for getting close to impossible ones. The circumstances have not been easy, I know, and you haven't had full control of the campaign, but despite all this you've made considerable progress and more important, the Reichsfuhrer Himmler has been able to shine in front of the Fuhrer and annoy Fritz Todt. The latter being the most gratifying.'

'I can only thank you for coming all this way to confer the honour, sir.'

Lehrer whipped his feet off the sill and swivelled his chair to face Felsen. Promotion had worked on him, there was a greater and harder authority emanating from under the black eyebrows.

'Do you know what temperature it is in Russia?'

'Now?' asked Felsen, unnerved. 'Well below zero, I imagine.'

'Minus twenty if you're in Moscow. Minus thirty if you're out in the wilderness somewhere… and it's going down not up. It's not so easy to remember that in plus fifteen with the blue sea and the Estoril casino and the champagne…'

'The blankets…'

'Forget the damned blankets. The quality was complete shit anyway. I'm glad, you know this, I'm glad the British pre-emptive campaign was so successful. Now they've got all those blankets rotting in their own warehouses instead of them stinking out ours.'

'And Poser seemed so cheerful.'

'What you don't know about Poser is that he has a prosthetic head. Nothing in there is real,' said Lehrer. 'You know who they've got fighting our boys out there on the eastern front?'

'Russians?'

'Siberians. Flat-faced, slit-eyed Siberians. Those people, they sleep in the summer, it's too warm for them. They only wake up when the temperature drops below minus ten. That is their operating temperature. Our troops are still in their summer tunics. They haven't even got gloves. And they're faced with those barbarians who dance because it's so beautifully cold, who rub rancid pig fat on to their bayonets so that when they stick our half-frozen soldiers the wound will be hopelessly infected and they'll die in agony. If their screams could carry as far as Berlin we'd be out of there tomorrow.'

'Why are you telling me this?'

'The reward for failure is a posting to the Russian front. What does that tell you?'

'We are not experiencing total victory.'

'The real winter has just started, but it's been damn cold for two months. Our supply lines are stretched over thousands of miles. The Russians have retreated and left us nothing. They've razed everything to the ground. There isn't a single thing we don't have to transport. You know what we do with our Russian prisoners of war? We stick them behind barbed wire and watch them starve and freeze to death. We can't give them anything. We can't supply ourselves. Grim, is an unimaginably slight adjective for the situation out there.'

'The first half of the liverwurst sandwich?'

'Have you been out in the Beira with your head up a pig's arse? What happened on 7th December?'

'Pearl Harbor.'

'We already have the makings of the sandwich.'

'The way we see it here, we're twenty-five kilometres from Moscow. We're in the suburbs, for God's sake. The Americans are on the other side of the Atlantic. They've still got to invade Europe. Let's be reasonable, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer.'

'I'm hopeful, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, but we must have contingency,' said Lehrer. 'Now… that peasant you work with up there in the Beira.'

'Abrantes.'

'Can he read or write?'

'No,' said Felsen, 'but he has a signature.'

'Is he under control?'

'He's under control,' said Felsen, thinking how close it had been. 'As long as he's making money he's happy. He does well enough out of the wolfram cleaning companies we set up.'

'This is a different thing altogether. Those cleaning companies are nothing, they don't have significant assets. You remember what I said to you at the beginning of the year… about private thinking.'