Dateline Haifa

by D A Kent

  With memories of her late husband freshly arisen to the surface, Elise put her weight into her work. Sweat beaded her shoulders and thighs as she raised weals on the quivering buttocks of the naked wife of the Police Chief. The woman whimpered her enjoyment. Elise laughed. She bent down and asked if the little mouse wanted something extra. The woman did. She was emphatic. She needed something else. Elise smiled, stripped herself of her corset and knickers, buckled on a phallus from what she called her ‘toybox’ and returned to her client. One never knew, she reflected, when it might be useful to have a contact within the highest echelons of the police. ‘Keep the customer satisfied’ was her mantra.

  Edward was at Queen Anne’s Gate, relieved to have escaped the clutches of Mummy and Caroline, who had formed an unholy alliance. He hated it. It seemed to have given Caroline an alarming new confidence. She was constantly at the house. The church was already booked for November, with a small reception to follow at Caroline’s parents’ house, on the basis that she would start to ‘show’ after that.

  ‘You’re fairly vast already,’ he thought disdainfully. Edward was vain about his looks and could not bear to think about being seen out with this squat, lowering creature. He decided to keep busy by clearing out his father’s old office, which he had taken over after a brief but good-humoured spat with Louis.

  How many of these filthy magazines had his father possessed, he wondered, throwing another into the bin? He put the riding crop on one side, as a precaution. His mind drifted back to the afternoon when his father lay dead by the fire grate and Sylvia had sat with him on the floor, with her arms around him. ‘Edward and Sylvia against the world,’ as it always had been, he reflected, although he had usually managed to let her down. If only she would give him another chance. What did Gunn, that vicious upstart, possess that he didn’t, he wondered bitterly? Perhaps he would give her this Bad Kaltenbrun probate file to look at, he thought. He couldn’t fathom it out at all.

  Sylvia and Gunn were wandering around the demeure, losing track of time. Their clothes were discarded in a heap in the hall. Jones’s room was neat and tidy; nothing much in there. He had packed Louise’s clothes and possessions in a suitcase. They looked at it silently. It seemed intrusive to open it. A few of the other doors along the next corridor were locked. Sylvia had found a key on a hook in the scullery which opened them all.

  ‘It’s like The Secret Garden all over again,’ she called. ‘Remember that?’

  Gunn was examining a framed map on the wall, produced during the Revolution, showing the demeure, its boundaries and what it produced. This place could tell some stories, he thought. He caught up with Sylvia in the nursery. There was a doll’s house on the floor, a cradle and a cupboard full of embroidered linen.

  ‘This must be before Jonathan and Louise’s time. They didn’t have children.’ she said. ‘It’s beautiful. A perfect room for a little girl. I wonder …’

  She caught herself in time and fell silent.

  ‘Let’s go back up to our room,’ she suggested, holding him close.

  Lying in the crook of his arm, listening to the wood pigeons outside, Sylvia talked about the way some houses gave her the creeps. This one didn’t; it was as if it liked having them there. She told him how, alone in Tufnell Park the previous Christmas, she had put all the lights on and had stayed up until it was nearly light, half-frozen.

  ‘You really are a silly girl sometimes,’ Gunn told her, affectionately. He rested his hand against the curve of her hip as he drifted off to sleep. He woke with a start an hour later. Hearing her clattering around in the kitchen, he went downstairs. She was fiddling with the coffee percolator. Her face was wet with tears. She tried to turn away, but he was too quick for her. He led her firmly back upstairs with their coffee.

  ‘What am I going to do with you, sweetheart? How can I leave you like this?’

  He told her again that he loved her, and that most people never found love like this. They usually ended up with a relationship that was second best or worse. They were lucky to have found each other.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she promised. ‘Really, I will. And I know it’s a really good opportunity for you; well, for both of us.’

  She was a brilliant actress, but he could read her like a book. He told her that if he saw any more tears, even just one, he wouldn’t go. She turned to him.

  ‘Dinner by the lake tonight?’ she suggested. ‘I think this weather could be breaking up; one hell of a storm later.’

