by Philip Kerr
I took out the button, scrutinized it momentarily, and then handed it over to the inspector. “It’s not one of mine. Sorry.”
“Did you think it might be?” asked Luger.
“As a matter of fact, no. But I don’t suppose that matters.”
“We’re not fools, sir,” said Luger, pocketing the button.
“Then you’ll already have noticed that none of my coat jackets is missing a button.”
“I have noticed that. So I’m still trying to fathom why you picked it up.”
I shrugged. “I guess I was hoping to meet a man who’s missing a coat button.”
“Of course it might have been there a while,” admitted Luger. “Still, it is evidence. Not as good as a gun with fingerprints on it, however. Your fingerprints, you say?”
“As well as the murderer’s.”
“It’s a pity that radio wasn’t here,” said Luger. “That might have made things very different.”
“I imagine that the same person who killed the Princess must have removed it. And for the same reason. To conceal the fact she was a German agent. Something must have spooked him.” I sighed as I realized what might have happened. “I think that must have been me. You see, I searched the house last night when everyone was asleep. At least that’s what I thought at the time. Someone must have seen me and decided to cover their tracks. The fact is, Inspector, I believe I’ve stumbled on a plot to kill the Big Three.”
I handed over the plaintext message. There was no sense in hanging on to it now. I was inches away from being charged with murder.
“I believe this message was received by someone, very likely the murderer, using that missing radio.”
Luger glanced at the message. “It’s in German,” he said.
“Of course it is. It was sent from Berlin. ‘Mordanschlag.’ That’s the German word for ‘assassinate.’”
“Is it?”
“German intelligence is my speciality. I’m with the OSS. That’s the American intelligence service. I’m the president’s liaison officer with the agency. It’s imperative that I speak to the head of the president’s Secret Service detail as soon as possible. His name is Mike Reilly.”
Cash appeared in the doorway. “No German radio, sir?” he asked.
“No German radio. And don’t let anyone touch that gun in the bedroom. The professor here has confessed his fingerprints are on it.”
“Actually, no. I said you might find them.”
Inspector Luger leaned forward. “Shall I tell you what I think happened, Professor Mayer?”
I groaned inside. It was easy to see where his elementary thought processes were going with this.
“My friend is dead, Inspector. And what you think about that is of little interest to me right now.”
“I think that sometime during the night, when you were in bed with Princess Pontiatowska, you had an argument. A lover’s quarrel. So sometime this morning, you shot her.”
“As complicated as that, eh?” I shook my head. “You must read a lot of novels.”
“We leave the complications to you. This was very simple. All this stuff about a German radio is complete nonsense, isn’t it? Just like the story about there being a plot to kill the Big Three.”
Luger advanced slowly on me, followed closely by Sergeant Cash, until I was close enough to smell the tobacco and the coffee on his breath.
“It’s bad enough that you should murder a woman in cold blood,” said Luger. “But what really pisses me off is that you should take us for a pair of fucking idiots.” Luger was shouting now. “German spies? Plots to kill the Big Three? Next thing you’ll be telling us that Hitler is hiding in the fucking cellar.”
“Well, I didn’t see him when I was down there this morning.”
“Why don’t you tell us the truth?” Cash said quietly.
“I don’t like Yanks,” said Luger.
“For the first time since you opened your big trap you’ve said something that makes sense. This is personal.”
“You were late for this war, just like you were late for the last one. And when you do finally bother to show up, you all think you can treat us like poor relations. Tell us what to do, like you owned this bloody war.”
“Since we’re paying for it, I think that gives us a say.”
“Tell us what really happened,” murmured Cash.
“You’ve told us a pack of bloody lies, that’s what,” bellowed Luger, taking hold of my coat lapels. “You’re full of shit, mate. Like the rest of your bloody countrymen.”
Cash grabbed hold of Luger’s arm and tried to pull him off me. “Leave it, guv,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”
“I’m going to have this bastard,” and Luger tightened his grip on my lapels. “That, or the truth, so help me.”
