The Third Man and the Fallen Idol

by Graham Greene

  You must understand that at this period cooperation between the Western Allies and the Russians had practically, though not yet completely, broken down.

  The original police agreement in Vienna between the Allies confined the military police (who had to deal with crimes involving allied personnel) to their particular zones, unless permission was given to them to enter the zone of another Power. This agreement worked well enough between the three Western Powers. I only had to get on the phone to my opposite number in the American or French zones before I sent in my men to make an arrest or pursue an investigation. During the first six months of the occupation it had worked reasonably well with the Russians: perhaps forty-eight hours would pass before I received permission, and in practice there are few occasions when it is necessary to work quicker than that. Even at home it is not always possible to obtain a search warrant or permission from one’s superiors to detain a suspect with any greater speed. Then the forty-eight hours turned into a week or a fortnight, and I remember my American colleague suddenly taking a look at his records and discovering that there were forty cases dating back more than three months where not even an acknowledgement of his requests had been received. Then the trouble started. We began to turn down, or not to answer, the Russian requests, and sometimes without permission they would send in police, and there were clashes. … At the date of this story the Western Powers had more or less ceased to put in applications or reply to the Russian ones. This meant that if I wanted to pick up Kurtz it would be as well to catch him outside the Russian zone, though of course it was always possible his activities might offend the Russians and his punishment be more sudden and severe than any we should inflict. Well, the Anna Schmidt case was one of the clashes: when Rollo Martins went drunkenly back at four o’clock in the morning to tell Anna that he had seen the ghost of Harry, he was told by a frightened porter who had not yet gone back to sleep that she had been taken away by the International Patrol.

  What happened was this. Russia, you remember, was in the chair as far as the Innere Stadt was concerned, and when Russia was in the chair, you expected certain irregularities. On this occasion, half-way through the patrol, the Russian policeman pulled a fast one on his colleagues and directed the car to the street where Anna Schmidt lived. The British military policeman that night was new to his job: he didn’t realize, till his colleagues told him, that they had entered a British zone. He spoke a little German and no French, and the Frenchman, a cynical hard-bitten Parisian, gave up the attempt to explain to him. The American took on the job. ‘It’s all right by me,’ he said, ‘but is it all right by you?’ The British M.P. tapped the Russian’s shoulder, who turned his Mongol face and launched a flood of incomprehensible Slav at him. The car drove on.

  Outside Anna Schmidt’s block the American took a hand in the game and demanded in German what it was all about. The Frenchman leaned against the bonnet and lit a stinking Caporal. France wasn’t concerned, and anything that didn’t concern France had no genuine importance to him. The Russian dug out a few words of German and flourished some papers. As far as they could tell, a Russian national wanted by the Russian police was living there without proper papers. They went upstairs and the Russian tried Anna’s door. It was firmly bolted, but he put his shoulder to it and tore out the bolt without giving the occupant an opportunity of letting him in. Anna was in bed, though I don’t suppose, after Martins’ visit, that she was asleep.

  There is a lot of comedy in these situations if you are not directly concerned. You need a background of Central European terror, of a father who belonged to a losing side, of house-searches and disappearances, before the fear outweighs the comedy. The Russian, you see, refused to leave the room while Anna dressed: the Englishman refused to remain in the room: the American wouldn’t leave a girl unprotected with a Russian soldier, and the Frenchman – well, I think the Frenchman must have thought it was fun. Can’t you imagine the scene? The Russian was just doing his duty and watched the girl all the time, without a flicker of sexual interest; the American stood with his back chivalrously turned, but aware, I am sure, of every movement; the Frenchman smoked his cigarette and watched with detached amusement the reflection of the girl dressing in the mirror of the wardrobe; and the Englishman stood in the passage wondering what to do next.

  I don’t want you to think the English policeman came too badly out of the affair. In the passage, undistracted by chivalry, he had time to think, and his thoughts led him to the telephone in the next flat. He got straight through to me at my flat and woke me out of that deepest middle sleep. That was why when Martins rang up an hour later I already knew what was exciting him; it gave him an undeserved but very useful belief in my efficiency. I never heard another crack from him about policemen or sheriffs after that night.

  I must explain another point of police procedure. If the International Patrol made an arrest, they had to lodge their prisoner for twenty-four hours at the International Headquarters. During that period it would be determined which Power could justifiably claim the prisoner. It was this rule that the Russians were most ready to break. Because so few of us can speak Russian and the Russian is almost debarred from explaining his point of view (try and explain your own point of view on any subject in a language you don’t know well – it’s not as easy as ordering a meal), we are apt to regard any breach of an agreement by the Russians as deliberate and malign. I think it quite possible that they understood this agreement as referring only to prisoners about whom there was a dispute. It’s true that there was a dispute about nearly every prisoner they took, but there was no dispute in their own minds, and no one has a greater sense of self-righteousness than a Russian. Even in his confessions a Russian is self-righteous – he pours out his revelations, but he doesn’t excuse himself, he needs no excuse. All this had to form the background of one’s decision. I gave my instructions to Corporal Starling.

