The Man from Lisbon, page 46
He gave me a somewhat baleful look. We sat quietly a bit longer, the business part of our meeting clearly completed. Did I know what answer I would finally give him? Yes, I think maybe I did; but I wanted to be sure, to make certain that it truly reflected the way I felt.
We walked to the end of the terrace. Our footsteps echoed on the floor. In the main lobby I saw my son’s car pulled up outside waiting for me. He was sitting behind the wheel intent on reading his book. I had finally succeeded in getting him to read P. G. Wodehouse.
Herschel saw me to the car, shook hands, and then, as we were pulling away, I heard his voice calling.
“Alves—one last question! Did you ever see her again?”
I leaned my head out the window; we were driving away. “Who, David?”
His voice sounded hoarse and distant.
“The actress, Greta Nordlund—did you ever see her again?”
I called back to him, couldn’t be sure whether he heard me, and then he was gone, out of sight as we turned the corner and headed out along the park. My son was a good driver, and I leaned back, only half conscious of Lisbon passing. Herschel’s questions had set me thinking, for better or worse. It was all coming back to me, echoes from across the gulf of time. …
When they came to get me at the harbor I was improvising an appropriate response and, all things considered, I don’t regret the way I handled it. It was the sixth of December, 1925, a sad and rainy winter morning. The old S. S. Adolf Woerman was anchored in the bay at Cascais, awaiting the pilot boat. Through the fog and mist I saw that familiar stretch of beach that had been the setting for so many enjoyable moments. It was six in the morning. I was standing at the rail wondering what the future held for Maria and me when I noticed a boat coming toward us across the bay. As they drew closer I heard my name called. Some friends had come to warn me that handcuffs awaited me in Lisbon. They suggested I flee.
It all seemed so absurd, particularly in light of our recent triumphs in Angola. From that to this, well, it struck me as exceedingly unlikely. But the story they told had the ring of truth. An investigation into the affairs of my bank in Oporto had turned up counterfeits in the vaults. There was also a warrant for Hennies.
Once the boat had departed, Hennies, who had joined me on deck to hear the news, turned to me with a weary smile, adjusted his monocle and said, “Well, it was too good to last, old man. We’d better get out of here. Every great man knows when to make a strategic withdrawal.”
“But, Adolf, I have committed no crime. I refuse to let myself become the sacrificial goat just because my friends at the Bank of Portugal lost to the other faction.”
There was, I fancied, a twinkle of recognition in his eyes. I suspect it was dawning on him just how well I had laid my defenses.
“Wouldn’t it be better to continue the fight and help your friends from abroad?”
“No, I must stay and fight,” I said calmly. My mind, however, was racing. “I have photographic copies of the contracts and all the supporting evidence I need to prove that I was ordered to carry out the banknote issues by the governor and vice-governor of the Bank of Portugal.”
“Alves, there isn’t much time to sort this out. But you must listen to me. … Admiralty lawyers have an expression—peril point, when you pass the point at which you cannot recover from your own peril. Damn it, if you wait until they come and arrest you, you’ll be bloody well past the peril point. … You’ll have to prove your innocence from a jail cell! You can avoid the peril simply by coming away with me and fighting from Paris or Berlin.”
I was adamant. Perhaps it was vanity. And anger, too. Here they were, coming to arrest me for no more than what the Bank of Portugal, with governmental approval, had been doing ever since the turn of the century—putting some new money into the economy. The only difference was that I knew what to do with it, for the betterment of both Portugal and Angola as well as for myself. But I wasn’t one of them: I had to go to jail. Well, there was going to be a fight.
Hennies was in an altogether different position. It made good sense for him to get out. Once they had him in jail, God only knew what they would start digging up. He had a past of extraordinary complexity, and it wouldn’t bear scrutiny. He wisely made a deal with the German ship’s captain. For a small cash consideration he arranged to leave the ship on the pilot boat at seven. He had with him a large cash reserve, letters of credit and a very old passport. He was a remarkable man, old Adolf. I wished him luck and went to our cabin to tell Maria what was going on.
