by Len Deighton
‘He’s asleep,’ she said. She looked at me as if still not believing I was real.
‘I’m glad you kept the teapot, Pina.’
‘I’ve come close to throwing it over the balcony,’ she said tonelessly. She went over to the cabinet and looked at it. Then she picked up the photo of her late husband and sons and put it down again.
‘I should have come here and talked to you,’ I said. ‘Every day I planned to, but each time I put it off. I don’t know why.’ But really I did know why: it was because I knew such a conversation would probably end with Pina going into custody.
‘A husband and two fine boys,’ she snapped her fingers. ‘Gone like that!’ She pouted her lips. ‘And what of the kid who threw the bomb. Someone said he was no more than fifteen years old. Where is he now, living there, in Algiers, with a wife and two kids?’
‘Don’t torture yourself, Pina.’
She took Billy’s coat and mine from a chair, and with the curious automatic movements that motherhood bestows she straightened them, buttoned them and hung them in a closet. Then she busied herself arranging the cups and saucers and the small plates and silver forks. I said nothing. When she had finally arranged the last coffee spoon, she looked up and smiled ruefully. ‘The war,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel so old, Charlie.’
‘Is that why?’ I said.
‘Is that why what?’
‘Is that why you tried to kill Champion today, and damned near killed me and the kid as well?’
‘We didn’t even know Billy was in France.’
‘So it was Champion’s fault,’ I said bitterly.
‘Did you recognize me?’ she asked.
‘Billy did.’
‘We came back,’ she said. ‘You were on your feet, and Billy was all right. So we didn’t stop.’
‘You and old Ercole’s grandson,’ I said. ‘Bonnie and Clyde, eh?’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid, Charlie.’
‘What, then?’
‘Someone’s got to stop Champion, Charlie.’
‘But why you? And why Ercole’s grandson?’ But I didn’t have to ask. I’d heard Ercole’s stories about the war and the glorious part he’d played in the liberation of France. Who could miss the citation, and the photographs, so beautifully framed and well displayed near the lights ostensibly directed at the Renoir reproduction?
I put more sugar into the cocoa.
‘I said you’d guess,’ said Pina. ‘He sounded you out about the football match, to make sure you wouldn’t be in the car at the time. But I said you’d guess.’
‘It will be a fifteen-year stretch,’ I said. ‘The driver’s dead, do you know that?’
‘We talked about it,’ said Pina. She took her coffee and drank some. ‘But finally we decided that we’d go ahead, even with you in the car, we’d go ahead.’
‘So I noticed,’ I said. I drank some cocoa and then I sniffed at it.
‘It’s only cocoa, Charlie,’ she said.
I drank it. ‘And did you decide to go ahead even if Billy was in the car?’
‘Oh, my God, Charlie. What have we come to?’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Will you forgive me, Charlie? We didn’t see Billy. You must believe me. You must!’
‘I believe you, Pina.’
She reached out and clung tightly to me, but there was no passion, just that terrible wail of despair with which survivors lament being left alone.
‘Take Billy to his mother, Pina.’
She nodded, but her face was contorted with grief and she soon began to cry again. I put my arms round her, and tried to steady her as the sobs racked her frail body. I felt the hot tears on my cheek and I caressed her back as a mother might calm a fractious child.
‘I’ll phone my people right now. I might be able to arrange a plane immediately. In any case, you mustn’t stay here.’
She stopped crying, and looked at me. ‘Serge Frankel said you were an important man.’
‘Go to Caty, in Wales. Stay, until I tell you it’s safe to return.’
She gripped my arm to tell me that she understood. I pulled myself away from her and stood up. She huddled in the corner of the sofa and sobbed into her hands. I remembered the tomboy who had never shed a tear, not even when the Germans took her mother away. Pina had a lot of crying to catch up with. Or perhaps she was crying for all of us.
24
I was too late. We were all too late. If you are trying to do a totalitarian job within the permitted limits of a free society, you are always too late. The vegetable market, that after dark is as deserted as anywhere in the city, had become a copper’s carnival.
