But the hell with it, he hadn’t been there. He’d been in bed asleep. He’d let her go on her own, and now there was less than fifteen minutes left before they were due to meet Pol at the Hotel Kempinski. It was only a couple of minutes’ walk up the street, so he decided to wait in the lobby until 5.57.
He put on his boots and sweater, with his French raincoat over his arm; made sure he had his passport and new wallet, containing several hundred marks — Pol’s most recent gift of pocket money, in exchange for the vast sum in Turkish lire which Hawn had returned to him — and slipped out into the corridor. Both lifts were engaged, one coming up, the other going down. He waited next to the one coming up. His watch said 5.49. He had checked it that morning against the clock on the Pan-Am building, and again down in the lobby.
They were only on the fifth floor, but the lift seemed to take an interminable time. He felt his adrenalin beginning to rise again, and at the last moment stepped back to the right of the lift, pressing himself against the wall, his raincoat over his left arm, while his right hand groped in his pocket, wedging several one-mark pieces between his fingers, just below the knuckles. He heard the lift hum to a halt, the doors slide open, and a tall blond man stepped out carrying a black attaché case. He looked behind him, smiled and gave a little bow. ‘Verzeihen Sie mir, gnadige Frau!’ Anna stepped past him, with a little smile. She did not see Hawn until he had grabbed her wrist.
He waited until the man was out of earshot before he pulled her close to him. ‘And just where the hell have you been?’
He saw she was flushed and slightly out of breath. He heard the lift doors begin to close, and jammed them with his foot. ‘Get in. You can explain on the way down.’ He pushed the ground-floor button.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Tom. I went to the Tutankhamen Exhibition at the Charlottenburg Palace. Then I couldn’t get a taxi, and I got on the wrong tram. I had to walk most of the way back.’
‘You certainly managed to cut it pretty fine!’ The hand in his pocket belatedly released the coins between his fingers. ‘Got your passport?’
‘Yes. I’m not making that mistake again.’
The lift stopped. They got out and began to walk towards the entrance. The lobby was surprisingly empty: it was the cocktail hour, the obligatory watering-time for all West Berliners, and only a few tourists and businessmen were busy at the desk. The receptionists ignored them both.
Hawn pushed Anna through the revolving door, and began to follow: then at the last moment stepped smartly back and bumped into a man behind him. He swung round, half inside the door, and pulled the man in after him; and kicked out with all his strength. Anna was in the street and the door had stopped moving. In the closed space there was a scream and the man stumbled and began to sink down on to the felt carpet.
He was wearing a fur hat and a long coat with a fur collar. The coat had protected his groin, so Hawn had gone for his kneecap. He brought both fists up, smashed one into the middle of the man’s face, while he brought the other down in a chopping blow just behind his ear. The man slouched on to his knees, his gloved hands half covering his face, and Hawn felt a pang of shame as he remembered his victim had been wearing glasses. They now lay crunched on the carpet under Hawn’s feet.
Blood was seeping down the leather fingers of the man’s gloves, his fur hat had slid off his balding head and he had begun whimpering. Hawn checked quickly that there was no one near, grabbed the man under the arms and hauled him back onto his feet.
‘Sorry, Otto. But I’m surprised at you. At least, I’m surprised at your organization. Using the same man twice, on a job like this. Surely they’re not that short-staffed?’
‘Ach, meine Nase!’ The man gulped and peered at Hawn through his weeping eyes. His gloves were wet with blood and mucus, and drops of blood were falling on the floor.
‘It was an accident, Herr Dietrich. You banged into the door. You have to be careful where you’re going.’ As he spoke, Hawn retrieved the broken spectacles and dragged the man into the street. One of his legs hung limp on the slushy pavement. Anna stood a few yards away, watching, perplexed. A few passers-by glanced at them, a few hesitated, but Hawn was now holding Dietrich up and seemed to be soothing him. ‘A little accident — nothing serious,’ Hawn told them.
An old woman stopped and said, ‘Oh, the poor man — should I call a doctor?’
‘He’ll be all right — he just bumped his nose.’ Hawn nodded reassuringly.
Otto Dietrich made no effort to contradict him; the last thing a BND man would want was to be the centre of a sordid punch-up with his quarry in broad daylight.
