Dead Secret

by Alan Williams

  ‘However, I will put your mind at rest on one point. Salak. You are worried that you got on to him too easily. But you forget that Imin Salak was a big wheel in the Istanbul underworld. He was a big wheel during the war. The British made the mistake of trusting him, and he sold out to the Germans. Istanbul in those days was like Lisbon — what one might call a social centre for high-life espionage. Anyone involved in Intelligence work in the Middle East — like your old journalist friend — would have heard of Salak. It would have been highly suspicious if he hadn’t.

  ‘The fact that he’d also heard of Mönch is because you exposed your theory to him and asked him specifically about the German fuel industry. Mönch had been a powerful man in that industry, and your friend — having specialized, as you say, in economic warfare — knew all about him, too. So you see, you do not have to worry about coincidences there. Again it is the matter of perspective. Unless you have the theory — the overall picture in your mind — that the Western powers, through ARCO, were supplying the Nazis with their fuel — the random names of Rice and Mönch and Salak have no particular significance. Have I put your mind at rest?’

  ‘Not quite. Rice’s presence in East Germany needs some explaining. Presumably he fled there after the war to avoid arrest by the British? And the Russians, not giving a damn about the British and their ideas of high treason, were only too happy to put him to work again as a top scientist? But how much do the Russians really know? And how much has Rice chosen to tell them? The Communists would surely love to expose the biggest Capitalist multinational enterprise as a gang of master war criminals?’

  ‘Yes, I have thought about that, too. But the Communists are very devious. They are also very pragmatic and consistent — when it suits their aims. One of the ironies of our time is that the Soviet Union, and the whole Eastern Bloc, depends a great deal on the stability, even prosperity, of the Western economy. Until now they have been short of oil — and it may well be that the hierarchy decided that it was not in their interests to try to topple the major Western oil consortium.

  ‘Anyway, supposing Rice did tell them all? It would still have been one man’s word against the collective voice of ABCO. It would also not only be a word emanating from behind the Iron Curtain, but that of a traitor who had worked for the Nazis, and one who was now lending his voice to the most crude Communist propaganda. Surely not a very edifying or convincing witness?’

  ‘Which suggests that we don’t have much hope of his talking to us?’

  ‘That is something we shall see. It must depend on many possibilities which we cannot consider now. For it is time I gave you your instructions. Do you know Berlin? No — then listen carefully. But you must remember it — write nothing down.

  ‘When you leave here you will walk up the Kudamm, past the Gedackniskirche to the Europa Centre opposite the Zoo. There you will take a number forty-seven tram up the Hardenbergstrasse to the Ernst-Reuter-Platz. There you will take the U-Bahn to the Charlottenburg station. As you leave the station, you will see on your right a bridge under the autobahn ringroad. You will pass under this bridge and the third street on your left is called Tiefengasse. Fifty metres down on the left is a bar called the “Cheri”. Go in and order a drink. It should be nearly 8.15. At that time Wohl will introduce himself.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to get a taxi?’

  ‘I have asked you to follow my instructions.’

  ‘Do you anticipate that we will be followed?’

  ‘Of course. It will be useless to evade them. At this stage they will have their best men on the job, probably using several cars, so a taxi would avail you nothing.’

  ‘So what’s the purpose of the tram and the U-Bahn? Or is the idea to give them the impression that I’m trying to lose them?’

  Pol nodded. ‘That is approximately the idea. You have reached a point in the game where you must act the part. If you take a taxi, and act as though you had nothing to fear, they would lose confidence in you — they would think that you were worse than an amateur — that you were an idiot. It is essential that they continue to think that they are dealing with someone reasonably serious. That is your insurance.’ Hawn climbed off the hot wet slab, feeling drained and parched and slightly giddy. ‘I suppose there’s no point in asking when I’ll see you again?’

  ‘You will see me when the time is right.’ Pol raised a hand like a pink flipper. ‘Bonne chance. Et merde.’

