The Map

by T. S. Learner

  August lifted the trapdoor a sliver, just enough to peer around the printing press. In the stripe of streetlight falling across the floor he could see a small slim figure standing over a set of office drawers at the far end of the room, rifling through them furiously, his back to August. He looked back down the ladder to Izarra and gave her a quick nod, both of them tensing in expectation. She nodded back, ready for anything. He swung the trapdoor open as quietly as he could and with his Mauser trained on the intruder climbed out. The intruder, absorbed by his task, noticed nothing. Izarra followed, gun in hand.

  They both crept silently towards the intruder, August in socks, Izarra in bare feet. When they were about a couple of metres away, Izarra accidentally knocked a discarded ink roller with her foot. The intruder swung around and sprang at August, pushing him down to the ground. The two men rolled and wrestled on the floor, but the intruder, who August now recognised as the man he’d seen loitering in the lane earlier that day, was physically much slighter. August managed to pin him to the ground and a second later Izarra’s gun was at the man’s temple.

  ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, I’m harmless!’ he yelled out in English, in a broad cockney accent, much to August’s amazement. Now he could see the man clearly. He looked young, not much more than twenty – a thin, narrow-skulled youth, with large terrified black eyes, aquiline features and a week’s growth of beard. Wearing an old belted overcoat that looked too big for him, he cowered against the floor. August hauled him to his feet then pushed him down into a chair, while Izarra kept her gun trained on him.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ August demanded.

  ‘Jacob Cohen, from Stepney, don’t hurt me, I didn’t mean you no harm! I didn’t think anyone was here. I was just after some information!’

  August exchanged glances with Izarra. ‘What kind?’

  The youth swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in a scrawny neck. ‘Can’t say unless I know who you are first?’

  ‘Listen, kid, I’m the one with the gun. Who sent you?’ August demanded.

  ‘No one sent me.’

  ‘C’mon, you’ve been watching this place for a day.’

  Izarra pressed her barrel against the man’s temple.

  ‘I work solo!’ he squeaked.

  ‘I don’t think so. I think you’ve been following us for a while. I think you killed a close friend of mine back in Paris.’ August stepped forward threateningly.

  ‘I didn’t kill Jimmy!’

  ‘So you do know Jimmy.’ August tilted the lamp so that it illuminated the young man’s face and eyes; he didn’t look like he was acting and certainly from the incompetent way he’d tackled August, he appeared to have had no military or police training. ‘Damien Tyson, does that name mean anything to you?’

  Cohen averted his eyes; it was obvious he knew something.

  ‘Listen, you can trust me!’ he began to argue, hysterically. ‘Do I look like a trained killer? Blimey, I can’t even kill the chicken me mum brings back from the market. I’m probably looking for the same thing you are.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘I’m a Nazi hunter working solo, all right? I went to see Jimmy because he had information I needed. We’re on the same side. But this business of having a gun pointing at me head is making me nervous, I’ve only got one brain and they tell me it’s a good one.’

  ‘Stand up,’ August ordered and the young man stood as August patted him down. He was clean. ‘It’s okay, Izarra, time to put the guns away.’

  Izarra lowered her revolver.

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Cohen crumpled with relief, then turned to August. ‘Got a fag?’

  August offered him a cigarette and he took it gratefully, then lit up from August’s Zippo. He inhaled deeply and immediately started coughing, stopping only when he’d thumped his own chest. ‘American?’

  ‘Once upon a time. So, Jacob —’

  ‘Jacob to you. Back home they call me Big Jacov,’ he snapped. August couldn’t help smiling – at five-foot-nothing, Big Jacov looked more like a boy than a man.

  ‘So, Jacob, what do you know about Tyson? And don’t make me ask Izarra to get her gun out again.’

  Cohen shivered, then looked around the room. ‘Listen, I’m ’appy to talk, but I’ve been standing out there in the freezing cold for hours. Is there anywhere I can thaw out?’

  Now down in the cellar, cradling a mug of hot coffee Izarra had made for him, Jacob rocked backwards and forwards as he spoke, as if the movement were somehow anchoring the intensity of his diatribe. August had the impression that if he stopped rocking, he would be propelled out of the chair by his own pent-up energy.

