The War in the Dark

by Nick Setchfield

  He had left England two days ago: slipped away from Folkestone on that awful Tuesday. Faulkner had ordered him to take a leave of duty, of course, so his absence from the Broadway office would be less obvious than it might have been. But he suspected he was under watch. Whoever had killed Malcolm, whoever Joyce had been working for – and he was already entertaining some troubling possibilities in that regard – had to be keeping tabs on him.

  For the moment he was severing all trust. He would operate alone. He couldn’t trust the chain of command now. Something was compromised back home.

  The radio was on, playing a buoyant waltz that didn’t match his mood. He clicked it into silence and reached for his jacket, removing the calfskin wallet from the inner pocket. Inside, nestled among banknotes and tobacco coupons, was a small black-and-white photo of him and Joyce. He had been looking at it a lot. They were together on the front at St Ives, smiling in a rare British summer that hadn’t broken its promise. August ’57? ’58? He should know. Damn it all. He should know.

  He traced the familiar lines of his wife’s face, touched her smile, tried to exorcise the image of that bloodied body on the bathroom floor.

  Why was he doing this? To persuade himself that their time together hadn’t entirely been a lie?

  He imagined her death might have made his memories sharper, more acute. It seemed to have had the opposite effect. All those shared days felt gauzy now, like fiction. He fought to remember the way they met, the kiss stolen in the arcade by Bentley’s Shoes, their first, earnest lovemaking in that quiet bungalow on the Kent coast. None of it felt real now. It was as if he’d read it all in someone else’s diary or seen it blown up on the big screen at the Gaumont. But if they were all lies, every moment, he had nothing. Was that worse?

  He came close to crumpling the picture in his fist but he returned it to the wallet, sliding it neatly into the leather fold. Turning off the lamp, he prised himself from the bed and walked over to the room’s lone window. It was evening now, and autumn dark.

  Winter opened the curtain half an inch. Positioning himself in the shadow of the wardrobe he scrutinised the street. A couple passed by below, chattering brightly, a Pinscher on a lead. He watched an old lady cross the road, as regal as a Habsburg palace. And he saw a man – middling build, fair hair, early forties – standing by a tram shelter with the practised blankness of someone who really didn’t want to be seen.

  Winter focused tightly on the man, and wondered. If he approached him, if he walked into the street and confronted him, would that face blur and shift and rearrange? It wouldn’t surprise him at all.

  He took his gun from the holster, feeling its weight in his hand. Releasing the safety catch he levelled it at the window, aligning it with the gap in the curtains. His left eye tightened, expertly. He locked the other eye on the man below.

  Not so invisible now, are you? thought Winter.

  He saw the tremor in his fingers. It was minimal, almost imperceptible, but it was there. A quivering in the bones that nudged the gun a fraction of an inch from its target. He knew why, too. This was the gun that had killed Joyce.

  He lowered the Webley, grudgingly reset the safety catch and flung the weapon to the bed. At that moment, as if by some extra sense, the man on the street looked up, his eyeline fixed on the darkened hotel window. Seconds passed. The man’s gaze held. It seemed to probe the glass and the shadows that lay behind it. If he glimpsed Winter he didn’t show it. His features stayed bland, expressionless.

  And then, quite calmly, the man began to walk away. A car slid by, and then another, slow and obscuring, and soon there was no trace of the figure on the street.

  Winter stood by the window for some time, watching the electric flash of the tramlines, their voltage sparking in the October darkness.

  * * *

  He rose early the next day, shaking away an ugly dream in which he had repeatedly put the gun to his mouth and shot off his own face. Each time he did so his features re-formed, unchanged, but his eyes filled with fragments of shrapnel until they were blind with the accumulated metal. Winter rarely dreamed. Sometimes he felt profoundly grateful for that.

  Leaving the hotel at nine he found a coffee house in the Stephansdom Quarter. It was shabby and tobacco-stained but pricelessly quiet. He took a table close to the door, ordered a Konsul – ink-black with a whirl of cream – and looked out at the morning with its fitful drizzle. A grease-smeared bay window gave him a good view of the Stephansplatz, the main square dominated by the Gothic hulk of the cathedral. A keen crowd of tourists had already formed and were arming their cameras with flashbulbs against the morning murk.

