World War Two Will Not Take Place

by Bill James

  By the time he had chewed all this over, he realized she might have gone out of sight in the street, or one of the side streets. He went down, anyway, and stood outside the apartment block looking for her. He could spot no long, dark, quarterdeck-style overcoat below dark hair. He realized he might appear a bit frantic, and therefore conspicuous. It was not wise to get himself or the apartment block noticed. Stephen Bilson would have roasted him for this kind of panicky, flagrant behaviour. Mount wondered whether his attempt to spot Olga and talk to her again was not much more than a token, anyway: he’d known he’d be too late.

  This pathetic mental shiftiness made him think back to his earliest days in the spy trade. At the end of training, officers were entitled to see their assessment reports. These contained three areas of appraisal: Physical, Intellectual, Psychological. He could recall some of the phrases word-perfect. His ‘Psychological Silhouette’ had said Mount liked sometimes to ‘make a show of moral concerns’ as they affected his work, but luckily this was only a show and probably wouldn’t mess up ‘his effectiveness in the Service’.

  Did they have this right – disgustingly, blazingly right?

  The silhouette had gone on to state that Mount probably was not cut out for the higher ranks in the Service because of his ‘excessive, unwise, compulsive self-questioning and enfeebling doubts’, but might be OK ‘when rigorously supervised’ at a middle or lower level. Without much relevance that Mount could see, the profile had added that he seemed ‘predominantly hetero at present (see, Physical Silhouette)’.

  Was his concern for Olga and Inge only a show? Mount recognized that too much human sympathy could be a weakness in this career; could even have a touch of absurdity about it. You didn’t join to help old ladies cross the street. And you couldn’t put the welfare of a couple of Jerry tarts before the interests of the Service, even if the present interests of the Service did seem to him woolly and too hastily picked. The Service had its eye on what was comfortingly known as ‘the greater good’. That is, the safety and continuance of the nation. These did not come as the natural, God-given state of things. They needed looking after. Only if that safety and continuance were properly guarded could pleasant qualities like human sympathy have any chance. Put more starkly, ‘the greater good’ meant the end might justify the means, and ends often did in this occupation. Only the ends came to be known about. The means usually stayed secret, especially if they were dubious or worse, and frequently they were.

  On his way back up the stairs he met a hefty middle-aged, anxious looking woman coming down, most likely from a third-floor apartment. ‘You are another one who does not trust lifts,’ she said.

  ‘I try to avoid them.’

  ‘May I ask you something?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘It is of a personal nature. That is how it could be regarded.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Pieces of a broken chair have been put in my bin and the bins of several others. Have pieces of a broken chair been put in your bin?’

  ‘I haven’t looked.’

  ‘You should look, in case pieces of a broken chair have been placed there.’

  ‘Well, I will,’ Mount said.

  ‘This is the second time pieces of a broken chair have been placed in my bin. On each occasion they are pieces from the same kind of chair. What is happening in these apartments if chairs of this type are being constantly broken and put into residents’ bins? I do not want those who empty the bins to think I am always breaking chairs of a certain type.’

  ‘Which type are they?’

  ‘Birch and metal. Laminated.’

  ‘One would have expected chairs of that sort to be strong.’

  ‘The question to be asked is, are the pieces of chair put into the bins by somebody who lives in these apartments, or does an outsider bring them?’

  ‘I should think almost certainly an outsider,’ Mount said. ‘It would be disturbing to think anyone in the building might do it. A resident should surely put the pieces in their own bin if a chair became broken.’

  ‘Or chairs. You believe someone, or more than one, would carry pieces of chair in the street and bring them to this apartment building?’

  ‘Perhaps not obviously pieces of chair. They could be wrapped. Other people carry parcels in the street after shopping, or on their way to someone with a gift, so that a wrapped piece of chair brought to the bins should not be noticeable. The bins are very accessible.’

  ‘But may I say what I believe?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘There is a furniture shop not far from here.’

  ‘Yes, I know it.’

  ‘This shop has been closed down.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For a long time. The reason is plain.’ She glanced about, up and down the stairs.

