World War 2 Thriller Collection

by Len Deighton

  ‘And perhaps that’s the way Champion hopes they will reason.’

  Schlegel sucked his teeth in a gesture that was as near as he ever came to admiration. ‘You have your lucid moments, fella. For a Brit, I mean.’ He nodded. ‘You mean he might have two contacts here.’

  ‘Champion was brought up on second network techniques.’

  ‘Well, you should know. You were with him, weren’t you.’ He walked over to the plastic flowers, took one and snapped its petals off one by one, tossing them into an ashtray. ‘There are still some questions, though.’ He looked down at the broken pieces of plastic that remained in his hand and dropped them as if they were red hot. ‘I’m trying to give up smoking,’ he said. ‘It’s tough!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Schlegel pulled a face, trying not to sneeze; sneezed, and then wiped his nose carefully. He went over to the radiator to see if the heat was on. It wasn’t. ‘You want to give me one of those aspirins? I think maybe I’m getting your virus.’

  I gave him two tablets. He swallowed them.

  He said, ‘Champion has been made a colonel in the Egyptian Army.’

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘It’s not promulgated, or even distributed, but it’s official all right. You know how these army chiefs like to get their claws into promising sources.’

  I nodded. The army would want to get the allegiance of a man like Champion, rather than let his reports go back to the politicians. Giving him a colonelcy was a simple way of doing it.

  ‘A colonel of the propaganda division, with effect from January the tenth.’ Schlegel folded his handkerchief into a ball and pummelled his nose with it, as if trying to suppress another sneeze. ‘Propaganda division! You think that could be on the level? You think this could all be a propaganda exercise?’

  ‘Propaganda? A sell so soft that it’s secret, you mean?’ I asked sarcastically.

  ‘He’s not through yet,’ said Schlegel, with some foreboding.

  ‘That’s true,’ I said.

  ‘You’d better move,’ said Schlegel. ‘I know Champion likes you back there in time to dress for dinner.’

  ‘You’re a sarcastic bastard, Colonel.’

  ‘Well, I’m too old to change my ways now,’ he said.

  There was a tiny mark on Schlegel’s face, where I had punched him in the fracas at Waterloo Station. ‘That other business …’ I said.

  ‘My Waterloo,’ said Schlegel. He smiled his lopsided smile, and explained, ‘That was Dawlish’s joke.’

  ‘It wasn’t like me,’ I said apologetically.

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ said Schlegel. ‘Dawlish said it was exactly like you.’

  16

  ‘So this is the south of France?’ I said, as the servant took my coat. Champion leaned forward in his big wing armchair, and reached for a log. He placed it upon the fire before looking up at me. The logs were perfect cylinders cut from young trees, a degree of calculation that extended to everything in the house. The three matching antique corner cupboards, with their japanned decoration, fitted exactly to the space outside the carpet, and the colours harmonized with the painting over the fireplace and with the envelope card table. It was the sort of home you got from giving an interior decorator a blank cheque. After a lifetime of bedsitters and chaotic flats I found the calculated effect disconcerting. Champion had the whisky decanter within arm’s reach. That morning it had been full. Now it was almost empty.

  Billy was full-length on the floor, drawing monsters in his animal book. He got to his feet and advanced upon me with an accusing finger.

  ‘The fishes can’t hear when you call them.’

  ‘Can’t they?’ I said.

  ‘No, because they have no ears. I spent hours and hours today, calling to the fishes, but Nanny says they can’t hear.’

  ‘So why do they follow me?’

  ‘My nurse says you must have thrown bread into the pond.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t tell her I did, because she gets angry if I don’t eat all my bread.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Billy wistfully. ‘I won’t tell her, you needn’t worry.’

  Champion was watching the exchange. He said, ‘You’ll give him a complex.’

  ‘What’s a complex?’ Billy said.

  ‘Never mind what it is,’ said Champion. ‘You go with Nurse now, and I’ll come up and say goodnight.’

  Billy looked at me, and then at his father, and back to me again. ‘I’d like a complex,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry, Billy,’ I said. ‘I know a man who can get them wholesale.’