“You boys have got quite an act here,” I said, grabbing hold of Luger’s wrists and wrenching them off my coat. “It’s a real shame to waste it on someone who’s seen it performed before. By better actors, too.”
“The truth,” yelled Luger, punching me hard in the ribs.
I lashed back, catching Luger with a glancing punch on his jaw. Cash stepped in, just managing to hold us apart. Glancing sourly at Cash, Luger said, “Get him out of my sight.”
They drove me back to the Citadel and locked me in a hot stinking cell. I sat down on the solitary wooden bunk and stared into the solitary slops bucket. The bucket was empty but it seemed to be where my life was headed.
Toward the end of the day, I heard the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. His powerful, sonorous voice drifted through the still air of the Citadel. The sound was soothing, something felt as much as heard.
A minute after the muezzin had finished, the cell door opened and I was ordered out. A uniformed policeman marched me upstairs to a large room where Donovan, Reilly, and Agent Rauff were seated around a table. In front of them was the plaintext message I had given to Inspector Luger. I didn’t mention it. I was through volunteering information.
“It seems that the British want to charge you with the murder of your lady friend,” said Donovan.
I poured myself a glass of water from the decanter on the table.
“How about it? Did you kill her?”
“Nope. Someone else killed her. Someone who wanted to conceal that she was a German spy.” I nodded at the table. “I found that message in the radio room.”
“Would this be the radio room without a radio?” Rauff asked.
“Yes. I guess the person who took it away was worried that someone like you was going to shoot it.”
“This German spy you claim killed her,” said Rauff.
“Yes. You know, German spies are not at all unusual in the middle of a war with Germany.”
“Perhaps it just seems that way,” he said, “because you manage to make it sound like there’s a plague of them.”
“Well, we are in Egypt. If there’s going to be a plague of spies anywhere, it would have to be here. Along with lice and flies and boils and Secret Service agents.”
The artery on Rauff’s sweating neck started to throb. It was hot in the room and he had taken off his jacket so that it was impossible to see if he was missing a coat button.
Donovan picked up the plaintext message on the table. He regarded it as I suppose he would have regarded a disputed bill from his local butcher.
“And you say that this is evidence of a plot to kill the Big Three, in Teheran,” he said.
“Not the Big Three. Just Stalin.” I took the paper from Donovan’s thick fingers and translated from the German. “I think Stalin is Wotan,” I explained. “From the opera by Richard Wagner? Only I figured that the British police might be more inclined to pay attention if I told them it was all three Allied leaders, instead of just Marshal Stalin. It’s funny, but most of the people I speak to don’t care very much for Uncle Joe. You included, as I recall.”
Donovan smiled calmly. His blue eyes never left mine.
“It’s a great
pity they didn’t find that German radio,” he said. “A radio would have corroborated your story nicely.”
“I imagine the man who killed my friend was of the same opinion, sir.”
“Yes, let’s talk about her for a moment. How exactly is it that you come to be friendly with a woman you say was a German agent?”
“She was beautiful. She was clever. She was rich. I guess I’m just the gullible kind.”
“How long had you known her?”
“We went way back. I knew her in Berlin, before the war.”
“Were you sleeping with her?”
“That’s my business.”
“Quite the swordsman, aren’t you, Willard?” said Rauff. “For a professor.”
“Why, Agent Rauff, you sound jealous.”
“I think it’s a fair question,” said Donovan.
“It didn’t sound like a question at all. Look, gentlemen, I’m not married, so I don’t see that who I sleep with is anyone’s business except me and the lady’s gynecologist.” I smiled at Rauff. “That’s a pussy doctor to you, Agent Rauff.”
“The British are saying that she was a Polish princess,” Reilly said.
“That’s right. She was.”
“Is it true that when you and she were living in Berlin you were both friends of Josef Goebbels?”
“Who told you that?”
“One of her Polish friends. A Captain Skomorowski. Is it true?”
