He drove out on to the Marginal and noticed for the first time on the outskirts of the city that the air was fresher and purer. After five days of brutal swelter, the sea was blue again, the sky clear and the twin steel towers of the Ponte Salazar, the new suspension bridge being built across the Tagus, were pin-sharp in the flat calm of the estuary. The workmen were already out on the massive concrete ramp, preparing to string the first cable across the river.
He stopped off in Belem to take a coffee and a pastel de nata in the Antiga Confeitaria. He ate three and smoked a cigarette. Now that his body was clean and his stomach sweetened he began to relish his work. He'd been with the PIDE for two and a half years and hadn't regretted a moment. He'd spent his first year in the PIDE headquarters in Rua Antonio Maria Cardoso in the Chiado district of Lisbon, where he'd demonstrated to his superiors a natural talent for the work. They didn't even have to tell him how to recruit informers. He knew. He found out people's weaknesses, he implied PIDE interest in their activities, and then saved them from arrest and the dreaded Caxias prison by bringing them into his network. It surprised him that his most significant weapon was charm. He'd thought he was devoid of it, but he'd learnt more than he'd thought from his elder brother, Pedro, and now that he was in a new world, where he had no history, he could use what previously he'd only observed. It was so facile. Charm was just a question of demeanour. If he smiled people liked him. The smiling made his long-lashed, blue-green eyes shine, which attracted their attention, while his moustache made him appear genial, and his thinning hair gave him an air of vulnerability so that, overall, people trusted him. He never made the mistake of despising people for this because he was so glad to be liked. He just made sure that his superiors knew that this carefully crafted exterior concealed a ruthless persistence, an unflinching severity, and an unswerving relish for following through.
Manuel asked the barman at the Antiga Confeitaria to make up a packet of six pastels de nata. He crushed out his cigarette, paid and drove to the Caxias prison.
In his first year at the PIDE headquarters he'd been particularly successful at rooting out dissent in the university. It had been easier than he'd expected. His brother was at the university. He was very popular. His friends were constantly in the house. Manuel listened. He took down names and fed them into his network. He did more recruiting. He cajoled, threatened and manipulated until by the end of 1963 he had compiled dossiers on two professors, who would never work again, and eight students whose futures were over before they'd even begun. His superiors were impressed. His father wanted him to root out all the union men and communists from his factories, and was annoyed to find that he didn't have the influence over this institution that he'd come to expect elsewhere. Manuel was moved to the interrogation centre in the Caxias prison where the Estado Novo detained their more serious, more politically active dissidents. These people needed more persuasive methods to encourage them to help PIDE uncover the network of communist cells threatening not just the stability of the government, but the country's whole way of life.
The first months in Caxias were spent honing his interrogation skills, partly through practice but initially by watching more experienced men through a recently installed two-way mirror. The new mirror excited Manuel. It brought back memories of childhood. He liked to sit close to it, almost with his nose touching, and sometimes with the prisoner's face pressed right up against it on the other side. The pleasure was exquisite, almost sexual for him, to openly observe, without being seen, a man's shattered face as he was brought to the limits of his endurance.
This was another part of the training-the breaking-down of the prisoner. The preferred method was a combination of sleep deprivation and random beatings. They had installed sound equipment which, with little supervision, could keep a prisoner awake for days. They still used the old method, the statue, where the prisoner was made to lean against a wall, his bodyweight supported by his fingertips, but it was time-consuming and required regular beatings and therefore manpower.
Manuel parked up outside the fort. He put his jacket on, picked up his briefcase and the cakes and remembered with a thrill the reason why he'd bought the girl the night before, and why he'd particularly wanted one with an Alentejana accent. He showed his pass, which the guard ignored. He walked across the inner courtyard to the interrogation centre. Waiting for him in his office was Jorge Raposo, an overweight twenty-one-year-old from Caldas da Rainha who was an agente de 2° classe. He was talking to another agente about an English pop group called the Beatles and their new single called 'Can't Buy Me Love'. Jorge was translating the tide into Portuguese but he shut up when Manuel came in and the other agent slipped out after a hurried bom dia.
'What's his problem?' asked Manuel, laying his briefcase down and the packet of cakes. Jorge shrugged and eyed the cakes. 'We haven't got to the stage where we're reporting each other for listening to pop music.'
Jorge shrugged again, lit a cigarette and turned the box of matches over and over on his desk.
'So, you like the Beatles,' said Manuel.
'Sure,' said Jorge, sitting back and blowing smoke at the ceiling.
'She loves me yeah, yeah, yeah,' said Manuel in English, to show he was groovy, too.
'She loves you…' said Jorge.
'What?'
'She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah. Not "me".'
Manuel grunted and sat at his desk and laid his hands down flat. Jorge regretted correcting him now. He thought it might have an impact on the cake situation.
'What have we got today?' asked Manuel.
Jorge stuck his cigarette back into the corner of his mouth and looked down at his papers wondering how he could remedy the situation. The name sprang off the page.
'There's always that Maria Antonia Medinas girl,' said Jorge, who saw immediately that he'd hit the right button.
'Ah, yes,' said Manuel, frowning as if he'd forgotten her, 'the girl from Reguengos.'
'The one with the blonde hair… the blue eyes…'
'And I thought they were all Arabs out there,' said Manuel. 'You know… dusky… Moorish.'
'She certainly isn't,' said Jorge, licking his lips.
'Shut up, Jorge, and have a cake,' said Manuel quickly.
Jorge opened up the packet and took two.
'God, they're good,' he said. 'We should bring some cinnamon to the office.'
'Get them to bring up the Medinas girl,' said Manuel.
Jorge reached for the internal phone.
'Do you want to talk to her or…?'
'No, no, I'll watch this time,' said Manuel.
The girl stood in the interrogation room. Jorge moved her up close to the mirror. Manuel looked into her face, haggard now from lack of sleep. The blue eyes were dark and sunken. She blinked frequently in the harsh strip-lit room. Her hair was beginning to grease up. She was scared but keeping it to herself. Manuel felt pity and admiration. She stood with her shoulders square in a tight-fitting grey top with four buttons that started between her jutting breasts and finished at her neck. She wore a grey calf-length skirt and a pair of black pumps. She was neat and still looked clean, apart from her hair.
Jorge began with the same litany of questions. He wanted to know about the copies of the communist rag Avante which had been found in her possession as she'd tried to board a ferry in Cais do Sodre. Her answers were the same. She didn't know anything. She'd picked up the packet by mistake. They weren't given to her. She didn't know about any clandestine printing operations. She didn't know any names. She didn't know any addresses of safe houses.
Jorge grilled her for two hours. She stuck rigidly to her story. When Jorge's questions flagged and she began to drift into sleep he'd slap her awake and make her stand in the crucifix position and do knee-bends until she was sobbing. After the third hour Jorge had her sent back down to the cells.