The Man from Lisbon, page 40
“He knows nothing of the banknotes, of course,” Hennies said.
Marang smiled smugly. “I told him only that we had a great number of confidential documents we needed brought to Lisbon from The Hague as diplomatic baggage. I told him we’d be happy to cover his expenses, which will of course be fairly heavy. …” He laughed abruptly. “I doubt if he realizes fully just how many official documents we have! In any case, he’d not the kind of man who asks questions—been a diplomat too long for that.”
“You’ve done well, gentlemen,” Alves said.
Marang shrugged as if to say, What else would you expect?
The Albanian matter was not so happily resolved. There was little to be done now, Hennies admitted. Mussolini was establishing a firmer hegemony in Albania than any of them had thought likely. The plain fact was that they’d been beaten out by the new dictator of Italy.
“In other words,” Alves said, “we kiss our hundred thousand dollars goodbye. Cut our losses and get out.”
José, fresh from London, acknowledged that he was buying Bank of Portugal shares as quickly as he could but that, in fact, it was a slow process. There were a great many shares, the price was rising almost daily since there was known to be a new buyer in the marketplace, and it was important not to arouse too much outside attention.
Marang brought the group up to date on the real-estate purchases made by the group’s newly organized Holland and Portugal Trading Company, headquartered in The Hague. The intention was to sink as much of the bank’s resources as possible into countries other than Portugal. Thus far nearly a million dollars was in use in England, France, Switzerland and Holland. The future, Marang reported, looked very promising in Norway and Sweden as well.
Alves concluded the meeting with the word—which he tried to soften with a smile—of Arnaldo’s resignation but moved quickly on to news from Lisbon’s banking community. While their own new bank was prospering splendidly and the Bank of Portugal was healthy enough, several banks in Lisbon and smaller cities were on the verge of closing their doors, primarily because the government had withdrawn its money from African branches. Things were desperate in Angola and Mozambique, and the banks were already going under—five already.
“The closings,” Alves said, “work to our advantage. The Bank of Angola and Metropole will have much less competition in buying up hard foreign currencies. We should be thankful for each and every blessing.”
At dinner he sat and watched them, prosperous, worldly businessmen who had been at best marginal cases when he’d brought them together. Did they ever question how he had done it? How bright were they all, really? In their position, having seen what they had seen, would he have known? He considered the question during the course of the long dinner, through the brandies and the Upmann cigars. Would he have known that the man on the top was a swindler? Yes, he suspected that he would have known. But he also knew that he wouldn’t have admitted it to himself. It was just too good a thing to squander. …
He had the two Hispano-Suizas delivered to Claridge’s the next morning. The sun was bright and hot, and the trees stood motionless as the startlingly beautiful automobiles were wheeled up the Champs-Elysées. Alves stood at the back, watching. He had waited with considerable anticipation for the cars, and now they seemed a trifle meaningless—lovely, yes, but nothing really more than an accumulation of bits and pieces of metal and leather. He frowned at himself. Perhaps he was growing jaded. He’d heard it could happen.
“You must be very happy with those cars, Senhor Reis.” It was the doorman, by now an old friend.
“Yes, Claude, of course I am very happy with them.” He clapped the doorman on the back.
“A matched pair,” Claude said with a wink. “Very stylish. You know how to live, Senhor. Magnifique!”
“Well, Claude,” Alves said, stroking his mustache with a knuckle, “that’s why we’re here. … It’s a question of style.”
Alves drove the lead car and José took the wheel of the second. In a caravan the two enormous red-and-silver coaches wheeled gaily through the streets of Paris, along the Seine, circling the Eiffel Tower, moving swiftly across countless ancient bridges, through the shadow of Notre Dame with the pigeons scattering, past the Invalides and St. Germain and countless other places he had visited with Greta.
But it wasn’t as much fun as he’d hoped it would be. The fun—God, the fun was supposed to have been so important—was draining off like the water the street cleaners ran in the gutters.
