Sira, page 40
He looked at me, taking in my unexpected decision. Satisfaction may have been running through his veins, but he contained himself and didn’t show any jubilation openly. He was a scoundrel through and through, but not a reckless madman. He knew what was needed in any given moment.
“I appreciate it, Sira. Really. Thank you.”
To emphasize his words, he held his right hand to his chest. He was convincing, and he seemed honest in his reactions. But I ignored the gesture and concentrated on finishing my tea with apparent indifference.
“All we need to do,” I said, separating my lips from the cup, “is set a date. I’ll try to make it as soon as possible, so you can stop pestering me and I can forget about this whole unpleasant business.”
I left the cup on the saucer and got up. Like a gentleman, he stood too and approached to pull the chair out for me. Then he went to take a step forward beside me, but I stopped him in his tracks.
“There’s no need for you to accompany me. Enjoy your breakfast.” My back was turned when, without looking at him, I added, “I’ll let you know what agreement I come to with the shipowner.”
58
The National Theater Company exceeded all expectations. The actors, the set, the lighting, and the sound effects made for a magnificent performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But at almost four in the morning, the audience, though they tried, couldn’t stop the involuntary closing of eyes, the nodding of heads, and the yawning.
We were in Barcelona, in the gardens on the great hill of Montjuic, where a big stage had been set up under the stars. Some fool had had the idea to schedule the performance for after midnight: half past midnight, in theory. But as always, the delays piled up and it was after three before we took our seats. I’d returned to my duties at last, and by all appearances I was focused on gathering impressions for my future report. That facade, however, was only a half-truth, and if anyone had been able to see inside my head, they would’ve found my brain working in two dimensions. One part of my mind was operating right there in the preferential seats reserved for foreign correspondents, while the other was galloping someplace else, at a hundred miles per hour.
A couple of days before, I’d come out of my meeting with Ramiro at the former Hotel Gaylord’s convinced that everything was ready: the Grand Cross was hidden in his toilet bag, he’d been placated by the promise of a meeting, and Ignacio was waiting for my signal to arrest him. Events would begin to unfold as soon as I wanted them to. Once the Argentine national Román Altares was detained for possessing the badge that had been taken from the first lady, everything else would fall into place. True, he hadn’t stolen anything in this case. But he had in the past. And now he’d deviously coerced me, behaved miserably with Philippa . . . who knows how far he would’ve taken things if I hadn’t stopped him? The punishment he received, for whatever reason he received it, would be more than justified.
And yet, surprisingly, I’d felt no satisfaction after leaving him with his succulent breakfast. Feeling uncomfortable, I’d taken a taxi to Hermosilla. I was on edge, tired after that turbulent night in Granada, Seville and its confusion, the return journey to Madrid by train, the run-down guesthouse in Atocha, all my comings and goings, the constant telephone calls, the toing and froing in and out of the Gaylord, my lies, my deception, my machinations and dissembling. I needed rest, a bit of calm and fresh air before the next step. A physical rest, but not just that. Above all, I needed to give my poor soul a bit of peace.
Víctor had welcomed me with delight. He threw himself into my arms, laughed his head off, pinched my face, pulled my hair. We’d only been apart for a few days, but I had the impression he’d grown. He hadn’t started walking on his own yet, but he could do it with a little help. With him gripping my little finger, we went up and down the incredibly long hall in my father’s flat half a dozen times. I fed him a plate of rice with chicken, and he sat on my lap while I finished my lunch. Then we lay on the sofa together to take a nap in the semidarkness of the living room while my father was out for lunch at the Gran Peña. I started singing “El Señor Don Gato” in a low voice, and within a couple of verses he was out, lying atop my body. Seconds later, I too fell asleep, under his weight.
I thought I was dreaming when an insistent murmur began to circle my head. “Señora, señora, señora . . .” I noticed I was being shaken, opened my eyes, confused, and found myself looking at Miguela’s wizened face a few inches from mine.
“Señora,” she whispered again, so as not to wake Víctor. “There’s a call for you. They say it’s urgent.”
I slid off the sofa to receive the call at the desk in my father’s study.
“You almost pulled it off, my girl. I almost believed you.”
I was standing in bare feet. I swallowed. It was Ramiro.
“I don’t consider a job done until I’ve tightened all the screws, Sira. Maybe you don’t remember that about me, or perhaps it’s something I’ve learned to do later, over time. So to make sure your promise was solid, I dropped by the Palace, where you told me yourself Dodero was staying. In fact, I’m calling you from here right now.”
There was a soft whirring in the background; he could equally have been telling the truth or lying.
“The shipowner should be there,” I said. “I spoke to him yesterday.”
“He was. He was. Past tense of the verb ‘to be.’”
“What do you mean he ‘was’?”
“He ‘was’ because he’s not anymore. He’s gone.”
“Gone? Where?”
“You tell me.”
It took me a moment to fit the pieces together; I was still shaking off the cobwebs of sleep. If the Argentine magnate had given up on Madrid, the logical thing would be for him to proceed to the next stage of the tour.
“I suppose he’s on his way to Barcelona, then, to prepare for the arrival of—”
He didn’t let me finish.