  CHAPTER 25

  A slow icy drizzle was falling as they climbed out of the U-Bahn station at Charlottenburg. A small crowd came out with them. Pol had been right — it would have been easy, even for one man, to have followed them: and almost impossible for Hawn to have spotted him. Most of the passengers on the train had looked like late commuters, mostly men, well-upholstered against the damp cold, reading the sports pages of the evening paper. There had been a big match in Cologne and the Berlin team had won.

  The bridge was on their right, just as the Frenchman had said. Again, no reason why Pol should have lied. Hawn had to trust Pol, just as he had to trust the man Wohl. What really jarred with Hawn was that Anna had to trust them both too. Anna had been loyal, patient, almost unquestioning from the start; but like a pair of mountaineers roped together, Hawn knew that every step grew more treacherous, the drop more terrible. He was holding her end of the rope, while Pol held his. There was no going back now.

  The passengers from the train had spread out into the gloom. A few cars threw up a spray of slush and sand. A tram came grinding and sparking round a corner; there was the distant shriek and rattle of the overhead S-Bahn. Hawn took Anna’s hand and began to cross towards the bridge, through the puddles of dim light. He felt very exposed, very alone with her, as he walked under the concrete stanchions, hearing the dull roar of the autobahn ringway passing above them. The street beyond was dark — wet cobbles stretching away like the skin of a reptile. Between the buildings, a glimpse of black ruins creeping down to the edge of the street like dead lava flows.

  At the third street on their left they turned into Tiefengasse. An unsteady, blinking scrawl of red neon marked the Cheri Bar. Hawn paused for half a minute: but no one turned into the street behind them. He opened the iron-ribbed door and walked into a long room with a bar down one side, a row of wooden partitions along the other. Cheap cigar smoke swirled in a myriad of colours from a revolving ball of light in the middle of the ceiling. A jukebox was bawling out some German hit song, which had a distinctly martial beat — a crazy hybrid of pop and the parade-ground.

  They found seats in one of the partitions where two men were just leaving. It had just gone 8.15. Anna asked for Schnapps. Hawn, still feeble from the steam bath, ordered a cold beer. He drank half of it straight down, and was just lowering the mug when a man stopped at their table.

  ‘Monsieur, Madame Marziou? Vous permettez?’ Before they could reply, he had removed his camel-hair coat and slid down between them at the end of the table. His smile was white, his French very correct. He held out his hand to Anna. There was a chunky gold signet ring on his index finger and a thin gold bracelet peeped from under his white cuff.

  ‘Enchanté, I’m sure! The name’s Wohl — Doktor Oskar Wohl.’ He shook hands with each of them; his grip was strong and dry. Hawn noticed that his hair had two thick greying streaks folded back behind his ears, and that he was carrying no hat. Hawn guessed that a car had dropped him and was probably waiting outside. Doktor Wohl certainly was having no nonsense about pretending to be evading a ‘tail’. People like him could afford to act in the open.

  Wohl snapped his fingers and called for a whisky sour. ‘Sorry I had to invite you to this joint. Fact is, all the decent places are a bit too public. Berlin’s like a club — you can’t move without bumping into somebody you know.’ The switch from French into English had transformed him perfectly: he spoke with one of those American accents that no American has — what Hawn called the ‘IBM accent’. He was the supersalesman, the transatlantic executive: relaxed,
confident, full of hidden aggression. None of it showing now — smiling whitely over his whisky sour, toasting them both with his bright brown eyes.

  Hawn said, ‘You say Berlin’s a club? Which half — East or West?’

  Wohl laughed easily. ‘I guess I should say, “touché”! No, I meant the West sector — what I call the Sin Sector.’ He paused. ‘Monsieur Marziou — can I call you something a little more relaxed? We don’t have to play games here. And I hate formality. What do I call you?’

  ‘Call me Tom. And this is Anna.’

  ‘Anna, Tom — I’m delighted.’

  Anna had been studying him carefully. He was slightly below medium height, but strongly built, and he looked very fit, very tanned, but with that slight shade of orange tan which suggested the regular use of a sunlamp. His eyes were heavily-lidded, quick and shrewd.