  The coffee arrived. It had a bitter kick. He felt a brief, homesick pang for Lyons Green Label Tea. He sipped it again and took his wallet from his jacket. No, he wouldn’t look at the picture of Joyce, not today.

  Outside the window a flashbulb flared, bright in the grey morning.

  Winter opened the wallet and slid out a thin rectangular object. It was a business card, thin and pale blue, stamped with the words EMIL HARZNER, HARZNER PLASTICS. The address it declared in tiny embossed letters was on a street nearby. He rubbed the card between his thumb and forefinger, stroking the words like Braille. It had a wealthy, superior feel to it. Harzner had money, and cared that you knew it.

  Another flashbulb popped. This time there was laughter outside.

  Malcolm had left this card for him. It had been waiting in the spiked cylinder at the dead drop in Matilda Park. As leads went, it was pretty unambiguous, but Winter still had no idea who Harzner was, or his connection to the events of the last few days. Clearly he was the man in Vienna, the one Costigan had been trading with. But how did he fit into the bigger picture? Winter stared at the card. If he hadn’t left England so quickly he could have done some digging at the Boneyard, the dusty but scrupulously indexed kingdom of files in the bowels under Broadway. The place where manila came to die.

  Again, a flashbulb. This time Winter glanced out of the window, taking care to tilt his gaze but not his body. The flash had been close. He suspected someone was photographing him, no doubt some bored security grunt assigned to document his presence in Vienna. It was all about keeping tabs, knowing movements. A camera was as crucial as a gun in this game.

  Outside, through the smudged glass, an old man held a Box Brownie. He was gesturing at two laughing children, urging them to stand closer to the carved wooden figure in lederhosen that smiled cartoonishly outside the café next door. Winter looked beyond them. He had glimpsed a familiar figure in the square.

  The man he had seen on the street last night was standing in the doorway of a bookshop. He was perfectly motionless but his eyes were on the coffee house. Winter took the opportunity to properly appraise him. Yes, definitely early forties. Sandy, receding hair. He wore a camel coat and a ribbed pea-green fisherman’s jumper, the roll-neck collar bulging at the throat. There were no obvious signs of concealed weapons distorting the cut of his clothes.

  Winter chose to be bold. Fumbling for schillings he paid for his coffee and left the café. He stepped into the square, folding his coat collar against the drizzle that was rapidly turning to rain. He walked purposefully, though he had no real destination in mind. Stephansplatz smelt of ripe horse dung and there was the clang of morning bells, ringing out from the cathedral tower, loud and true.

  He walked past a tavern and a post office. And then he stopped, pretending to be absorbed in a spinner-rack of postcards. There were tourist-bait pictures of the Schönbrunn and the Hofburg and a portrait of St Ruprecht, patron saint of salt merchants, keeping watch over the Danube canal. The cards were tatty and bleached by the sun. Winter peered between them, gazing through the rusted wire of the rack to the square beyond.

  The man had moved. He was clearly keeping pace and now stood parallel to Winter across the street. He was as still as a bill poster, his head turned to the contents of a watchmaker’s window.

  There was a stiff rain now and people wer
e opening umbrellas. Winter crossed the square, scattering pigeons from the flagstones. They took to the air in a rattled flap. St Stephen’s Cathedral loomed over him, its single spire puncturing the sullen sky.

  There was restoration work under way on the building’s exterior. A grid of scaffolding lay against the ribbed vaulting, hugging the bays of the north wall, an ugly steel skeleton obscuring the beauty of the church. Winter saw tarpaulin mounted on a framework of wooden poles. One sheet rippled in the morning breeze, acting as a makeshift door. There was no sign of any workers.

  He pushed through the tarp, entering a dim, enclosed space filled with loose bricks and chalky rubble. Turning, he saw a stone archway behind him, a limestone sculpture of a saint mounted in the alcove above it.

  Winter examined the high, curving arch. A moment later he dug a foot into an indentation in the stonework. He gripped the groove with a gloved hand and began to haul himself up. Soon he was standing on the ridge of the apex, level with the face of the saint. He stood there, stationary, letting the minutes pass, watching the wind tug at the tarpaulin. He could hear the rain slowing as it pattered the plastic. Finally it dwindled to nothing.