  When he came back to Anna’s room a dispute was raging. Anna had told the American that she had Austrian papers (which was true) and that they were quite in order (which was rather stretching the truth). The American told the Russian in bad German that they had no right to arrest an Austrian citizen. He asked Anna for her papers and when she produced them, the Russian snatched them from her hand.

  ‘Hungarian,’ he said, pointing at Anna. ‘Hungarian,’ and then, flourishing the papers, ‘bad, bad.’

  The American, whose name was O’Brien, said, ‘Give the goil back her papers,’ which the Russian naturally didn’t understand. The American put his hand on his gun, and Corporal Starling said gently, ‘Let it go, Pat.’

  ‘If those papers ain’t in order we got a right to look.’

  ‘Just let it go. We’ll see the papers at H.Q.’

  ‘If we get to H.Q. You can’t trust these Russian drivers. As like as not he’ll drive straight through to his zone.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Starling said.

  ‘The trouble about you British is you never know when to make a stand.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Starling said; he had been at Dunkirk, but he knew when to be quiet.

  They got back into the car with Anna, who sat in the front between the two Russians dumb with fear. After they had gone a little way the American touched the Russian on the shoulder, ‘Wrong way,’ he said. ‘H.Q. that way.’ The Russian chattered back in his own tongue making a conciliatory gesture, while they drove on. ‘It’s what I said,’ O’Brien told Starling. ‘They are taking her to the Russian zone.’ Anna stared out with terror through the windscreen. ‘Don’t worry, little goil,’ O’Brien said, ‘I’ll fix them all right.’ His hand was fidgeting round his gun again. Starling said, ‘Look here, Pat, this is a British case. You don’t have to get involved.’

  ‘You are new to this game. You don’t know these bastards.’

  ‘It’s not worth making an incident about.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ O’Brien said, ‘not worth … that little goil’s got to have protection.’ American chivalry is alwa
ys, it seems to me, carefully canalized – one still awaits the American saint who will kiss a leper’s sores.

  The driver put on his brakes suddenly: there was a road block. You see, I knew they would have to pass this military post if they did not make their way to the International H.Q. in the Inner City. I put my head in at the window and said to the Russian haltingly, in his own tongue, ‘What are you doing in the British zone?’

  He grumbled that it was ‘orders’.

  ‘Whose orders? Let me see them.’ I noted the signature – it was useful information. I said, ‘This tells you to pick up a certain Hungarian national and war criminal who is living with faulty papers in the British zone. Let me see the papers.’

  He started on a long explanation, but I saw the papers sticking in his pocket and I pulled them out. He made a grab at his gun, and I punched his face – I felt really mean at doing so, but it’s the conduct they expect from an angry officer and it brought him to reason – that and seeing three British soldiers approaching his headlights. I said, ‘These papers look to me quite in order, but I’ll investigate them and send a report of the result to your colonel. He can, of course, ask for the extradition of this lady at any time. All we want is proof of her criminal activities. I’m afraid we don’t regard Hungarian as Russian nationality.’ He goggled at me (my Russian was probably half incomprehensible) and I said to Anna, ‘Get out of the car.’ She couldn’t get by the Russian, so I had to pull him out first. Then I put a packet of cigarettes in his hand, said ‘Have a good smoke’, waved my hand to the others, gave a sigh of relief, and that incident was closed.

  Chapter 13

  WHILE MARTINS TOLD me how he went back to Anna’s and found her gone, I did some hard thinking. I wasn’t satisfied with the ghost story or the idea that the man with Harry Lime’s features had been a drunken illusion. I took out two maps of Vienna and compared them. I rang up my assistant and, keeping Martins silent with a glass of whisky, asked him if he had located Harbin yet. He said no; he understood he’d left Klagenfurt a week ago to visit his family in the adjoining zone. One always wants to do everything oneself; one has to guard against blaming one’s juniors. I am convinced that I would never have let Harbin out of our clutches, but then I would probably have made all kinds of mistakes that my junior would have avoided. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Go on trying to get hold of him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘Forget it. It’s just one of those things.’

  His young enthusiastic voice – if only one could still feel that enthusiasm for a routine job; how many opportunities, flashes of insight one misses simply because a job has become just a job – tingled up the wire. ‘You know, sir, I can’t help feeling that we ruled out the possibility of murder too easily. There are one or two points –’

  ‘Put them on paper, Carter.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I think, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ (Carter is a very young man) ‘we ought to have him dug up. There’s no real evidence that he died just when the others said.’

  ‘I agree, Carter. Get on to the authorities.’

  Martins was right. I had made a complete fool of myself, but remember that police work in an occupied city is not like police work at home. Everything is unfamiliar: the methods of one’s foreign colleagues, the rules of evidence, even the procedure at inquests. I suppose I had got into the state of mind when one trusts too much to one’s personal judgement. I had been immensely relieved by Lime’s death. I was satisfied with the accident.

  I said to Martins, ‘Did you look inside the kiosk or was it locked?’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t a newspaper kiosk,’ he said. ‘It was one of those solid iron kiosks you see everywhere plastered with posters.’