  ‘Yes, plain,’ Mount said.

  ‘Perhaps someone who bought chairs from that shop before it was closed down is now ashamed, even frightened, about that, and wishes to get rid of them in a gradual, secretive manner, so as not to be discovered owning chairs from such a tainted shop. It is said the shop will reopen, but this has not happened. Therefore someone who bought chairs from the shop as it was previously could not claim to have bought the chairs from the reopened shop. Dismembering the chair or the chairs would be a final solution. But, by putting these pieces in other people’s bins, whoever does it might bring blame on those other people, such as myself, and perhaps you, as if we had bought the chairs. This is a disgraceful slur.’

  ‘There will be many theories about the pieces in the bins, I expect,’ Mount replied.

  ‘Soon, there might be more pieces of chair in bins. Usually, people have more than one or two chairs in their apartment, either here or elsewhere, because of visitors sometimes wishing to sit, at least one chair being required by the host or hosts.’

  ‘An apartment without enough armchairs always seems to me to lack spirit,’ Mount replied. ‘Great care should be taken in choosing the right number of chairs for an apartment.’

  ‘I don’t think it is a matter for the police – not so far,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It might not be an offence to put chair pieces into bins. It is not theft. In a way, it is the opposite of theft.’ She laughed a while at the contrariness of this. She had a large, oval face. Talking about her worries seemed to have calmed her.

  ‘I agree with your views about legal points,’ Mount said. He could have done without a mention of the police – even a negative mention ‘so far’ – but on the whole he enjoyed the conversation. It was neighbourly. It lit up the bit of staircase landing, otherwise dour, though carpeted hotel-quality in crimson. Spontaneously, she treated him as like-minded, part of a community. She had thick fingered boxer’s fists and wide feet that would have given solid purchase on the canvas when leading with a punch, left or right. She wore pink rimmed spectacles and watched Mount’s face carefully for changes of expression as they spoke. Some of her views reeked, yes, but she willingly discussed them with Mount, as if certain he would go along. From the job point of view, the content of what she said didn’t matter, only that she chose to say it, and to him, in full, confiding style. He kept his amiable look on, occasionally increasing it to extremely amiable. There’d been no training on management of one’s features, but Mount considered he had an inborn gift. It seemed to work now. For a few minutes they became friends. Acceptance. Everybody in his kind of work longed and schemed for this: integration, a spy’s grail. During an utterly fortuitous meeting, she had at once shown him the ins and outs of her thinking: some of it obnoxious, some of it fairly sane. For instance, people did generally have more than one or two armchairs in their apartment in case more than one or two people wanted to sit down at the same time, the host or hosts requiring at least one chair for himself or herself or themselves. The logic of this was unassailable.

  Back in his own apartment he sat alone in an armchair, though, and tried to do some planning. Of cou
rse, Olga had it hopelessly wrong when she said Mount should find it easy to check at Toulmin’s office or home that he was all right. The girls couldn’t ask at these places for fear of embarrassing Toulmin. Ditto. Mount couldn’t ask about Toulmin at these places, either, for fear of embarrassing him, and embarrassing him far more severely than the girls: embarrassing him possibly to death.

  Mount could probably safeguard his own anonymity by ringing the Foreign Ministry from a public phone, and asking for Konrad Eisen, Toulmin’s real name. But anything incoming on the general lines would go through a switchboard, and who would trust government switchboards in this country as it was at present, or, come to that, government switchboards anywhere at any time? Germany kept an exceptionally strict eye on government employees since the formidable 1933 ‘Restoration of the Civil Service’ law. If Toulmin had been exposed and arrested, the switchboard might have instructions to divert any calls for him. Possibly, someone else would reply and apologize courteously for Konrad Eisen’s absence, while trying to find the purpose of Mount’s call and his name and address and present location – particularly that, yes very particularly that – and, in any case, keep him chatting.