Where the vegetable stalls usually stood, there were the shiny black police cars of the Divisional Superintendent, the police doctor and the examining magistrate. Parked tight to the pavement there was an ambulance and the Criminal Records van.
The entrance to Serge Frankel’s apartment block was rigged with lights, and guarded by two policemen, their pinched faces blue with cold.
‘Everybody wants to get into the act!’ It was Claude.
He nodded to the guards and I was permitted inside. ‘It looks that way,’ I said.
There was a cop on each landing, and the residents stood about in pyjamas and dressing-gowns as plainclothes men searched through every room. But when we got to Serge Frankel’s study there was hardly room to move.
Frankel was spreadeagled across the threadbare carpet, one thin arm extended to the wing armchair in which I’d sat that day in 1940. There were enough valuable stamps and covers scattered around the room to make some casual observers believe that it had been robbery with violence. Claude did not look directly at Frankel. He found excuses to look at other things in the room, and to examine the stamps and covers on the desk, as the policeman entered them into the evidence book. ‘It was clean and quick,’ said Claude.
I picked up the sheet. ‘Through and through wound,’ I read aloud. ‘Grease collar on the entry side …’
‘He was a big man in the ’thirties,’ said Claude. ‘He brought a lot of people out of Germany in ’thirty-three and ’thirty-four. He helped the Princess escape, did you know that?’
I looked at him. Claude was taking the old man’s death very badly. Very badly for a professional, that is. I realized that my suspicions about Claude’s intentions were unfounded: he simply liked the old man.
‘He was never bitter,’ said Claude. ‘Never suspicious.’
‘This time, he wasn’t suspicious enough,’ I said. ‘No break-in. He must have opened the door for whoever did it.’
Claude nodded.
Dawn was breaking, chiselling the horizon open like a blue steel oyster knife. The first of the market-men were throwing boxes of vegetables about, with all the noisy glee of men who are early risers.
‘Schlegel said that you would know what to do,’ said Claude.
‘Here?’
Claude looked towards the Divisional Super, who was near enough to be listening to what we said. The policeman nodded, and looked at me. ‘Schlegel said you know more than any of us.’
‘God help us, then,’ I said.
A plainclothes officer was outlining the position of Frankel’s body in white chalk upon the carpet. As he finished and stepped aside, a photographer did the necessary three-shot set. Then two men in white coats put Frankel on to a stretcher, tied a label to his wrist, and carried his body away.
‘The end of an era,’ said Claude.
‘Only for us, Claude,’ I said. ‘For these boys it’s just another night of overtime.’
‘It’s shaken you, too, hasn’t it?’ said Claude.
‘No,’ I said.
‘They should never have sent us,’ said Claude.
Well, perhaps Claude was right, but as soon as the ambulance men had removed Serge Frankel’s body I took hold of the situation. ‘Three of your men,’ I told the Divisional Super. ‘Get all the rest of them out of here. Three of your best detectives must go through all this stuff, piece by
piece.’
‘Looking for what?’ said Claude. ‘A piece of paper?’
‘This man Frankel had some sort of inside line to the Champion household. By some kind of alchemy this arthritic old man sat up here in this apartment, plotting and planning everything from murder to geopolitics. Until yesterday I thought his contact was Champion’s English nanny, but now I’m sure it wasn’t her.’ I turned to look at the amazing chaos of the study: thousands of books, thousands of covers, countless stamps and a muddle of bric-à-brac. ‘Somewhere here something will tell us who, what, why and where Frankel’s contact was.’ I sighed. ‘No, I don’t know if it will be a piece of paper.’
A plainclothes officer stood behind Frankel’s desk, putting keys and money and personal papers into separate plastic bags and labelling each one with the same number that was registered in the evidence book. ‘Stop him doing that,’ I said. ‘We’ll need those keys: I want to open these drawers and boxes and filing cabinets.’