Night came and there was another dinner with too much to eat and drink and too many cigars and brandies. Maria got tipsy, and Greta let José take her home, blowing a kiss to Alves, and then everybody was sleepy and the day of the Hispano-Suizas was over.
In the morning Alves and Maria loaded the car to drive to Carlsbad. At the last minute José decided he would come too, and Maria said quickly that that was a wonderful idea; the party wouldn’t be over after all.
Alves left the second car with Claude to break in. He gave him a hundred dollars in francs, and Claude’s smile of surprise and gratitude was the nicest thing that had happened to him in Paris. Then they drove to Carlsbad, which turned out to be a longer trip than they’d expected. Alves didn’t mind. He had plenty to think about, and as he drove time seemed to be moving too quickly. It was almost as if he heard a clock ticking.
Carlsbad was not a great success, at least not from his point of view. On the first day, while strolling along the picturesque streets, José saw a photographer’s studio and insisted on having several pictures taken. He knew of Alves’ fondness for photographs; and the afternoon was spent posing under the lights, waiting for the explosive flash. Alves, intent on looking his best, wore a gray homburg, a double-breasted suit in banker’s gray, a three-pointed white handkerchief in his breast pocket and carried a Malacca cane. The summer heat notwithstanding, he had José go back to the hotel and fetch Maria’s mink coat. Then the three of them posed. Staring into the camera’s lens, it occurred to him that there was something wrong. José didn’t really belong there. The problem was that Arnaldo wasn’t there, the way he’d been in all the other pictures taken in all the other photographers’ studios.
The photographs turned out very well. Alves ordered two dozen copies to be made for mounting in the new stand-up, cut-out fashion. It was always nice to send copies to associates, a homey touch, a testament to your stability. It spread confidence. A personal inscription was always nice. He would send one to Ivar Kreuger.
You could never have too many photographs.
But that was the high point. Over tea, Maria was quiet, watching him. Her face had lost its rounded softness, the oval grace it had once presented so happily to a world full of promise. Now her cheekbones projected ever more angularly and she wore varieties of makeup that gave her a French look, somewhat haunted and mysterious. Had he been meeting her for the first time he’d have taken her for a woman with a past. He felt her eyes on him until he could stand it no more, looked at the stranger’s face inquiringly.
“I was just thinking,” she said evenly, “what a farce that picture-taking was. The happy couple—rich and well dressed and smiling—having their picture taken. Remember that when you add it to your collection and flood the mails with copies for your friends.”
He watched her, trying to recognize her. There was nothing to say. She’d been unable to stop the bitterness at the end.
Alves sat in a white lawn chair on green grass and dozed and went to the terrace for lunch. He read a new Wodehouse novel, vowing for once to keep the plot clear in his mind. But it was hopeless. He drank mineral water. He took the baths with José. The three of them dined each evening, and it was rather like being aboard ship. Occasionally they met a German baron or an English duchess and a party would be made up. Maria’s clothing and jewels were striking, acting as a magnet on the curious, drawing them into her orbit, where she was at times talkative and at other times withdrawn, shy and, he had to admit it, seductive. It was as if she were acting, trying out a series of masks. He’d forgotten what the reality of their lives had been. …
He derived little benefit from the waters. There was no comfort to be had with Maria. One night with too much champagne in him he took her very messily in her bed and she seemed hardly to notice. After that the thought of sex with her was unimaginable.
As their stay progressed he took the baths by himself more often than not as Maria was completely taken up by the princesses, countesses and dowagers and those who were simply very rich. He saw less and less of her, glimpsed her at card tables with her new friends, saw her at cocktails with a group of haughty Germans, and later she sped by him in an open Mercedes, her face oddly serious, absorbed in what someone was saying.