  ‘I’ve been hunting Nazis since I realised no one else was going to do it. Post-war governments have short memories. One day a man’s a war criminal, the next he’s a bureaucrat cash-up and squeaky clean. Me, I remember. Some things can’t be forgotten. You could say – not that I will – that the Allies don’t give a monkey’s about the victims of war, especially the four-by-twos, which is my tribe.’

  ‘What are you, a child detective?’ August cracked. Izarra laughed, while Jacob stayed grim-faced.

  ‘What I am is a maverick, paid by no one, disliked by most. I hold up the mirror no one likes looking in.’ It was obvious he was insulted by their laughter and August couldn’t help respecting the strength of his convictions.

  The three of them were huddling around the potbelly stove; Jacob in a plain wooden chair, Izarra with her knees and legs now tucked up an old woollen jumper, August’s lanky legs astride a stool. ‘So Jimmy put you onto Tyson?’ August asked.

  ‘Not at first. I kept running across this German codename, Der Pfarrer – “The Priest” – in Russian transcripts of interviews of arrested SS officers recorded in the days following the fall of Berlin. One of these interviewees indicated that the Priest might have been an American, a Nazi sympathiser working within the US war machine. That’s where Jimmy came in. I met him in Paris when I was on the trail of a Vichy collaborator. He was playing at a club I’d gone to, we were introduced and got talking. When Jimmy told me that he’d worked for the OSS, I mentioned the Priest, hoping he’d have some leads.’

  ‘Der Pfarrer is Tyson?’

  ‘I think so, and I’ll tell you this much, he is definitely one of the brokers behind the US pact with Franco. I believe Tyson is close to a Basque exile rumoured to be working for the Americans – Jesús María de Galíndez. The rumour is that the US is going to sign with Franco in Madrid in September and it’s worth billions. Ugly, it’s got my uncle, a paid-up member of the party, most upset.’ Jacob looked over at Izarra for her reaction. She spat on the ground, cursing Franco in Euskara.

  ‘We have been betrayed by everyone. First the Pope with the concordat of the Vatican this month and now this. I tell you, next the UN will make Franco a member,’ she concluded, passionately.

  ‘Never,’ August retorted. He turned back to Jacob. ‘We know all about Tyson’s involvement with Spain. Tell us something we can use.’ August was losing patience – morning was only a couple of hours away and he had a strong sense the safety of the hideout had been compromised. Jacob got up and started pacing, his hands gesturing wildly.

  ‘This sounds crazy, but that codename kept niggling at me. One transcript referred to Der Pfarrer having been paid with antique artefacts instead of hard cash. With Nazi gold taken from all over Europe – from the Iberian Peninsula and from Russia – raided from some of the most influential Jewish families. Kabbalistic artefacts, medieval, a couple were even ancient Egyptian. Now, my German is good but when I saw that I thought it must have been a mistranslation. I mean, what kind of spy gets paid with occult trophies? Not a sane man is what. Then I get this other lead, evidence that Der Pfarrer spent time in England in the early thirties and had been an associate of Aleister Crowley. Spiritual bedfellows, one could say. Finally, eureka, the penny drops.’ He looked pleased with his own detective work. ‘It’s obvious when you think about it �
� Der Pfarrer is a reference to Tyson’s black magic practices. In his mind he is the High Priest. Turns out our Mr Tyson or Der Pfarrer to the Huns is —’

  ‘Jester to the Americans,’ August cut in, beginning to see a link in Tyson’s choice of codenames. He thought about Malcolm Hully – who was playing whom? Until now he’d assumed he’d had the upper hand. Now he wasn’t sure. He looked over at Jacob. ‘What proof do you have that Tyson played the English too?’

  ‘Nothing substantial yet, just an ugly rumour and one or two unbelievable coincidences. Why, have you heard something?’

  Both Izarra and Jacob looked at August questioningly. The queasy feeling he might have endangered them both unwittingly swept over August. ‘No, but we’re moving out of here as soon as it’s daylight.’ He felt cornered. He knew all too well how organised MI6 could be in locating people, especially with American help. The bloodied white rose left for him in the hotel room came to mind. Was he being played? If so, why? And who was the woman who had visited Izarra?

