Dead Secret

by Alan Williams

  He was in the shadow of the trees when the fourth bullet thumped into the mud a couple of inches from his left knee. He had decided, with a kind of reckless chivalry, that they would get him before they got Anna. Though his body would offer feeble protection, judging by the second bullet that had passed straight through Rice and sliced into the tree behind.

  Hawn thought, even one gun — a heavy automatic pistol — tilted the odds considerably. Now, if they could just get to the cafe… He remembered that Hanak’s car was facing away from the trees. If they could only reach it, they would just have those few vital seconds to get the engine started. Enough for a bullet in the tyre, the petrol tank?

  Hanak was lying on his side under the narrow tree trunks, adjusting a long metal tube to the end of a pistol. Hawn thought at first that he was fixing a silencer, then realized that he was converting the gun into a small rifle. He had taken out a leather sling which he snapped round his shoulder and wrist to give himself extra leverage. ‘Keep your eyes skinned on those trees — we may spot a muzzle-flash.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Anna said, in a small distant voice, as though she had not fully taken in what was happening.

  ‘How the devil should I know? — except that there’s at least one marksman out there with a very powerful rifle.’ Hanak’s voice was brisk, competent.

  Then two sounds reached them simultaneously. The fifth bullet shrieked into the tree beside Hanak, grazing his left thumb; and at the same time, two quick rattling noises, like pebbles being shaken inside a tin can. Hawn recognized the sounds at once, horribly, excitingly familiar — bursts of automatic fire — and they were not being aimed at them. Then a third burst, followed by shouts, and a scream — shrill, like a woman’s scream, carrying clearly across the water.

  Hawn thought he could see movement in the trees opposite, but with only one good eye his vision was soon blurred. He heard a voice: ‘No one move!’

  More voices, shouts of command, tramping feet; then the growl of approaching vehicles. The three of them crouched rigidly behind the pines. The voices continued from the far bank, but less urgent now. Then, coming down the pier, the sound of boots. Hanak had hastily dismantled his gun and sling and put them away under his coat.

  Whether it was the cold or the excitement, his pale cheeks were flushed pink.

  Hawn said savagely, ‘Well, Sam, how does this fit into your game? Or perhaps it wasn’t part of your brief? They never brief you enough, do they? Always finish up by dropping you in the shit.’

  Sam Hanak did not reply; he did not even look at Hawn. He was looking at the two Vopos who had appeared around the side of the cafe. They were followed by the short, bulky figure of Colonel Kardich. He was in uniform this time — epaulettes, smock-tunic, boots, belt and holster all polished like dark mirrors. The pair of Vopos had their guns aimed at the three of them. One of them said, ‘Raus!’

  Anna was already coming out with her hands up. Hawn followed her, but without raising his hands, reaching instead to shield her from what was left of Doctor Rice. The Vopos had young hard faces, their eyes full of dull hostility. Kardich walked round them. ‘Miss Admiral, you may put your hands down.’ He stopped and glanced down at Rice, then moved the body gently with the toe of his boot, turning it enough to see what had happened to the scientist’s face. He looked up at Hanak, then at Hawn.

  ‘He was a valuable man, Doktor Reiss. One of the best of his kind.’ His voice was flat, without emotion. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  Hanak answered: ‘You found it first, long ago. We should have known that Rice wouldn’t have kept his secret that long.’

  ‘You are very trusting, Herr Hanak. And a little naive, I think, for a man in your position.’

  The Jew stood studying his bleeding thumb, grazed by the bullet, then looked up at Kardich and smiled. ‘You’d have done the same thing, Colonel. Only you had the advantage of operating on your home ground.’

  Kardich blinked wearily at him. ‘Follow me, all of you.’ They made their way round the cafe and along the pier. Two jeeps were drawn up a little way down the road, and opposite the trees where the shooting had come from stood a truck. A dozen men were moving around, several of them wearing steel helmets.

  A couple of Vopos emerged from the trees opposite the island, lugging a bulky weight wrapped in an army blanket One of them also carried, besides his Kalashnikov automatic, a sporting rifle with a telescopic lens. Kardich led the way until the two parties met. The Colonel signalled the Vopos to stop, said something, and they dropped their bundle like a heavy sack on the road. Kardich leant down and pulled back the end of the blanket. ‘You know him?’