  Sol replaced the receiver in the bar that had become his ‘headquarters’ in Le Marais, and bought another whisky. David in Tel Aviv had asked him what he knew about Ernst Wirth, late of the Ahnenerbe, a new subscriber to Alaikum and Otto’s briefing. The Israeli subscription package, which Alaikum described as ‘de luxe,’ included occasional information as to the identity of other subscribers. Any such revelation usually constituted a precursor to a request for a hike in the fee.

  Taking a sip of whisky, Sol cursed Alaikum and Otto roundly. Was there ever an end to their deviousness? The problem was that no matter how much you paid, and he kept trying to impress this on David, they were as trustworthy as the depth of the pockets of their paymasters. The name Ernst Wirth rang bells; he was another of those that had escaped in the confusion of 1945. David seemed to think he was back in Bavaria. It was only a matter of time. There was nothing for it; he needed to talk to Gunn and Sylvia sooner rather than later. A night in Chartrettes would also be rather pleasant; the heat had become oppressive and he could scarcely breathe. He went back to his hotel, packed his holdall and headed to the Gare de Lyon.

  Gunn and Sylvia had just finished their dinner by the lake, watching the sun set and two swans, swimming around busily.

  ‘Is it true that they mate for life?’ he asked her.

  ‘I think so,’ she said.

  Gunn was trying to remember the verses to a song with which his father often regaled the regulars at the Gunn House Hotel after a few drinks. He sang it to her. It finished with the line: ‘it will not be long, love, till our wedding day.’

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ Sylvia commented.

  ‘It is, but from what I remember, the girl in it dies before they can get married.’

  Sylvia shivered. A fat raindrop landed on her wrist.

  ‘It’s going to bucket down,’ said Gunn. ‘Reckon we can make it over to the hayloft before we get drenched?’

  Sol bought his ticket and stepped onto the last train to Chartrettes. He had caught it by the skin of his teeth. He settled back into his seat, as the train slowly pulled out of the station on its way south. The clouds rolled in. Forked lightning hit the summit of the Tour Eiffel and the rain came in heavy gusts, driven by a hard wind. He peered out into the weather and prayed there would be a taxi at the railway station. He had remembered a little more about Wirth. It did not bode well.

  Gunn and Sylvia had been listening to the storm, up in the loft. The ancient beams traced an arc above their bodies. The hay was dry and sweet. They made love slowly and easily, with the familiarity of new belonging. Sylvia drove her nails into Gunn’s back, wrapping her legs around his hips as she did so. Her body rode with the rhythm of his drive. He bit her throat gently and she groaned, her groan adding weight to his thrust. He filled her up and she shook, her cries echoing to the roof.

  Gunn rolled off her and lay panting beside her. He said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.

  Sol made his way up the drive, his feet crunching over the gravel. The house was in darkness. The back door was open, but nobody was in. They had to be here somewhere, he thought; the Horch was in the drive. Leaving his holdall in the hall, he started to make his way methodically around the outbuildings.

  The rhythmic crescendo of their lovemaking identified their whereabouts. He thought back to the few times he had had with Sarah, and felt rather sad.

  ‘Best give them some privacy,’ he thought, closing the door of the barn softly. Up in the loft, Gunn was in a deep sleep. Sylvia had
noticed that he always fell asleep straight afterwards. That amused her. She wrapped her arms around him, luxuriating in the warmth.

  ‘Gunn,’ she whispered, after a while. ‘There’s somebody outside, can you hear?’

  ‘There’s nobody there, sweetheart,’ he murmured.

  ‘Listen!’

  Gunn was instantly wide awake. He pulled on his trousers, rolled off the mezzanine and landed with a soft crump, kicking up dust on the floor below. He looked around. That old pitchfork would do. He flicked it up with his toe and hefted it. It had a lot of front end balance but that was all right. He brushed webs and dust from the wooden stave shaft and slowly, on the balls of his feet, moved across the floor.

  To the left of the barn door was a window, with wooden shutters that opened outwards. He chose that as his exit, as the egress was wider and taller than the interior, fork first followed by a dive and roll out. He followed his plan to the letter, rolling up onto his feet to find Sol examining the pitchfork at his feet and smoking a decent cigarette.

