by Morris West
‘I am happy to know you, Inspector,’ said John Spada.
‘Meister Hugo has informed me of your family problems – and your need for a new document of identity. I am curious to know why you need a German one.’
‘First, I speak the language. Second, there are, as you know, many Germans in the South Americas. It is, therefore, an easy role to sustain.’
‘Provided the document is genuine and that it can be proved back to its source.’
‘Quite.’
‘And that’s the difficulty. However, it is not insuperable. If it could be shown, for example, that you were providing certain services . . .’
He left the rest of the sentence unspoken. Spada completed it for him.
‘In areas of common interest?’
‘Precisely.’
‘I’ll think about that,’ said John Spada. ‘This threat to Hugo. How real is it?’
‘Very real, Mr Spada. The techniques of urban terror are developing every day. Certain personages – and Meister Hugo is one of them – have an exploitable value which goes far beyond that of normal victims. They are symbols, whose kidnap or assassination has a special theatrical impact. You, yourself, are a similar case . . . which is another reason for my interest in you while you are a guest in my country.’
‘I wonder if I am a similar case,’ asked John Spada moodily. ‘My daughter and her husband are the victims of another kind of terror, the terror of governments and institutions which abrogate human rights to hold themselves in power.’
‘So now you see both sides of the medal! Our post-war liberty and prosperity have produced the Spontis – spontaneous radicals – who have no other programme than the destruction of existing order, good and bad together. They’re well-organised, well-financed, well-armed – educated too, most of them. Yet their dedication is to a mindless terror. In the end . . .’
‘You get civil disorder,’ said John Spada. ‘Then the professionals take over again, with their own brand of terror. Cold comfort in that!’
‘I’ve got men out in Schwabing now,’ said Kurt Deskau sombrely. ‘Do you know what the student talk is: “Pity if it has to be Von Kalbach but he’ll die soon anyway – and the name is important on the list I”’
‘Christ. It’s obscene!’
‘In Geiselgasteig you’ll hear another kind of obscenity, the same which you have experienced in Argentina: “Let’s open up Dachau again and give these bastards a taste of real discipline” . . . My problem as a policeman is that I understand both points of view. Which is why I responded with interest to Meister Hugo’s invitation to join your group. There has to be a middle road somewhere. Maybe Proteus points the way to it . . . I understand you have come by way of Basel. An interesting city.’
‘I didn’t have much time to explore it. I had one meeting last night. I left first thing this morning. Tell me, have you ever heard of a man called Gebhardt Semmler?’
A sudden gleam of interest showed in Deskau’s dark eyes.
‘Was that the man you met?’
‘No. His name was mentioned.’
‘In what connection?’
‘As a Meuchelmörder – a hit man.’
‘I would give a lot to know where to find him.’
‘A passport, for instance?’ Spada gave him a cool, sidelong grin.
‘A special kind of passport, Mr Spada. One which is used by our agents. The true identity of the bearer is known only to the issuing officer – who can also withdraw it at will. Interested?’
‘Very,’ said John Spada.
‘Did you propose to use Semmler?’
‘No, he was offered to me in case I needed such an operator.’
‘You keep strange company, Mr Spada.’
‘What would you do, Inspector, if you were in my shoes?’
‘Take warning from a friend, Mr Spada. To sup with the Devil, you need a very long spoon!’
The house of Meister Hugo Von Kalbach was set on the shore of Tegernsee. It was one of the older dwellings in the area: a large, two-storeyed chalet, in traditional Bavarian style, with a garden running down to the strand and a wooden jetty with a motor-boat moored to the piling. The house was almost hidden by trees. The window-boxes were ablaze with flowers.
Meister Hugo himself received his guests at the door. He gave Spada a bear-hug of welcome, then steered the two men immediately to his study, talking volubly all the time.
‘Welcome, my friends! Welcome! You had a good journey, John? You look strong and healthy. Good! Now, let me remember: you drink bourbon whisky with ice and water . . . Splendid! Fraulein Helga told me I wouldn’t get it right; but I did, you see! Prosit, my dear John. Prosit, Kurt! We drink together to a happier future for all of us!’