The new Maria took it well. We had grown closer again, but neither of us was clear about the future. I missed Greta, and Maria was not at all sure she wished to return to Lisbon in my shadow. She was no longer dependent on me to see her through. I thanked God just then that she was as she was. There were no tears. She listened carefully as I told her what she must say in the future—lies, yes, but crucial to the defense I was already planning in detail. She would have to attest at all times that Camacho Rodrigues and Mota Gomes had dined at our home, all the secret meetings they attended in my library at the Menino d’Ouro. “And,” I cautioned her, “you must recount these tales with conviction.” She nodded. She understood.
At various times I’ve asked myself, when did she realize the fact of my crime? In Paris, when she found the fake stationery? On the S. S. Adolf Woerman? I never asked her.
In any case, I kissed her goodbye, told her to give the children my love and handed her over to Adolf for the trip to shore. I wasn’t sure when I’d see her again, but I had no doubt that it would be soon. After all, there were limits in Portugal to holding a man, and with the case I had there really wasn’t anything to worry about.
The police came on board at nine o’clock and I was waiting for them, trunks packed, freshly bathed, talcumed, cologned. I wished there was a fresh flower for my lapel. I was optimistic.
On shore they took me to a police car. There was no need for handcuffs, and they treated me with respect, as if they were embarrassed by what they were doing. I sat alone in the rear seat. The car moved slowly through the rain, passing the waterside cafés. Looking out through the streaked window, I saw Adolf sitting inconspicuously by himself, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. The Adolf Woerman rode quietly past the quayside, a ghost ship in the fog. It wouldn’t be leaving until its wealthy German traveler was back on board.
I didn’t find out until later that I was arrested on purely trumped-up charges stemming from the Bank of Portugal idiots in Oporto calling the Lisbon police on Saturday! It wasn’t until nearly noon on Sunday, three hours after my arrest, that Smythe-Hancock found the first counterfeit.
I was taken to the civil governor of Lisbon and then by order of Dr. Crispiniano da Fonseca, the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, I was transferred to the questioning cell of the Pampulaha precinct, where I would be questioned by Dr. Fonseca on the morrow.
My spirits took a resounding fall. It reminded me too much of the Oporto jail. The horrible hole I was thrust into poisoned every decent instinct in my heart. The damp, infected and morbid atmosphere of a cell with no light and no air revealed the inhumanity of the Republic. If such methods were to be used to wrench my secret from me … well, it stiffened my resolve not to surrender.
That was when I began to commit my greatest crime—I would not give up. My blood was at the boil, sitting there in my best suit in that wretched stinkhole. How curious fate is! If they had treated me like the Hero of Angola, the greatest financial genius in Portugal, how much trouble everyone might have been saved. …
But life develops its own rhythms, as I have come to learn over these forty years. Scandal was going to be my revenge, and I coolly, quite calmly, began to conceive an all-out-attack—on innocent men, yes, innocent in this instance, but hardly innocent in any larger moral sense. The governor and vice-governor of the Bank of Portugal, the High Commissioner of Angola, the politicians—and I wanted to drag them all down in the wake of Alves Reis.
That is, if I was about to go under. … And if I were to survive, well, somebody else would have to pay up. It would have to be Camacho Rodrigues, Mota Gomes and their flunkies. In this manner, occupied with these less than uplifting thoughts, I passed the hours on my filthy cot.
It was late that afternoon that Campos e Sa got the word to Camacho. By then they had found several counterfeit notes.
The next day, Monday, the Bank of Portugal wired all their branches that all holders of the Vasco da Gama notes could exchange them for new notes of a different face. Camacho wired Sir William Waterlow that falsifications had been discovered; an expert from London was required. On Tuesday Sir William wired that a deputation from Waterlow was preparing to leave for Lisbon.
While people gathered at banks all over Portugal to wait in exchanging lines, the rumors flew in considerable profusion: the Bank of Portugal itself was involved in the counterfeiting scheme and several directors were already on their way to jail … or it had been a German plot to acquire Portugal’s colonies … the notes were imported from Russia. … With each telling the rumors grew. In Lisbon and Oporto there were riots at the banks.