The Divisional Superintendent gave the necessary orders, until the room was almost empty. His chosen detectives took a handful of keys and began to work methodically.
‘What’s the latest on the big trucks?’ I asked Claude.
Claude straightened the shoulder strap of his impeccable white trenchcoat, coughed and said apologetically, ‘We can hardly put out an all-stations alert, can we?’
‘It might look that way now,’ I said. ‘But if it all fouls up, you’ll have lots of little men in pin-stripe trousers explaining exactly why you could have.’
‘Five trucks,’ said Claude. ‘Still all together, and following the expected route to Bonn. At first light, the traffic helicopters will take a look at them.’
I didn’t answer.
Claude said, ‘You’re blown, Charlie. You’re not going to get back into Champion’s set-up again. The whole thing is blown wide open. Schlegel sent you across to investigate Frankel’s death. It’s absurd to go on pretending you are just a bystander.’
‘You’re right, Claude,’ I said.
‘Your request about the plane for Pina Baroni and the Champion child came to me,’ explained Claude. ‘I got permission to use the plane belonging to our ambassador in Paris. So I know all the details.’
‘Schlegel talks too much,’ I said.
‘You’re wrong,’ said Claude. ‘Colonel Schlegel is brighter than you. He knows that he can get more cooperation from people who know what is happening.’
One of the detectives had found the key to the big safe behind the door. It looked like a rusty old refrigerator and was about as invulnerable.
‘You think this Algerian secretary has taken control?’ said Claude.
‘How do we know he is Algerian? He might be an Egyptian – a nuclear physicist, a general or an executioner. If I hadn’t been in that shoot-up on the autoroute, I’d even be suspecting that that was another of Champion’s tricks.’
‘He’s got us all like that,’ said Claude. ‘But perhaps Champion’s ultimate trick is simply to pull no tricks.’
We both turned to see the two detectives hammering the handle of the gigantic safe. With one final heave they wrenched the door open.
Just for one moment, I thought he was still alive. He was sitting inside, cross-legged, on some dented cash-boxes, with box-files resting on his shoulders. Then, very slowly, Gus tilted forward, and crashed on to the carpet, in an avalanche of stamps and covers. He had not yet stiffened, and, under the weight of his body, his arms and legs reached out, so that he seemed to be trying to crawl out from under the debris.
‘Gus!’ I exclaimed loudly. ‘The Spanish Civil War – the International Brigade. Why the devil didn’t I think of those two getting together.’
‘Someone murdered both,’ said Claude. It was a guess, but it was obviously the right one.
One of the detectives leaned close to look at the body. ‘Same wound as the old man,’ he said.
‘Damn, damn, damn,’ I said. ‘Every time they are a jump ahead of us.’
Claude’s Teutonic reaction was a more practical one. ‘Get the doctor and the photographers and the records people back,’ he told one of the detectives. ‘Now we start all over again.’
A uniformed policeman brought me a small green official envelope from the police station. His raincoat was shiny with rain and I had already heard the rumble of thunder. I tore open the envelope. Schlegel had sent a Telex from the CRS office at Nice airport. He wanted me there as quickly as possible.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said.
‘Schlegel is probably taking you up to talk to our Border Police in Aachen.’
‘Where the hell is that?’ I said. I knew where it was, but I was angry that Claude knew more than he told me. Perhaps that was what was wrong with all of us.
‘Nordrhein-Westfalen,’ said Claude. ‘The German frontier with Belgium and Holland. It’s a health resort.’
I waited, but Claude said nothing more. ‘Well?’ I said. ‘He’s not going up there to take a cure, is he?’
‘There was a tip-off … a shipment of guns being smuggled. Schlegel felt it might have a bearing on the Champion business.’ Claude’s face was quite impassive. It was impossible to know whether he agreed with Schlegel.
‘We have a car here,’ said the uniformed policeman, in a polite attempt to hurry me.
‘One more thing,’ said Claude.