“How sure are you of that?”
“Almost completely.”
“And you’ll be there, too?”
I could’ve told him it was none of his business but preferred not to show my irritation.
“Of course. I have to continue covering the tour.”
“Good. Get me a meeting with him in Barcelona, then.”
All the calm politeness he’d shown me that morning seemed to have vanished. Ramiro’s tone was demanding and detached now, as cold as a knife plunged into ice. I sensed that this was more than a simple mood change. The way he spoke suggested something darker.
“Leave a message with reception at my hotel, but don’t bother asking to speak to me. I’m not there anymore. I’ve gone away, too.”
I slumped into my father’s leather armchair with the heavy receiver pressed against my ear. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Ramiro had left Hotel Buen Retiro. And he would’ve taken his luggage, naturally. And his toilet bag would be in his luggage, with the Grand Cross inside. And I didn’t know where he was staying now, and he didn’t seem to have any intention of telling me.
“I’m losing my patience, Sira,” he went on, unrelenting. “And worst of all, I anticipated it. I knew you’d try to put me off with false promises and anger, so hurt, so wounded by my behavior. You’ve reminded me you were always like this, touchy, unbearably sensitive. That’s why I tired of you and left, I should think.”
I sat back and closed my eyes.
“I don’t know exactly what you are now,” he continued without stopping to take a breath. “Your past is a mystery. If I’m honest, since I left Tangier I’ve been too busy to take the slightest interest in you. I’ve had businesses, women, ups and downs, good times and bad. I haven’t had time to spare. I’ve also had friends. And one of them, would you believe it, has been in London for a few months, it turns out. As it happens, he owed me a favor, and he just repaid me with a bit of information that alarms me.”
He continued with a serious tone, relentless.
“Nobody knows you at the BBC, as Livia Nash or Sira Quiroga or however you prefer to be called. No one has ever heard either the name you use now or the one you had before. The friend I’m talking about is Argentine and well connected, and the Latin American and Spanish crowd isn’t so big. Everyone knows everyone or they’ve heard of one another, not least of all someone who’s supposed to work in radio. But curiously, nobody has ever heard anything about you.”
I didn’t bother to reply. The excuses and cover stories I used with others wouldn’t work with Ramiro. The fact was, he now knew what no one else in Spain must know. And with that knowledge, he had the upper hand.
“So, to be clear,” he added forcefully. “Barcelona. Dodero. I need concrete progress. And it’s no use just offering me a place and time, and then you disappear. I don’t trust you. I want you to be at the meeting, to come with me, to push him, find a way to make the shipowner accept my proposals.”
He knew I was listening, just as he knew I wouldn’t reply. He finally paused, and I could hear faint piano notes in the background. Perhaps he hadn’t been lying when he said he was at the Palace.
“You’ll work out how to do it, Sira. I’m mystified by the arts you use with those people. I don’t know whether you win them over by playing innocent or by exciting them between the sheets. It’s neither here nor there to me. Either way, you know what I need. Cooperate, or I’ll make sure those concerned know that the supposed BBC reporter they treat with such deference, the one who parades around with grandees and pokes her nose in everywhere, is nothing but a fraud.”
Two days later, I was recalling that conversation, as I had so many times in the intervening days, while I contemplated the Montjuic Park stage full of characters penned by Shakespeare. I hadn’t heard from Ramiro since the call, and I didn’t know whether he was still in Madrid or was now in Barcelona like me, waiting for his appointment with the shipping tycoon. As we applauded the performance and got to our feet, two mysteries were still hounding my thoughts. First, where was Ramiro—and, with him, the Grand Cross? And second, where the hell had Alberto Dodero disappeared to?
I’d assumed that I would find the shipowner there, attending the first engagements of the final days of the tour. But no, he hadn’t shown up. The first lady was escorted by her good-for-nothing brother, by her personal companion, by the ambassador whose orders I’d pretended to be following at the jeweler’s, and by other loyal followers. But not by Dodero. He hadn’t shown his face at those initial events in Barcelona where, to the delight of those attending, Evita wore another over-the-top cabaret-star hairstyle and her white lamé dress, cascading jewelry, and an ermine stole that almost reached the floor. She wasn’t sporting the badge that the Generalísimo had pinned on her, but expectations regarding the farewell dinner hosted by Franco were another matter.
They put us up at the Hotel Majestic on Paseo de Gracia—quality and luxury for the foreign journalists, as ever. Only three or four of those who’d been at that first meeting at the press club in Madrid remained, but for the Barcelona visit, in preparation for the leap to the rest of Europe, a few new ones had joined us. A well-dressed correspondent from Il Giornale d’Italia, a slender gentleman from the French agency Havas, a Pathé News reporter, and three or four more whose particulars I didn’t concern myself with. I had other problems.
I woke early despite the late night, and the first thing I did was ask reception whether any messages had been left for me.
“No, none, Señora Nash.”
“And Señor Alberto Dodero? Has an Argentine gentleman by the name of Alberto Dodero checked in in the last few hours, by any chance?”
“No, Señora Nash.”
