by Philip Kerr
Schoellhorn swore loudly. “Mehdizah is another wrestler!” he said. “He was supposed to be looking after South Team.”
“What about our wrestler?” asked Oster. “Herr Ebtehaj. Maybe he’s in this, too. Maybe he tipped off our friend from SMERSH here. Maybe he’s going to come back here with the Red Army.”
“No.” Schoellhorn shook his head. “He could have betrayed us many times already. So why didn’t he?”
“If I may say so,” Oster said carefully, “all of this is a very long way from the picture you were painting earlier today. How a blind man can spot an NKVD agent.”
“Are you suggesting I’m a traitor, too?” said Schoellhorn.
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting. Christ, what a mess.” He removed his broom-handle Mauser from the holster inside his jacket and began to screw a silencer onto the end of the barrel. “I just wish that bastard Schellenberg was here to see this. It would be the last thing he would see, I can promise you that.”
Oster stood in front of the prisoner, the now silenced pistol still pointed at the floor and parallel with his trouser leg.
“I told you everything I know,” the Pole said, swallowing.
Oster smiled sadly and then shot the man three times in the head and face.
Shkvarzev nodded his approval. He had been wondering what the German captain was made of, how much stomach he had for killing, and now he knew. It was one thing to shoot a man in a fire-fight, with a rifle or a machine gun; but it was quite another to kill him in cold blood, as he looked you in the eye. This German was all right, he could see that now, and as Oster made the Mauser safe and unscrewed the silencer, Shkvarzev lit a cigarette and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” Oster said and, placing the cigarette between his lips, drew on it deeply as he holstered his pistol again. “Did you get through to South Team?” he asked Schnabel.
“No, sir. I don’t seem to be able to raise them at all. But I did receive a message from Berlin. We’re scrubbed.”
“What?” Oster’s face collapsed into fury. “Ask for confirmation.”
“I already did.”
Shkvarzev sighed. “So that’s that, then,” he said. “We’re scrubbed.”
“Like hell we are,” said Oster. “I didn’t come all this way to do fuck-all. If I’m going to die in a Soviet labor camp, it’ll be for a damn good reason.” He took a long drag on the cigarette and then flicked it at the dead man’s head. “How do the rest of you feel about that?”
Shkvarzev hardly had to glance at his men. “The same way as you. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for a chance to kill Stalin. Nothing.”
“But without those Junkers bombers,” said Schoellhorn. “And the South Team. What can you do?”
“Perhaps none of that matters,” murmured Oster.
“How do you mean?” asked Schoellhorn.
“Maybe I like your plan better.”
“My plan?”
“We’re too many and not enough,” said Oster. “That’s the trouble with Schellenberg’s plan. Too many not to be noticed before next Tuesday. And not enough to deal with three thousand fucking Russians. But a couple of men with a water cart could do the job. You can put anything in a water cart. Machine guns. A bomb.” Oster looked at Shkvarzev. “What would we need to make a decent-sized bomb, Shkvarzev?”
“Now you’re talking.” The Ukrainian lit a cigarette for himself and thought out loud. “Some sort of nitrogen fertilizer, rich in nitric acid,” he said. “A nitrating agent to make a glycerine compound with the nitric acid—sugar, sawdust, lard, indigo, cork are all commonly obtained nitrating agents. A few grenades, some mercury, and some ethyl alcohol to make a reliable detonator. And an alarm clock and some batteries, on the assumption you don’t want to be around when the thing goes off.”
“Could you make such a bomb?”
Shkvarzev spat on the floor and then smiled. “Child’s play.”
“Then that’s settled. As soon as we get to another safe house I want you to start building a bloody big bomb.”
XXII
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1943,
CAIRO
SLIPPING OUT of Elena’s bed in the early light of an Egyptian dawn, I went onto the balcony. Beyond the extensive chaos of Garden City rooftops, it was possible to see across the Nile as far as the river island of Zamalek and the Gezira Sporting Club, where Elena and I had dined just a few hours before.
The Gezira was something straight out of The Four Feathers, a club so stiff it hurt, and it left me puzzled why Elena should have wanted to go there. It was like seeing the whole of the British empire preserved in aspic jelly. Everyone was in uniform or evening dress, or a combination of both. A little quintet played dreary British popular music and red-faced men and pink-looking women shuffled their way across the dance floor. The only people with dark skins were the men holding silver trays or towels over their arms. Every time Elena introduced me to someone I caught a faint smell of snobbery.
There was only one person I was happy to see. The trouble was, Colonel Powell assumed I was eager to resume our philosophical discussion, and it took me quite a while to divert him onto a subject that now interested me more.
“Do you know a Polish colonel by the name of Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz?” I asked.
Powell looked surprised. “Why do you ask?”
“I met him last night,” I said. “At a dinner party. I think I may have got on the wrong side of him. Since then, I’ve been informed that he is not a man to cross.”
“That was also my impression,” said Powell. “A most ruthless character. Might I inquire if your disagreement with Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was to do with philosophy?”
Thinking I had better keep off the subject of philosophy altogether, as far as Powell was concerned, I shook my head. “Actually it was about the merits—or lack of merits—of the Soviet Union. The colonel takes a very dim view of the Russians. And of Stalin in particular. I think Pulnarowicz perceives Stalin as a kind of modern Herodotus, if you like. As the ‘father of modern lies,’ I think he said.”
Powell smiled thinly.
“If you are concerned that the colonel is ever likely to seek you out, I can put your mind at rest, in a manner of speaking. Regrettably, Colonel Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was killed late this afternoon. The plane on which he was traveling was shot down somewhere in the northern Mediterranean. He was on a secret mission, you understand. As a result, I’m afraid I am duty bound to tell you no more than that.”
I let out a breath that was a mixture of relief and surprise. And for a moment or two, I was hardly aware that Powell had already changed the subject and was disputing my description of Herodotus.
“Herodotus only makes the mistakes that are common to all historians,” he said. “Which are that he was not there and often relies on sources that are themselves unreliable. After this war is over, don’t you think it will be interesting to read the many lies that will be told of who did what and when and why, and of the things that were done, and the things that were not? Although God cannot alter the past, historians can and do provide a useful function in this respect. Which persuades Him, perhaps, to tolerate their existence.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I said vaguely.
Powell seemed to detect my relief that Pulnarowicz was dead, and he changed the subject back again. “Wlazyslaw Pulnarowicz was a good soldier,” he said. “But he was not a good man. It is the nature of war to find ourselves with some pretty strange bed-fellows.”
Standing on the balcony of Elena’s bedroom, I finished my cigarette and reflected that Enoch Powell was more right than he had known. My own current bedfellow was very possibly a German spy. I had to find out if my suspicions were justified. She remained soundly asleep, so I left the balcony and slipped quietly out of the bedroom. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I felt I would recognize it if I saw it.
On the sweeping marble staircase, I laid my hand on the wrought-iron balustrade and peered over into the hallw
ay. Apart from the sound of a ticking grandfather clock and a stray dog barking somewhere in the street outside, the house was as quiet as a mausoleum.
At the end of a long corridor, I entered a door and found a set of stairs leading to a laundry room, a wine cellar stocked with some very choice vintages, and several storerooms that were filled mostly with old paintings. There were one or two pictures I recognized from Elena’s house in Berlin and various pieces of dusty-looking Biedermeier furniture.
I tiptoed back up to the second floor, where I checked that Elena was still sleeping before opening the doors to some of the other rooms. One set of double doors revealed a whole stone staircase and, at the top of this, another door that led into what looked like an apartment complete with drawing room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and library. There was even a sort of tower with bars on the windows. Just the place to lock up a mad prince or two.
I was about to call off the search and return to the bedroom when my eye caught sight of a book on one of the shelves. It was my own book, On Being Empirical, and, much to my surprise, I found that it had been substantially annotated. I could not understand the annotations, which were in Polish, but I did recognize Elena’s handwriting. And yet she had given me the impression that my book had been beyond her understanding. This hardly counted as evidence of anything except perhaps that she was a lot cleverer than I had always supposed.