I bowed my head and pinched my nose waiting for it.
‘It was Champion who betrayed the network. The rest of us all worked through cut-outs. Only Champion knew that Marius was collecting the radio messages from the Princess, and circulating them through the confessional.’
I looked at him for a long time before replying, wondering why he wanted to hurt me. ‘I was there at Nice railway station when Champion was arrested,’ I told him. ‘You know that Marius and the others had already been arrested about five o’clock that morning – seven hours earlier!’
Claude shook his head. There was the sound of distant thunder, and dawn was making the windows red enough to see the dabs of rain hitting the glass. When Claude spoke, it was in the dull monotone of a speak-your-weight-machine. ‘That was part of the deal. We arrested Champion the previous morning. It was part of the deal that we would let him come down on the train, so that you would see him being arrested.’
‘The departmental inquiry after the war. Your people cleared him.’
‘We all lied. We thought it would be clever to have a hold over a man like Champion. But it was never of any use.’ He sighed as though his life had been filled with brilliant ideas for blackmail that he’d found no chance of using.
‘Why tell me now?’ I asked. ‘After all this time. Why tell me now?’ It was all happening as I knew it would if I came back here to find the remembered magic: I was stumbling over broken wires, bent pulleys and jammed trapdoors, left over from a bungled stage conjuring act.
‘You’ve been assuming that Champion is some kind of entrepreneur. He might be the victim of blackmail.’
‘I’ll write it into the report,’ I promised. ‘Meanwhile, dig out something on that old bastard Santa Claus. Why do the poor kids get the paper-hats, and the rich kids get the ponies?’
‘Have a good time in Germany,’ said Claude. I heard the thunder again. Or was it some old man in the wings, shaking a sheet of tin?
25
Monday morning: Germany: the helicopter touched down on the rain-soaked earth, and lurched slightly as it settled into the mud. I opened the Plexiglas door, and jumped down, landing with a loud squelch. Schlegel jumped out too, and the mud spattered over my trouser-legs. ‘So Champion was taken away by force?’ asked Schlegel. He squinted through the driving rain to the far side of the clearing, where a group of foresters conferred beside a fallen fir tree.
I didn’t answer. Schlegel asked me again. It was one of those examination questions; any square you tick loses you marks.
‘Billy went into the garden and hid,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine Champion moving
off, and leaving his boy there.’
‘I’m glad to hear that some of it’s not going according to plan,’ said Schlegel, with uncharacteristic low spirits.
‘I just can’t decide whether the death of Gus, and Serge Frankel, was part of the plan – or a reckless way of dealing with an emergency,’ I said. ‘If we knew that, it might all fall into place.’
Schlegel sighed, wiped his face and nodded, all at the same time. Behind us I heard the helicopter blades chug to a halt. ‘Come along,’ he said. For a moment or two there was no sound except the squelch of our shoes, and the splash of rain running off the firs that made this path as green and gloomy as the ocean deeps. But then the first axe fell, and the chopping continued like the beating of a heart.
‘We should have put a transponder into Champion’s cars,’ grumbled Schlegel.
‘Yes, we should have,’ I said. It was like wishing that Champion was sporting enough to leave a trail of paper.
We came off the pathway on to the road, stepping along a wooden duckboard to cross a drainage ditch. On the road three cars and a small van were parked askew to improvise a roadblock. The cars had the insignia of the state police, but the van belonged to the Border Police, a force with federal authority. There was no way of recognizing which men were which, for they were all wearing the same wet raincoats and sou’westers. They had adopted the relaxed and patient attitudes with which outdoor workers endure steady rain. One of the men detached himself from the group and hurried towards us.
He was an elderly man, and under the collar of his oilskin I saw the badges of a captain. He saluted gravely. ‘We’re holding them in the truck.’ He spoke good English, with just a trace of an accent. ‘They’ll admit nothing.’
‘While you get wet!’ said Schlegel. ‘Bring the little creeps out, and let them get rained on.’