They drank the toast; then the old man asked eagerly:
‘You two – you have talked. You have come to an understanding?’
‘We are getting there – I think,’ said Kurt Deskau.
‘Let’s agree the principle first,’ said John Spada. ‘I give you your man, you give me the passport, right?’
‘Right.’
‘The question is how we make the exchange. I can’t compromise the operation in Buenos Aires.’
‘Why should it be compromised?’
‘It can be if you misuse the information I give you.’
‘I have trusted you, Mr Spada. I have even joined the Proteus group, at the insistence of Meister Hugo.’
‘Forgive me.’ Spada was instantly apologetic. ‘I didn’t mean it the way it sounded . . . Last night I talked with a man called El Tigre, who runs the European operation of the South American Revolutionary Junta. He’s promised, for a large amount of money, to recommend me to his people in Argentina. I need their help to get Vallenilla out of gaol. He mentioned Semmler in case I needed a gunman. Later I called Semmler; I have an arrangement to telephone him in four days’ time on the seventeenth.’
‘Why, Mr Spada? I thought you told me you had no idea of using him.’
‘I was curious,’ said Spada. ‘Just that I wanted to know how such deals were made.’
‘I think you made a mistake, Mr Spada.’ Deskau’s response was cold. ‘A bad one! Your cover is thin. There is a direct connection now between you and El Tigre and Semmler.’
‘I realise that. Therefore we should discuss how to repair the mistake and leave my operation dean.’
‘That may not be possible, Mr Spada.’
‘Everything is possible.’ Hugo Von Kalbach cut in hastily and poured another round of drinks. ‘We are intelligent men. We have a common interest. Let us use a little patience. Drink up, my friends! Even the eagle needs two wings to fly – and tomorrow we may be dead, with the girls crying over our coffins!’
The tension relaxed then. Deskau shrugged off his irritation and said lightly enough:
‘Forgive me, Mr Spada. I forget that you are still new to this game.’
‘I’m learning.’ Spada raised his glass in a small salute. ‘Semmler is in Amsterdam. He earns his living as a painter. I have his telephone number. He said he was going to be away for a few days.’
Deskau digested the new information and then said:
‘That probably means a new job. I’ll cast around and see what I can dig up . . . With luck we may take him in the act. If not, it may pay for you to keep your appointment.’
‘You see!’ The old scholar beamed with satisfaction. ‘Now you use your brains. We should eat now – otherwise Fraulein Helga will make my life impossible!’
All through lunch he played, with gusto, the role of the ageing scholar dominated by his strong-willed secretary. Fraulein Helga, grey-haired and blushing, loved every moment of it. She told little tales of his foibles and forgetfulness. She chided him for his indulgent appetites, his extravagance with money, his rages when wrestling with a difficult passage. It was all very tender and touching – a late-blooming love affair between a fifty-one-year-old virgin and an elder savant who still preserved the capricious innocence o
f a child.
At two-thirty precisely Hugo consulted his gold hunter – a present from Adenauer on the occasion of the Nobel Award. – and announced that he was going to take his afternoon nap. Deskau and Spada should relax and discuss their business in private. They might like to take the boat out on the lake. Oh – and tomorrow he had arranged a treat. He had two seats for the opera in Munich, where the new diva, Minna Gottmer, was to make her debut in Rosenkavalier.
Spada felt trapped. He was in no mood for entertainment. Inspector Deskau frowned. He had to make proper security arrangements, therefore, he should know about such things in advance. How long had the bookings been made? What were the transport arrangements? Fraulein Helga promised that, before he left, he would have a typewritten list. Hugo fussed and fumed about the restraints on his liberty. Truly, he might just as well be in prison! Helga shepherded him from the room, clucking like a mother hen. Kurt Deskau chuckled and said:
‘It’s like a fairy-tale, isn’t it? Now, Mr Spada, let’s see what sense you and I can make of our affairs.’
