When the plane had landed, the state of semi-suspended animation in which the passengers had spent most of the flight was changed to a rush of activity. With raincoats over arms and small baggage in hand they filed down the gangway into the blinding furnace of a Portuguese summer’s morning. Freda Oliveiros, saying conventional farewells to the travellers as they disembarked, had just time to give Vicky an encouraging pat on the arm and speak a few private words.
“I’ll meet you at your hotel as soon as I’ve changed into my civvies, okay? Which is it?”
“The Tagus. Couldn’t you stay with me there?”
“Thanks, but the airline keeps a couple of apartments in town for holdover crews, and I’ve got some clothes there. It doesn’t cost a centavo, so why make your bill any bigger? Ill just pop over to your place soon.”
“Great,” Vicky agreed, and hurried on down the steps and across the hot pavement to the arrival portals.
Curt Jaeger, ahead of her in the immigration line, gave up his place and joined her as they, with their fellow-passengers, filed respectfully past the uniformed inspectors to have their passports stamped. This internationally idiotic ritual, followed by the no less universally pointless struggle through a perfunctory Customs checkpoint, actually introduced only a very moderate delay before Vicky and her self-appointed protector were standing on the curb outside the terminal’s main entrance. It was only natural that they should share a taxi to their hotel, but Vicky felt worried about obligating herself to Jaeger. He had already tipped the porters who had carried out their luggage.
“If we’re going to be doing some of the same things, like this,” she said, “I really can’t let you pay. Here... for the porters.”
She thrust out a palmful of Portuguese coins that she had just obtained at the airport casa de cãmbio, and with an indulgently amused look he chose a few escudos.
“Very well, Miss Kinian, we shall keep this all very Dutch, within limits, but let me explain to you that I am on an expense account — and expense accounts, like justice, are quite blind. Or perhaps I should say, like dead men they tell no tales.”
His choice of simile seemed peculiarly unapt to Vicky, but she reminded herself that there was no way he could have known how they applied bizarrely to her own situation. She settled back and began to enjoy the indescribable excitement of knowing that she, Vicky Kinian the nobody, was for the first time in her life on foreign soil.
The taxi was soon entering the outskirts of the city, and when she leaned her head near the window on her side she could watch a fast-changing prospect of small busy shops, tree-lined walks, and above on the steep hillsides clusters and rows of colourwashed houses — pink, yellow, and green — baking like festive cakes in the sun.
“It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed.
“Maybe you’d like to see more, then,” Jaeger suggested. He leaned forward and spoke to the driver in Portuguese. “I’ve asked him to take us the long way around, by the waterfront,” he explained.
The cab followed a street which led down a valley towards the sea-like estuary of the River Tagus on which the city faces. The efficient plainness of modern commercial buildings was occasionally relieved by such a startling souvenir of gaudy Moorish extravagance that Vicky’s head was constantly kept bobbing from one side to the other.
“This stewardess on the flight,” Jaeger said, “is she a good friend of yours?”
He spoke almost too casually, but Vicky was in no frame of mind to detect subtleties of tone.
“Oh, Freda?” she said. “We were in school together when we were teen-agers, but I haven’t seen her since — until last night. She knows Lisbon quite well, of course. I’m lucky to have run into her.”
She did not take her eyes off the new views of pastel houses, water and cliffs that the taxi’s route opened to her. She was sure she had never been more thrilled in her life, and she did not think of the implications of what she had said until Jaeger spoke again.
“I hope that doesn’t mean I shall lose the privilege of helping you to enjoy Lisbon a little myself.”
Vicky turned with a quick apologetic smile.
“Of course not! I’m very lucky to have run into you, too, and I appreciate—”
He raised a hand to stop her.
“You have nothing to appreciate yet. Maybe a division of labor is the best solution, since you’re so popular. Your old school friend can guide you for the day while I make my business calls, but would you give me the pleasure of taking you to dinner tonight? As a professional salesman, I can offer the inducement that in these Catholic countries bars and restaurants don’t always welcome a woman alone.”
She had already thought of that.
“Well, thank you. I’d love to.” Then she thought of something else. “Oh, dear!”
“Is something wrong?” her companion asked.
“Well, I was just thinking. If I go with Freda during the day and then go out with you in the evening it might seem as if I was just making use of her and then leaving her on her own.”
Jaeger deliberated for just a few seconds, looking ahead over the taxi driver’s shoulder.
“I agree,” he said at length. “That would not be nice, so by all means let her come with us. Let her show you inside the churches and shops. I think I can be a better guide to a good dinner, and I should be happy to have you both as my guests.”
Although that was what she had wanted him to say,Vicky had to make a perfunctory protest, but he interrupted after her first word.
“Remember,” he said, “the expense account.”
She laughed.
“All right. You win. You’ve got yourself a date with a couple of jabbering American females. I hope you won’t be sorry.”
“I think I can promise you,” Jaeger said smoothly, “that I won’t be.”
Their circuit of Lisbon’s waterfront and center seemed finished so soon that Vicky was amazed when she looked at her watch and realized that it had been almost an hour since they had left the airport.
“I’d better get on to the hotel,” she said reluctantly. “Freda is supposed to meet me there, and she may beat me to it at this rate.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jaeger. “We’re almost there now, and I won’t delay you any more. Ill call for you and your friend at seven o’clock this evening.”
As soon as they arrived and registered at the Hotel Tagus — whose relationship to Lisbon’s River Tagus existed more in its christener’s imagination than in geographical fact-Vicky had thanked Jaeger and gone straight to her room. It was larger than she had expected, and because of its thick outer walls was as cool as a limestone cave. A small private balcony — there was one for every room in the four-storey building — looked from her third-floor vantage point out over the red-tiled roofs and peacefully tinted walls that sloped away towards the distant bright blue of the estuary.
After enjoying the view for a minute she stepped back inside the room, closed the French doors behind her, loosened her dress, and started unpacking her suitcases. It was good to be alone for the first time in many hours.
She would have taken considerably less pleasure in her apparent solitude, and her room’s old-fashioned spaciousness and agreeable temperature, if she had known that her neighbour on the right-hand side as she faced the estuary had been either listening to or watching every move she made since the bellhop who had brought her luggage upstairs had closed her door behind him. She would have been even more troubled if she had recognized him as the same bald stout man with the hearing-aid who had been a fellow-passenger on the flight from New York.