You don't look well,' said Abrantes. 'You're not eating properly.'
It was true Felsen hadn't had any appetite for some weeks. He felt as if there was a big moment pending, and to be ready for it he wanted to be sharp, hungry, concentrated. He looked out of the black window watching Abrantes' reflection.
'You put alcohol on an empty stomach, you'll ruin yourself,' said Abrantes, demonstrating his all-round expertise, as if his visits to Harley Street with Pica had been part of his education, and allowed him to pontificate on all things medical. Felsen puffed on his cigar, the coal at the end sending Morse code back to him.
'Smoking's bad too… unless you eat,' added Abrantes, which tempted Felsen to announce a midnight swim to see if his partner would say that that would kill him too. 'Everything's all right as long as you eat properly.'
Felsen paced the length of the window looking out across the other houses to the ocean.
'You're nervous too,' said Abrantes. 'You can't sit still any more. You're not working. You're spending too much time with too many different women. You should calm down, marry…'
'Joaquim?'
'What?' he asked, looking up from his chair, innocent, put-upon. 'I'm just trying to help. You haven't been yourself since you came back from Africa. If you had a wife I wouldn't have to worry about you… that's what wives do.'
'I don't want to get married,' said Felsen, for the first time out loud.
'But you have to, you have to have children or… or…'
'Or what?'
'It all stops. You don't want to be the end of the line.'
'It's not as if I'm the last male Hapsburg, Joaquim.'
Abrantes wasn't sure what a Hapsburg was. It shut him up. They drank. Felsen refilled and went back to the window. He saw Abrantes reflected, craning his neck to see what was worth looking at.
'Manuel is doing very well in PIDE,' said Abrantes.
'You told me.'
'They say he has a natural ability for the work.'
'A suspicious mind, maybe?'
'An enquiring mind,' said Abrantes. 'They tell me he likes to know everything… they're going to make him an agente de i° classe.'
'Is that impressive?'
'After less than six months in the job? I think so.'
'What does he do?'
'You know… he checks up on people. He talks to informers. He finds the worms in the apple.'
Felsen nodded, hardly listening. Abrantes writhed in his favourite chair unable to get comfortable.
'I meant to ask you this,' said Abrantes. 'I meant to ask you this months ago.'
'What?' said Felsen, turning away from the window, interested for the first time that night.
'Did you see the Senhora dos Santos about your problem in the summer?'
'Of course I did.'
Abrantes sat back, legs spread, relieved.
'I was worried,' he said. 'That you wouldn't take it seriously. It's a very serious business.'
'She didn't do anything,' said Felsen. 'She said it wasn't her type of magic.'
Abrantes came out of his chair as if a mechanism had thumped him in the back. He took Felsen by the elbow, squeezed it hard to impress upon him the gravity of the matter.
'Now I know,' he said, his eyes staring and wide. 'Now I know why you're behaving in this way. You must see someone. Immediately.'
Felsen eased his elbow out of the man's mechanical grip. He threw back the Armagnac remaining in his glass and left the house.
It was 10.30 P.M. He was drunk but not too drunk to drive himself back out to Cabo da Roca. He drove his Mercedes through the silent streets, black and glistening from the rain. He slowed past a couple of addresses in Cascais but each time moved on-not lacking in any physical appetite, just the talk necessary to get him to that point. He smoked the remains of the cigar and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and it occurred to him out there, in the blustery darkness on the Guincho road with the storms stacked up over the Atlantic waiting to come in, that in a fit of madness Maria might have told Abrantes thai: Manuel was not his child. Was that why she was back up in the Beira? Was that why Abrantes talked about continuing the line, and in the next breath mentioned Manuel and his success in PIDE? Abrantes had made a remark at that party in the summer too, about Manuel not having the same parents as Pedro. He shook his head at the indecisive windscreen wipers, at the rain gusting across the road, slashing and buffeting the car. His thoughts unnerved him. He began to feel uncomfortable between his shoulders and up the back of his neck, suspicious suddenly that the back seat of the car was not empty.
Drunk again, he sighed.
A car approached on a long straight section of the road. They dipped their headlights at each other. As the car drew nearer he took advantage of the light to check the back seat in the rear view. Nothing. He reached behind him and swept his hand across the seats. Stupid drunk.
Red lights receded into the blackness, quickly obliterated.
The road climbed up through the dense darkness of the pine trees, past Malveira da Serra, the road winding, cutting back on itself, the steering wheel shooting through his hands, a little sweat on his top lip from the drink oozing out of his system.
He turned off at the top and dropped down through the village of Azoia and out towards the lighthouse where his house, huddled in its own courtyard, shouldered the weather. He got out to open the gates. The wind inflated his lungs, the rain battered his hot ear. He drove the car up to the garage and went back to close the gates. He'd left a lamp on outside the house on the corner and in the light that shone off the hard wet mud in the courtyard, he saw footprints going to the side of the house.
He put his own foot down over one of the footprints. His were smaller. He squeezed his chin and swallowed. The GNR had warned him that bandits were operating on the roads around the Serra da Sintra. He drove the car into the garage. He opened the glove compartment and removed an old Walther P48 he'd kept from the war. He checked the magazine and tucked it into his waistband. His mind worried over ammunition corroded by the sea air, and he tried to remember when he'd last cleaned and oiled the damn thing. Still, having it in his hand was the important thing.
He stumbled into the house and saw his rubbery face in the hall mirror. Maybe, that was it. He was just drunk and they were the gardener's footprints. That must be it. He took off his coat, shook the rain off it and hung it up. The gardener was small, didn't even come up to his shoulder, had the feet of an elf. His ears strained for movement and returned to him the tinnitus that had developed since coming back from Africa.
He wiped his feet and moved down the corridor. His leather soles sounded loud against the wooden flooring. He turned on the kitchen light. Empty. He crossed to the living room. Flicked that light on. The Rembrandt looked down on him. He went to the sideboard and poured himself a shot of aguardente from an unmarked bottle. He sniffed it, the raw alcohol unstuffed his head, the paranoia backed off a notch. He lit a cigarette, took two fast drags and crushed it out. He removed the gun from his waistband and turned.
A man was standing by the door, grey hair swept back, blue raincoat, the wet shoulders glistening in the light. He had a gun in his hand.
'Schmidt,' said Felsen, surprisingly calm, given that the name had come into his head like a lobbed grenade.
Schmidt adjusted his grip on the.38 revolver, and the four-inch barrel performed a small circle. He was surprised that Felsen wasn't thrown against the wall in astonishment at the sight of him. He was surprised to see the Walther in the man's hand. How could he be armed and ready? Did he know things?
'You should put that down,' said Schmidt.
'You could do the same.'
Neither of them moved. Schmidt breathed loudly through his broken nose, his mouth sealed, the stress of the situation working his jaw muscles, his brain calculating as hard as a chess grandmaster's but without the clarity.