‘What are you after, Otto? Working for your own people this time? Or still running errands for Mr Robak and his friends?’
‘Ach, my leg!’ the Austrian gasped. ‘You have ruined my leg!’
‘Tell me what you’re doing here. Quick! Or I’ll ruin your other leg.’
‘I am under no obligation to answer your questions,’ Otto Dietrich said; with a certain dignity, as he tried to wipe his burst nose with the back of his glove. ‘Find me a taxi.’
Hawn propped him against the wall, and with one hand managed to get the man’s broken spectacles back on his face; but at the last moment one of the lenses fell out. ‘Anna,’ he called, ‘try and get a taxi. If you can’t, get the hotel to call one. But hurry!’ He turned to Dietrich and said softly, ‘You won’t hold this against me, will you, Otto? All in a day’s work. When do you next report to Herr Robak?’
‘I am now with my official duties,’ the Austrian said, as the other lens dropped out of his spectacles.
‘Do your official duties include reporting to Robak? Come on, let’s have it!’ Hawn’s free hand had crept up to Dietrich’s face and his thumb reached the place where the man’s nostrils had been. ‘Do you want me to give your nose a friendly little squeeze? Or perhaps my foot might slip and kick your knee again. Just a little tap to jog your memory.’ He raised his left foot and let it dangle.
The man was breathing heavily, like an asthmatic. ‘No, please. You are mistaken. I had certain duties in Istanbul for Mr Robak. Here, I am again official, with the police.’
‘Listen, Otto —’ Hawn was now whispering to him — ‘if you make any complaint about this incident, the story about you and Robak and Istanbul will be in every German newspaper tomorrow morning. I might even tie you in with the murder of Imin Salak — which I am sure you know all about. German readers will, no doubt, be interested to know the extent of the activities of their Secret Service.’ He broke off, as Anna came running up.
‘I’ve got a taxi — it’s waiting at the corner.’
‘Right. Give me a hand with him.’
Together the three of them made an ungainly trio as they dragged the limping, hobbling BND man along the pavement to the waiting taxi. Anna had retrieved his hat and put it back on his bald head, then found a tissue to wipe some of the mess from his face. Hawn pushed him into the taxi and left him to give the address: then stepped back and looked at his watch. It was 6.17. He took Anna’s arm and began to run with her up the street.
The interior of the Hotel Kempinski was instantly expensive and ultra-modern — large, warm, carpets soft and deep; not crowded, but busy — busy with the consuming effort of pleasure: the best cocktails teased up by Europe’s top barmen, and enjoyed by men in thousand — D-mark suits and enamelled girls stiff with jewellery and deep-frozen expressions, as though fearful that their make-up might crack.
Pol was not in any of the armchairs in the foyer; nor was he in any of the several bars or the restaurant. Hawn left Anna in a corner and went to Reception, where the clerk handed him a little envelope with flowers at the corner, like a birthday greeting. Inside was a sheet of the hotel writing paper, with across it a rounded scrawl: ‘I am enjoying a massage. Join me. C.’
Hawn found the sauna and massage parlours at the side of the main hall, near a row of muttering telex machines. He paid a plump handsome woman 15 D-marks, with five ext
ra for the towels; undressed in a steel cubicle with a locker which opened with a key on a loop which he hung round his neck; locked his French passport inside, then passed down a slippery white corridor with a sweet, hygienic smell, somewhere between honey and wet wool. The woman pointed to a door at the far end.
From all round, through the steamy whiteness, came the chaotic rhythm of pounding and kneading and smacking of flesh. The cubicle at the end was locked. Hawn had to identify himself as Monsieur Marziou, before a blonde girl with long legs under a short white coat let him in.
Pol lay on his stomach on the marble slab. A steep wall of towel covered his mountainous buttocks, while the girl returned briskly to the hopeless task of working away at his shoulders and back, both gleaming like sides of ham. He had the appearance of a grossly inflated baby on whom someone had maliciously painted a whirligig of hair and a short pointed beard. His crimson lips were parted, his eyes closed, and sweat crawled down every runnel of fat, as if from a melting snowman.
‘Charles?’
