The Man from Lisbon, page 32
“Better safe than sorry, eh?” the German barked with his customary energetic good humor, “Nobody will dare fiddle with these trunks now. In my travels I’ve learned that you can never take too many precautions. Someone, some busybody is always out there, waiting to catch you up when you least expect it.”
Night was falling beyond the windows of the dining car. They sipped their coffee quietly, contemplated the dimming French countryside.
“It’s all gone the way you planned, eh? The money is in circulation, the investments being made. We’re all making more money through Camacho’s generosity in the matter of bonuses. … You’ve done very well out of this, I must say.” Hennies smiled broadly.
“I was fortunate in my connections,” Alves said.
“I’ve know men who would have killed for such an opportunity. Many such men …”
“Are you including yourself, Adolf?”
“Quite possibly.” The German chuckled. “At least when I was younger and less cautious …” He puffed his cigar, watching Alves. “I’m very curious about you, you know. I don’t really know what kind of man you are … an enigma, so you remain to me. Oh, yes, you’re a thinker, a planner, a clever fellow. But I knew that in Luanda, the night I met you. Your reputation had preceded you. An entrepreneur … then I learned of your stay in Oporto and I put what I knew of your African career together with that and I said to myself, the man is an adventurer … possibly a bit on the far side of the law, but, please, I am not judging you. Many of us have spent much of our lives in that no man’s land where right and wrong grow confused. It is very easy to collide with the law. It can happen to anyone.”
“I was found innocent in court, you may recall.”
“I know, I know, but it has been my experience that anyone who has resided for a time in a jail cell has usually earned it, one way or another. So, I said to myself, the man may be something of a swindler—again, without passing judgment, I assure you.”
“Of course not. You are in no particular position to pass any judgments.” Hennies was making a blind probe. Surely he knew nothing.
“How right you are! But then you came to me with this remarkable offer—and once again I was set to doubting my opinion of you. Your connections with the bank—the highest levels of Portuguese finance! Surely not the province of a swindler, however clever, eh? Nor even of an adventurer. No, here is a man with extraordinary dimensions, I said to myself. But—” he sighed heavily—“what are those dimensions? You have hidden yourself away. … And now I think again. This bank, what kind of men are they? Here we are suddenly in the position of investing the bank’s money through your company, as if it is ours. And we are given bonuses and the size of the bribery grows like … like nothing I have ever seen! Well, can such things not be part of a swindle? But who is being swindled, I ask myself, and I see in my mind all those contracts and letters … and I cannot see anyone being swindled. But I still have my riddle: what sort of fellow is this Alves Reis?” He shrugged his shoulders elaborately. “Perhaps he is some sort of financial genius, eh? You’d agree with that, I dare say. You don’t mind my little speculations, I hope. …”
“I don’t blame you,” Alves said. “But there is no great mystery. I am just a man with a restless mind, determined not to be poor. … There is always a way to succeed, if you can only see it. You must be ready when the chance arises, when you come up with the idea that will work. But I am not a difficult man to understand, Adolf. … I do what I can to make my own luck, and once I have set out I don’t look back. The future is only marginally interesting. … The future is now, Adolf. Remember that. What counts is now. … Confidence in what you do, always have confidence!”
Before retiring to their compartments for the evening Hennies winked at Alves.
“Perhaps you’re a salesman. How about that, eh?”
“It’s as good as anything. Whatever you decide, remember that it makes no difference. I am as I am.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me. Good night, Reis. Sleep well.”
The next day Alves went to buy newspapers at Rossio Station while Hennies went to pick up the trunks. The papers folded under his arm, he was approaching the customs counter when he realized that something was very wrong. He stopped, stepped back into the crowd, propped himself against one of the pillars and surveyed the counter from behind the paper. He’d been through too many tight spots to miss it: his instincts set off the alarm, along the back of his neck, in his stomach. Danger … Hennies was arguing with the Chief of Customs, who watched him impassively, shaking his head in an unmistakably negative manner. Hennies threw his Liberian diplomatic passport down on the counter between them, pointed at it vigorously. The Chief of Customs curled a lip, regarded the document with disdain and folded his arms across the brass buttons on his chest. Hennies threw up his hands, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.
If the Chief of Customs insisted on opening the trunks the world would blow up in their faces. Alves shrank against the pillar, trying to make sense out of the scene before him. He could see that seven hundred and fifty pounds of freshly printed banknotes spilling on the floor would set off a round of questions that would lead to Camacho Rodrigues—the real Camacho—and the earth would crack apart, swallow them all. Hennies looked ashen, trapped, eyes flickering. He was at a standstill with the Chief of Customs and had realized the consequences of a search through the trunks. The Chief of Customs pointed to the trunks that reposed in full view on a cart behind him. What was he contemplating? Alves watched for any sign, analyzing the situation like a man watching the fin of a shark circling in the water and weighing his chances of survival. Then, as the Chief of Customs moved back from the counter and reached for the three Vuitton trunks, Alves decided, slipped on an old mask of confidence and strode briskly up to the counter, smiling pleasantly.
“Trouble?” he inquired. The customs official turned abruptly. “Some difficulty here?”