I nodded. It made sense that Elena would have told him. What better way of persuading someone that you could never be a spy than by being hopelessly, charmingly indiscreet?
“I was never a friend of Goebbels. Only an acquaintance.” I nodded at Rauff. “Like me and your colleague.” I took another sip of water. “Besides, this was in 1938. The United States still had an ambassador in Berlin. Hugh Wilson. We used to see each other at Goebbels’s parties. I think I may even have left Germany before he did.”
“Did you mention this information when you joined the service?” asked Donovan.
“I think I told Allen Dulles.”
“Since he’s in Switzerland, it’s going to be hard to corroborate that,” said Donovan.
“Yes. But why would you want to? My short acquaintance with Goebbels hardly makes me unusual in the OSS. In the early days of COI, we had lots of krauts working for us. Still do. Everyone on Campus knows about FDR’s Doctor S project. Then there’s Putzi Hanfstaengl, Hitler’s former foreign press chief. Didn’t you bring him under the COI wing, General? Of course, that was before the FBI decided he ought to remain under house arrest in Bush Hill, monitoring German news broadcasts. And let’s not forget Commander George Earle’s several meetings with von Papen in Ankara. No, General, I hardly think my having met Goebbels is going to trouble anyone.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Donovan.
“Of course. But on Saturday the president is flying to Teheran to meet Stalin. Don’t you think that instead of quizzing me about whether I might have been a friend of the German propaganda minister you would do better to find out who it is among the American delegation that’s planning to assassinate Marshal Stalin?”
“That’s exactly what we were doing,” Rauff said, holding up the plaintext. “After all, this message was found on you.”
“I gave it to Inspector Luger.”
“He’d have found it when he searched you anyway. And let’s not forget that you were the one using the German radio back in Tunis.”
“I wondered what you were doing here, Rauff. I take it your clever theory is that ever since leaving Hampton Roads I’ve been crying wolf because I’m a wolf myself, is that it? Well, you’re certainly consistent, I’ll say that for you. Your stupidity looks chronic.”
I retrieved the Hamilton Hotel matchbook from my empty cigarette packet. I had hidden it inside the lining of my jacket.
“Whoever killed Princess Elena also killed Thornton Cole, back in Washington. I found this matchbook in the wastepaper basket beside that plaintext message from the Abwehr.”
“This is underneath the nonexistent radio, right?” said Rauff.
“It’s a little complicated, Agent Rauff, so I’ll speak slowly and in short words even you can understand. Cole was murdered because he stumbled onto a German spy ring. The Schmidts were murdered to help maintain the fiction that Cole had been cruising for homosexual sex—something that a State Department already nervous about losing presidential confidence in the wake of the Sumner Welles scandal was more than happy to see swept under the rug.
“The same man who killed the Schmidts—let’s call him Brutus—also killed his contact here in Cairo and is trying to frame me for it. My guess is that he hopes to clear the way for an attempt on Stalin’s life in Teheran.”
I thumped the table hard with the flat of my hand, which made Donovan jump. I upped the tone. “Look, you’ve got to listen to me. Someone, an American, is going to try to kill Stalin.”
Mike Reilly stirred in his chair. “Oh, there’s no doubt that there’s an assassination plot,” he said coolly. “In fact, the Russians know all about it. But there’s no American involved, Professor. That’s a fantasy. There was a plot to kill the Big Three. You were right about that. Two teams of German parachutists were dropped into the countryside outside Teheran on Monday. Most of them have already been arrested. And the rest are being picked up as we speak.”
I sat back on my chair, flabbergasted. “A parachute team?”
“Yes. They were SS. The same outfit that rescued Mussolini from the Hotel Campo Imperatore in Italy.”
“Skorzeny,” I said dumbly.
“As yet it’s unclear if he’s involved or not,” said Reilly.
“Our last intelligence was that he’s in Paris,” said Donovan. “Of course that could be a feint.”