‘You are very late. You had my instructions.’
‘I can explain.’
Pol gave a belly chuckle. He said something to the girl, who nodded and climbed off him — looking rather relieved, Hawn thought. ‘Lock the door,’ Pol said, when she had gone. He waited until Hawn was lying beside him, then opened one eye and blinked painfully through the sweat. ‘We will speak in French, but keep your voice down. This is a very cosmopolitan city.’ As he spoke, he rolled over on to his side, supporting his huge head on his elbow, while his breasts hung down in two soft pendants of flesh with a deep cleavage between them, from which there was a steady trickle on to the tiles below. ‘So, mon chèr Monsieur Marziou! What have you to report?’
Hawn told him about his meeting with Dietrich. Pol listened, shaking with quiet laughter. ‘I hope you were not too unkind to the poor old gentleman!’
‘How the hell could Robak have got on to us that fast?’
‘Ah, you are dealing with a large organization — one that is used to moving fast. The important thing is to move still faster! Which is what you will be doing later tonight. You both have your passports? Excellent! Then you will be ready to leave, when we have finished our little talk. I regret that I cannot give you dinner, but it is important that we are not seen together.’
‘So where are you planning to send us next?’
‘It depends. You are the one, mon chèr, who goes forward and finds which doors are open and which are closed — who makes the first footprints. I merely follow, and try to make sure that no harm comes to you.’
Hawn took a deep breath, gasping for oxygen. The towel wrapped round his waist was already soaking with his sweat. He eased himself up on to one elbow, so as to get a more commanding look at Pol.
The Frenchman shifted his belly with a sucking sound, like a stopper being pulled out of a bottle. ‘Tonight I have arranged, on your last evening in West Berlin, that you should meet someone rather interesting. Rather superior to these policemen and gangsters who have been pestering you recently. Have you ever heard of a Doktor Wohl — Oskar Wohl?’
‘Might be familiar,’ Hawn said carefully; ‘I can’t place him off-hand.’
‘He is what is known, in the terminology of East-West relations, as one of the “Grey Men”. His precise status is difficult to define. By profession he is a qualified lawyer who practises in East Germany. He lives just outside the city boundaries, in a big luxurious house on the Grunau Lake. Runs the latest model of Mercedes, which he changes every year, and has apparently unlimited access to the West. He is a sort of unofficial Mister Fix-it between the Russians and the Americans. If Moscow, or one of the Warsaw Pact countries, wants to feed some information to the West, or fly a kite to test Western reactions, they use Wohl.
‘You remember in 1963, when there was a phoney story put round the world that Khrushchev had resigned or been sacked? The story was said to have originated in Tokyo, of all places. In fact, it originated with the main Japanese agency here in Berlin. The Moscow caucus were just testing the water, before they finally gave old Nikita the boot a year later. The man who planted the story was Wohl.
‘But his journalistic activities are something of a sideline. His main function — where he comes into the international eye — is, as one of those East German lawyers who fixes up exchanges between Soviet spies being held in the West, and Western ones, so-called, being held by the Russians. Wohl’s exact brief and methods of action are not quite clear. But his orders certainly come from the top in Moscow, and he also has access to the highest authorities in the West.
‘Obviously he is accused of being an agent of Soviet Security. Some sources insist that he is a full colonel in the KGB. This he vigorously denies, and has even threatened to sue one of your English newspapers for saying so. He prefers to be thought of as an international lawyer with a special interest in East-West relations. In any case, you will shortly have the privilege of meeting the gentleman, when you will no doubt draw your own conclusions. He is not a particularly admirable man, although I hear he has great charm. In any event, you must trust him. You have no alternative.’
‘I can always refuse to meet him.’
Pol dabbed at his goatee beard, which was pouring sweat like a tap. ‘You are a newspaperman, Monsieur Hawn. You will not refuse. Besides, what harm can there be in meeting a legitimate German citizen on German soil? It is not something which should concern you.’
‘It concerns me in so far as it concerns this whole story. What’s he got to do with ABCO? Or with Mönch? Or Salak, perhaps?’