But then I noticed a small curving mark on the carpet that ran from the corner of the bookcase toward the wall beside it—almost as if the bookcase itself was regularly shifted. Taking hold of the side of the case, I tugged at it gently, only to find it was also a door.
As I advanced into the darkness behind the bookcase, I noticed a smell. It was the same smell I had detected in the drawing room the previous afternoon. American cigarettes, Old Spice, and brilliantine. I reached out for a light switch and saw a room about ten feet square. The room was equipped with a chair and a table on which a lamp and a German radio stood. I recognized the radio immediately, for it had been one of the first things they had shown us on the OSS induction training course at Catoctin Mountain. One of the eight German agents arrested on Long Island in July 1942 had been equipped with just such a radio. It was standard Abwehr issue, an SE100/11 with the controls all printed in English to try and disguise it. The disguise might have fooled a civilian but not someone who was in the trade. Back in the States, just possessing a sender/receiver was enough to get you the electric chair.
On the table in front of the radio was a little Walther PPK automatic. It seemed to make clear that Elena meant business. If it really was her gun. The masculine scent in the room suggested she had another confederate besides Major Reichleitner. I picked up the pistol. Turning it upside down, I ejected the magazine from the plastic grip. The gun was loaded, not that I had expected otherwise. I shoved the magazine back into the handle and laid it down on the table.
I tiptoed back to the top of the stone stairs for a moment to check that my dirty little mission was still a secret. And it was about then that I had the sudden sensation I was being watched. I remained standing there for several minutes before concluding I had imagined it, and returned to the secret radio room.
I sat on the chair, reached underneath the table, and drew a metallic wastepaper bin toward me. It was full of paper. I placed it between my naked thighs and began to examine the contents. It showed a great want of vigilance not to have set alight the cellophane sheets intended to help burn any plaintext messages sent or received. Abwehr agents, even the ones from Long Island, were usually not so careless. Perhaps the secret room itself had lulled Elena into a false sense of security about normal spycraft. Or perhaps the lack of a window.
I fished a message out of the bin, spread the paper flat on the table, glanced over it, and then folded it up so that I could read it later. I was about to return the wastepaper bin to its place underneath the table when something else caught my eye.
It was an empty package of Kools. Kools were a mentholated American brand of cigarettes that neither I nor Elena smoked. Smoking Kools was like smoking a stick of chewing gum. Even more interesting was what I found crushed up inside the empty packet. It was a matchbook with only one match left. It was from the Hamilton Hotel in Washington. The Hamilton Hotel overlooked Franklin Park, where Thornton Cole’s body had been found. Finding this matchbook in the same room as an SE100 radio was all the evidence I needed to know that the man who had killed Cole, and very likely Ted Schmidt, too, had occupied the very chair I was sitting in.
All I had to do now was tell Reilly, and then he could arrange with the British to have the place staked out until the German agent showed up again. I snatched up the evidence—the plaintext message, the empty package of Kools, the Hamilton Hotel matchbook—and went out of the radio room. I knew I could hardly catch the spy without condemning Elena as well.
I turned out the light, closed the bookcase door, and returned to the bedroom. Seeing her stir under the single sheet, I pretended to fetch a pack of cigarettes from my coat pocket.
“What are you doing?” she asked, sitting up.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “Go back to sleep.”
I closed the bathroom door, sat down on the toilet, and unfolded the plaintext message headed OPERATION WURF. In German, wurf was the verb “to throw,” but, figuratively speaking, it also meant “success,” “a hit,” “a stroke of luck,” and even, “a decisive action.” The message, addressed to someone called Brutus, was short, and everything about it supported the idea of some kind of decisive action. I read the message several times before folding it carefully and sliding it inside my own cigarette packet, alongside the matchbook from the Hamilton Hotel. Then I stood up, flushed the toilet, and went back to bed.
