“In Spain?”
He nodded. “When he got killed in Madrid, she made arrangements to get my mother and me to Portugal and then to Mexico City.” Padillo’s mother had been a beauty from Estonia who had married a Spanish attorney. The attorney had been shot by the winners in 1937. Mother and son had gone to Mexico where she had supported them by giving piano and language lessons. She taught Padillo to speak six or seven languages perfectly before she died of tuberculosis in the early 1940’s. I don’t think he could play the piano. He had told me all this a long time ago in Bonn when we first met. It was this unique fluency with languages that had drawn him to the attention of the U.S. spy crowd.
“What’s your father’s old flame do now?”
“She keeps track of others who are still in my former line of work.”
“You know her well?”
“Very. I’ve seen her quite a few times over the years.”
“She won’t peddle what you know?”
“We won’t tell her what I know.”
We took a cab to a quiet neighborhood in Chevy Chase, just inside the District line, where Senora Madelena de Romanones did whatever she did for a living. It was a two-story house, built in the style of the ’thirties with a shingled roof and red brick that was painted white. The white paint was flaking a little, but they may have planned it that way. A screened porch was on the left and some large elms in the well-kept yard gave enough shade so that the porch looked as if it would be pleasantly cool in summer. I paid the cab and we walked up to the front door and rang the chimes. We could hear them sounding inside and a dog began to bark. It sounded like a small dog. A Negro maid opened the door.
“We wish to see Senora de Romanones,” Padillo said. “I’m Mr. Padillo; this is Mr. McCorkle.”
“Miz Romanones is spectin you,” the maid said. She unlatched the screen door and held it open for us. We went in and followed her down an entrance hall. She stopped at a pair of sliding doors and opened them. Padillo went through first.
The woman wasn’t as old as I had expected. She must have been around thirty when she was in love with Padillo’s father for she was no more than sixty now and in the dim light of the drawing room she could pass for fifty. She was erect in a wine-colored chair and smiled at Padillo as he crossed the room and bent over her hand. “May I present my colleague, Mr. McCorkle,” he said.
I bowed over her hand, too, and she said that she was enchanted. There was a network of ridged blue veins on the back of her hand that gave it a slightly arthritic look. The rings on her fingers I estimated at close to ten thousand dollars.
“You will join me in coffee, Michael; you and Mr. McCorkle?”
“Thank you.”
“You can serve the coffee now, Lucille,” she said to the maid who stood in the doorway.
The maid said “Yes, ma’am,” and left. Padillo and I took two chairs that faced Senora de Romanones across an inlaid table whose curved legs ended in lions’ heads that held round glass balls in their mouths. The rest of the furniture was of the same period, whatever it was. Dark wood glistened with polish and use. The floor was covered with oriental rugs that overlapped and the dusty-rose walls were hung with somber oil portraits of family or friends or just strangers whose features were obscured by the dimness of the room. A Knabe piano was tucked into one corner. Its keys were exposed, its lid was open, there was sheet music on its stand, and it looked as if somebody might have been playing it just before we arrived. The outside world was kept out by drawn maroon velvet curtains. Sunlight probably did nothing for either the oriental rugs or for the fine network of lines in the face and neck of Senora de Romanones.
“It has been such a long time, Michael,” she said. “I despaired of seeing you again.” She had a curiously penetrating voice, not loud, but well-toned and full of command.
“It was three years ago in Valencia,” Padillo said.
“Do you speak Spanish, Mr. McCorkle?”
“Not well, I’m afraid.”
“His German is excellent,” Padillo said. “If you would prefer—”
She smiled slightly. “I remain cautious, Michael. So we shall speak German.”
“Usually, Michael, you come to see me only when you have some dreary task at hand.”
“I am grateful for the tasks, because they give me the opportunity to be with you.”
She laughed. “Give me a cigarette. The way you turn a compliment reminds me of your father. He was such an articulate man, although his politics was pathetic.”
“Yet you helped him many times, Madelena. And my mother.”
She waved the cigarette that Padillo had given her. “I helped him because I foolishly was in love with him despite the fact that he was married. I helped your mother because of you. I never liked her really. She was too beautiful, too intelligent, too good.” She paused for a moment and smiled. “Too much competition, I suppose.”
The maid came in with a tray containing a silver coffee service and some almost translucent cups. Senora de Romanones poured and the maid passed us the cups.
“That will be all, Lucille.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said and left, closing the double doors behind her.
“So how do you like it, Michael, my little not-quite-suburban nest?”
“I was surprised when I heard that you had left Madrid. I was even more surprised when I learned that you had come to Washington. I can see you in New York, Madelena, but not Washington.”
She waved her cigarette around again. She did it gracefully. “This, my dear young man, is where things take place nowadays. Once it was Berlin and once it was Madrid and once it was London. Now it is either Washington or Hong Kong. I think I much prefer Washington.”
“Business is good, I take it?”
“Excellent,” she said. “I’ve rediscovered many old friends here and I have made a number of new ones. There are some mutual acquaintances whom we could have great fun gossiping about sometime.”
“Nothing would be more enjoyable, but there is a deadline and once again I need your help.”
She sighed and put her cigarette out carefully. “This time I will charge you, Michael. In the past I have helped you for foolish sentimental reasons, but this time you will pay. The price: Spend one hour soon with an old friend and listen to her memories.”
“You would be paying me,” Padillo said. “It will be a rare privilege and we will do it quite soon.”
She looked at him and smiled slightly. “You even lie like your father. You are not yet married?”
“No.”
“Then I will be the matchmaker. You are a wonderful catch, and I will find you a rich bride.”
“I will be in debt to your ability as well as to your good taste.”
“Now, what is it that you wish to know?”
“I want to locate — today, if possible — three persons.”
“Are they in the States?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Their names?”
“Philip Price, Jon Dymec, Magda Shadid.”
“A mixed bag, Michael,” she said in English. “An Englishman, a Pole, and Magda, half-Syrian, half-Hungarian. I didn’t realize you knew her.”
“We’ve met. Are they in town?”
“Two of them are, Magda and Price. Dymec is temporarily in New York.”
“Can you get word to them?”
“I can.”
“Today.”
“Yes.”
“Just tell them I’m at the Mayflower, and that I’m calling my loan.”
“Do you know these persons, Herr McCorkle?”
“No. They’re Mike’s friends.”
“Take my advice. Keep it that way.” She turned to Padillo. “You know, Michael, that you have piqued my curiosity and you know that I will eventually learn everything.”