Pol had cocked his head and was grinning at him mischievously. ‘Or with Doktor Alan Reiss, who has an important job with the German Democratic Republic’s petrochemical industry? Born Alan Rice, of Anglo-German parents, and whose activities during the war are best not discussed. You know the name, of course?’
‘Of course.’ It was almost too casual, too obvious: and Pol’s appearance, through the haze of steam, tended to render it absurd.
‘So you see, mon chèr! You see how the circle seems to be getting smaller? It is no coincidence. A grand conspiracy on this scale is very much like those merry-go-rounds one used to know as a child, where one had to try and step on to the revolving rim without being thrown off. It was very difficult, but once one had managed to get aboard and move towards the centre, it became easier. The trick, of course, was that the wheel was moving much more slowly at the centre. That is a rough but nonetheless accurate analogy for what we have both been doing — although each of us climbed aboard the wheel at opposite sides. But once we had learnt of the magic name, Doktor Reiss, then immediately the dimensions of the whole conspiracy shrank. You see, the success of “Operation Bettina” lay not only in its secrecy, but in its very compactness. It operated more like a club than a government agency.’
‘It seems to have been a pretty big club — with half its members being Doktors. And once one started digging, an awful lot of people seemed to know about it. The first person to mention Reiss’s name to me got his throat cut a few days later. A little matter that still hasn’t been cleared up.
‘Then there’s a Monsieur Toby Shanklin — that high-flying trouble-shooter for ABCO who actually knew Rice in Central America in the last years of the war, and for whom all references, for some reason, have been either withheld or excised from the Public Record Office in London.
‘Then we have Salak. I suppose Rice was one of the names on Salak’s list?’
Pol shifted his immense weight and grunted, but made no reply.
‘Salak,’ Hawn continued, ‘seems to have been a pretty easy lead. My old journalist colleague from wartime Intelligence put me on to him. He also put me on to Mönch, and Mönch knew about Salak, too. As I said, it all seems a bit too obvious — almost as though someone had left us a paperchase to follow.’
Pol was watching him through sleepy eyes. ‘I am not sure, mon chèr, that I fully understand what you are implying.’
‘Let me put it another way. All these people I’ve met have been pretty accessible. They’ve been accessible for a long time. What I find odd is why no one had got on to them earlier. In short, why hasn’t the whole story been blown wide open years ago?’
Carefully, and with skill, Pol manoeuvred himself over on to his back, keeping the towel tucked tightly around him to cover whatever pitiful obscenity sprouted from his groin. He settled his great head on his arms.
‘Mon chèr, as I said, it is all a matter of perspective — of the grand perspective. Rice was a scientist. Mönch was an administrator. Rice was technically a traitor, Mönch technically a war criminal. There is nothing interesting about that. There were hundreds of traitors, hundreds of thousands of war criminals. Some were caught, some were not. And the ones who got away usually preferred to keep to themselves. Few of them spill the beans — if they have any to spill — unless they have a special inducement to do so.
‘In Mönch’s case, there was a double incentive. You offered him money, with which he needed to make a quick getaway — and the second incentive was Jacques. Mönch may even have thought that by giving you information — assuming he thought you were connected with Jacques — he would be buying himself time, or what time was left to him. But of course, you had the supreme advantage — you had been blessed with your overall theory — a masterful inspiration, a flight of fancy, perhaps, but nothing more.
‘However, I am straying from the point. You mentioned that unhappy Englishman, Monsieur French? There you had a stroke of luck — a stroke that may have cost the gentleman his life. He happened to know about Rice’s activities in Central America during the war. He also knew about this man Shanklin. He may have known a lot more.’
‘If they killed French, why haven’t they killed me and Anna? Or even you?’
‘Ah, that is one of the riddles that must be solved — although I have my theories.’
‘Which are?’
Pol closed his eyes and belched. ‘Mon chèr, your conduct in this affair has so far been a model of tact and restraint. You have not posed awkward questions, and you have not obstinately sought answers to every problem. You have preferred to pursue events at their own pace, to wait and see how the story unfolds. So please, do not start asking me to divulge my theories — unless I choose to do so, of my own accord. Continue to see yourself as a soldier in the front line, with me as your commanding officer — you do not seek his answer to all your questions.
Dead Secret Page 22