  The man entered, brushing his way through the thick sheeting. His steps were tentative, cautious. Winter observed him from his vantage point, watching as the back of the man’s head tilted like a bird.

  The man assessed the empty construction site, peering into the corners.

  Winter sprang, leaping on the stranger. The sudden impact sent his pursuer sprawling to the ground, smashing his body against stone slabs.

  Fighting for breath, the man twisted around, only to find Winter’s hands closing for his throat. He blocked the grip with his fists and struck up into Winter’s jaw. Winter retaliated with a thump across the man’s teeth. There was a spray of blood.

  The two men struggled, rolling over rubble, their tussle kicking up clouds of chalk and brick dust. They fought for dominance, trading fast punches, half on their feet, half on the floor. The man slammed a balled fist into Winter’s stomach. Winter staggered back, buckling.

  There was a brick on the ground. Winter seized it, eagerly, and swung it at his opponent. The man dodged the full weight of the blow but the edge of the brick connected with his left temple, scuffing the flesh. He clasped his head in sudden, blackening pain and sunk to his knees.

  ‘Public-school prick!’ he spat.

  It was an East End voice, dry as sandpaper.

  ‘What did you say?’ demanded Winter, the brick held tight and ready in his hand.

  The man looked up, his hand pressed to his forehead, blood trickling between the knuckles. He shot Winter a distinctly venomous look.

  ‘I said you’re a public-school prick, you great galloping cock!’

  The man winced, as if the words themselves had exacerbated the wound. ‘I’m Joe Griggs,’ he said, more quietly. ‘SIS. Malcolm’s man, you bloody tool.’

  Winter’s expression was sceptical. ‘You work for Malcolm?’

  ‘Yes, mate. Do keep up.’

  ‘Why should I trust you?’

  ‘Because it’ll save a right bunch of ball-ache, won’t it?’

  Winter considered this, too. And then he reached inside his overcoat and smoothly removed his Webley. He trained the gun at the man. This time his hand did not shake.

  ‘What brand of cigarettes does Malcolm smoke?’

  Griggs snorted, blinking in bewilderment. ‘What?’

  ‘Malcolm. What cigarettes does he smoke?’ Winter kept the gun level. ‘Tell me now.’

  The man’s mouth twisted, partway between a smile and a snarl. ‘Do bugger off. How am I supposed…’

  Winter’s finger embraced the trigger. His voice was stone. ‘I won’t ask again.’

  ‘Capstans! Capstans! Bleedin’ Capstans! Christ, do you want his inside leg as well?’

  Winter lowered the pistol.

  ‘I’m Christopher Winter.’

  ‘I know,’ sighed Griggs. ‘I wasn’t labouring under the misapprehension you’re Audrey cockin’ Hepburn.’

  The two men shook hands.

  ‘Is there somewhere we could talk?’ asked Winter, eyeing the tarp for signs of approaching workmen.

  ‘Got just the place, mate.’

  Griggs hauled himself to his feet, brushing at the chalk dust that covered his camel coat. He gave a crinkled, blood-smeared grin.

  ‘So, Malcolm, then,’ he said, brightly. ‘How is the old fruit?’

  Winter holstered his Webley and met the man’s eyes. ‘We really need to talk.’

  7

  Griggs led the way, up the ramshackle staircase to the room he was renting on the fourth floor. The building stood on Blutgasse, the narrow street that ran between the Domgasse and Singerstrasse, where some of the oldest houses in Vienna crowded together, hunching above the cobbles.

  The two men reached the door at the top of the stairs. The landing was dingy, the light sparse. Griggs fished in his pocket and brought out a heavy, rusted key. He turned it in the lock. The door opened with a yowl of hinges.

  ‘Excuse the glamour.’

  It was a crate of a room, compact and cramped. Decades of cigarettes had yellowed the walls and left black whorls of ash residue on the low ceiling. The window at the far end was masked by wooden slats, allowing only a weak spill of light on the exposed floorboards. It was a practical place, a place for work. You couldn’t live here, thought Winter, just before he spotted the rumpled sleeping bag and portable gas stove in the corner. There was an abandoned copy of Parade, too, with a sulky, beehived model on the cover.