  Instant hang up by Mount would follow, to defeat a trace, and this must be the end of all inquiries at the office, and the end of any nearness by Mount now or ever to that phone booth. But, in fact, he knew he could not risk such a call, in case Eisen-Toulmin was still at the Ministry and liable to be pinpointed by it. To ring would be diametrically against all agreed procedures for contact.

  So, then, should he get down to the Wilhelmstrasse in the morning or evening or both and try to intercept Eisen, known as Toulmin, between the station and the Foreign Ministry building there, on his way in or out? Irksome. Had he allowed Olga’s worries to take an unwarranted hold? They hardly added up to much: a client fails to arrive for a week to a couple of girls, and this gets the alarms going. Did that seem reasonable, even taking proper account of what this country was at present and of Toulmin’s congestion? In Mount’s view, the whole project had started from panic – SB’s strange tremor of regret – and perhaps now drops of it had percolated through to Mount. Maybe; if a man as habitually solid as SB could panic, panic must have something to be said for it occasionally, such as on this occasion.

  Anyway, Mount decided to carry out some loitering near the Ministry at the right times on three successive days. He didn’t think he would be noticeable. Because of its clutch of famous and historic government buildings the area attracted tourists, and he could merge: the area was known as Diplomatstrasse. They would see the new Reich Chancellery under construction for Hitler at the junction of Voss Strasse and Wilhelmstrasse, and not far-off was the Unter den Linden, one of Berlin’s main drags. He hadn’t settled what to do if he spotted Toulmin. At least he’d have proved Toulmin existed still. But this wouldn’t explain why he had not appeared lately – supposing the girls’ anxieties made sense. Should Mount try to speak to him? If they’d turned Toulmin, might this be what they were waiting for, planning for, keeping Toulmin apparently unmarked and able to walk for? Would he have plain clothes attendants nearby, ready to bag any stranger who approached? It could be the simplest of pounces. Mount remained uncertain how to react, hoped he’d make the right instinctive decision at the time. Possibly, he’d get some kind of signal from Toulmin: warning him off, or welcoming him.

  In fact, though, Mount’s ardent shilly-shallying didn’t matter. He foot-leathered around the big buildings and wide streets, staring everywhere, as if seeing it all for the first time. His staring never found Eisen-Toulmin. Accosting wasn’t offered.

  After the third evening’s dud duty, Mount went to the Toledo club, hoping Toulmin might have by now come back to Inge and Olga. Perhaps he had somehow missed him around the Wilhelmstrasse. Perhaps Toulmin had been ill at home or even in hospital. Inge wasn’t present in the club. She had several appointments of a charmingly established type every other Tuesday, Olga said – consecutive bookings. They had not seen Toulmin. Mount and Olga drank rum and blackcurrant together at the bar. She seemed to think he might like her to return to the apartment with him. ‘Inge does not take her accessories with her for the Tuesday appointments. They are not required. These clients are elderly and physically limited in what they can do. Inge leaves her accessories here behind the bar. I am certainly entitled to borrow them,’ she said in a pleasantly inquiring tone.

  He’d make sure no further chair breakage occurred. Tomorrow, when she had left after breakfast, he must take the underground again, this time to the eastern suburbs where Toulmin had a flat in the Lichtenberg district. A loiter here might be more risky – the same sort of possibilities, but stronger. If something bad had happened to him, his home could be under watch, in the hope of catching contacts like Mount. Toulmin, who was Eisen, lived alone after a divorce, or lived alone last time his dossier was adjusted. No children.

  Mount had his details on recall: address, home telephone number, real name – Konrad Paul Eisen – former wife’s name, political sympathies, career stages to date, present salary, parents, siblings; nothing written. Notes were peril. To offset the need for them, there had been two days in training given to memory exercises and tests. Besides those word-for-word extracts from his ‘Psychological Silhouette’, he could still recite a big slab of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, one paragraph of it backwards, starting with ‘laughter of occasion ridiculous or cause such no’, instead of ‘no such cause or ridiculous occasion of laughter’. Oliver Fallows, in the Section, could do the first half of Browning’s poem ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ – in English, ‘Friar Lippo Lippi’ – backwards, and would, if you encouraged him, finishing on the title, ‘Lippi Lippo Fra’, which he thought had a better ring to it than the original.

