Message From Málaga by Helen MacInnes

Author:Helen MacInnes [MacInnes, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781164365
Published: 2012-10-17T00:02:00+00:00

13

Ian Ferrier had swung the door open, but only far enough to let him bang it shut if the face of the cautious visitor turned out to be unknown. He might have a pistol in his hand or he might just happen to have a voice that sounded like Ben Waterman’s. Ferrier wasn’t in much of a trustful mood tonight.

But it was Ben, all right. He stepped smartly into the hall, closing the door behind him on the dark, silent garden, saying quickly to Concepción in his execrable Spanish, “No, leave that hall light off. Please!” He moved past her into the big room, turned to face Ferrier, and stared. He shot a second glance, at Concepción, who followed them slowly, uncertainly, and his stare intensified. “What’s that for?” He pointed to the half-raised cooking pot. Then he looked at the chairs out of place, rugs wrinkled, one floor lamp fallen, and—through the wide doorway of the study—disorder complete. “I wondered why you were so damned slow to open that door,” he said, “but I must say—” He looked around him again, shook his head.

“It’s all right, Concepción,” Ferrier said. She wasn’t even aware that she was gripping the pot as a weapon. “This is one of my friends. Would you get him a Scotch and soda? I’ll have another of Esteban’s specials.” That reassured her. It also got her out of the room. “What the hell are you doing in Málaga? Thought you were going to Toledo for the bullfight this weekend?”

“That’s tomorrow. Might make it yet.” Waterman had a soft, gentle voice with traces of Atlanta clinging to it; a most deceptive voice. In Korea, where Ferrier had first met him after the ceasefire—both twenty-two and already realists—he had been one of the toughest reporters who wouldn’t take an evasion for an answer or an excuse as an explanation; in the Philippines, he had been one correspondent who had left the bars of Manila for Huk territory; in Vietnam, around 1958, he had penetrated to remote villages that had been converted to supporting the Vietcong and found—as an incentive to unanimity of opinion—the leaders of the anti-communist opposition impaled on high posts for all to see; in Washington, where he and Ferrier had come together again in the early sixties, he had frankly disliked his editor in chief, longed for overseas assignments, and eventually exchanged the newspaper world for government service. As a press attaché, he had been moved around enough to please, and perhaps exhaust, his curiosity about other places, other people. Or perhaps the times were out of joint. At present, he was stationed in Madrid, a pleasant appointment as well as a difficult one, which of course made it interesting. But when Ferrier had seen him last week for a long dinner and a catchup talk, Waterman was thinking of resigning before his next transfer, of getting back to reporting and the United States again. This time, he was going to explore his country. And

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