Every nerve was alive. To the threat of the grey-haired man, as much as to Graf.
*
Café Luso was once a wine cellar of one of the Bairro palaces, and by ten o’clock the room was crowded and already thick with smoke. The tables radiated from an area cordoned off by thick red ropes, where a slight man sang in front of a mural of another fadisto, singing to a crowd on the streets. The painted man cavorted but the live one’s eyes were closed, his delicate hands extended as his voice soared.
Graf seemed more at ease here than he did on the streets in his uniform. And I took comfort in the crowded room. If there was a kidnapping on the cards tonight, it would be damned difficult to do it here.
‘Don’t let his innocent look fool you,’ Graf murmured, and it took a moment to realise he spoke of the fadisto. ‘This song is very political.’
‘I thought you didn’t speak Portuguese?’
‘I don’t, but I have learnt words – phrases. Enough to get by.’
He’s been here before. With other women? The Canary?
‘Oh.’
I suppressed the stab of jealousy and the knock-on horror: he was an Abwehr officer, and my decoy as much as I was his.
‘The song is loosely based on history,’ Graf continued. ‘Just enough to keep him out of trouble. But he does not welcome us here.’
We were surrounded by Portuguese couples, the women with their hair cut in the ‘refugee’ hairstyle, their dresses based on French designs.
‘Us?’
‘The Germans, the Italians. Europeans. Not so much the people, I think, as much as the strife we bring.’
‘He favours the Allies?’
‘Most Portuguese do.’ Graf paused to order a bottle of wine from a passing waiter. ‘You didn’t know?’
‘No.’
Graf seemed unconcerned by the Portuguese’s sentiment. What were his politics? Could a Nazi be sitting with a Frenchwoman, drinking vinho verde in a casa do fado? Could he blithely accept a singer who disagreed with his leader’s policies – when Salazar, however covertly, was rumoured to support Hitler?
Who was Eduard Graf?
‘Why are you here, Solange?’
His question so closely mirrored mine that all I could do was blink and take his question at face value.
‘Because you suggested a night of fado.’
‘That’s not what I meant. You don’t court the aristocrats, although I suspect they would accept you. But nor do you seem overtly political. Why did you leave France?’
Keep the lies close to the truth . . .
‘I made a mistake.’
He put down his glass. ‘A mistake? One that landed you in Portugal?’
‘One that could have landed me in Fresnes.’ I shrugged. ‘I turned down a date with a neighbour. In retaliation, he accused me – to a gendarme – of being a Resistance fighter.’
It was the same story I’d told Adriano de Rios Vilar. It was always easier to be consistent when it was the truth.
He looked politely amused. ‘And are you? Is that where you learnt to fight?’
‘I told you – I have three brothers. And if I was a Resistance fighter, do you really think I would have left France? That I would be here with you?’
‘Perhaps not,’ he answered. ‘There was no one who would speak on your behalf?’
‘This neighbour was well placed. I did what I had to do.’
His face became serious and he put his hand over mine.
‘Remind me to thank that neighbour of yours,’ he murmured.
He wouldn’t thank the neighbour, or me, if the grey-haired man figured out who I was.
The fadisto finished his set, bowed, and left the stage. His guitarists sipped water and tuned their instruments. The noise levels rose when a beautiful woman made her way through the crowd. She paused at the red ropes before taking her place behind the microphone, dark hair shining under the gaslights.
‘Amália,’ Graf said, unnecessarily.
Unlike the young man, Amália was quietly confident. She straightened her black shawl at the opening notes of the first song. The fadista’s black gaze was piercing and when she opened her mouth, the most extraordinary voice emerged. I understood why Graf and the waiter had insisted that I hear her.
Amália’s skill humbled me. Enjoying my response, Graf refilled my glass, his fingers brushing against mine, evoking all the wrong emotions. He was Abwehr – my enemy – and my instincts should be telling me to bolt. Instead, for the first time since landing in France, they urged me to relax and enjoy the temporary illusion of safety.
Because it wouldn’t last.
Part 3
Late July to August 1943
Chapter Twenty-six
Rupert Allen-Smythe stood near the Tower of Belém, a thin silhouette against pale, delicate stonework. He spoke to a man who, not unlike the tower, was short and squat. A snap-brim hat hid his face, but I recognised him, by face if not by name. Like Allen-Smythe, he kept cropping up, often in the same company. German company. While someone like me, with no official links to the British embassy, could get away with it, I struggled to find a reason, above board, for his actions. Curious, I had begun to follow him, often wearing the blonde wig or a short auburn one to keep the PVDE’s attention away from Solange Verin.
Allen-Smythe favoured tourist attractions for his meets and maintained a rough pattern that allowed me to find him in the morning and, even if he managed to lose me, to pick him up again by mid-afternoon. Patterns were as dangerous as they were foolish. And while Allen-Smythe’s stupidity was clear, there was little evidence of any wrongdoing. Yet. But I trusted my hunches.
A peal of bells reminded me of my own meeting. According to the tourist books, the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos was commissioned in 1502 by King Manuel I and designed by a chap called Boytac. It had stonework that ‘wonders and delights’, statues of Prince Henry the Navigator and Our Lady of Belém. The architecture was Manueline, which as far