There wasn’t much chance of my sleeping again—not now that I had read the plaintext message from the Abwehr. And as dawn broke, I was still repeating the message in my head. Brutus to proceed with the assassination of Wotan. Good luck.
It was a while since I had seen an opera by Wagner, but I remembered that Wotan was one of the gods in Das Rheingold. This seemed to suggest that Brutus, whoever he was, planned to kill just one of the Big Three. But surely not Roosevelt or Churchill. Neither of them appeared to match up to Wotan. No, there was only one of the Big Three who seemed to fit the bill, and that was Joseph Stalin.
Elena awoke for a few minutes and kissed me fondly before going back to sleep. I really did think she cared for me. I knew I cared for her. And I knew I wasn’t prepared to send her over, no matter who or what she was. I tried to sleep a little in the hope that when I awoke I would know the right thing to do. But the sleep never came. And after a while I could think of no other way forward than the one I had first thought of. I slipped out of bed and, before leaving her bedroom, took the photograph of Elena and Major Reichleitner from her album, to make sure that I would be believed.
REICHLEITNER was still eating breakfast when Lance Corporal Armfield brought me to his cell. The major greeted me coolly. At first I was inclined to ascribe this display of indifference to the fact that his breakfast was not yet over. But as I lit a cigarette and waited for him to look me in the eye, I realized that something had happened. And that was when, looking around the cell, I saw Donovan’s Bride transcripts piled neatly on the table, the task of rendering them into plaintext now complete.
“Everything is clear to me now,” said Reichleitner. He was wearing a superior smile I found annoying, after all that I had done for him.
“Why haven’t you tried to tell someone?”
“Don’t think I won’t. But, no, I wanted to speak to you first. To tell you what I require for my silence.”
“And what might that be?” I smiled, half enjoying his little show.
“Your help to escape.”
This time I laughed. “I think you’re being a little premature, Major. After all, I need to see what you think you know and how you think that you know it. Cards o
n the table. Then perhaps we can make a deal.”
“All right. If you want to play it that way.” Reichleitner shrugged and fetched the papers off the table. “The Russians call this ‘open packing,’” he said. “Even though it’s deciphered, the use of certain code words still makes it hard for the layman to understand. How to read what ought to be plain, but is not. You will note the date of this particular message, please. October eighth. The message concerns a meeting that took place in London.
I nodded, more or less certain now I knew the meeting to which he was referring.
“LEO reports in his last LUGGAGE that he had BREAKFAST in GLADSTONE with a 26 who we now know was formerly a NOVATOR for SPARTA in TROY during the year 1937. Codenamed CROESUS. VERSAILLES suggests watching brief minimum, since CROESUS now works for ORVILLE and STAMP in a special capacity, and might provide future KNAPSACK. At any subsequent BREAKFAST you should stress the desperation of the situation in SPARTA and, if all else fails, you should tell him that we may have to weigh the question of his 43.”
Reichleitner smiled. “LEO is the name of an agent,” he said. “And BREAKFAST is a meeting, of course. GLADSTONE is London. A number 26 is a potential recruit for the NKVD. A NOVATOR is an existing NKVD agent. SPARTA means Soviet Russia, and TROY refers to Nazi Germany. CROESUS is you, I suspect, since you work for both ORVILLE—that’s Donovan, I imagine—and STAMP—that’s Roosevelt, I know. KNAPSACK is information that might develop into something more important. Number 43 means last will and testament.”
“Well, that part about the last will and testament ought to tell you something, Major.”
“Not as much as the fact that you were once a NOVATOR for SPARTA.”
“‘Once’ being the critical word. For example, I imagine you’re no longer the enthusiastic Nazi you were back in 1933. Well, in 1938 I was a lecturer at the University of Berlin and occasionally came into contact with Dr. Goebbels. I decided that the best way I had of opposing Nazism was to pass on any information that came my way to the Russians. Only all that ended when I left Germany to return to the United States.