  Anna shuddered and looked away. Hawn nodded. ‘A Corsican — Serge Rassini. We first saw him in Turkey. He was pretending to be drunk.’

  ‘He will not get drunk again,’ Colonel Kardich said. The Corsican’s face was splashed with mud, and there was a dark clotted mass at his throat. Kardich let go of the blanket and signalled to the two Vopos to carry on.

  Behind them a massively laden stretcher was now being carried out from the trees. Kardich again led the way towards it.

  They had thrown a blanket over this one, too, but it was hardly large enough to cover the body beneath, from which now came a shrill whimper — the same voice they had heard cry out from the woods.

  The two bearers again stopped when they reached Colonel Kardich. He turned to Hawn and Anna. ‘So this is your good friend — your comrade-in-arms, your protector and benefactor. The man who has just tried to have you killed.’

  Pol’s face was the colour of dirty water and his kiss curl straggled over the dome of his forehead like the ends of a frayed rope. He peered up at Hawn with eyes miserable with pain. ‘Ah, quelle jolie fin de partie!’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘It was necessary. An act of policy. I would like to explain, but I haven’t the strength.’

  Hawn gave him a tired grin and spoke without looking at Colonel Kardich; ‘Die Voglein schweigen im Walde — the woods by the lake, Charles. And soon you will be silent too.’

  ‘All, not quite yet, I hope!’ Pol giggled feebly. ‘Mon chèr, there are good days and there are bad days. Voilà — this is a bad day. As you say, it seems that Doktor Mönch may have had the last laugh.’

  Kardich said something in German and the two Vopos began to move away. ‘Give me some cognac!’ Pol cried, and closed his eyes.

  ‘We have more waiting for you than cognac,’ Kardich said, and turned to Hawn and Anna. ‘You will both get into the first jeep, please.’

  Hanak was already walking back towards the Skoda; then paused, and gave them both a sad smile. He was holding his wounded thumb, wrapped in a handkerchief.

  As Hawn and Anna reached the first jeep, from inside they heard another squeal of pain. The last they saw of Pol were his tiny feet peeping out from between the canvas flaps at the back. Anna turned to Colonel Kardich. ‘Is he badly hurt?’

  ‘He will live.’

  CHAPTER 29

  The car was a big black Russian saloon with a military driver and a plain-clothes man in the front, Hawn and Anna in the back. They drove fast, with the headlamps on high-beam. By noon they were past Oranienburg and on the autobahn heading west to Berlin. Except for a few whispered exchanges between Anna and Hawn, no one spoke. Anna was in a state of shock, her body shaken with spasms of shivering.

  At the checkpoint into the East Sector they slowed down but did not stop. The plain-clothes man flashed a card and they drove through, down the dismal dirty-white reaches of Karl-Marx-Allee, looking now, in daylight, like two rows of vast pock-marked tombstones: across Alexanderplatz, and west into drab suburbs littered with workers’ flats backed by great mounds of rubble half overgrown with scrub and weed.

  They did not cross at Checkpoint Charlie, but at the more remote Glienicke Bridge. There they stopped, but only for a moment. Two Vopos surrounded the car and whipped the rear doors open. An officer appeared and pointed acros
s the bridge. ‘Go.’

  It seemed a long lonely walk, across the murky, half-frozen waters of the Spee Canal. At the far side was a broad white line on the road; two American MPs sat in a jeep and glanced at them both, curiously. A taut-faced man in a black leather raincoat approached them. ‘Mr Hawn. Miss Admiral.’ He gestured towards a BMW parked a few yards on, with its engine running. A second man in a raincoat sat behind the wheel. They were again shown into the back, and again they drove off at speed.

  Hawn tried to ask the first man what was happening, where they were going. The German replied, ‘Please, I am not permitted to discuss matters.’

  Twenty minutes later they drew up outside the international terminal of Tempelhof Airport, and were conducted to the British Airways counter. Here a youngish man with a clipped moustache and weak eyes stepped forward and said, ‘Mr Hawn, Miss Admiral, my name’s Wynn-Catlin — I’m with the British Consulate here.’ He handed Hawn a plastic folder. ‘These are your travel documents for entering the United Kingdom, and your tickets. Your plane leaves in just under half-an-hour.’

