José came back, armed with a map of the island. San José 21 was the number of the Villa Las Vedras, listed under the name of Barja—that could have been a long-standing cover for Duchêne or the name of an owner that they had rented the place from. José knew the villa. It was in the south-west corner of the island, about half a mile from the sea. It was about eight miles from San José along a dirt road that ran through pine woods. Beyond the villa was a headland and just off shore from it a group of conical-shaped islands known as the Vedras, from which the villa took its name. I made him draw me a sketch map of the road out and also of the layout of the villa and the ground around it as far as he could remember these. By the time this was done I knew what I was going to do. I got some notepaper from the cafe and wrote a letter to Olaf which José was to take to the airport. José was to tell Olaf all he had told me. In the letter I gave Olaf Sutcliffe’s unlisted London number and told him to put a call through to him, if Manston hadn’t arrived, and give him the facts. He was also to get in touch with the British Consul in Ibiza and pass him the code word Python and any information he asked for which he could give. He was also—though I didn’t say anything about this to José—to keep José with him. It was just possible that José, peseta-lust in his heart, might take it into his head to phone the Villa Las Vedras and make a little extra for himself. For myself, I said I was going out to have a look at the villa and to keep an eye on things. At least if they did move while I was around, I might have a chance to follow them or even whip Wilkins, if not Dawson, away. All I knew was that I had to get out there. I had a feeling that time was running out fast. Wilkins’s letter had helped me, but it had also, for certain, decided Duchêne upon a fast move.
It didn’t take me long to get to San José. The road went inland, rising all the time until it reached the village that lay in a saddle between two hills. It was the usual affair, a church, a bar, a few shops, a tourist place for buying pottery and iron work, and a lot of old men sitting around watching time and the traffic pass.
I had José’s sketch map on the seat alongside me. Just beyond the village I found the turning off to the right. A main sign read Cabo Llentrisca—that was the headland José had mentioned—and nailed under it were the name boards of the various houses and farms along the route. One of them read—Villa Las Vedras.
It was a dirt road, built on a switchback pattern and, although I had to go slowly, I raised a great trail of dust behind me. I wasn’t pleased about that. Once I was in sight of the house it might attract attention. Duchêne wasn’t the kind not to have someone watching the road up to the villa. At first the road was bordered with little patches of maize, tomatoes, red fields of olive and almond trees, with here and there a peasant’s single-floored house. After about a couple of miles it began to rise slowly, through pine woods and hillside covered in tall, dark-green scrub. Now and again there would be a turning to left or right with a house sign on it. After a while the turnings grew less frequent until finally the only sign left on the direct road was that of the Villa Las Vedras. I stopped and consulted José’s map. A mile before the villa was reached he had said there was a small cottage. Half a mile after the cottage I would find a gate across the road, which marked the beginning of the Las Vedras property. From just beyond the cottage I meant to make the rest of the journey on foot. Anyone who wanted to come out of the villa had three routes. Either along this road, or out along the headland and down to the sea—or by an airlift. To a man like Duchêne any of these could be arranged. He had behind him any facility he liked to call on.
I found the cottage. It stood up off the road, door shut, windows boarded up. Behind it ran the telephone wire for the villa, strung out on short poles through the pine trees. I went about four hundred yards past it and then, as the ground began to rise sharply, I pulled off the road and ran the van into the cover of some scrub.
As I got out the air was full of the crazy fiddling of cicadas and the whine of a jet making a half-circle overhead to go in to land at Ibiza airport twenty miles away. I set out through the trees, keeping away from the road, but following the line of telegraph poles. After fifteen minutes I was running with sweat and half-deafened by cicadas. Twenty minutes after that I came panting up a hillside and out on to the edge of a small bluff that gave me a view which would have sent a tourist reaching for his Instamatic.
Ahead of me the ground sloped down gently through scrub, umbrella pine and low oaks to a long hollow into which snaked the dirt road to end at the Villa Las Vedras.
