Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

'Careful,' she said nervously, and stretched back a hand to try and slow him down.

He stood between her bald heels showing out of the holes of her overused silk stockings. She shouted out as he entered her and her elbows collapsed. Felsen grabbed at her haunches and pulled her back on to him. Her hand flailed behind. Her face was screwed up with pain, her throat contorted by the way her head bent under her as he drove in.

Felsen was shocked to find himself thrilled by her every wince, at her fingers stretching out to push him back, at the white knuckles of the other hand which gripped the rucked counterpane on the bed. He didn't last long.

They lay on the bed in the light and cold air from the open windows. She was under the covers huddled and shivering and trying not to cry. This part always made her cry. The shame of it. How many times had this been in three months?

Felsen smoked. He'd offered her one but she hadn't answered. He was irritated because he'd expected satisfaction, but in emptying himself he'd done just that, and found his head full of Eva.

He slept badly and woke early, alone in the room which was now freezing and damp from the sea air. He closed the window. The letter he'd written for the girl addressed to Madame Branescu had gone and the pair of gold KF cufflinks Eva had given him on his last birthday weren't on the dressing table.

Later in the day he caught a lift into Lisbon and went to the Pensáo Amsterdão in Rua de são Paulo. At the front desk they'd never heard of Laura van Lennep and no one answered to the description he gave of her. He worked the other pensions in the street and drew a blank. He went to the American consulate and walked the line of faces but there were no single women. Finally he went down to the shipping offices but they were closed and the docks were empty. The Nyassa had gone.

It had been raining in Guarda all night. It rained throughout breakfast and it rained during the strategy meeting Felsen had convened with his fellow-agents to decide on the necessary tactics if they were to buy and ship in the region of three hundred tons of wolfram per month for the rest of the year.

The size of his task had only just crystallized in his head on seeing the British Beralt mine in Panasqueira, near Fundão in the south of the Beira. The mine and buildings were extensive, the colossal slag already part of the landscape. To have created that quantity of slag there had to be a small city of hundred-metre-deep shafts and kilometres of galleries under his feet. There was nothing remotely comparable in the rest of the Beira. This feat of engineering was ripping two thousand tons of thick horizontal wolfram veins from the earth each year. All the other mines in the area were nothing but scratches and nicks on the earth's crust by comparison. His only hope was total motivation of the people. The galvanizing of thousands to the task of gleaning the surface. And, of course, theft.

The strategy meeting had started off badly. These men were already working at full stretch and had never achieved anything close to three hundred tons in a month. They started off by complaining that the Portuguese concession-holders had sensed which way the market was going and were stockpiling. Then they railed against the British who had instituted some pre-emptive buying operations which had forced the price up and encouraged the Portuguese to sit tight.

'Price is no longer an issue,' said Felsen, which quietened the meeting. 'Our job now is to get our hands on the product by any means we can. My intelligence briefing in Lisbon indicates that the UKCC has a slow decision-making process, that they are active in the market only for short periods, that they are frightened of high prices because their managers are cautious and are buying with borrowed money. They have shot themselves in the foot. They've driven the prices up and now they've started to lose labour from their own mines. Their miners have begun to see that they can earn more fossicking than by taking wages to go underground. We don't have any of these problems. We have money. We can be aggressive. We can be consistent.'

'What do you mean by consistent?'

'It means we never fail to buy. The British can't do that. They work in fits and starts. They disappoint. We will never disappoint. We'll develop close relationships with people on the ground, people who control the local communities and we'll make them loyal to the German buying cause.'

'And how do we make them loyal?' roared one of the agents. 'The British give them tea and cakes and kiss their children. Do we have time for that, chasing three hundred tons a month?'

'They're only loyal to one thing in the Beira,' said another agent, grimly.

'That's not true,' said the first agent. 'There are concession-owners who will only sell to the British, some of them have British blood. They will never come over to us.'

'You're both right,' said Felsen. 'First-I've seen the people here, the ordinary men. They are living like we did in the Middle Ages. They have nothing. They walk twenty miles with fifty kilos of charcoal on their back to sell in town. They make enough money to fill their stomachs so they can make it back to their villages. These are very poor people. They can't read or write. They have a hard life ahead of them. And it is these people who will scour the Beira for us and bring in every rock of wolfram they can find. In time, people will see how easy the money is up here and more will come up from the south. The Alentejo is full of the same victims of poverty, and they'll work for us too.'

'And what about the mines who sell to the British whatever the price?'

'My second point-the people who work in those concessions live in villages. We will move into the villages and encourage them to do some night shifts. We will buy from them at market rates.'

'You mean stealing?'

'I mean distributing wealth. I mean taking from the enemy. I mean waging war in the Beira.'

'They're difficult people in the Beira.'

'They're mountain people. Mountain people are always difficult. They have hard, cold lives. Your job is to understand them, to like them, to befriend them… and to buy their wolfram.'

Felsen divided the region up, putting a group of agents in Viseu, Mangualde and Nelas, another group in Celorico and Trancoso, one further south in Idanha-a-Nova and he took for himself the area south of Guarda to the Serra da Malcata from the foot of the Serra da Estrela in the west to the Spanish border. Most of the product would travel on the Guarda/Vilar Formoso road and cross the border at that point. He needed the Guarda Nacional Republicana in one pocket so that the trucks would get there and the alfândega in the other so that it would cross the border into Spain without any trouble. The town of Guarda was the central point of the wolfram area. It was the obvious headquarters.

The rain had stopped by the time he'd finished the conference. His driver came in to say that he'd delivered the two bottles of brandy to the chefe of the GNR and that he should go to the GNR post now, preferably before lunch, for a meeting.

The chefe of the GNR had recently been transferred to this post from Torres Vedras. He was a big man with a small face encased by a fat head. His moustache was thick, black and luxuriant as mink with ends tweaked to points, making him look as if he was permanently delighted, which most of the time he was. His hand felt small and soft in Felsen's peasant grip and not one that was in the habit of coming down with the full force of the law. Felsen sat on the other side of the man's desk which looked as if it had seen heavy skirmishing during the Peninsular Wars. The chefe thanked him for his gift and offered him a glass of absinthe. He poured the green liquor into two small glasses. Felsen's mouth crinkled at the bitterness of the wormwood as he laid a piece of newspaper down in front of the chefe. He tapped an article near the bottom of the page. The chefe read it, sipping his absinthe and thinking about lunch. He took one of Felsen's cigarettes.