“I cannot seem to convince this lunatic that the trunks are diplomatic property, sealed and protected by law. …” Hennies was holding onto the counter, jowls trembling.
Alves swallowed dryly, froze his smile in place, offered his assistance.
“I am quite within my powers to open whatever I choose. I am unfamiliar with you and I have never been offered a Liberian passport in my life.” The Chief of Customs was not about to be intimidated. His eyes were very close together and glowed like coals. “I see no reason not to check these trunks.”
“Excuse me, my good man,” Alves said soothingly. “You are certainly within your rights. It is men like you who have made the Portuguese Customs Office one of the nation’s prides! But this is a special case, if I may explain.” He nodded to the man to come close, lowered his voice, as if to impart a weighty confidence. Hennies’ eyes glazed over, staring past the counter at the trunks. “I am Senhor Alves Reis of Lisbon. These trunks were given to my care in Paris to hand-deliver to certain individuals in our government. As for myself the contents are entirely unknown to me or to my associate here. I fully understand your concern … but to avoid any difficulty for myself—you know how government ministers can be, I dare say—might we leave these trunks in your care overnight? Surely they will be safe with you and we’ll send someone round tomorrow. Someone with more authority, if you understand. Then I will be out of any difficulty with my associates in power and you may deal with them as you wish.” His shirt was soaked with sweat; his collar seemed to be choking him. It had to work.
The Chief of Customs sized him up, then nodded judiciously. He acknowledged with stern dignity that the trunks could be no safer anywhere else in Lisbon. Alves nodded. “They are in your trust, then.”
Alves guided Hennies quickly away to a taxi. The German was still a sickly gray. They barely spoke until Alves saw him installed at the Avenida Palace.
“Don’t worry, Adolf. Confidence is the watchword. Tomorrow I will have Camacho himself go down and show that officious dimwit what for. There will be no problem. Relax.”
He left Hennies fussing. He took the checks for the trunks with him. He also took the Liberian diplomatic passport. God, what next?
The next morning he went to Rossio Station and positioned himself to watch the customs counter. For nearly an hour he watched without seeing the culprit from yesterday. There would not be a shift change until after noon. With a commanding air he approached the counter, heading straight for an elderly fellow with a round, happy face who had been seen to smile several times during the hour of surveillance. He too wore the badge of a Customs Chief. Quickly, with an engaging humble smile on his own face, Alves explained the problems the diplomat Hennies had experienced the previous day. The elderly fellow nodded sympathetically.
“It’s not important, you understand,” Alves said, “but you know how zealous these diplomats are of their privileges. Now Hennies plans to make a formal protest to the Foreign Office this afternoon, and of course he needs a morning coat and striped trousers … and, as luck would have it, they happen to be in the trunks he’s protesting about!” Rolling his eyes over the childish behavior of impetuous diplomats, Alves extracted an elegant crocodile-and-gold key case preparatory to opening the trunks then and there.
“That must have been my young colleague,” the Customs Chief said, “who shall remain nameless to save him any further humiliation. I wonder sometimes what gets into him—maybe he has stomach gas, who knows? Such a blunder!”
“Ah, how true. I was hopeful that your maturity might prevail.”
They chuckled together, men of the world.
“Well, I will be delighted to release the trunks, Senhor, upon the presentation of a diplomatic passport.”
“No sooner said than done.” Alves presented the document in question.
In a matter of seconds the trunks were being carted toward the waiting taxi. Alves followed behind, his clammy, trembling hands jammed in his coat pockets. He didn’t trust himself to light a cigarette. Much too close. Much.
José was sitting on the couch smoking a black cigarette in an ivory holder, a veritable bouquet in his buttonhole. Maria was trying to learn to smoke, coughing over an identical cigarette and holder. Alves, returned from taking the trunks to the office and leaving them with Arnaldo, stood in the doorway of the old apartment, mouth agape. For a moment he thought there was a fire in the room.
“What do you think you’re doing, Maria? What is going on here, anyway?”
“Now, Alves, don’t be angry.” José grinned.
“Your flower will die, it will suffocate!”
“José is teaching me to smoke, dear. It’s nothing to get upset about.”
“She’s doing very well, too.” José’s grin seemed a permanent fixture. “I’ve stopped her swallowing the smoke and that’s the battle, of course.”
Maria belched softly. She held the cigarette holder as if it might go off at any moment.
“And we’ve done some shopping as well,” she said, moving briskly on. “José has been helping me. I never see Arnaldo anymore, he’s always off with his ladylove. You’re always in London. …”
“Or The Hague or Paris,” José said. “A very busy fellow.”
“So I wanted to go out and needed someone to take me.”
“All right, all right,” Alves said, lighting a cigarette of his own. “Where are the boys?”
“In the park with Nurse. Let me show you what I bought.”
“With what, may I ask?”
“Well, José said I could use credit. …”
“I merely pointed out that the owner of the Menino d’Ouro should certainly be a good credit risk. Once I told the shopkeepers precisely who Senhora Reis was, well, there was no question about an extension of credit—”
“I see,” Alves interrupted. “Wasn’t that a trifle presumptuous, José?”
