The House of Rumour Read Online Free

to consider what might explain the square bulge below the breast pocket. The outline of an automatic pistol, perhaps? Fleming smiled, aware that he had become known for the brash style of his memoranda. But no, he decided, it wasn’t a gun that gave the extra weight to this man’s left-hand side. No, he thought, his smile becoming a grin. It was a big, fat slab of money, the eighty thousand dollars that rightly belonged to British Intelligence.
    The ornamental gardens that surrounded the Palacio were veined with narrow gravel pathways that forked here and there, making a discreet pursuit almost impossible. Fleming was acting not so much on initiative as on compulsion, since shadowing Popov had nothing to do with his mission in Portugal. That had already been completed earlier that day with the meeting at the Café Chiado in Lisbon. Operation Mistletoe: an audacious operation to catch a top Nazi. This hastily improvised tail-job was a mere sideshow, but he found the prospect of it just as exciting as the astonishing information he had received that afternoon. For some it was the game, but for Fleming it was always the story. And here was a good one, he felt sure of it. Inspiration, yes, that’s what drove him to follow this man. Something he might use one day.
    The archives of Room 39 had furnished the sparse details of the individual he now studied at close hand: Dusko Popov, Yugoslav émigré, code-named ‘Tricycle’, posing as a spy for the Nazi Abwehr while working for the British. A lethal double act. The man was a light-footed adventurer; the one who watched him was forever weighed down by ideas. Popov was all that Fleming aspired to and sometimes pretended to be: handsome, charming, something of a playboy, whose designation Tricycle was said to refer to his fondness for the ménage à trois . Fleming stalked him in jealous fascination.
    He knew that the eighty thousand dollars were funds from the Abwehr to pay for an entirely fake spy network that Popov was running in London. He was due to hand it over to an MI6 agent the following day and had obviously decided it was better kept on his person than in the hotel safe. Unless Popov had had a better idea, such as a taxi into Lisbon and then a flight somewhere the next day. The Pan American flying boat was departing for Rio de Janeiro from Cabo Ruiva dock tomorrow morning. Popov would have enough money to disappear and live his cherished high life without any of the risks. Was that the story? A capricious choice that could change a whole lifetime. The dry tracks in the grounds of the Palacio fanned out, each path a possibility.
    Popov made a play of doubling back at a corner junction, passing by Fleming without looking at him but with a half-smile on his lips. Fleming stopped. He could hardly change direction now without giving the game away. Yes, it was definitely the game for Popov. And Fleming would be hard pressed to beat him at it. Paperwork, not fieldcraft, was his forte, he concluded gloomily. But cold analysis had its uses. He might have lost his quarry for now, but he had a very good notion of where he was headed.
    Where else but the House of Games? The Estoril Casino, its grey, melancholy walls skulking amid more serene surroundings, looking like an office building or a workshop. Which indeed it was: the bureaucracy of bad luck, the sweatshop of short odds. The perfect setting, thought Fleming, as he passed through the vestiaire into the gaming rooms. He entered a theatre of calm excitement, filled with the repetition of muted sounds and stifled gestures. A static impersonal space, where anxiety and relaxation could be enjoyed in equal measure. A collective trance: where all are actors, all are audience to both shared and private dramas.
    The Estoril Casino was the very hub of an enclave of neutrality where all sides in the war rubbed shoulders. It was peopled by many exotic species, which Fleming divided into flora and fauna. The flora were the refugees,