  The room was crammed with the tools of surveillance. There were tangles of multicoloured wire, large wheels of reel-to-reel recording tape. A fat pair of headphones lay on top of a chest of drawers and a squat rotary telephone sat beside them. A film camera was positioned by the window, mounted on a tripod, aimed at the street. Numerous metal canisters were propped against the wall.

  ‘I’ve got loads more out back,’ said Griggs, nodding to the film cans. ‘Got some terrific honeytrap stuff. There’s this knockout little dancer from Hamburg having it away with the Soviet agricultural minister. Soon put a smile in your trousers, know what I mean?’

  Winter ignored him. He picked up a chunky camera that had been left on a folding desk. It had a futuristic look to it.

  ‘Polaroid?’ he asked.

  ‘Colour Polaroid,’ clarified Griggs, smugly.

  ‘Whatever next,’ said Winter, turning the object in his hand. It was a weighty little thing.

  ‘Haven’t you heard, mate? It’s the age of miracles. They’ve given us cheese-and-onion crisps and all sorts.’

  Winter put the camera down and walked to the window. He peered between the wooden slats. There were tiny, dust-like gnats imprisoned behind the glass. For a moment he watched them flit uselessly, trapped between the panes. Then he focused on the street.

  Another old Viennese building faced them across the cobblestones. This one was considerably less decrepit, its pale grey façade in a superior state of repair. Its windows were shadowed and impenetrable.

  ‘So that’s Harzner’s place?’

  ‘Harzner’s main office. His factory’s just outside Graz. And he’s got a mansion in the Vienna Woods. He’s a man of property, you might say.’

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Winter, keeping his gaze on the building, though no movement could be seen behind its dark, boxy windows. ‘All I know is that he’s into plastics. Self-made man, I take it?’

  Griggs joined him by the blinds. ‘Yeah, pretty much. He emerged after the war. Lots of whispers that he’d been something rotten in Nazi high command but nothing that could be pinned to the bastard. We just don’t have the intelligence on him, frankly. KGB might do but they don’t share no more. Whoever he was, he remade himself. Came back as an industrialist in the fifties. Fancied himself as one of the big dicks of the new Germany.’

  ‘Criminal connections?’

  ‘Yeah, you could say.
He’s like a randy squid. Tentacles everywhere. We’ve linked him to European cartels in Berlin and Paris. But that’s just mob stuff.’

  The more Winter stared at the building the more convinced he became there was something odd about its windows. They refused to reflect light. It was almost as if they repelled it.

  ‘So why are you watching him? Why did Malcolm assign you?’

  Griggs gave a low whistle. ‘Now you’re asking the big questions, Eton boy. All right, then. Our man Emil Harzner is what you might call an auctioneer. What does he auction? Secrets. Whose secrets? Ours, sometimes. Which is, to say the least, a liberty.’

  ‘Who buys these secrets?’ asked Winter.

  ‘Whoever’s got the readies,’ shrugged Griggs. ‘Russians. Chinese. Yanks. Even us lot if we raid the piggybank and the finance boys don’t ask too many questions. But it’s not always money that people offer. Sometimes it’s other secrets. And he’ll trade, if he reckons he can flog them on for a decent price.’

  Winter reached inside his jacket, removing a marbled fountain pen. He snapped and twisted the barrel. Inside was a tiny sliver of microdot film, wrapped ever so carefully around the ink cartridge. It had been buried in the dead drop in Matilda Park, along with Emil Harzner’s business card.

  ‘What have you got there, mate?’

  ‘You tell me, Billingsgate boy.’

  Griggs took the fountain pen and moved to the desk. He settled into the canvas chair. Clearing some room, he tossed the headphones to the floor and reached for his microdot reader, a black cylindrical item that resembled an upright microscope. Selecting a pair of tweezers from a tray he plucked the miniscule fragment of film and slid it beneath the eye of the high-powered magnifying device.

  Griggs scrutinised its contents with the air of an expert jeweller.

  ‘Shaft me sideways.’

  ‘What’s on it?’

  ‘It’s a nasty little nerve gas formula. From the labs at Porton Down. Secret as Her Majesty’s chuff. Malcolm gave this to you? Seriously?’