  Jacob sighed then took a long sip of coffee.

  ‘What you have to understand is that the Priest’s been involved with all sorts of black voodoo, all really unkosher. He’s been collecting magical artefacts for decades like a saner man might collect stamps. I mean, he really believes. Don’t know about you, but that scares me.’

  Izarra and August exchanged glances. ‘So the Germans exploited this fact?’ August ventured, carefully, not yet willing to divulge his own information.

  ‘There’s been a link between fascism and black magic for a long time. It’s well known that Hitler believed in hogwash like that, and when they liberated Berlin they discovered “black” Tibetan priests that had been housed by the Führer. The Nazi regime was sympathetic to such beliefs, or, should I say, an American double agent with the same beliefs as the Führer would have been attractive to them. Your friend believes there are ways of manipulating people, external ways through the practice of the occult and for a man obsessed by power that’s a seductive conviction. You and I might not share such beliefs but that’s irrelevant.’ Jacob stopped rocking and leaned back in his chair. The cellar was beginning to fill with a faint light, seeping in from the floor above, and there was the sound of a dawn chorus of birds filtering through the blocked-out window. Jacob stared down into his tin mug mournfully. ‘My coffee’s gone cold.’

  Izarra got up and put another small pot of thick black coffee on top of the stove.

  ‘Tell him,’ she instructed August, still with her back turned to the two men. She swung around, her face an open book. ‘He deserves to know the truth.’

  ‘What truth?’ Jacob asked, looking from one to the other. August searched Izarra’s face.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She nodded solemnly.

  ‘Izarra knows Tyson from a US black operation training a cell of Basque fighters at the end of the war. A black op that ended in a massacre Tyson ordered. Her sister was the commander of that cell. She died with her men.’

  ‘From a family of six, there are only two of us left – myself and her son,’ Izarra said, standing in front of Jacob, and now August could see she had recognised something in Jacob he himself hadn’t seen, something she shared with the slight youth – a familiar grieving.

  ‘I’m sorry for the death of your sister, I know what it is to lose your family,’ Jacob replied, suddenly older and wiser than his years. Then he got out of his chair restlessly. ‘But the fact that Tyson ended up running that black op wouldn’t have been a coincidence, he’s a cold-blooded calculator – there would have been something else that brought him to that village, something linked to his obsession with power and black magic.’

  August and Izarra exchanged glances again. Reading her expression, August decided to hold back on the information about the chronicle.

  ‘That might be, but tell me, how did you find us? You said you’d seen Jimmy in Paris a week ago, so why come to Avignon?’ August ventured, while wondering how much he could actually confide in Cohen.

  ‘I’ve been on Tyson’s trail since he flew in from Washington to London about a month ago. I followed him to Paris. I’d managed to alert Jimmy. I thought he should know his nemesis was in Europe, then Jimmy gave me a list of contacts —’

  ‘The same list he gave me – a network of ex-International Brigadiers – those who survived,’ August interjected.

  Jacob’s face flushed with a sudden revelation. ‘I know who you are,’ he told August. ‘You’re Joe Iron, Joe fucking Iron.’ He grabbed August’s hand.

  Embarrassed, August stood there, feeling like a fool, while Jacob pumped his hand up and down vigorously. Izarra looked on, amused.

  ‘Who is Joe Iron?’

  Jacob turned, amazed. ‘Who is Joe Iron? You telling me you don’t know who you’re sleeping with —’

  ‘Jacob, she’s not sleeping with me,’ August, further mortified, interrupted, over Jacob’s loud, emphatic voice, but the young cockney ignored him.

  ‘He hasn’t told you about what he did at Jarama? Or the time he tricked a whole Falangist squadron into marching the wrong way at Quinto? Or the courage he showed at Belchite?’

  August looked at Jacob aghast; so Jimmy had told Jacob about the firing squad, that terrible day.

  ‘Enough about Belchite!’ He swung back to Izarra. ‘Joe Iron was my nom de guerre, and you knew I’d fought in the Civil War, the details are not important!’ Only when he noticed the shocked faces of the other two he realised he’d lost his temper, something he never allowed himself to do.