  But, most of all, Anna noticed his clothes. The tweed suit was a little too square at the shoulders, too narrow at the hips; the double-breasting an inch too wide, the check a few millimetres too large. His tie was a conservative blue, knotted a little too tightly, above a pin with a large paste pearl, and the points of his shirt collar were too broad, too long. He wore no wedding ring.

  He made conversation rapidly, changing his subject as deftly, effortlessly, as a card sharp, never staying on one topic long enough to offend, or to arouse suspicion on controversy. He talked of life in London, Paris, Berlin — how he preferred Berlin because it had more ‘zip, more fizz’. ‘London and Paris are half-dead. Not what they used to be. Now you take Berlin — God, what a city. Crazy but fun!’

  ‘You’re talking about East Berlin, are you?’ said Anna sternly.

  Wohl held up his hand, and smiled. He obviously felt that his smile was his passport to social success. ‘You ask me about East Berlin? OK, I’ll tell you. Very sober. Very, very sober. Discipline and work. What do you feel about the Workers’ State, Anna?’

  ‘I’ve never been to one. But I don’t like policemen who go around armed. And I like them even less when they’re backed up by tanks — particularly when those tanks come from another country.’

  ‘Ah c’mon, Anna, c’mon! That’s an old disc from way back in the Cold War. Budapest, Prague — so you get a bit of trouble and the tanks come in to restore order. OK, so a few people get killed. But I can play that same disc to you — the flipside. What about Chile, the Argentine, Iran, South Africa — and your own Ulster?’

  ‘I’m a Socialist,’ Anna said, reddening. ‘I deplore what goes on in those countries. Anyway, I don’t need an East German to tell me what to think.’ She gulped her Schnapps and put her glass down with a bang.

  Wohl leant out and patted her wrist. ‘OK, Anna. I’m glad you’re a Socialist. So am I. But we don’t have to worry about old England going Communist, do we? Nothing revolutionary about England, eh? I think it was Stalin who said that England would never go Communist after he’d heard about the workers and the police playing a football match during your General Strike?

  ‘Let me tell you both a little story. It demonstrates the English political character so beautifully. I once heard of a very old guy whose father had worked in the British Museum round about the time that Karl Marx used to go there. The son was asked if his father had ever talked about his patrons. He was asked about someone called Marx. The son said, “Oh yes, Mr Marx — the German gentleman with the beard who used to come in every day, year in, year out. A real regular. Then one day he stopped coming, and he was never heard of again.”’

  He was looking at them both eagerly: ‘You get it, eh?’ And he repeated the punchline. Hawn gave a polite laugh, and Anna smiled sourly. Wohl shook his head: ‘No, there’s nothing revolutionary about England. More the mentality of head in the sand, and to hell with the rest of the world.’

  Hawn said, ‘Have we come here just to discuss the nightlife of Berlin and the degree of English revolutionary fervour?’

  ‘No, Tom, of course not. Just a way of breaking the ice. Leave politics to the politicians. They get paid for it, after all. Let’s talk about things that are of more immediate interest. Such as a French friend of yours called Pol. I gather he’s a fairly recent friend?’

  ‘I prefer to call him a business associate,’ said Hawn. ‘So you know him too?’

  ‘Not personally. But I have friends who do. Pol is an interesting man. But you want to be careful of him — he’s clever and he’s dangerous. And he always plays alone. Anyone who plays with him usually finishes up being used. You’re both being used by him at this very moment. But I suppose you are aware of that?’

  ‘I’ve got something to get out of this, too, you know,’ Hawn said defensively.

  ‘Sure, sure. But you still need protection. From what I understand, Pol will protect you just as long as it suits him, but no more.’

  ‘Let me ask you something. How much do you know about this?’

  ‘Enough. I make a point of never knowing more than I have to.’

  ‘And how much is that?’