  There was a discreet tap at the door. Topaz entered. She wore a white apron. Her face had no make-up, and her blonde hair was drawn tight into a chignon high on the back of her head. I knew it was what she always wore when giving Billy his bath but it made her look like some impossibly beautiful nurse from one of those hospital films.

  She nodded deferentially to Champion, and smiled at me. It was the same warm friendly smile that she gave me whenever we saw each other about the house, but she had not visited my room since that first night together.

  Love has been defined as ‘a desire to be desired’. Well, I’d been in love enough times to think it unlikely that I was falling in love with Topaz. And yet I knew that curious mixture of passion and pity that is the essence of love. And, in spite of myself, I was jealous of some unknown man who might deprive her of this exasperating composure.

  I looked at Champion and then I looked back to her, always watchful for a hint of their relationship. But the secret smile she gave me was more like the rapport two sober people share in the presence of a drunken friend.

  ‘Come along, Billy,’ she said. But Billy did not go to her; he came to me and put his arms round me and buried his head.

  I crouched down to bring our faces level. Billy whispered, ‘Don’t worry, Uncle Charlie, I won’t tell her about the bread.’

  When Billy had finally said goodnight and departed, Champion walked round to the table beside the sofa. He opened the document case I’d brought from Valmy, and flicked his way through it with superficial interest. ‘Crap,’ he said. ‘The same old crap. I’ll look at it later. No need to lock it away upstairs.’

  ‘Does Gus know that it’s crap?’ I said.

  ‘It makes him feel he’s part of the class struggle,’ said Champion.

  ‘He won’t feel like that if he gets ten years for stealing secrets.’

  ‘Then you don’t know him,’ said Champion. ‘I fancy that’s his most cherished dream.’

  ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘She’s doing that bloody tripes à la mode again.’

  ‘I like that.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ said Champion. ‘Don’t you ever think about anything but food? How about a drink?’

  ‘You do that journey up the road to Valmy three times a week, in that little Fiat, and maybe you’ll start thinking about it, too.’ I waved away the decanter he offered.

  ‘All right. You think it’s a waste of time seeing Gus. But we’ll need Gus soon – really need him – and I don’t want him getting a sudden crisis of conscience then.’

  ‘This is just to implicate him?’

  ‘No, no, no. But I don’t want him picking and choosing. I want a regular channel out of that place. I’ll sort it out when it gets here.’

  ‘Dangerous way of buying crap,’ I said.

  ‘For you, you mean?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head. If they are going to clamp down, I’ll hear about it. I’ll hear about it before the commandant.’ He gave me a big self-congratulatory smile. I’d never seen him really drunk before, or perhaps until now I’d not known what to look out for.

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ I said, but the sarcasm didn’t register upon him.

  He said, ‘You should have seen Billy this afternoon. Ever seen those toy trains the Germans do? They sent a man
from the factory to set it up: goods wagons, diesels, restaurant cars and locomotives – it goes right around the room. Locomotives no bigger than your hand, but the detail is fantastic. We kept it a secret – you should have seen Billy’s face.’

  ‘He wants his mother, Steve. And he needs her! Servants and tailored clothes and model trains – he doesn’t give a damn about any of that.’

  Steve furrowed his brow. ‘I’m only doing it for the boy,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  He drained his Scotch. ‘He wants his mother,’ he repeated disgustedly. ‘Whose damn side are you on?’

  ‘Billy’s,’ I said.

  He got to his feet with only the slightest hint of unsteadiness, but when he pointed at me his hand shook. ‘You keep your lousy opinions to yourself.’ To moderate the rebuke, Champion smiled. But it wasn’t much of a smile. ‘For God’s sake, Charlie. She gets me down. Another letter from her lawyers today … they accuse me of kidnapping Billy.’

  ‘But isn’t that what you did?’

  ‘Damn right! And she’s got two ways of getting Billy back – lawyers or physical force. Well, she’ll find out that I can afford more lawyers than she can, and as for physical force, she’d have to fight her way through my army to get here.’ He smiled a bigger smile.