“Please, Alves, I told him you would be pleased. After all, this way you won’t have to take time away from your business to go shopping with a silly wife. …”
“I don’t quite understand,” Alves said. “I am more than happy to accompany you anywhere you—”
“I know that, but José explained to me how terribly busy you are, how much depends on what you’re doing—”
“He did, did he? Very kind of you, José.”
“It’s nothing, Alves, nothing at all.”
“Come, dear, look at what I bought.” Maria led him to the dining table. It had taken on the look of a jeweler’s display case. With what he saw as a delicate kind of greed, Maria presented her purchases. There was a pearl necklace with three hundred and ninety-nine perfect pearls. Diamond earrings that glittered on the table like a scattering of stars in the night sky. Eight diamond rings. Gold and diamonds in a bracelet. A platinum lorgnette—and, for the evening, a diamond-encrusted platinum lorgnette. Fifty thousand dollars’ worth of pearls, gold, platinum and diamonds.
“Good God,” Alves sighed.
“Do you like them?” Maria prodded them with her forefinger as if they might come to life. “Oh, I know this awful apartment is a grim setting, but our new house, that will be perfect. … We must live up to our house!”
“This is incredible,” Alves said.
“It’s not too much, is it? We can afford it, can’t we?”
“I don’t know what to say, really I—”
“José said you—”
“Don’t tell me what José said. Yes, of course I can afford it, I suppose. But it is a great deal all at once. …”
“Now, Alves, I knew you’d want Maria to have the best. From now on the sky’s the limit. Everything is going so well for you—hell, for all of us! Maria is growing up after all these years of bearing your children, staying at home all locked away and protected. … It’s time she got out into the world and became a sophisticated lady of means.”
“That’s true, isn’t it, dear?” She stood before him, her fingers wrapped in the lapels of his coat. The corners of her mouth twitched, unsure of themselves. “You want me to be sophisticated, fit for such a rich and powerful man?”
“Rich and powerful—”
“That’s what José called you.”
“Stop, stop, yes, rich and powerful. Go home, José!”
“He’s joking, José.”
“I know.”
“I am not. Go home, José.”
“Stay, José,” Maria said, confidence growing.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” Alves murmured.
“Are you angry, dear? Tell me truthfully?”
He put his hand in his pocket and touched the second of the two small packages from Boucheron. There was no point in that now.
“Of course I’m not angry,” he said, forcing a smile. What could he expect, after all? He was in Paris with Greta every chance he could get. If the price he had to pay for his infidelity was some jewelry and an extravagant house, well, that was little enough. But when would the price come down to something other than money?
“Alves?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, just thinking how dazzling you will look in our new home, draped in diamonds and beautiful gowns. … Quite awe-inspiring I must say.”
“You see,” José cried, leaping up, sweeping his arms in an expansive gesture, “I knew he’d approve!” He squeezed Maria’s shoulders while she smiled happily from one to the other.
Maria went off to bathe away the exertions of the shopping trip. José smiled at Alves, waiting.
“You may go too far,” Alves said quietly. “She’s a very simple woman, not sophisticated, not a clothes horse.”
“She’s never had the chance. … It’s not fair to her. You’ve developed a sudden taste for worldly women, well, then the least you can do is let Maria enter the competition and battle for your affection on even ground.”
“You understand nothing, José,” Alves said, forcing himself to control his exasperation. “Maria has my love, my undying devotion, but not because I want her to become a sophisticate, a worldly woman. I love her for what she is. I don’t want her to become a second-rate copy of Greta—that would be ridiculous.”
“You underestimate your Maria.” He picked up his walking stick and slipped his fingers into a fawn-colored glove. His suit was a shade darker than the gloves, and he wore a chocolate-brown necktie. His hair was oiled slick against his small skull. He smelled of French cologne. “She intends to enjoy your new wealth. She is pursuing her instincts. That house has transformed her, my friend, but when she speaks you are either in Paris with Greta or you don’t listen because you think it is only empty-headed little Maria who has nothing of interest to say.” He waggled a forefinger in Alves’ face. “Well, you are in for a surprise.”
“What are you talking about, my new wealth? You know how much I made on the bank deal. … You know I can’t afford these jewels.” He had to probe, find out what José was thinking.
“Don’t kid me, not old José. It won’t work. I’ve been there and back, time and again. All those bribes for the bank? You’re skimming some of that for yourself. You’ve got some private arrangements with them, I know that. All legal, don’t get me wrong. … But you’re making a hell of a lot more than a commission!” He laughed, punched Alves’ arm. “And the investments in Ambaca and the mining company? You’ll gain a fortune as the stock rises even if the investment money isn’t yours. … Hell, man, you can afford the jewels and, believe me, I love being along for the ride. Anything I can do, you name it.” He paused at the door. “What I’m saying about Maria, I’m not joking. She may not have thought it through, but she knows there’s something wrong, that she’s seeing less and less of you, losing you—to your business if not to another woman. And she has to replace you in her life. Either with another man—yes, another man—or by embellishing her own life. As it happens, she is doing the latter … for now. You should be delighted she’s not cuckolding you, my lad.”
