Message From Malaga Read Free Page A

sideways at the table, could glance briefly, toward the back corner of the courtyard without swerving his head around. He saw a man in his mid-thirties, small, compact, cheerful, with dark complexion and curling hair. He seemed to be concentrating on his companions, who were talking volubly. “Who are the two men with him?”
    “A journalist, and a captain of a freighter that docked this morning. From Cuba.”
    “And where’s that?” They exchanged smiles, remembering the missile crisis, a tricky situation indeed, that had brought them together in a strange way. Reid had been one of the flyers who had volunteered to take photographs, at a low and dangerous level, of Khrushchev’s rocket installations in Cuba. Ferrier had been one of the intelligence group who had analysed the original photographs taken at high altitude, discovered thearea that seemed to deserve closer attention, called for some low-altitude shots, and found the sure proof. “We ought to work together more often,” Ferrier said.
    “We certainly called Papa Khrushchev’s bluff that time.”
    “Do you do any flying nowadays?” Ferrier’s question was purposefully casual. He wondered for a moment if he’d ask Jeff outright why he had resigned from the Air Force. Sure, he had had a bad smash up, still flying too low, still taking dangerous chances for a more closely detailed photograph. At the time, he had said he didn’t want to be pushed into a desk job, and with his injuries that was certainly where he was heading; but what was a business-man except someone attached to a desk? That separation from his wife had something to do with it. He had moved abroad soon after, which was one way of definitely putting distance between himself and Washington where Janet Reid lived. But I can’t ask him about that, either. Not directly. Several of Jeff’s friends had lost him completely, trying to nose into that puzzle. And now Jeff wasn’t even answering his question except with a shake of his head. So Ferrier backed off tactfully, tried another angle. “Interesting town, Málaga. I begin to see how you enjoy it. Plenty of action, movement in and out.”
    Reid looked at him sharply, then relaxed. “Oh, we get a bit of everything wandering through here, from honest tourists to strayed beatniks and travelling salesmen.”
    “Not to mention all those freighters along your docks, packed like cigars in a box. Stowaways and narcotics and smuggling in general?”
    “All the headaches of civilisation. But at least there has been peace and growing prosperity. I’ll take that, headaches and all,over war any day.”
    “And civil war, at that,” Ferrier said quietly. He was looking at the packed courtyard, a mass of faces waiting expectantly as they talked and laughed and listened to the guitars’ improvisation. Incredible, he was thinking, how people can look so damned normal as they do, when they’ve been through so much. Sure, it was thirty-odd years ago, another generation, and yet... He shook his head and added, “I keep remembering what you told me about it, on our way here—”
    “If you must talk about that, keep your voice down.”
    “It’s down. We are both mumbling like a couple of conspirators.”
    “And that,” Reid said, trying to look amused, “is not too good either.”
    What’s wrong? Ferrier wondered. Jeff is suddenly on edge. And that’s the third time he has glanced at his watch. What’s worrying him? Does he think that Tavita may decide not to dance, after all, and the whole evening becomes a letdown? Not just for me. These quiet faces around me—how would they react? “Okay,” he said. “Voices back to normal. No more questions about their civil war. I asked you enough of them, anyway.”
    “It wouldn’t be the old Ian if you didn’t,” Reid said, but he made sure of changing the subject by starting some talk on the history of this courtyard. Its name, El Fenicio, was a reminder of the Phoenicians who had founded