Incredibly enough, I had not yet begun my campaign.
Under the law I could be held under suspicion for a total of eight days; I might legally be held incommunicado only forty-eight hours. In my case the laws were a mockery, no better than a police state whether it was called a republic or not. I was held a week without recourse to a lawyer. I knew nothing of Maria or José. Had he been arrested? Were Hennies and Marang under arrest? Most people have never spent time in prison. They do not know precisely what it is like, but for the clever and resourceful fellow, many things are possible. Once I was removed from the interrogation quarters, I found myself in a more commodious cell, still poorly ventilated but not entirely uninhabitable. I still had the contents of my trunk from the ship, and I made the best of it. Though I was being held without external communications, the quick arrests of Camacho and Mota Gomes cast me in a new, somewhat more favorable light. Thinking it possible I might indeed be innocent, my jailors made certain amenities available to me. Bearing my bank draft, one of them went shopping to furnish my cell as I wished. I was also allowed paper, pens and other normal office supplies.
I was so indignant at the complete disregard of my rights as a Portuguese citizen that I began to fight them on their own level. Given my office supplies and confidence, I falsified documents and letters, including receipts allegedly signed by Camacho and Mota Gomes. I knew their signatures as well as I knew my own. With a few well-placed bribes, I had some smuggled out to The Hague to convince Marang that my story was indeed a true one; others I used on the spot.
I wanted to revenge myself at all costs on a justice that sought the severest punishment for an Alves Reis, while others who had long held positions of power and influence were given carte blanche to do with Portuguese laws as they wished. Did I think I could win in the end? It was a very long time ago. …
Dr. Costa Santos, Attorney General of the Republic, was in charge of the investigation. In our interviews he was not a congenial fellow, not the chap you’d want investigating you if you’d pulled the greatest swindle since the invention of paper money. In a matter of a few minutes, secure in my little forgery factory, I created a receipt proving that he had once received a twenty-five-thousand-dollar gift from Alves Reis. When I bestowed it upon my captors poor Dr. Costa Santos was at once removed from the case. A lunatic replaced him.
Dr. José Pinto Magalhaes and I got along famously. He interviewed me in my cell for several hours as soon as he was assigned the job—Chief Investigating Judge. A high-strung gentlemen, he was wholly sympathetic to my unhappy plight. He kept telling me he knew an honest man when he saw one, that throughout his career he’d time and again been proven an infallible judge of character. “I’ve based my entire career on my instincts, young man!” he would say, puffing a great drooping briar, filling my cell with pungent latakia fumes. “Tell me your story. And before I walk out this door I’ll tell you whether you’re guilty or innocent. How’s that for a bargain, eh?”
He was a large man, rotund, with a red rash on the back of his hands, and shoes that squeaked. I remember the rash because he was always picking at it, flaking off bits of dead skin. I remember the squeaking shoes because, as I talked, he was constantly leaping thunderously from his chair—yes, I’d had a pair of very nice club chairs installed in my cell—and pacing about the available space.
When the story was over he fixed me with a burning stare from beneath wild, bushy eyebrows.
“By God, man!” he bellowed, like a great animal rattling his cage. “You’re the scapegoat. It’s perfectly obvious. Only a madman would have tried what they say you did … and you’re as sane as I am! Your story is obviously true.” He charged about the cell, ashes dribbling from his pipe.
It was the first night I slept soundly.
In the morning—of the day Camacho and Mota Gomes were arrested—Judge Pinto Magalhaes returned to my cell, full of high spirits and eager to get to work on my behalf. Rather to my amazement he insisted on calling me “your excellency.” He finally informed me about what was happening to my friends and family. Maria was worried, but he assured me that she would soon be visiting me—later in the day perhaps. José was under arrest, held only one floor away from me, and as a surprise he’d arranged for José to join me in my cell for lunch. He wondered if there were any other comforts he might provide me. I requested that he send over the newspapers dating from the time of my arrest and make sure that henceforth they be delivered daily.