José introduced him to an Italian with only one eye and an Englishman with a Guards mustache and only one arm, the sleeve of his dinner jacket pinned up to his shoulder. They smiled benevolently, and it turned out that they were wartime heroes who had decided to become gamblers. They moved from spa to spa but did not work as a team. The four men became chums. Within two weeks Carlo and Hugh had won thirty thousand dollars from José and fifty thousand dollars from Alves. They were terribly embarrassed about it, but as Hugh said with his nasal public-school voice, “You two can afford it a damn sight better than we can!”
José and Alves saw them off at the railroad depot. Alves hated to see them go. Losing money to them was considerably more enjoyable than taking the waters.
One evening he called Greta.
“Are you a new man?”
“No, but I’ve lost fifty thousand dollars at cards.”
“Well, that should make you feel like a rich man, darling.”
“It’s raining,”
“That’s too bad. …” He could barely hear her. The lines crackled.
“I wish you were here. We could stay in bed all day.”
“Have you had your talk with Maria?”
“Not yet. I hardly ever see her. She has new friends.
“Darling, I can’t make out what you’re saying. I’ll ring off now. Call me again in a few days. I’m anxious to be with you.”
It was true: he seldom saw Maria. And he was afraid to have a serious talk with her. What was there really to talk about, anyway? This difficult time between them would either pass or it wouldn’t. What could he say? Divorce me? I’m abandoning you? Would she care, one way or the other? He had seen her twice walking in the garden with a handsome young German, very courtly and polite and polished. Someone said he was a medical student. She had drinks one evening with a fiftyish Englishman, a lord, he thought, and he had watched them dance and had gone home early by himself.
One day, beneath an iron-gray sky that seemed to be resting on the conical treetops like an Indian on a bed of nails, she told him she wanted to talk to him. She had lost weight and wore a dusky green dress than hung loose, elegant with all the tiny gold appointments. She led him to the terrace, where they sat at a little round table and drank Cinzano. The breeze was almost cool. She told him that she wanted him to go away.
“You don’t fool me, you know,” she said. “I know all about you and my wonderful friend Greta … and I don’t blame her. I blame you, I trusted you, I never gave you a moment’s cause to betray me. Our marriage was the one exception to all the others—you weren’t a man who had a mistress. Your wife was enough. Well, we turned out no better than all the others. … Surprise.”
“I don’t understand what it is you know about Greta and me,” he said. “I’ve not hidden the fact that I’ve seen her on occasion in Paris, that we’re friends—”
“For one thing, foolish man, I saw the sapphire ring! Arnaldo told me that you’d given him one to give to Silvia, a duplicate. … Obviously the rings came from the same man.”
“And what does that prove? The one I gave Arnaldo was intended for you, but it looked so silly the day I brought it home, like nothing among all your diamonds, I was embarrassed to give it to you.”
“My God, you bought the same ring for me you bought for your mistress … She and I, we’re equals in your eyes, is that what you’re telling me?”
“I have no mistress, no kept woman—I forbid you to say that to me!”
“How pathetic you are, how earnest. In Greta’s apartment, just a few days before you arrived, I saw one of your initialed handkerchiefs on a table beside her bed, neatly laundered and folded, for you to place your spectacles on the next night you spend with her. …” She gazed at him appraisingly and he felt his stomach sliding away. “Greta must have left it out for me to see. Intentionally. I’m not sure what I think of her—it may be that she’s trying to protect me and have you for herself. You’re very rich, you know. You’re like Ivar Kreuger, soon you’ll need bodyguards and private railway cars—”
“I still love you. I will always love you. …”
“Did I say you didn’t? I said that Greta is your mistress and that I want you to leave me alone, go away. She is more than welcome to you.”
“I must go anyway. I’ve been away from business too long as it is. I’m not going because you told me to. … You are distraught, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Ah, I see. Well, just so you go, the reason is immaterial to me.”
“What are you going to do here alone? Are you planning an affair? To make me jealous?”
Her laughter pealed across the terrace.
