We had a Mercedes 220S now, and an hour later we were driving it up through Albufeira’s twisting streets, past postcard stands and shop windows of Madeira lace. The coastal road was bordered with white and blue irises, a typical Portuguese touch. We zipped around horsedrawn wagons painted with symbols for protection against the Evil Eye.
On a side road, we passed a bullock market and rice fields of women working in rows carefully pulling up the crop by hand. We were back in the eighteenth century. Pastel flamingos balanced on one leg and searched for frogs in the shallow water.
We climbed steadily until we were above the marshlands into rolling, arid hills, the most typical Iberian landscape. Twisted cork trees cast sharp, garish shadows over the gray-green earth. Vera exclaimed, looking in the distance.
“Is that snow?”
On the far mountain was a blanket of white shimmering under the summer sun.
“There’s an old Moslem story,” I said. “When Spain was ruled by Arabs, an Arab prince married a Viking princess and brought her to Spain to live. She grew increasingly sad, and, when he asked her why, she said she missed the sight of Northern land, especially the snow. He couldn’t bear to send her back, so he planted Spain with almond trees, which covered the country with white blossoms like snow.”
“Almond trees,” Vera echoed softly.
The Mercedes hummed, and we climbed up toward what first seemed like a mirage or a magical glacier. Then we’d reached the orchard, and we were surrounded by a sea of shivering, pure white petals.
Almonds. The crushed kernels are the base of amygdalin, otherwise known as cyanide. But Vera looked particularly beautiful against a background of treeborne snow.
After mile upon mile of almond orchards we reached a complex of buildings: a garage, a mill, silos, and an office. We parked and entered the office. An old man in wellworn tweeds greeted us with a military snap of his heels.
“Herr Hauffmann?”
“No, I am Senhor Senevres. I am from Hauffmann Gesellschaft. Do you have our order completed?”
The old boy was disappointed, and I guessed why. He was German, very likely a war criminal gone into hiding like so many others who arrived in Spain and Portugal in ’45. Now he was desperate for a touch of the homeland, poor fellow.
“Yes, yes, all ready.”
“Here is a cashier’s check drawn from the Banco do Lisboa for one rail-car-load of almond powder. I would like to see the powder now.”
“Very well.”
The three of us strolled over to the silos. A truck had been backed up to one, and our guide pointed to some half-filled cardboard barrels. The almond powder inside was an aromatic ivory dust. I couldn’t see it but I could feel Vera’s appreciative look. Except for the aroma, there was no apparent difference between almond dust and opium.
“You might as well give me back the check. I’m not taking this powder,” I told the old man.
“What do you mean?” he was startled out of his disappointment.
“We intentionally sent you large, transparent plastic bags to ship the powder in. If you pack the powder in barrels, customs at each border will tear the barrels open until we’ll lose ten percent just by contamination.”
“Customs will open the bags anyway,” he protested.
“That’s why the bags were supplied with elastic bands. That is the way Hauffmann Ubersee Gesellschaft operates. You should understand.”
Abruptly, he summoned workers and demanded they search for the plastic bags. In a few minutes the bags had been found, and the powder was transferred from the barrels.
“The freight car is waiting in the Albufeira yard. I expect it to leave on tonight’s train so you should load today. Hauffmann Gesellschaft will have much more business to give you if this shipment is handled correctly.”
“As you say,” the old boy nodded energetically.
“Wonderful,” Vera kissed my cheek as we drove down the mountain. “Almond powder is a perfect match. But I don’t understand how you’re going to do the switch. You were right when you said that border inspectors would check all the bags. They’re on the lookout for opium, and they’ll take samples from every bag.”
“Right. I want them to.”
“Well, where are you going to hide the opium then?”
“I’m not.”
We drove in silence through the almond orchard for a minute before the thought occurred to her.
“You mean, we’re not bringing the opium through Portugal?”
“I never said we were.”
“But, I assumed...” Vera frowned. Wind tugged at her long gold hair. “Then why are we here at all?”
“What do you have against almonds?”
She rubbed her cameo ring nervously on her chin and reached for a cigarette. When we stopped for a lunch of grilled sardines and green wine, she was still relatively silent.
“What’s bothering you? You seem unhappy.”
“Not unhappy,” she reached for my hand. “It’s just that you scare me sometimes. If DeSantis knew that he had $100,000 in almond powder and nothing else, he’d be very upset with you. I’d feel better if you told me at least how you’re bringing the opium in. After all, I have a stake in this now, too.”
“Vera, if you want to feel better you should drink more wine. As for the system, don’t worry. Everything is going as well as it could.”
“You sound so confident.”
“Salud,” I touched her glass with mine.
It was early afternoon as we got back to the hotel. The sun was a golden ball in the center of the sky, and we decided to get our swimsuits and find a nice private cove up the coast.
“Just give me a chance to wash up,” Vera said as we walked into our room.
I yawned the yawn of someone who’s had a bottle of wine and laid down on the bed. If only the Commander could see Nick Carter now, I thought, he would go through my expense account for the past ten years. It was a perversely satisfying daydream.
A pop with the same resonance of a champagne cork but ten times louder came from the bathroom. I was off the bed and drawing the Astra. The bathroom door opened, and a man plunged face forward onto the wall-to-wall carpeting. In his hand was a large caliber revolver. In the middle of his back was a powder burn and a small black hole.
Vera stepped out of the bathroom. Her hair was disheveled and her lipstick smeared. She still held a Beretta .22, obviously part of her toilet accessories.
“Who is he, Vera?”
“I don’t know. He was waiting behind the shower curtain.” She knelt by the dead man and hoisted his head up by the hair. The face was square and swarthy, the eyes bulged in shock. “Corsican. I’m afraid your competition has heard about you.”
“It looks that way. I guess you saved my life. That was some shot.”
And the Corsican must have been pretty dumb to let anyone but a friend put a gun on his spine.
“We’d better get out of here right away, Raki.”
“First, we’ll take care of the body. I’d rather not have the police on top of us, too.”
The dead man oozed rather than bled, and the slug never made it out of his chest. I didn’t worry about the sound of the shot. One person out of a thousand recognized the report of a small-caliber gun.
“Get that terry cloth beach robe from the closet. I’ll call room service.”
I ordered drinks for three and a wheelchair.
“What are you doing?” Vera brought me the robe. “He may have friends waiting for him.”
“As long as you’re my friend, what have I got to be afraid of?”
We had the robe on the Corsican when room service came. A few minutes later, we had the dead man belted into a sitting position in the wheelchair. I began prying the unfired gun from his hand.
Criminals sometimes try to make a murder look like a suicide by putting their gun in the victim’s hand. The reason police aren’t fooled is that the gun falls out of the corpse’s hand as soon as the body’s lifted. The gun won’t fall out if it was held in the hand at the moment of death. Then the muscles of the hand contract like steel.