They walked down to the jetty, climbed into the boat and drove out to the middle of the lake, where they sat rocking gently to the wash of the passing pleasure craft. Deskau had Hugo’s old panama hat tipped over his eyes, and a fishing line looped over his hand. Spada, at first, was faintly irritated by the childish pastime, but after a while he felt relaxed and in tune with Deskau’s mood, which seemed to be one of philosophic detachment.
‘I am the law, Mr Spada. I know the law is inadequate, but if I corrupt it, I endorse my own damnation.’
‘I am outside the law,’ said John Spada. ‘Because, for my family, the law has proved an instrument of injustice.’
‘Let me tell you about Gebhardt Semmler.’ Deskau gave a few desultory twitches on the empty line. ‘I know he is a killer; but I have no proof. In Germany I can arrest him for complicity in various Baader-Meinhof affairs; but to extradite him from Holland – that’s another matter. The Dutch have problems of their own and they’ll want a plateful of hard evidence before they will proceed against him and issue an extradition order. The moment they put him on trial they invite new terrorist attacks.’
‘So, in effect, the bandits call the tune.’
‘As you, my friend, hope to do in Buenos Aires.’
‘Check,’ said Spada. So let’s make a deal. You give me the passport. I’ll undertake to deliver Gebhardt Semmler.’
‘I want him alive.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ said John Spada. ‘I can’t promise more.’
‘How does it feel?’ asked Deskau with apparent irrelevance.
‘How does what feel?’
‘When you step over the fence on to the killing ground?’
‘No different from you, Inspector, when you shove a man into Stammheim prison for twenty years. It’s an empirical act.’ He used the German phrase: ‘auf Erfahrung gegrundet’. ‘The necessary end to a chain of unavoidable circumstances. No moral judgment is possible. You’ll go mad if you try to make one . . . Do we have a deal?’
‘Come to my office at eleven tomorrow. Bring me three photographs, passport size, and five thousand Deutschmarks to open a bank account for you, because you’ll need a cheque book and credit cards as well. But remember one thing: I’m the issuing officer. Any trouble you make lands – plop! – on my desk. I need that as much as I need an attack of influenza.’
‘I’ll try to spare you,’ said Spada with a grin. ‘A man without a passport is like the living dead.’
The next day in Munich was a rush. He was photographed. He delivered the prints to Kurt Deskau. He bought a cheap but passable dinner suit for the opera. He spent an hour in a gunshop choosing a pistol and arranging for its legal export on his outgoing flight. On the way back to Tegernsee he was caught in a press of city traffic.
When he reached the house a little before five, he found Fraulein Helga in a fuss. He was late. He must hurry and dress. The limousine would be arriving in thirty minutes. Could he be ready, please, please? He could and would and, thank God, the dinner suit didn’t look too bad, because Meister Hugo was punctilious about his public appearances. He had no patience with what he called ‘scurf and dandruff scholarship’. Wisdom, he claimed, should be honoured in her lovers.
Spada hurried through his toilet, and was ready, if a trifle breathless, when the Master descended the stairs, resplendent in tails and opera-cloak, sporting white gloves and a gold-headed cane. Helga surveyed the old man critically, twitched at his tie, brushed an imaginary dust mote from his shoulder, and then pronounced him ready for his public. He gave her a fatherly peck on the cheek and then strode out like a prince, with John Spada at his heels.
There were two automobiles outside – a hired limousine for Meister Hugo and a police car for the escorting detectives. It was a tart reminder that, however much Von Kalbach discounted the threats to his life, the police took them very seriously indeed. As they drove through the rolling uplands, Hugo was as excited as a child on the way to a carnival.
‘Tonight, my friend, we forget the ugliness of the world and divert ourselves. We look at fairy-tale women. We hear great music from a new talent. We eat raspberries and ice-cream in the galleries and remember the sweets of yesterday.’