  When Hawn looked round, the German had gone. He turned to Wynn-Catlin: ‘Would it be too much to ask what’s going on?’

  The man looked at him, full of officious disdain. ‘I’m afraid it would. You see, I haven’t the faintest idea myself. I just know that you’ve lost your passports, and that it’s our job to see you get back home.’

  They landed at Heathrow at 2.15 local time. It was raining.

  Customs and Immigration must have been tipped off; the formalities were swift and perfunctory. Hawn was half expecting, with a mixture of vanity and habit, to be greeted by reporters and cameras. Instead, there was just one man, in a chauffeur’s uniform, carrying a card with ‘Mr Hawn’ printed on it. He told them he had a car waiting for them outside.

  It was a dark blue Jaguar with a telephone between the front seats. Hawn tried again: ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To Mr Shanklin’s place in Wiltshire, sir.’ His accent was that of the perfect gentleman’s gentleman.

  ‘I’d prefer to go home. Number eighty-two, Pembridge Villas, please.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I have my instructions.’

  ‘You’ll do as I say, or I’ll call the police.’ But the car was already moving, gathering speed.

  ‘Mr Shanklin gave me a message,’ the chauffeur said, with no inflection in his voice. ‘He told me to tell you that you are now in safe hands and that you have nothing more to worry about.’

  ‘That’s very nice of Mr Shanklin. Can I reach him on this telephone?’

  ‘He won’t be at home for another hour, sir.’

  ‘I see. Supposing we jump out at the first red lights?’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise it, sir. Mr Shanklin is very strict about his instructions.’

  Hawn sat back, holding Anna close to him, as they drove down the long underpass towards the M4.

  It was a grey-stone farmhouse with a converted barn, standing on the brow of a hill behind a fringe of beech trees; and in a field beyond, a dilapidated windmill in the process of being restored. On the forecourt stood a muddy Range-Rover. The chauffeur nodded at it and said, ‘Mr Shanklin’s at home.’

  The door was opened by a large woman with a long pleasant face, her hair tied in a bun. ‘Mr Hawn, Miss Admiral! Welcome! I expect you’re both exhausted? Have you seen a doctor? We’ve got a very good locum here — I’m sure he’d pop over and look at you.’

  She led them down a passage lined with gumboots and overcoats and spades, into a high-beamed room with an inglenook in which a log fire blazed between two brass lions. Apart from one or two pieces of expensive furniture, the room was spare and rustic, with a pleasant homely untidiness. On a table in a corner stood a handsome scale model of the windmill Hawn had seen outside.

  The woman had led them towards the fire. ‘Miserable weather, isn’t it?’ She rubbed her great hands together. ‘It’s a bit early for a drink, but would you like some tea?’

  ‘I’d like a whisky,’ said Hawn. ‘Where’s Mr Shanklin?’

  ‘I expect he’ll be down in a jiffy. He’s probably having a bath. Now, you wanted a whisky? Would Miss Admiral like one, too?’

  ‘Please.’ Anna sat down in a very old chair and hunched her shoulders.

  The woman went over to a Welsh dresser to fetch the drinks. Hawn noticed that the only reading matter in the room was a shelf of leather-bound volumes, each containing three condensed popular novels, and several stout volumes of Debrett’s Peerage and Landed Gentry.

  The woman handed them their drinks, just as Shanklin came in. He wore no braces, and his shirt drooped out under a shabby cardigan that was too tight for his shoulders. He was carrying a shotgun.

  ‘My dear Hawn! How very nice.’ He paused. ‘I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your young friend?’

  They had both stiffened in their chairs. Shanklin glanced down at the gun, and laughed. ‘Sorry, you mustn’t mind the weaponry! You’re in the country now, you know. I was just oiling it.’ He propped the gun up carefully against the wall, then came forward and sat down. ‘Mind you, I don’t blame you for being jumpy. I would be, if I’d been through what you have.’ He turned to Anna. ‘But we still haven’t been introduced.’

  ‘Anna Admiral. I’m sure you’ve heard my name before.’

  Shanklin gave a robust chuckle. ‘Touché! I’m afraid in my job I get too much into the habit of standing on ceremony. Now, are you hungry? I expect you could do with something after that plastic muck they serve you on BA?’