  ‘What the buggering hell are you doing here, Sol?’

  ‘Judging by the noise you were making, I don’t have to ask you the same question,’ retorted Sol. ‘There have been some developments. We need to talk. Can we go inside?’

  Sylvia emerged, still pulling her dress round her. She had straw in her hair and looked faintly flushed. Gunn did her dress up for her and she accompanied them into the house, her arm through his; an instinctive gesture but one not lost on Gunn. He drew her close to him.

  ‘Nice place,’ said Sol. ‘Secluded. You wouldn’t think you were only an hour from Paris.’ An idea was beginning to form in his mind. He examined his wine glass appreciatively; Gunn had been foraging in the cellars again. Sylvia was making a bed up for Sol upstairs.

  She came back downstairs, having got rid of the rest of the straw, and sat next to Gunn. He poured her a glass of red wine and put his arm round her. He had lit a fire in the magnificent hearth. The room looked impressive.

  ‘It should be all right; maybe a little smoky at first,’ Gunn told him.

  Sol looked across at them both. He remembered Marguerite’s words in Haifa about Gunn and Sylvia. She was right; they belonged together. They always looked every inch a couple; even more so in these surroundings.

  Coming straight to the point, he said:

  ‘The pipeline is starting up again.’

  ‘Well, I think we all knew that, didn’t we?’ Gunn was a little bemused.

  ‘The man behind it now,’ Sol continued, ‘makes Mueller and Cumberland look like a pair of clowns.’

  He gave them an outline of what he knew about Wirth and the Ahnenerbe. His view was that Wirth wouldn’t be content simply to get people out of hot water. With Mueller and Cumberland out of the way, he wanted to set up a Fourth Reich in Argentina, with a view to the world once again being ruled by Aryan peoples, in accordance with all the myths. They could expect more people to be spirited away, including those who were sympathisers but not necessarily on any current list. It would be quite easy to set up a sizeable population out there, and a dangerous one.

  ‘This guy has money,’ Sol told them. ‘Both inherited and gleaned by nefarious means. It’s no object. ‘I’m not sure yet whether he has made the connection between you and Mueller and Cumberland. He has just subscribed to the Alaikum newsletter. Mr Duplicity and his sidekick. It’s a matter of time, but he is some way behind.’

  Sylvia suddenly remembered the paperwork Louis had given her; copies, he had explained, of a much larger set of information stored by Cumberland with an Austrian tailor named Juncker.

  ‘With a cat that drinks excellent whisky,’ she added.

  ‘What a waste,’ was Sol’s comment. He hadn’t heard of Juncker.

  ‘We’ll have a look at them tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It’s late and we all need some sleep. We’ve got a lot of plans to make. And you two had better be fit for work in the morning.’

  He took his leave and went up to his room. Sylvia and Gunn were curled up on the sofa together in front of the fire. Sylvia wondered what these plans would entail, and if they might involve her. She stretched, luxuriously, and manoeuvred herself onto Gunn’s lap.

  ‘I’ve always dreamt about making love in front of the fire.’

  ‘Better keep the noise down then, sweetheart. Reckon you can?’

  As the fire died down, they crept up to bed, hand in hand, still trying not to make a noise, wanting to make the most of every second they had together.

  Sol could not sleep in any case. He had tried, but his furtive imagination and the heavy silence of a country house played on his mind. Eventually, he got up and dressed, and went and sat on the low wall at the edge of the property, looking towards the woods. He drank some coffee and smoked half a packet of cigarettes.

  The isolation of the house was certainly useful but could represent a weakness. There was shelter for those inside, but also for anyone wishing to get up close and personal. Sol shrugged and tossed a silver coin he kept in his pocket. It was one his father had given him many years ago. He kissed the coin and followed its glittering arc in the creeping light of dawn. Heads. It would do.

