María Dueñas - The Time in Between

“How did you do it?”

“Almost every night I sent messages from my room at the Hotel Nacional. I had a small radio transmitter with me, hidden at the bottom of my suitcase. And I wrote an encrypted message daily about what I’d seen, what I’d heard. Then, whenever I could, I passed it on to a contact in Tangiers, a shop assistant at Saccone & Speed.”

“And no one ever suspected you?”

“Of course they did. Beigbeder was no fool, you know that as well as I do. My room was searched several times, but they probably sent someone who just wasn’t all that skillful: they never found anything. The Germans were suspicious, too, but they weren’t able to get hold of any information either. For my part, I did my best never to make a single false move. I didn’t contact anyone outside official circles and didn’t venture onto any hazardous terrain. Quite the reverse—my behavior remained irreproachable. I allowed myself to be seen with all the right people and always went around in the plain light of day. All apparently entirely clean. Any more questions?”

He already seemed less tense, closer. More the Marcus he used to be.

“Why did you leave so suddenly? You didn’t warn me: you just showed up one morning at my house, gave me the news that my mother was on her way, and I never saw you again.”

“Because I received urgent orders to get out of the Protectorate immediately. There were more and more Germans arriving every day, and word got out that someone suspected me. I still managed to delay my departure a few days, even though I was risking being uncovered.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to leave without confirming that your mother’s evacuation had gone ahead as we’d hoped. I’d promised you that. There was nothing I would have wanted more than to have been able to stay with you, but it wasn’t possible: that wasn’t my world, and my time had come. And besides, it wasn’t the best time for you, either. You were still recovering from a betrayal and you weren’t ready to put your trust entirely in another man, least of all someone who would have to abandon you suddenly without being able to be absolutely honest about why. That’s it, my dear Sira. The end. Is that the story you wanted to hear? Will this version do?”

“It will,” I said, getting up and walking toward him.

“So, have I earned my reward?”

I didn’t say anything. I just approached him, lowered myself onto his lap, and brought my mouth to his ear. My made-up face brushed against his freshly shaved skin; my lips, bright with lipstick, spilled out a whisper just half an inch from his earlobe. I noticed how he tensed when he felt my closeness.

“Yes, you’ve earned your reward. But you might find that this gift is poisoned.”

“Perhaps. If I’m to know that, I need to find out about you now. When I left you in Tetouan you were a young dressmaker filled with tenderness and innocence, and when I found you in Lisbon you’d been transformed into a grown woman who had become close to someone entirely inappropriate. I want to know what happened in between.”

“You’ll find out very soon. And so that you absolutely trust my story, you’re going to hear it from someone else, someone I believe you already know. Come with me.”

We walked arm in arm down the corridor. I heard my father’s powerful voice in the distance and once again couldn’t help remembering the day I’d met him. How many turns had my life taken since then? How many times had I been nearly drowned, unable to come up for air, and how many times had I managed to get my head back above the surface? But that was all in the past now, and the days for looking back were past. It was time to concentrate on the present alone, to face it head-on in order to attend to the future.

I guessed that the other two guests were already there and that everything had gone according to plan. When we arrived at our destination we unlocked our arms, though our fingers were still entwined. Until we both saw who was waiting for us. And then I smiled. Marcus did not.

“Good evening, Mrs. Hillgarth; good evening, Captain. I’m glad to see you,” I said, interrupting their conversation.

The room filled with a dense silence. A dense, anxious silence—electrifying.

“Good evening, miss,” replied Hillgarth after a few everlasting seconds. His voice sounded as though it were coming out of a cave. A dark, cold cave, because the head of the British secret service in Spain, the man who knew everything or ought to know everything, was feeling his way blind. “Good evening, Logan,” he added after a pause. His wife, this time without the makeup from the beauty salon, was so stunned to see us together that she was unable to respond. “I thought you’d gone back to Lisbon,” continued the naval attaché, addressing Marcus. “And I wasn’t aware that you two knew each other.”

I noticed Marcus was on the verge of saying something, but I didn’t let him. His hand was still in mine and I gave it a hard squeeze and he understood. I didn’t look at him, either: I didn’t want to see whether he was as confused as the Hillgarths were, and I didn’t want to see his reaction to them sitting there in that unfamiliar living room. We’d talk about it later, when everything had calmed down. I was sure that we would have plenty of time for that.

Looking into the wife’s big, light-colored eyes, I saw only confusion. It was she who had given me the guidelines for my Portuguese mission; she was completely involved with her husband’s activities. They were probably both struggling to connect the same dots I’d finished connecting the last time the captain and I had met. Da Silva and Lisbon, Marcus’s untimely arrival in Madrid, the same information delivered by the two of us just a few hours apart. All that, quite clearly, wasn’t merely the product of chance. How could they have missed it?

“Agent Logan and I have known each other for years, Captain, but we hadn’t seen each other for a long time, and we’re just finishing catching up on what we’ve each been doing,” I explained. “I know all about his situation and his responsibilities now, and since you were extremely helpful to me not so long ago, I thought you might be so kind as to assist me again by informing him about mine. And that way my father can hear about it at the same time. Oh—sorry! I’d forgotten to tell you: Gonzalo Alvarado is my father. And don’t worry: we’ll try to be seen in public together as little as we can, but you can understand that breaking off my relations with him completely won’t be possible.”

Hillgarth didn’t reply: he looked at us both again with a granite stare from under his bushy eyebrows.

Imagine Gonzalo’s bewilderment: it was probably as extreme as Marcus’s, but neither of them spoke so much as a syllable. They just waited—as did I—for Hillgarth to digest my boldness. His wife, uneasy, resorted to a cigarette, opening the case with nervous fingers. A few uncomfortable seconds passed in which the only sound was the repeated click of her lighter. Until at last the naval attaché spoke.

“If I don’t reveal it, I presume you’d do it yourself anyway…”

“I fear you wouldn’t leave me any other choice,” I said, giving him my best smile. A new smile—full, confident, and slightly challenging.

The silence was only broken by the clink of the ice cubes against the glass as he brought the whiskey to his mouth. His wife hid her confusion behind a thick drag on her Craven A.

“I suppose this is the price we have to pay for what you brought us from Lisbon,” he said at last.

“For that, and for all the missions to come in which I’ll work myself to the bone, I give you my word on that. My word as a dressmaker, and my word as a spy.”