Poets and Chess Players #7-1: In Which Mr. Echevarria Confesses A Certain Distaste For The Swiss

More annoyed by Jeanne’s attitude than he’d have liked to admit aloud, Echevarria spent much of the long uphill tram ride inventing a fictional crew she wasn’t part of.

This is chapter 7 (part one) of Poets and Chess Players, a WWII spy adventure and drama serial. Previously, Jeanne put aside her reservations and agreed to help Matia chase down their contact in Switzerland. This time, he finally gets to try his hand properly at spy games.

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November 28, 1941
Geneva, Switzerland

One of the side effects of growing up on a sailboat was that, aside from the bloody ruins of northeastern Spain, Matia had rarely been anywhere that didn’t have its own seaport. His vague idea of Switzerland as the land of mountaineering watchmakers had only continued to amuse him until he woke up this morning and realized that Geneva, at least, was nothing but more France. 

The miserably rain-streaked view of the lake through his hotel window was the first good look he’d had at the city. Mat had been half dozing behind a comic book when they pulled in late last night, the excitement of the job to come dampened by the fact that he hadn’t seen the sun since they left Avignon. Miss Martin, too, had been less than entertaining. He’d had great hopes - all things considered - that she would warm up to him, or at least manage two or three hours of civil conversation, but he might as well have been talking to himself. Eventually, left so unmercifully to his own thoughts, he had stopped bothering to vocalize them and left them to duke it out alone. They hadn’t liked that; as he pulled himself away from the view and started poking through his suitcase for his belt, they reared up their ugly heads at him again. 

If it weren’t for Vic…

Echevarria rubbed his face roughly in frustration, forgetting he’d already combed his mustache. First Lou and now Otsoa, of all people, playing on his sympathies? He must be doomed to roam the world like the caballero of La Mancha, getting into scrapes and doing favors to get out of them. Jeannie was probably right to be concerned about his impartiality, no matter how much he wanted to believe in it himself. He’d always thought somehow that he could keep company with these men without letting their statist machines get their hooks into him too - but if that were really what he wanted, he would have told them all to go to hell a long time ago. The fact was that somewhere along the way, he’d gotten sidetracked from no god, no state, no masters by the sheer thrill of hit-and-run warfare. Now he was paying the price. 

He looked into the mirror, ran his palm over his hair one more time, and made himself a deal while he was wiping the excess Brylcreem on a paisley handkerchief: whatever mess Vic was in didn’t have to change things. If he could solve Lou’s problem without so much as talking to the man, he would. If not…well, he’d figure that out once he heard back from his temporary bosses at COI. Matia folded the now-greasy square loosely into his breast pocket and wandered out to find Jeanne. He found her lingering over a half-empty plate in the breakfast room, several chapters into the latest Peyré.¹

“You’re wearing that to the bank?” she said in shockingly precise French, her gaze flickering over him and then back to her book as he took the other chair.

“Mais oui.” Matia thought he looked pretty well-turned-out, himself - especially considering that he’d had to put the entire outfit together back in New York, with no time for tailoring. He couldn’t imagine her having a problem with the slacks, since he definitely remembered five-inch-wide waistbands going around a few years back. It couldn’t be the green silk shirt, either, because he’d picked that specifically to go with the green-and-yellow check on the oversized jacket. Fortunately, whatever the problem was, Jeanne’s opinion didn’t matter. “That’s the great thing about being Cap’n, Jeannie,” he explained, switching to English. “You get to wear whatever you want.”

“Ya’ don't say.” She turned a page and absently raised her hand to twist her finger into her necklace. “Well, let me know how it goes.”

He frowned in surprise. “You’re not coming?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Well - I thought we were in this together,” he said, eyeing the untouched croissant on her plate.

“I don't see any reason I should come along - don’t you dare,” Jeanne said, looking up and bringing the book down sharply on his hand, which she’d just caught sneaking across the table. “I’m gettin’ to that. And trust me, if you’re talkin’ and not shootin’, I’m more of a liability than anything.”

Matia rubbed the back of his hand and grimaced. Yeah, he thought, he could see that. “Fine. Don’ expect me to bring you back chocolates or anything.”

“I wasn’t,” she said, already flipping the book open again. 

“Still, I would have, if you could be nice,” he grumbled. 

The corners of her lips twitched, almost as if she were amused with him. “Yeah, well, don't take it personally. You’re only stuck with me ‘cause no one else can stand me neither.”

More annoyed by Jeanne’s attitude than he’d have liked to admit aloud, Echevarria spent much of the long uphill tram ride inventing a fictional crew she wasn’t part of. Díaz and Son International was more than just one vessel, of course: a converted fishing sloop would be run by Alesander, a brother he didn’t have, and a small yacht by a brother-in-law whose navigator wife he’d name after his favorite little sister, Nerea. But he wouldn’t worry too much about those. All the real excitement happened on board the Esmeralda del Cantábrico², a beautiful little boat currently laid up in Narbonne harbor under the dubious guardianship of Lucky Kumar, his womanizing Guyanese first mate, who was undoubtedly having a better week than Captain Díaz was. Matia had just realized the hole in his story - after a score like this, why wouldn’t he use the money to buy Nerea and Raul a safe retirement? - when he saw that he’d missed his stop, and was going to have to get down at the next street and walk.