  ‘He wants his mother, Steve. How can you be so blind?’

  ‘Just do as you’re told and keep your nose clean.’

  ‘Tripes à la mode, eh,’ I said. ‘I like the way she does that. She puts calves’ stomach and ox-foot in it, that’s what makes the gravy so thick.’

  ‘Do you want to make me sick!’ said Champion. ‘I think I shall have a mushroom omelette.’ He walked round the sofa and opened the document case. He shuffled through the Xerox copies that Gus had made at considerable risk. This second look at them confirmed his opinion. He tossed them back into the case with a contemptuous Gallic ‘Pooof!’ and poured the last of the Scotch into his glass.

  I was surprised to find how much his contempt annoyed me. Whatever Champion felt about my fears, and Gus’s motives, we deserved more for our pains than that.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She puts those garlic croutons into the omelettes. Perhaps I’ll have one of those as a starter.’

  17

  Thursday was a free day for me. I spent it in Nice. That morning I walked slowly through the market, smelling the vegetables, fruit and flowers. I ate an early peach, and put a blue cornflower in my buttonhole. From the market it was only a stone’s throw to Serge Frankel’s apartment. He was not surprised to see me.

  ‘We’ll have coffee,’ he said. He ushered me into the study. It was in the usual state of chaos. Valuable stamps were scattered across his desk, and there were piles of the old envelopes that I had learned to call ‘covers’. Catalogues, their pages tagged with coloured slips of paper, were piled high on a chair, and some were placed open, one upon the other, alongside the notebooks on his desk.

  ‘I’m disturbing you.’

  ‘Not at all, my boy. I’m glad of a break from work.’

  I looked round the room, carefully and systematically. I tried to be discreet about it but there could be no doubt that Serge Frankel knew what I was doing. He waited for me to speak. I said, ‘Aren’t you frightened of burglars, Serge? This stuff must be worth a fortune.’

  He picked up some creased stamps that he’d lined up under the big magnifier. Using tweezers, he put them into a clear paper packet and placed a small weight upon them. ‘This is only a small percentage of what I have. A dealer has to keep his stock circulating to prospective customers.’ He plugged the coffee-pot into a wall socket. ‘I can give you cream today. It will make up for last time.’

  ‘Is Steve Champion still buying?’ I said.

  The telephone rang before Frankel could answer my question. He answered the call, ‘Serge Frankel,’ and then before the caller could get launched into a long conversation, he said, ‘I have someone with me at present, and we are talking business.’ He watched the coffee-pot and interjected a few laconic and noncommittal words and a farewell. The coffee-pot was bubbling by the time he rang off. ‘A stamp dealer faces a thousand problems,’ he said. ‘One or two of them are philatelic but at least nine hundred and ninety are simply human nature.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘This woman, for instance,’ he made fastidious movements with his fingers to indicate the telephone. ‘Her husband died last month … a decent sort: a printer … well, you can hardly respond to his death by asking her if she wants to sell her husband’s stamp collection.’

  I nodded.

  ‘And now,’ said Frankel, ‘she’s phoning to explain that a Paris dealer called in to see them, was shocked to hear that her husband had died, offered to advise her on the sale, and wound up buying the whole eighteen albums for five thousand francs.’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘About one quarter of what I would have given her for it. She thinks she’s got a wonderful deal because her husband would never admit how much he was spending on stamps each month … guilty feelings, you see.’

  ‘You get a lot of that?’

  ‘Usually the other way about: the husband with a mistress and an apartment in the Victor Hugo to pay for. Such men tell their wives that they are spending the money on stamps. When that sort die, they leave me with the unenviable task of explaining to the widow that the stamp collection that she thought was going to pay off the mortgage, give her a world cruise and put their sons through college, is just a lot of “labels” that I don’t even want to buy.’

  ‘Those collections you are offered.’

  ‘Yes, dealers from Paris don’t just happen by when there’s a death in that sort of family. Worse, the widows so often suspect that I’ve been through the albums and stolen all the really valuable items.’