A few minutes after I hung up, the telephone rang. I answered anxiously—perhaps the receptionist had made a mistake and there was something for me. Or the shipowner had arrived after all.
“Livia? Good morning, it’s Diego Tovar. I’m calling to let you know that this morning’s engagements have been canceled. We’ll try to rearrange the activities for a later date. The first lady is exhausted, and it’s better that she rests. We have another busy schedule lined up for the afternoon and evening.”
I didn’t know if he was aware of my relief when I thanked him. To hell with the trade fair visit, the applause, the anthems, the rushing around! I was about to say goodbye when he interrupted me.
“It’s a luxury on this tour to have some free time. Do you know Barcelona? Can I persuade you to come for a walk and I’ll show you around?”
I hesitated. It was the first time I’d set foot in the city, and the idea of a morning off was tempting. But no, I had to stay focused. At the same time, however, it wasn’t wise to turn him down, particularly after the fright I’d had in the last few days. Wavering, I made a counteroffer.
“How about we meet for lunch? I’d like to make the most of this breather and get ahead with some work.”
If I’d been a real reporter, that was what I would’ve done. As nothing more than an impostor, however, I threw myself into my other matters. I went down the big hall and found the switchboard. I remembered how wonderfully the operators at the Alhambra Palace had treated me and hoped they would do the same here. In keeping with the size of the hotel and the upbeat tempo of the city, instead of two employees working the lines, I found five.
Barcelona was a big city where anything could happen, and the Majestic was a hotel that catered not just to relaxed tourists but also to all kinds of visitors with more urgent business and problems. I wasn’t going to get away with playing the charming but scatterbrained young wife of an older millionaire. Feigning an Argentine accent once again, I adopted a different role—it was all I could think to do. In a serious, almost severe tone, I mentioned the Diplomatic Information Office, Señora Perón, and their busy schedule of activities. I threw every name I could think of into the mix, but without identifying myself as holding any particular official position. In any case, they eventually took me to be someone with a certain amount of authority, and I achieved my objective.
“So what is it you need exactly, señora?”
“To locate Don Alberto Dodero as soon as possible. Please start with Pedralbes Palace and then all the city’s five-star hotels, as well as the four-star ones. Please be as careful as possible. And contact me in my room as soon as—”
Something caught the attention of my left ear and I stopped dead. Sitting with her switchboard plugs in front of her at the last station, one of the youngest operators had just said some compelling words.
“I’ll put you through to Señor Duarte right away.”
I took a couple of steps toward her and redoubled my air of authority, even raising a finger for emphasis. I didn’t know who was calling the brother or why, but I was going to find out.
“If the gentleman doesn’t answer, please keep trying.”
She nodded obediently. She would keep up the effort until she managed to get Juancito out of bed, the bathtub, or God knows where else.
“Señor Duarte, a very good morning to you,” she said at last. “It’s an international call. I’ll put you through to the ambassador of the Argentine Republic in London.”
I don’t know where I found the nerve, but by the time the conversation had started, I had the girl’s headphones over my ears.
59
I heard everything, of course. I even noted down some details with a pencil on the pad that the operator put in front of me when I requested it by scribbling in the air.
I hadn’t received any news about Señora Perón’s visit to London since her stylists had put me in the picture about the outfit she was planning to wear there, or since the first lady herself had mentioned the invitation she was longing for, while on board the plane to Granada. At times, I felt pricks of guilt like pins in my conscience—faced with this lack of information, perhaps I should have been more probing, found other ways to discover how things were progressing. But the last few days had been so frenetic that this hadn’t been possible.
“First of all, I hope you will allow me to extend my good wishes for your saint’s day tomorrow.”
Despite the shortcomings of the telephone lines, I could hear maturity and judiciousness in the man’s voice.
“Everyone at the diplomatic mission in London wishes you a very happy day, señor, as we do our president.”
Sure enough, it was June the twenty-third, Saint John’s Eve, the night of festivities that preceded the Feast Day of Saint John the Baptist—when Juan Domingo de Perón and Juan Duarte himself would celebrate their saint’s day. Hence the ambassador Dr. Ricardo Labougle’s good wishes.
“We wished to contact you,” he went on, “to update you and to request that you pass on some particulars to the first lady.”
The ambassador was astute—astute and wary. What he was about to communicate was not, I was sure, welcome news. And foreseeing Evita’s furious outburst, he preferred to use an intermediary to shield himself.
“If she decides in the end to add the United Kingdom to her tour,” the diplomat went on, “the British Government insists on welcoming her with the appropriate etiquette for the first lady of a friendly country. But the visit, it seems almost certain, would not be granted the desired official status in any way.”
There was irritation in Juancito’s voice.
“And what does that mean, Labougle? That the king and queen won’t receive her?”
“I fear as much, señor. His Majesty’s government does not believe it appropriate for the king or queen or prime minister to issue an official invitation. If the first lady still wishes to come, they propose receiving her with the usual courtesy that is extended to any distinguished foreign visitor. A schedule of visits would be drawn up for her, but with a low, almost private profile. The wife of Prime Minister Attlee would, however, be pleased to take tea with her . . .”