  ‘You’d better show me the place.’

  ‘But is Anna all right?’

  ‘The police are watching the flat. They won’t try anything else yet.’

  I didn’t want to make a fuss in the neighbourhood with a police car, so we took trams – several trams – changing here and there, and came into the district on foot. I didn’t wear my uniform, and I doubted anyway, after the failure of the attempt on Anna, whether they would risk a watcher. ‘This is the turning,’ Martins said and led me down a side street. We stopped at the kiosk. ‘You see, he passed behind here and simply vanished – into the ground.’

  ‘That was exactly where he did vanish to,’ I said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  An ordinary passer-by would never have noticed that the kiosk had a door, and of course it had been dark when the man disappeared. I pulled the door open and showed Martins the little curling iron staircase that disappeared into the ground. He said, ‘Good God, then I didn’t imagine him!’

  ‘It’s one of the entrances to the main sewer.’

  ‘And anyone can go down?’

  ‘Anyone. For some reason the Russians object to these being locked.’

  ‘How far can one go?’

  ‘Right across Vienna. People used them in air raids; some of our prisoners hid for two years down there. Deserters have used them – and burglars. If you know your way about you can emerge again almost anywhere in the city through a manhole or a kiosk like this one. The Austrians have to have special police for patrolling these sewers.’ I closed the door of the kiosk again. I said, ‘So that’s how your friend Harry disappeared.’

  ‘You really believe it was Harry?’

  ‘The evidence points that way.’

  ‘Then whom did they bury?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but we soon shall, because we are digging him up again. I’ve got a shrewd idea, though, that Koch wasn’t the only inconvenient man they murdered.’

  Martins said, ‘It’s a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s no good applying to the Russians, and you can bet he’s hiding out now in the Russian zone. We have no line now on Kurtz, for Harbin’s blown – he must have been blown or they wouldn’t have staged that mock death and funeral.’

  ‘But it’s odd, isn’t it, that Koch didn’t recognize the dead man’s face from the window?’

  ‘The window was a long way up and I expect the face had been damaged before they took the body out of the car.’

  He said thoughtfully, ‘I wish I could speak to him. You see, there’s so much I simply can’t believe.’

  ‘Perhaps you are the only one who could speak to him. It’s risky though, because you know too much.’

  ‘I still can’t believe – I only saw the face for a moment.’ He said, ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘He won’t leave the Russian zone now. Perhaps that’s why he tried to have the girl taken over – because he loves her? Because he doesn’t feel secure? I don’t know. I do know that the only person who could persuade him to come over would be you – or her, if he still believes you are his friend. But first you’ve got to speak to him. I can’t see the line.’

  ‘I could go and see Kurtz. I have the address.’

  I said, ‘Remember. Lime may not want you to leave the Russian zone when once you are there, and I can’t protect you there.’

  ‘I want to clear the whole damned thing up,’ Martins said, ‘but I’m not going to act as a decoy. I’ll talk to him. That’s all.’

  Chapter 14

  SUNDAY HAD LAID its false peace over Vienna; the wind had dropped and no snow had fallen for twenty-four hours. All the morning trams had been full, going out to Grinzing where the young wine is drunk and to the slopes of snow on the hills outside. Walking over the canal by the makeshift military bridge, Martins was aware of the emptiness of the afternoon: the young were out with their toboggans and their skis, and all around him was the after-dinner sleep of age. A notice board told him that he was entering the Russian zone, but there were no signs of occupation. You saw more Russian soldiers in the Inner City than here.

  Deliberately he had given Kurtz no warning of his visit. Better to
find him out than a reception prepared for him. He was careful to carry with him all his papers, including the laissez-passer of the Four Powers that on the face of it allowed him to move freely through all the zones of Vienna. It was extraordinarily quiet over here on the other side of the canal, and a melodramatic journalist had painted a picture of silent terror, but the truth was simply the wider streets, the greater shell damage, the fewer people – and Sunday afternoon. There was nothing to fear, but all the same, in this huge empty street where all the time you heard your own feet moving, it was difficult not to look behind.

  He had no difficulty in finding Kurtz’s block, and when he rang the bell the door was opened quickly, as though Kurtz expected a visitor, by Kurtz himself.

  ‘Oh,’ Kurtz said, ‘it’s you, Mr Martins,’ and made a perplexed motion with his hand to the back of his head. Martins had been wondering why he looked so different, and now he knew. Kurtz was not wearing the toupée, and yet his head was not bald. He had a perfectly normal head of hair cut close. He said, ‘It would have been better to have telephoned to me. You nearly missed me; I was going out.’

  ‘May I come in a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’

  In the hall a cupboard door stood open, and Martins saw Kurtz’s overcoat, his raincoat, a couple of soft hats, and, hanging sedately on a peg like a wrap, Kurtz’s toupée. He said, ‘I’m glad to see your hair has grown,’ and saw, in the mirror on the cupboard door, the hatred flame and blush on Kurtz’s face. When he turned Kurtz smiled at him like a conspirator and said vaguely, ‘It keeps the head warm.’