  ‘But you were a hero?’ Jacob looked perplexed, aggrieved at August’s outburst.

  ‘A hero? That war was lost,’ August replied, now dangerously calm. Trying to steady himself, he reached up to sweep back his hair, a habit of his – then remembered with a shock that it was now shorn and black. Turning away, he lit a cigarette and took the opportunity to collect himself. He turned to face Jacob, something knocking against the back of his mind.

  ‘You followed him here, didn’t you? Tyson’s here, isn’t he, in Avignon?’ As soon as he said the words, August felt the thrill of anticipation – the fish was on the hook, so close.

  Jacob glanced nervously over at Izarra, then back at August. ‘About two days ago, just after you arrived, then I lost him.’

  ‘You lost him!’ August burst out in frustration.

  ‘It’s not like tailing a normal man. You get this uncanny feeling he’s choosing when he allows himself to be seen and when not. It’s like a tease, like he’s watching you but without his eyes. When I lost him I panicked, I had this horrible feeling he was now after me and that bloke is worse than a mercenary. Mercenaries killed for money, he kills for pleasure. So I came here. Jimmy promised I’d be safe here.’ Jacob was interrupted by the roar of a car outside. They all froze, waiting for the car to pass. Only when the sound of the engine faded did August venture to speak.

  ‘Do you think he’s still in Avignon?’

  ‘Without a doubt, something is keeping him hungry, something apart from closing the pact with Franco.’

  ‘Good, he’s taken the bait. Now we just have to reel him in.’

  Jacob was looking at him curiously, as if he’d just had an epiphany. ‘Winthrop, why is that name familiar to me?’

  But August had moved to the table where he had his map laid out. ‘Let it go.’ There were some things he knew he needed to keep from Izarra, if he wanted to retain her trust; Cohen had already exposed too much.

  ‘I never let anything go, that’s why I’m good.’

  ‘I said let it go!’ August wheeled round, threatening, but Cohen didn’t move. He remained defiant. Now August could see why he might be an irritant to so many people.

  ‘Got it. Clarence Winthrop, the American UN representative, any relation?’

  August glanced over at Izarra, who was now staring back at him – he had no choice but to be honest.

  ‘He’s my father.’

  ‘Mazel tov. I’m gu
essing you were the black sheep of the family, or should I say pink?’ Jacob cracked.

  ‘Pink sheep? You have pink sheep in America?’ Izarra asked, now totally befuddled by the English banter.

  ‘He’s making a joke, Izarra, a bad joke.’ August turned to Jacob. ‘My father and I haven’t talked in years. His previous incarnation as a right-wing republican senator and close buddy of Joe Kennedy aka the Nazi lover was a little hard to swallow.’

  ‘But he could be our only chance.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We have to expose Tyson and alert your father so that the UN can do something to stop the pact from going through.’

  ‘Not a hope in hell. He disowned me years ago and I wouldn’t be surprised if my father was in on the deal.’

  But Jacob was lost in concentration. ‘But we can use him and get him to help us arrest Tyson for war crimes. That would discredit Tyson and draw more international condemnation towards the defence pact. Just let me talk to him?’

  ‘Not a good idea. You’re definitely not one of Senator Winthrop’s people, if you understand me.’ August couldn’t bring himself to use the word “anti-Semitic”, but the look on Jacob’s face told him he’d got the message.

  ‘August, you have to try. Listen, the general assembly is sitting in a few weeks in Geneva and I know Tyson is one of the American delegates who will represent the case to instate Spain as a member. This could be our chance!’ Jacob’s hands moved through the air emphatically.

  ‘But I don’t want Tyson to stand trial and serve a sentence. I want him dead.’ Izarra was adamant.

  ‘Well, that could be arranged as well,’ Jacob offered.

  ‘Stop it. Both of you.’ Exasperated, August thumped the table. ‘Is there anything concrete on Tyson? So far we haven’t actually got any witnesses to the massacre. Jimmy might have testified but he’s dead.’

  ‘There’s Gabirel,’ Izarra suggested, tentatively.

  ‘He was seven at the time; the court could dismiss it as fiction. We need more, something official that places Tyson there.’