  FOUR

  An officer in the field had a lot of autonomy, and Mount decided he needed no authorization from London to burgle Toulmin’s place. ‘Please, sir, may I spin his drum?’ Serfish. Of course, he hoped a break-in would not be necessary. He’d walk the streets around where Toulmin lived in the hope of seeing him coming or going, just as he had walked the streets around the Foreign Office. But if this search also failed he might have to get inside the apartment somehow.

  His training course had spent a week on how to break into properties and do a thorough rummage – so, clearly, they expected you to break into properties and do a thorough rummage some time, times. He’d been issued with very effective ‘children’, as lock-busting equipment was known. The term came from rhyming slang: children = boys and girls = twirls, slang for skeleton keys. But he guessed that a request now for permission to pop into Toulmin’s nest on the quiet would be refused. He’d never convince Stephen Bilson the urgency justified the risk. After all, the real impulse came from Inge and Olga and their anxieties over Toulmin’s untreated congestion, apparently made worse by hitting the floor in the furniture mishap with Olga on top of him. SB was better off not knowing this, especially as Mount’s report to London on the ruined chair had been an outright lie. Suppose he went ahead and it came to light he’d ignored the ban on forced entry; Mount would most likely get kicked out of the Service. What kind of job could an ex-snoop get? Yellow Press reporter, maybe. He didn’t think much of that, though.

  Any break-in would involve two different peril types. First, to Mount, personally and physically, and through him to Toulmin. If they’d detected and arrested him, Mount’s search would give final proof of Eisen-Toulmin’s treachery: a spy suddenly short of whispers had turned up desperately seeking his whisperer. Get both into a Gestapo sack. Second, came the prospect of an appallingly flagrant espionage catastrophe that would fracture Anglo-German relations and put at hazard Hitler’s state visit to London, so dear to the king. If SB considered any or either of these likely, he might urgently pull Mount out of Germany. This wouldn’t be another panic, but tactics, based on a profit and loss forecast. In that estimate, loss might look much likelier. SB had seen God knew how many troops sen
t to their death in the war. The experience made him careful with his men’s and women’s lives. Also, he’d want to safeguard the Hitler visit, if that’s what Edward and Wallis desired, and what he might desire for his own purposes, also. The monarch employed him, was his commander in chief. Fealty: SB owed it, existed for it.

  Mount didn’t feel ready to quit Berlin yet, though. He’d look like someone who did a bunk when things went rough and left his agent to the hunters. Wasn’t Mount bound to feel big loyalty to someone he’d taken part with in a thoroughgoing foursome, this in addition to Toulmin’s worth as an informed, informer voice? If things went rougher Mount might still have to run, or try to: effect ‘instant unscheduled closure of mission and withdrawal’, as the official vocab went. Decoded and de-euphemized, ‘unscheduled’ meant ‘Christ, they’re on to us’. And ‘withdrawal’ meant ‘make a run for it’. But he judged galloping retreat not at all necessary so far.

  He did recognize another worrying uncertainty. If they knew about Toulmin, how long had they known and watched him? As a result, did they also know about Toulmin’s trysts at the Steglitz apartment, and about Stanley Charles Naughton? Mount wondered, and knew SB would also wonder. Mount chose not to make him wonder even more by disclosing too much. At any rate, not immediately. Mount thought of the woman on the stairs and the broken chair conversation. Was she really just a woman on the stairs and the broken chair conversation only a broken chair conversation? Did she report back somewhere? And report back what?

  But he mustn’t let himself get paralysed by such doubts and frets. The training preached carefulness, yes, but also enterprise, resolve, audacity. He began to plan the break-in. It might be unavoidable. There’d be two objectives. One: discover if Toulmin were there, possibly dead. Two: suppose Toulmin weren’t in there dead, look for anything that might say what had happened to him: mainly, this meant documents, notebooks, memos, blood and bone fragments on the wallpaper, photographs, letters. He saw complexities: