Artillery of Lies by Derek Robinson

hot stuff.”
    â€œThat’s not
writing.”
The word came out like a kick on the shins. “That’s hack-work. Somebody in London picks out the music. I’m just the monkey that dances for them.”
    Julie said nothing. Against such self-contempt there was nothing to be said.
    â€œWe should have stayed in Lisbon.” He removed his hands and looked into the gold of the fire. “I was happy in Lisbon. It was bloody hard work but it was a marvelous game. Just me and them. Every day I got out of bed and I thought: What can I sell them today? And I invented something, I made up Eldorado, nobody else did that, just me, I created Eldorado, I recruited all his pals and I christened them, Seagull and Pinetree and Knickers and Garlic and Nutmeg, they all came from me. Just me.”
    â€œThat reminds me,” Julie said. “About Nutmeg …”
    â€œAnd it was
fun,”
Luis said with a kind of savage desperation. “It was
exciting.”
    â€œIt was damn dangerous. You nearly got killed.”
    â€œNow …” Luis sucked his teeth and spat into the fire. “Now I have to get permission before I can turn around and fart.”
    â€œCome on.” She got up, and pulled him to his feet. They set off into the dusk. “So you’re not a one-man-band anymore. So what? You’re properly organized now, Luis. Eldorado really makes a difference to the war. You’re bigger than ever, kid.”
    â€œYou don’t understand.” Luis stumbled along behind her, his bare feet sliding and slipping in his gumboots. “Eldorado was my secret. Just me, and later you but you didn’t count because we were in love and so we were like one person.”
    â€œGee, thanks,” she said.
    â€œNow they’ve taken my secret away. Eldorado’s just another department of the British War Office, for the love of Sam.”
    â€œMike,” she said. “Love of Mike.”
    â€œWhy not Sam?”
    Julie could think of no reason. “You win,” she said.
    They said little more until they came in sight of the house, when she remembered Nutmeg. “Luis … Why is Nutmeg getting twenty-five percent of his last six months’ earnings?”
    â€œIncome tax demand,” Luis said.
    â€œTax? That’s crazy. How did the Revenue get into the act?”
    â€œHe told them about his extra earnings. He said he got the money by selling paintings. Nutmeg is a gifted artist.”
    â€œThe
Abwehr
isn’t going to buy that, Luis. The
Abwehr’s
going to want to know why Nutmeg couldn’t keep his fool mouth shut and save them twenty-five percent.”
    â€œNutmeg is a retired officer of the British Indian army,” Luis declared, with a tinge of reproach in his voice. “He is an honorable man. He wouldn’t cheat on his taxes and I for one would never dream of suggesting that he should.”
    â€œPardon me all to hell and back,” Julie said.
    They went inside.
    Dr. Hartmann surprised everyone, including himself, by being the first to recruit a new spy.
    Hartmann wasn’t much interested in people. He wasn’t even excited by war. What gripped him was science, especially the science of radio, and barometric fuses, and what blast-waves did to concrete buildings, that sort of thing. He approved of the war because it gave him so much opportunity to develop his interests, and he enjoyed analyzing Eldorado’s contributions, especially as the fellow wasn’t there to argue. But apart from that, Hartmann preferred chess to people. It was at a chess club in the old part of Madrid that he met Laszlo Martini.
    Laszlo was about thirty, thin and bearded, and he dressed like a crook who had bought the local police chief and doesn’t care who knows it: snakeskin shoes, midnight-blue suit with cuffs on the sleeves and a little too much flare in the lapels, hand-painted silk tie that looked like an explosion in a Chinese