Portuguese politicians.
My hotel was in the old city; the Medina. The rooms were finished in brown and cream paint and the wall decorations were notices telling me not to do various things in French. From the next room came the sound of water dripping into the stained bath tub and the call of an indefatigable cricket, while through the broken fly-screens in the window came the musical sound of an Arab city selling its wares.
I removed my tie and put it over the back of my chair. My shirt hung suddenly cold against the small of my back and I felt a dribble of sweat run gently down the side of my nose, hesitate and drop on to ‘Sheet 128: Transfer of sterling assets of Government of Portugal held in United Kingdom, Mandates or Dependencies to successor Government’.
We sipped oversweet mint tea, munched almond, hoheysticky cakes, and I took comfort in the idea of being back in London inside twenty-four hours. This may be a millionaire’s playground, but no self-respecting millionaire would be seen dead here in the summer. It was ten past four in the afternoon. The whole town was buzzing with flies and conversation; cafes, restaurants and brothels had standing room only; the pickpockets were working to rota.
‘Very well,’ I said, ‘availability of thirty per cent of your sterling assets as soon as the British Ambassador in Lisbon is satisfied that you have a working control within the capital.’ They agreed to that. They weren’t delirious with joy but they agreed to that. They were hard bargainers, these revolutionaries.
2 Old solution
The W.O.O.C.(P) owned a small piece of grimy real estate on the unwashed side of Charlotte Street. My office had an outlook like a Cruikshank illustration to
Dawlish was my chief. When I gave him the report on my negotiations in Marrakech he laid it on his desk like the foundation stone of the National Theatre and said, ‘Foreign Office are going to introduce a couple of new ideas for tackling the talks with the Portuguese revolutionary party.’
‘For
‘Top marks, my boy,’ said Dawlish, ‘you cottoned on to that aspect of their little scheme.’
‘I’m covered in the scar tissue of O’Brien’s good ideas.’
‘Well, this one is better than most,’ said Dawlish.
Dawlish was a tall, grey-haired civil servant with eyes like the far end of a long tunnel. Dawlish always tended to placate other departments when they asked us to do something difficult or stupid. I saw each job in terms of the pepple who would have to do the dirty work. That’s the way I saw this job, but Dawlish was my master.
On the small, antique writing-desk that Dawlish had brought with him when he took over the department — W.O.O.C.(P) — was a bundle of papers tied with the pink ribbon of officialdom. He riffled quickly through them. ‘This Portuguese revolutionary movement …’ Dawlish began; he paused.
‘Yes, V.N.V. — that’s “they do not see”, isn’t it?’
‘“Vos” is the same as “vous” in French,’ I said; ‘it’s
‘Quite so,’ said Dawlish, ‘well this V.N.V. want the F.O. to put up quite a lump sum of money in advance.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s the trouble with easy payment plans.’
Dawlish said, ‘Suppose we could do it for nothing.’ I didn’t answer. He went on, ‘Off the coast of Portugal there is a boat full of money. It’s money that the Nazis counterfeited during the war. English and American paper money.’
I said, ‘Then the idea is that the V.N.V. boys get the money from the sunken boat and use it to finance their revolution?’
‘Not quite,’ said Dawlish. He probed the hot pipe-embers with a match. ‘The idea is that
‘Oh no!’ I said. ‘You surely haven’t agreed to that. What do F.O. Intelligence Unit[1] get paid for?’
‘I sometimes wonder,’ agreed Dawlish, ‘but I suppose the F.O. have their troubles too.’
‘Don’t tell me about them,’ I said, ‘it might break me up emotionally.’
Dawlish nodded, removed his spectacles and dabbed at his dark eye-sockets with a crisp handkerchief. Behind him on the window ledge the sun was rolling dusty documents into brandy snaps.
In the street below a man with a twin horn was dissatisfied with the existing disposition of traffic.
‘V.N.V. say that off the Portuguese coast there is a wrecked ship.’
Dawlish could never tell you anything without drawing a diagram. He drew a small formalized ship on the notepad with a gold pencil. ‘It was a German naval vessel en route to South America in March 1945. Inside it there is a considerable amount of excellent counterfeit currency, sterling five-pound notes, fifty-dollar bills and some genuine Swedish stuff. It was for high-ranking Nazis seeking exile, of course.’ I said nothing. Dawlish dabbed his eyes and I heard the traffic outside begin to move again.
‘The V.N.V. want us to help them retrieve these items. For “help them retrieve” you can read “present them with”. F.O. see this as a way of supporting what they think is an inevitable change of power, without implicating us too deeply, or costing any money. Comment?’
I said, ‘You mean the Portuguese revolutionaries are to use the counterfeit U.S. money and the genuine Swedish stuff to buy guns and generally finance a political Paul Jones, but the English money they can’t use because the design of the fiver has been changed.’
‘Quite so,’ said Dawlish.
I said, ‘I’m cynical. Do you have the name of the ship, charted position of the wreck and German bills of lading from Admiralty Historical Department?’
‘Not yet,’ said Dawlish, ‘but I have confirmed that there have been a fair number of counterfeit fivers in that region. They may have come from a wreck. Also V.N.V. have a local fisherman who is confident about locating it.’
‘Item 2,’ I continued, ‘the idea is that we mount a subversive operation in Portugal, which is a dictatorship whichever side of the dispatch box you rest your feet. This in itself is a tricky enterprise, but we are going to do it, in cooperation with, or on behalf of, this group of citizens whose openly avowed aim it is to overthrow the government. This you tell me is going to cause H.M.G. less embarrassment than planting a few hundred thousand into a bank account for them.’
Dawlish pulled a face.
‘O.K.,’ I said, ‘so don’t let’s have any false ideas about motivation. It’s a way of saving money at a considerable risk — our risk. I can see the working of the P.S.T.’s[2] eager little mind. He is going to organize a revolution while the Americans have to finance it because there are so many counterfeit dollars turning up all over the world. But Treasury are wrong.’
Dawlish looked up sharply and began tapping his pencil on the desk diary. The twin horn had nearly reached Oxford Street. ‘You think so?’ he said.
‘I know so,’ I told him. ‘These Portuguese characters are tough guys. They have been around. They will get rid of the British stuff all right, then the Treasury will be all long faces and little pink memos.’
We sat in silence for a few minutes while Dawlish drew a choppy sea above his drawing of a boat. He swivelled his chair round so that he could see through the dingy windows, jutted his lower lip forward and beat it with his pencil. In between this he said ‘Ummm’ four times.
He turned his back to me and began to speak. ‘Six months ago O’Brien told me that he knew of one hundred and fifty experts on world currency. He said there were seven who knew all the answers about moving it, but when it came to moving and changing it illegally, O’Brien said that you would be his choice every time.’
‘I’m flattered,’ I said.