  Wohl sipped his whisky sour. ‘You and Anna are out to get some dirt on the America-Britannic Consortium. I have a contact in the GDR who may be able to help you. I don’t know the details, because I haven’t asked.’

  ‘Let me get something absolutely straight, Doktor Wohl. You may talk about leaving politics to the politicians. But you come from a highly political part of the world and, from what I gathered from Pol, you have a practically unique position there. If we’re to accompany you into what you call the German Democratic Republic, we want to know just where we stand.’

  The East German lawyer spread his hands on the table, showing two inches of cuff. ‘I am offering no guarantees. I can arrange for you both to be issued with temporary visas for the GDR at the city limits. I will also introduce you to the man you have come to meet. Whether he co-operates with you or not is entirely his affair.’

  ‘That doesn’t entirely answer my question. In your sort of work you must live in and out of the pockets of the East German Government. That includes their Security Police. And I’m not dumb enough to think that those boys make a move without consulting their bosses in Moscow. What you might call, “running a tight ship”.’

  Wohl raised his arm and called for another round of drinks. ‘Hell, Tom, I’ll say this for you. You’re certainly direct! That’s what comes of dealing with a journalist. But I prefer the more diplomatic approach.’

  ‘I prefer facts. Tell me straight. Does East German Security have a line on us both? If so, how much do they know?’

  Wohl’s face was working hard at being open and frank. He tried his smile, and Hawn could see the web of white wrinkles round his eyes that showed up against his false tan. He placed his hand on Hawn’s arm. ‘Tom, our Security will know about you if and when I tell them. They trust me. That’s why you gotta trust me.’ He took out a bronze-coloured packet of cigarettes which he offered to them both, and which they declined; then he tapped out an oval shaped cigarette with a gold tip, produced a gold lighter as if by sleight of hand, and went through a smooth, elaborate ritual of lighting up, inhaling, resting his head back and letting the smoke curl out through his nostrils.

  ‘I shall arrange for you to meet and talk with Doktor Reiss. This meeting will be entirely private. But it is possible that Doktor Reiss would prefer to communicate what he has told you to Security. He will do this more as a polite formality than as a duty. After that you will, of course, be free to leave the GDR.’

  ‘With no questions asked? Come on, Wohl! Supposing Reiss tells your Security something they don’t like?’

  Wohl drew on his cigarette. ‘Tom, you don’t think that a man in Reiss’s position — which is pretty high — would be fool enough to tell you something that would upset our authorities? Hell, your Government may have to stand to attention and salute every time the America-Britannic Consortium farts, but we don’t have those problems. We don’t owe ABCO a pfennig — and even if we did, we wouldn’t pay them.

  ‘Now, I’v
e got to make a short telephone call. It’ll give you enough time to talk things over.’ He finished his drink, slid out from behind the table and disappeared into the back of the bar.

  ‘God, what an awful man,’ Anna said. ‘I’m not a nationalist, or even much of a patriot, but I don’t like my country being run down by foreigners — particularly when I’ve only just met them.’

  ‘Just a line in Communist small talk. He also wanted to get some idea of where we stood politically, if at all. Otherwise, you’ve got to hand it to the man. He’s a hypocrite in the Olympic gold medal class, an ideologist gymnast, and a slick double-faced A-1 shit — and he’s intelligent enough to know it.’

  ‘He’s ghastly.’

  ‘He’s got good dentures.’

  ‘And he powders his nose — did you notice that?’

  ‘Angel, he’s going to finish that phone call in a minute. He left us to make up our minds. Which means whether to trust him, or to refuse to be led into East Germany — and out again, perhaps.’

  ‘I don’t trust him. How can you trust a man who plays for both sides so openly?’

  ‘That’s maybe the very reason why we should trust him. Wohl’s racket is practically unique. He may sound and look like a conman, but he certainly can’t afford to be one.’

  ‘You trust him because you want to trust him. Because you’re frightened of backing out.’

  ‘Lesser of two evils, my love. We’ve got ABCO behind us, the Communists in front. Which would you choose?’