“As many as a hundred men were dropped into Iran,” continued Reilly. “They were supposed to knock out local radar so that a team of long-range bombers based in the Crimea could attack the British embassy on Churchill’s birthday. When the bombers had done their worst, the two teams were supposed to coordinate a commando attack to kill any survivors. There’s your Operation Wurf, Professor. A renegade SS mission.”
“Renegade? What the hell do you mean by that?”
“It seems that the operation did not have official sanction.”
“But how do we know that?”
“We know it because it was the German government that betrayed their existence to the Soviets,” said Donovan.
I stood up from the table and put my hands on my head. Reilly’s mock-turtle story was beginning to make me feel like Alice in Wonderland. None of this made any sense.
“And why the hell would they do that?” I asked.
Donovan shrugged. “As I told you last Sunday, Professor Mayer. The last thing the Germans want right now is to kill President Roosevelt. For several weeks now our man in Ankara has been conducting secret talks with the German ambassador. I imagine that the Germans want nothing that might risk compromising these peace feelers. You should have paid more attention.”
“None of this explains Thornton Cole, the Schmidts, Brutus—”
“I’d say you’ve got quite enough to worry about right now,” said Donovan. “With the British, I mean. If I were you, Professor, I’d get myself a lawyer. You’re going to need one.”
XXIII
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1943,
TEHERAN
THE ENTIRE OPERATION in Teheran was directed by Beria, the head of the Soviet Security Agency (the NKVD), and General Avramov, of the new Eastern Office. Beria had arrived from Baku that same day, with Stalin. Aboard the same SI-47 aircraft had been General Arkadiev, and it had given the general some considerable pleasure to witness the Soviet leader demonstrate his intense fear of flying by delivering a spectacular dressing-down on the person of Beria himself. Stalin had been drunk, of course. It was the only way he had been able to find enough courage to get on the plane; and, filled with fear and vodka, Stalin had let
loose a torrent of abuse upon his fellow Georgian when the plane had encountered some air turbulence over the Caspian Sea.
“If I die on this plane, the last order I give will be to throw you out the door, snake eyes. Do you hear? We spend all that time on a train to Baku in order to avoid having to fly, only to end up on a fucking airplane. Doesn’t make sense.”
Beria had turned as red as a beetroot. Arkadiev had avoided Beria’s eye. It did not do to show pleasure in the NKVD chairman’s discomfiture.
“Do you hear what I’m saying, snake eyes?”
“Yes, Comrade Stalin,” said Beria. “Perhaps Comrade Stalin has forgotten that we went over the travel itinerary back in Moscow. It was always agreed that the last leg of the journey would be made by plane.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that,” snarled Stalin. “Makes no sense. Churchill and Roosevelt both had warships to carry them across the sea. Why couldn’t I have a warship? The Caspian Sea is no bigger than the Black Sea. Is the Russian navy short of warships? Is the Caspian Sea more dangerous than the Atlantic Ocean? I don’t think so, Beria.”
“Both Roosevelt and Churchill are making the journey from Cairo to Teheran by air,” insisted Beria.
“Only because they have to. There’s no other fucking way for them to get there, snake eyes.”
Now, several hours after the flight, in a large room on the first floor of the NKVD headquarters on Syroos Street in the eastern part of the city, Arkadiev saw that Beria was in a foul mood himself, doubtless still smarting from Stalin’s comments. He and his secretary, Stepan Mamulov, were reviewing the arrangements for Stalin’s security with General Merkulov, Beria’s deputy. Joining them were: General Krulev, who commanded the 3,000 men of Stalin’s personal guard, stationed in Teheran since the end of October; General Melamed, the head of the local NKVD; and Melamed’s deputy, Colonel Andrei Mikhalovits Vertinski. Beria’s ill temper had not been improved by the discovery that at least a dozen SS paratroopers were still at liberty. Of the two teams of men, one had been picked up near the holy city of Qom within hours of their landing; another forty men had been surrounded at a house in Kakh Street but had chosen to shoot it out. There were no survivors. But several were still unaccounted for.