  ‘Later,’ said Hawn. ‘We haven’t come down here just to enjoy your hospitality, Mr Shanklin. I want explanations — an explanation for everything.’

  ‘Of course you do. The trouble is, where to begin? Perhaps I should ask you, where would you like me to begin?’

  ‘Wouldn’t the best place be the beginning?’

  ‘Well of course!’ Shanklin’s voice had slid imperceptibly into that soothing tone that was at once intimate enough to be seductive. ‘Indeed, what better place to begin at than the beginning? Trouble is, there are so many beginnings. Are your drinks all right?’ He glanced round. ‘Jane’s left, has she?’

  ‘Start with Venice,’ Hawn said.

  ‘Yes, Venice. As I think I recall, you were there on holiday — happened to bump into that unhappy fellow, Grotti Savoia, and then into Logan. Awful ass, Logan, but still, one mustn’t be too unkind — fellow has the most ghastly job which he does very well. Through him, you met that fat Frenchie, Pol?

  ‘At the same time, you had just had your inspired hunch — a wild pipe-dream glimpsed in the dark waters of the canals, eh? That the bogey-men of the America-Britannic Consortium had been fuelling Hitler’s war machine and reaping rich profits therefrom? Well, here we come to one of the few genuine coincidences of this whole bizarre saga — that at the same time as meeting that villain Pol, you should also have made the brief acquaintance of Mr Robak. Now unfortunately for you — for all of us, really — both these gentlemen took your pipe dream seriously. You may ask why? Not, with respect, because you were the star reporter of Fleet Street. Men like Pol and Robak are not worried by journalists. They were worried by you for a simple reason. Because they knew your pipe dream to be true.’

  Without asking them, he fetched the whisky and refilled their glasses; then sat back and folded his mottled, hairy hands together. Hawn again observed that he was not drinking.

  ‘At this point we must venture some speculation. Robak, who is not the subtlest of men, tried to warn you off. At the same time he contacted me. He seemed to be in a slight panic. He even hinted that if you made any positive moves to try and pursue investigations into your theory, then direct action would have to be taken against you. I told him not to be so primitive — to sit back and wait to see if anything happened. What happened was that you paid me a visit. At that point, I decided to play you along — like a fish on a line, if you’ll forgive the metaphor.

  ‘I
put you on to Norman French, with whom I believe you’d already had dealings? French was a thoroughly horrid little man, but he’d chalked up one achievement to his name — he’d taken ABCO and a lot of its stockholders for a big ride. One of these was Robak. And while out in the Caribbean, French had also dug up a few skeletons from under the oil rigs. I’ll never be quite sure how much he knew, or how much he guessed. It was certainly nothing he could prove, or he’d have no doubt started to blackmail a few people — my good self among them, no doubt. But he put you on to Doctor Alan Rice, obviously knowing that Rice had been tied up in some sort of racket.

  ‘You started to check on Rice. Don’t worry, the Public Record Office is public, remember! I knew you were on to Rice and me and Frisby, and on to the Turkish end, with Salak. It wasn’t a difficult trail to follow. To the average investigator, it wouldn’t have meant much. But it just so happened that it fitted rather neatly into your theory.’

  Hawn cut in: ‘There’s a missing file on your activities in the Caribbean.’

  ‘There are several. Official secrets, hush-hush stuff. Those two Intelligence blokes who flew out to Mexico in ’44 weren’t at all happy about young Frisby’s death — not at all happy, and they said so. Unfortunately it was thought best, in the national interest — which meant the interests of ABCO — that some of their reports should remain classified.

  ‘Then, my dear Hawn, we find you going to your old chum, Angus MacIntyre. I’d been rather expecting you to do that — that is, if you were at all serious. And when you did, I confess I didn’t like it. The old boy’s a bit past it now, but he knows one hell of a lot. About the only thing he doesn’t know is how to keep his mouth shut. He was always careful enough not to rush into print, but from an old friend like you I don’t suppose he had many secrets. He put you on to Mönch, didn’t he? And Salak?’

  He rubbed his hands together, staring at the ceiling, the hair at the back of his balding head sticking out, making him look like an ageing bishop on the rampage.