My meetings with Maria and José were unproductive. She was numb from the turn life had taken, and José was struck virtually dumb by the tidal wave of events. While José possessed a native shrewdness that occasionally served him well, the fact was he simply wasn’t very bright. Dapper, handsome, stylish: a bit of a dim bulb, unfortunately. He thought he’d left all this prison stuff behind him, and he was frightened. He could hardly speak. I suppose I should have been thankful he didn’t babble.
In the morning I read the Diario de Noticias with more than a little interest.
ACT OF INSANITY?
A serious occurrence took place yesterday which can only be attributed to a sudden disturbance in the mind of the Chief Investigating Judge, Dr. Pinto Magalhaes. During an exchange of conversation with a Foreign Ministry Official, the latter asked the judge what he believed was the consensus of opinion in the Bank of Portugal regarding the counterfeit note case. The judge grew suddenly excited and with wild gestures shouted to the Foreign Office official that he had naturally come to make insinuations on behalf of the government. “I am working hard to do my duty, and if I am not doing any more it’s because I cannot.” He then shouted very loudly that he couldn’t stand it anymore. A crowd of people flocked into the room. The judge then dashed over to Dr. Camacho Rodrigues and Dr. Mota Gomes, who were also present, and, grabbing them by their coat lapels, he cried out in a voice that was heard all over the building: “You are under arrest! At my orders!” Then addressing a policeman who was there, the judge said: “Take them to a police station. Right away.” The two bank officials were taken to a room next to the Civil Governor’s office.
This rapid and unexpected scene left everyone astounded, and the judge’s excitement continued. Questioned by some present who pointed out the gravity of his order, the judge said: “You are right! This is really serious. If there is nothing in the investigation that is against these men, I’ll put a bullet in my brain.”
The newspapers had become obsessed with me. Those sent to my cell included a complete set of O Seculo’s attacks on me while I was in Angola. The mere fact of my arrest and imprisonment had not satisfied them. Presumably the name of Alves Reis on the front page sold newspapers.
REIS: SPECIAL STATUS?
It is strange that the judge should have authorized Alves Reis to furnish in princely fashion the jail at the Lapa Police Station in which he is held and which already contains sofas, a dressing table, mirrors, rugs, etc. We don’t know whether he installed central heating, but it seems nothing is missing for one who is used to the social amenities and receives frequent visitors. He enjoys a special status that softens imprisonment and encourages him to stand up to all endeavors to force him to speak the truth. Despite his incommunicability Reis knows all that goes on outside, reads the papers and receives the visits of his wife, who is in touch with his lawyer. In the Chief Investigator, Judge Pinto Magalhaes, Reis has found the ideal lawyer for his defense and his great protector. Were it not for him, the mystery of the A and M Bank would have been unraveled long ago.
There was a good deal of truth in the O Seculo piece. If anything they underestimated the extent to which the Chief Investigator had fallen under my spell. Shortly after I read of the arrest of Camacho and Mota Gomes the judge told me his version of the events of the previous afternoon and pleaded with me: “I’ve taken a great step in your behalf. Don’t let me down, Alves.”
“You are doing a magnificent job, Judge,” I said. “Rest easy. You’ve got the two men who perpetrated this crime. In a few days there’ll be irrefutable evidence.”
While the judge was quite possibly a certifiable lunatic, he wasn’t alone in his belief in me. All over Lisbon and throughout Portugal our cause had caught the fancy of the people. Rallies were held in cities, towns and villages. The people clearly believed I had been the tool of a real but utterly incredible plot concocted by the governor and vice-governor of the Bank of Portugal.
After a week of imprisonment, even with the surroundings I had arranged for myself, I was beginning to feel an immense loneliness. I could hear the shouts outside, at least in my mind, and I was growing acutely aware of the world I was missing and which I had grown to enjoy so much of late. Maria, what to do and feel about her? I was in a quandary. I was growing desperate, however, from want of word from Greta. But there was nothing.