“And they say you have no sense of humor. … No. I am not planning an affair, my dear husband. I simply want to be alone. … Before you go, please put ten thousand in a bank here for me. You wouldn’t want Senhora Alves Reis destitute in Carlsbad, pawning her diamonds for her next meal. And leave the car, if you don’t mind. I may learn to drive it. Or I may just buy a chauffeur. …” She stood up and leaned down to kiss the top of his head. “I have an engagement. I must go. Have a pleasant stay in Paris. Give Greta my love.”
He had another Cinzano and watched the clouds darken overhead. He was relieved that she’d told him to go. He’d been concerned. … Could he have taken the thing by the horns himself? He didn’t think he could have done it.
Arnaldo had seen the stationery.
Maria had seen the sapphire.
He had been careless.
The party had lasted for years and now everyone was leaving.
One morning José and Alves took the train for Paris.
In Paris they escorted Greta to the races and passed some cool hours in the Louvre, retreating from the summer sun. The Parisians were leaving on holiday. They checked in as usual at Claridge’s, where Claude had the car waiting for them; but Alves spent his nights at Greta’s flat. Alves and Greta had never been so quiet together before. They sat on the couch and read with the gramophone playing behind them. They walked along the Seine. They sat in the cafés and sipped cold beer. Greta didn’t bring up the subject of Maria after Alves told her they had had words. To Alves the marriage was in limbo, which, at least when he was with Greta, seemed a good place for it. Sometimes he wondered about the comments the women had made about each other. The Maria whom Greta called tedious and dull hardly existed anymore. But Greta had also called her dangerous, and for the first time he saw how that might be appropriate. He wasn’t sure exactly how Maria might endanger him, but it was no longer a ridiculous idea. …
And she had implied that Greta was being attracted to Alves’ wealth. He searched for clues, but there were none. She had not asked for the car he’d given her, nor for the sapphire. She took care of herself. He was not keeping her. The idea had never arisen. This was a matter of love. As such he supposed it might be more capricious than an economic bargain. But in other ways it was stronger. He would watch her over the top of his book as she read. She seemed at peace.
The time had come to pick up the new money.
In The Hague, Marang introduced him to Don Simon Planas-Suarez, who was tall and so dignified that Alves very nearly winced. Don Simon was not too dignified, however, to ask for more money to see the “official documents” through to Lisbon. He had, he said, misunderstood Marang’s original suggestion.
José smiled at Alves. “Let me handle him. I understand his type.” José’s confidence was growing like a patch of weeds. As managing director of the Bank of Angola and Metropole he was anxious to prove himself. He made a new arrangement with Don Simon, who agreed to store the trunks in his apartment in Lisbon, which doubled as the Venezuelan Ministry. Yes, José had grown, and Alves felt confident at the way this onetime reprobate and jailbird had matured.
The total of the new printing was ten million dollars in the same five-hundred-escudo notes. Two hundred thousand notes, accounting for the first delivery of the second printing and worth five million dollars, were packed into eight Vuitton cases and deposited at the Liverpool Street Station cloakroom. Hennies and Marang had stayed in The Hague working on various investment deals; José and Alves lunched in regal splendor at the Carlton after their meeting with Sir William and the next morning arrived at the Hook of Holland with the money. Five million dollars …
Don Simon had no trouble at all in getting the cases to Lisbon.
“Clockwork,” José reported. “It went like clockwork.”
And there were other things to be done in Lisbon. He concluded the outright purchase of two large Lisbon apartment buildings and gave them to Maria’s father, who was about to retire from the English firm. “You will never need to concern yourself with money again, Father,” he said. The older man was speechless. His wife, however, was not: she wanted to know why he would bestow such a huge gift. “There are many reasons,” Alves said. “I have no father and mother of my own now. You allowed me the hand of your daughter … not without a struggle, I grant you.” The old woman had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. “And you may be sure that Alves Reis will never forget that you closed ranks and stood behind him when he returned from the Oporto jail. You might have done otherwise. …”