I’m sure she’s just fine, anyway, he thought as he made his way back toward the bank, ignoring the rain running off his cap and dribbling down the back of his neck, hoping he could crush that little pang of guilt before it spoiled the remainder of his morning. Matia usually avoided thinking about the rest of his family. He hadn’t seen his mother or sisters in over fifteen years, since Mamá hit her breaking point and refused to pack up and get back on another boat. He’d been old enough to feel like a man when he left with his father anyway, but too young to understand what it meant to leave somebody forever - the details had slipped from his memory so long ago that he knew he’d never find them again. But he remembered endlessly lifting Nerea to see through portholes and over railings, her chubby brown hands clasped behind his neck as her trusting smile split into laughter. That giggling baby would be a grown woman by now, he supposed. She’d be lively, loud, beautiful, and tall enough to see over anything she wanted to. She could get on fine without him.

Mat stepped into the portico of a very imposing gray stone building and paused by one of the massive pillars to pull out his handkerchief and wipe the rainwater from his face. “Get it together, Berto,” he muttered in Spanish, thinking as forcefully as he could of Lucky Kumar and the rolling deck of the Esmeralda del Cantábrico. Lou was trusting him with this job, and there was nothing for it but to swagger boldly forward.

The interior of Wegelin & Company was quiet like a cathedral, footsteps and hushed speech echoing up to the ceiling and then down again to bounce right back off the marble floors. Robert Díaz breezed past several gray-overcoated businessmen just pulling out their umbrellas and made for a desk marked Accueil. “I’m looking for Monsieur Jean-Louis Siegert,” he said, smiling toothily at the fellow seated on the other side.

The man blinked back slowly behind his thin spectacles. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Not, uh…as such, no,” Díaz admitted. 

He frowned, even more slowly, and eventually said, “And your name?”

“Roberto Díaz Martínez.”

“I see…one moment, please.” 

Díaz waited for interminable minutes while the receptionist rose from his desk and stepped through an open door that just barely disclosed a telephone. He looked around at the austere grandeur of the architecture and flashed a grin at a passing elderly lady, who wrinkled up her whole face at him. Finally the man returned, his stony expression unchanged. “You're expected. Third floor, office fourteen.”

He was already making for the elevator, glancing back with a wave of his hand. Expected? Perhaps things had worked out more smoothly behind the scenes than he’d given them credit for. “Gracias, mil gracias, merci…third floor,” he told the lift man as he got in. 

The elevator system was old, possibly even older than the man at reception, and climbed slowly past yards upon yards of swirling iron grating. In the other corner, the young man at the controls said nothing, but regarded Díaz with a skeptical eye.

“It’s the hot thing in Panama,” Díaz said defensively, shuffling his cap and briefcase from hand to hand.

“...certainly, monsieur.” The lift mechanism ground steadily to a halt, and the doors opened. “Third floor. Mind your step.”

Díaz walked up and down the dimly-lit corridors for several more minutes, not quite willing to ask for directions, while he tried to get a sense of which way the office numbers were going. At last he found number fourteen, steeled himself again, and knocked.

“Come in.”

He pushed the door open and stepped into a small reception area, far more comfortable than anything he’d passed through so far. It was furnished with a lush Oriental rug stretching across most of the floor, several ornate floor lamps, a glossy potted ivy, two chairs for clients, and a secretary’s desk by the wall. The man behind it had been looking intently at Díaz since he entered.

“I’m here to see M. Siegert,” Díaz said, slightly uncomfortable with the attention.

“Yes, of course,” the secretary said. He didn’t look much more at ease with the situation than he did himself, Díaz thought. “And you’re - M. Díaz García, is that right?”

Was that what he’d said - García? It must have been. Díaz nodded. “That’s right.”

The secretary relaxed visibly. “Good, monsieur, that’s good. Very good. We were starting to think you’d never turn up.”

Díaz chuckled. “Yeah, well, the State De-”

“Shh,” the other hissed, bounding up to his feet. “We can’t talk about this here - do you understand?”

He nodded silently, eyes wide.

The secretary scribbled something on a scrap of paper and came around the desk to fold it into his jacket pocket. “M. Siegert will meet you at this address tonight,” he said. “Come at eighteen hours, no later. Make sure you take the usual precautions.”

“Of course,” Díaz said, equally mystified and excited. “You let him know I’ll be waiting.”

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1. Joseph Peyré, prolific Basque-French adventure writer. Matterhorn (1939), which follows a young woman and her Swiss guide as she prepares to climb the famous peak in pursuit of her husband, remains one of his more widely read works.

2. ‘Cantabrian Emerald’.