  In his small but centrally located apartment in Munich, Dieter Fischer was awake early, preparing for the drive into the countryside, to the hunting lodge. He wondered who else would be at the meeting. Wirth had struck him yesterday as a rather menacing character, one not to get on the wrong side of. Not that he was in the habit of being afraid of anyone, but a little caution, nonetheless, would not go amiss. Wirth had told him to pack an overnight bag. He wondered whether he would see this museum. In spite of himself, he was intrigued. He had heard a little yesterday about Wirth’s visits in the thirties to India, when he had been Professor of Archaeology at Gottingen. Dieter gave his girlfriend a farewell kiss; she scarcely stirred. Soon, he was on the road.

  Gunn was awake early. He padded downstairs to make coffee, noting that Sol had been down earlier. He went upstairs again to find Sylvia, asleep in her usual pose. He ran a finger down her spine, addicted to the silkiness of her skin. She woke, turned over and gave him a kiss and a tentative smile.

  ‘You should go down south,’ he told her. ‘Keep a distance from London for a bit. See how things pan out there. Work on that beautiful suntan of yours.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind going back down south,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what Sol has to say about the pipeline. It’s still early, isn’t it? We don’t have to get up yet.’

  Louis kicked the door of the storage room open at St Anne’s Court, arms full of another set of litigation files for storage. Galland stalked in ahead of him, tail held high. He stopped suddenly, nearly tripping over the cat. The room, which was normally a complete tip, was empty. He had left the floor covered in files last time. Where the buggering hell were they?

  ‘What files?’ Juncker was maddeningly vague.

  ‘You know full well.’

  ‘Oh, those files,’ Juncker said. ‘I’ve stored them elsewhere for safe keeping, after Mr Cumberland’s terrible accident. I’m sure that’s all it was. All the same, you can’t be too careful.’

  ‘So where are they now?’ asked Louis.

  The tailor shrugged. He was indifferent, or presented himself thus. It was easier, a means of hiding himself in plain sight. Louis bent down and tickled Galland under the chin, being a polite man. Then he launched himself from his haunches and, with a twist of his waist, hit Juncker first with a right and then with a left for good measure.

  ‘Those files matter. Mr Cumberland was in trouble.’

  Juncker dabbed at his lip. It was split and raw. His glasses were askew. His hair was ruffled. He had a pistol in his work table drawer but Louis was standing in front of the table and Juncker did not relish the idea of hanging from a rope. With all the dignity he could muster, he gestured towards a cupboard.

  ‘In there,’ he said. He toyed briefly with the idea of asking Louis for more money but decided against it. Louis wa
s already looking inside the cupboard. The confidential files were stacked neatly on top of the others, with the two empty cases on top. Louis turned.

  ‘I take it you’ve had a good look inside the files.’

  ‘Me?’ asked Juncker. ‘I’m the soul of discretion.’

  Louis did not trust him for one moment. The files did all seem to be present and correct, but he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them now. They needed to be handed over to the Israeli authorities, and fast. He hoped Sylvia would get in touch soon. He loaded them into George’s cases and, taking an icy leave of Juncker, walked down St Anne’s Court to hail a taxi. Juncker waited until Louis was around the corner and then shot off in the opposite direction, to the nearest telephone box, Galland leading the way.

  Upstairs in the demeure, Gunn woke and stretched, disentangling himself from Sylvia. She was beautifully warm. She had asked him to show her another of the courtesan’s tricks earlier. They had both particularly enjoyed that one. There were plenty more of them. Bugger. It was twenty past nine.

  ‘Time to go downstairs and see Sol, sweetheart,’ he said gently.

  He watched the expressions flitting across her face; sheer happiness to total dismay to careful professionalism in seconds. She lay across the bed for a moment, watching him shave, drinking in every second.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Let’s face the music.’

  In a rather grubby telephone box in Soho, Juncker fished in his capacious wallet for coins of a realm he did not care for. He was becoming more indignant by the minute. He was finally connected and spoke briefly and succinctly, like a soldier making a field report, not a rather vague tailor acting as staff to an eccentric cat. He noted his instructions and returned to the shop. He divested himself of his glasses, shaved off his whiskers and soon, sharply dressed and leaving Galland to mind the shop, locked up. With a Walter PPK with the serial number chiselled out under his jacket. He was under orders to retrieve the files and take no prisoners.