  ‘A stamp dealer’s life is tough,’ I said.

  ‘It’s like being Cassius Clay,’ he said. ‘I thump this desk and proclaim that I’ll take on all comers. You could walk through that door, and for all I know you might be the greatest authority on Ballons-Montes or the stamps of the Second Empire or – worse still – telegraph stamps or tax stamps. Everyone wants an instant valuation and payment in cash. I’ve got to be able to buy and sell from experts like that, and make a profit. It’s not easy, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Do you ever sell to Champion?’ I asked.

  ‘Last year I did. I had three very rare French covers. It was mail sent by a catapulted aeroplane from the liner Ile de France in 1928. It was the first such experiment. They ran out of stamps so that they overprinted the surcharge on other stamps. On these the surcharge was inverted … It’s all nonsense, isn’t it?’ He smiled.

  ‘Evidently not to Champion. What did he pay?’

  ‘I forget now. Twenty thousand francs or more.’

  ‘A lot of money, Serge.’

  ‘Champion has one of the top ten airmail collections in Europe: Zeppelins, French airships, balloon mail and pioneer flights. He likes the drama of it. He doesn’t have the right sort of scholarship for the classic stamps. And anyway, he’s a crook. He likes to have the sort of collection he can run with, and unload quickly. A man like Champion always has a bag packed and a blank airline ticket in his pocket. He was always a crook, you know that!’

  I didn’t follow Serge Frankel’s reasoning. It would seem to my non-philatelic mind that a mobile crook would prefer classic stamps of enormous price. And then he’d never need to pack his bag. He could carry his fortune in his wallet everywhere he went. ‘You didn’t tell him he was a crook in the old days,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Didn’t say that when he ambushed the prison van and set me free, you mean. Well, I didn’t know him in those days.’ He drank the rest of his cup of coffee. ‘I just thought I did.’

  He brought the pot and poured more for both of us. He spooned some whipped cream on to the top of his strong coffee and then rapped the spoon against the edge of the cream jug to shake the remains off. The force of
the gesture revealed his feelings. ‘Yes, well, perhaps you’re right,’ he admitted. ‘I must give the devil his due. He saved my life. I would never have lasted the war in a concentration camp, and that’s where the rest of them ended up.’

  ‘What’s he up to, Serge?’

  ‘You’re out there in the big house with him, aren’t you?’

  ‘But I don’t know what he’s up to, just the same.’

  ‘This oil business,’ said Serge. ‘It will change the lives of all of us.’ He picked up the jug, and in a different voice said, ‘Have some cream in your coffee?’

  I shook my head. I would not provide him with another chance to move away from the matter in hand.

  ‘I’m not a Communist any more,’ he said. ‘You realize that, I suppose.’

  ‘I’d detected some disenchantment,’ I said.

  ‘Did the czars ever dream of such imperialism? Did the Jew-baiters dream of such support? The Russians have us all on the run, Charles, my boy. They urge the Arabs to deny us oil, they pass guns and bombs and rocket launchers to any group of madmen who will burn and maim and blow up the airports and hijack the planes. They brief the trade unionists to lock up the docks, halt the trains and silence the factories.’

  I reached for my coffee and drank some.

  ‘Makes your throat dry, does it?’ he said. ‘And well it might. Do you realize what’s happening? In effect we’ll see a movement of wealth to the Arab countries comparable to the movement of wealth from India to Britain in the eighteenth century. And that generated the Industrial Revolution! The USSR has now become the biggest exporter of armaments in the world. Algeria, Sudan, Morocco, Egypt, Libya – I won’t bother you with the list of non-Arab customers – are buying Soviet arms as fast as they can spend. You’re asking me if I help the Israelis! Helping the Israelis might be the West’s only chance to survive.’

  ‘And where does Champion fit into this picture?’

  ‘A good question. Where indeed! Why should the Arabs bother with a cheap tout like Champion, when all the world’s salesmen are falling over each other to sell them anything their hearts desire?’