At the border he drank with the chefe of the alfandega who was pleased to give him the information that the British had been tracking German shipments through the border all last month, and there'd been rumours that Lisbon were going to issue orders to hold up his consignments of wolfram. Felsen gave the man a bottle of brandy and asked after Abrantes. The chefe hadn't seen him in a week.
It started to rain as they drove south along the border to Aldeia da Ponte and then on to Aldeia do Bispo and Foios at the foot of the Serra da Malcata, whose vast low, lynx-patrolled hills crossed the border. Here there was a contrabandista who was going to run a pack mule operation through the serra for him if Dr Salazar decided to make life difficult.
'Have you ever made the journey across to Spain?' he asked the back of Alvaro Fortes' head. No answer.
'Did you hear me?'
'Yes, Senhor Felsen.'
'Have you done it before?'
Again no answer.
'When was the first time?'
Alvaro Fortes answered by not answering. Felsen began to feel the heat of his missing tonnage as the wind strafed the car from the north. They drove through the village to the house and stables of the man who kept the mules. The serra was invisible under low cloud.
At the mule-owner's house Felsen went to the boot and unlocked a small metal trunk. He removed his Walther P48 and loaded it. He told Alvaro Fortes to get out of the car. They went to the back of the granite house, into the stableyard, which had a warehouse at one end, chained and padlocked. There were no mules. Alvaro Fortes jiggled about like a man with a full bladder.
Felsen banged on the door at the back of the house with the heel of his hand. No response. He made Alvaro Fortes hammer continuously, and they heard the old man's voice from inside.
'Calma, calma, ja you,' he said. I'm coming.
The rain was slanting across the yard as he opened the door on the German standing in a thick leather coat with his hands clasped behind his back. He knew he was in trouble well before a hand came out and put a gun in his face.
'No mules,' said Felsen.
'They're out working.'
'Who's with them?'
'My son.'
'Anybody else?'
The old man's eyes flicked across to Alvaro Fortes who was no help.
'Have you got the key to that warehouse?'
'It's empty.'
Felsen put the barrel of the gun right up to the man's eye so that he could smell the oil, see the narrow, dark, escape route from life. The old man produced the key. They walked across the puddled yard. He opened the padlock and ripped the chain out. Alvaro Fortes opened the doors. The warehouse was empty Felsen went down on his haunches and pressed his finger on to the dry floor and came back up with fine black chips embedded in his skin. He stood up.
'Kneel, both of you,' he said.
He fitted the gun barrel under the occipital bulge at the back of the old man's head.
'Who is with your son and the mules?'
'Senhor Abrantes.'
'What are they doing?'
'Running wolfram to Spain.'
'Where do they take the wolfram?'
'A warehouse in Navasfrias.'
He pressed the gun into Alvaro Fortes' head.
'What happens to the wolfram?'
'He sells it.'
'To who?'
'To the highest bidder.'
'Has he sold to the British?'
Silence. The rain lashed the yard and the roof overhead.
'Has he sold to the British?'
'I don't know who he sells to. Senhor Abrantes doesn't talk of such things.'
Felsen went back to the old man.
'When will he return?'
'The day after tomorrow.'
'Will you tell him I have been here?'
'No, Senhor, I will not… if you don't wish it.'
'I don't wish it,' said Felsen. 'If you do tell him I will come back here and kill you myself. I will shoot you in the head.'
To show a level of seriousness he let off a round past the old man's ear that would leave him deaf for a week. The bullet ricocheted around the slate and granite warehouse. Alvaro Fortes threw his hands over his head and fell to one side. Felsen grabbed him by the scruff and threw him into the yard.
They went back to the car. Felsen sipped liquor from his bottle while Alvaro Fortes shivered with his hair plastered to his white forehead.
He ordered the driver to take them back to Amendoa and as the wind drove the rain over the hills and through the chestnut trees and oaks and on to the granite walls, rather than wolfram or Abrantes he found himself thinking of Eva. A few nights ago he'd been a civilized man sitting with a woman in a Berlin club. She'd lied to him. There'd been a betrayal before the lie, but he hadn't been able to drag up any anger. Out here in this rock-shambled, wind-blasted place, where the houses were carved out of the ground, he could only find a single-minded brutality to drive him through to the next day. He was a primitive, a man stripped down to the essentials.
And now he was going to have to kill Joaquim Abrantes.
It was dark when they arrived back in Amendoa. The girl and Abrantes' parents were eating. He joined them. The rain had stopped and only the wind was left, shifting the tiles on the roof. The old man wouldn't eat. His wife brought the food to his mouth but he wouldn't take it. She ate her own food, wiped her husband's eyes and took him to bed. The girl waited on Felsen. She wouldn't sit with him. He asked after the baby. The baby was sleeping. She offered him apples, but he hadn't finished the stew. He listened to her skirts as she moved around him. He thought about Abrantes grunting over her and that hissing sound she made.
She looked at him while he was eating. Every chance she had. Even when she was behind him he knew she was looking. He was different to look at. He asked for coffee, which they'd never had in the house before the German came. He drank it and poured aguardente on to the grounds and sank that. He said goodnight. She brought him a flat, metal pan of hot coals to take the edge off the cold in his bare room across the courtyard where they used to keep the hay for the animals.
He lay on his bed and smoked cigarettes by the light of the hurricane lamp. After an hour he got up and crossed the courtyard. He went to the girl's room which had just a curtain across the door. She was sleeping. He put the lamp on the floor. She woke up with a gasp. He clamped his hand over her mouth and pulled back the covers. The baby was sleeping at her back. He eased the child to one side. He rolled her on to her back trapping her arms underneath. He pushed his hand up her woollen-stockinged legs. Her thighs were clamped shut. He jammed his hand between them and prised them open by making a fist. Her eyes darted left and right over his hand. He tugged her drawers down to her knees and undid his trousers. He was surprised to slide into her easily and their eyes connected in the leopard light from the lamp on the floor. He was slow and gentle with the baby in the bed. After some minutes she closed her eyes and he felt her heel on his left buttock. He took his hand away from her mouth. She began to tense and shudder against him and the other heel began to kick at his right buttock. He quickened. Her eyes sprang open and he emptied himself into her and stayed there, rammed to the hilt and quivering.
The next day she gave him breakfast. It was no different to any other day except that she looked at him straight, with no shyness.
He stayed out all day, overseeing the loading of a cargo of wolfram into rail cars. He went back to Abrantes' house at nightfall. After dinner the old couple went to bed. The girl remained sitting at the table with Felsen. They didn't talk. He got up to go to bed. She gave him the pan of coals. He asked her name, and she told him Maria.