‘The best news I’ve heard in weeks!’ Spada tried hard to match the Master’s mood. ‘The first time I saw Rosenkavalier was when Schwarzkopf sang the Marschallin in San Francisco.’
‘And I, my young friend, remember my mother dressing for the first performance in Dresden in 1911. She was more beautiful than any Marschallin I have ever seen. Alas for the passing years . . .!’
Spada waited for him to say more, but he closed his eyes, leaned back on the cushions and began to whistle a high, reedy version of Mein schoner Schatz, will Sie sich traurig machen . . . Spada permitted himself a small private chuckle. For all his monumental learning, there was a streak of the mountebank in the old man, a flourish of happy vanity that was infinitely attractive.
When they turned into the Maximilianstrasse and drew level with the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, Hugo commanded the driver to stop. They were thirty minutes early. He must consult with the head-waiter about supper; then they would proceed to the Opera House on foot. The chauffeur should park the car. As for the detectives, they might just as well go and drink beer in the Hofbrauhaus. What could possibly happen to any man in the two hundred metres between the hotel and the Opera House . . . At least they should stay at a respectful distance and not disturb his promenade.
John Spada smiled again. It was all so happily contrived: the Master making his grand entrance into the Walterspiel, consulting publicly and at length about the table and the wine and the supper, then strolling along the boulevard, acknowledging the salutes of the men and the smiles of the women, challenging the curiosity of the callow students who were too young to know what a great scholar looked like.
As a piece of theatre, it all worked beautifully. The head-waiter fawned and scribbled furiously and snapped his fingers at his underlings. The doorman saluted like a drill-sergeant. A party of American tourists drew back to let him pass first through the driveway, and their women whispered excitedly at his back.
There were more salutes and more whispers as he strode slowly along the sidewalk, pausing to admire the old Dresden in the corner shop and deprecate the lithographs in the modern art gallery, and point out a minor treasure in the antique store next to it. A small knot of people gathered about him as he studied the photographs in the Opera House booking office and told a spicy anecdote about the basso and the tenor and the overweight contralto. The gossips on the steps watched him as he pointed with his cane at the massive pediment and read John Spada a brief lecture on the sculptures, their history and their significance. Then, the lecture over, he grinned like a mischievous boy, laid a hand on Spada’s arm and said:
‘Now we’ve entertained them; let’s entertain ourselves.’
As they reached the top of the steps, where the the
atregoers were thickest, a young man in evening dress stepped from behind one of the massive pillars of the portico and jostled them. He turned as if to apologise. Spada heard two muted sounds like the popping of champagne corks. The next moment Meister Hugo was lying on the pavement with blood spreading over his shirt-front; and the man was gone, lost in the panic press of the crowd.
Kurt Deskau was a man in cold and murderous rage, but he worked with the efficiency of a robot. Five minutes after the murder he was on the steps of the Opera House, directing the first operations, culling witnesses, ordering the disposition of road-blocks on the city arteries. When the hectic work was over he drove Spada to the hospital and afterwards, when Meister Hugo was pronounced legally dead, to headquarters, where he sat him down at a desk with three volumes of police photographs and the harsh order:
‘The bastard’s in there somewhere. Call me when you’ve found him – and, don’t forget, it could be a woman in drag!’
‘I’m sure it was a man!’
‘Don’t argue! Find the face! I’ve got work to do.’
There were no identifications on the photographs, only index numbers. Spada was half-way through the second volume when he found a shot of a group of students taken during a demonstration in Frankfurt. One of the heads was ringed in red ink. Beside it was a blow-up, grainy but distinct. He stared at it for a few moments, then signalled Deskau.
‘That’s the one, I’m almost sure.’
Deskau lifted the telephone and snapped an order.
‘Get Fischer in here – on the double!’
A few moments later the police artist came in carrying a sketch pad. Deskau pointed at the photograph.
‘That one! Take the stubble off, groom the hair, and put him in evening dress, white tie and waistcoat.’
The artist sat down at the desk and began to work. Spada asked wearily:
