by Eric Ambler
“The rest refers to a forty thousand ton battleship building at Spezia and to be completed fourteen months hence. It is reported, he says, that it is to have a six-metre belt of manganese steel armour one point two metres thick. Six fifty-five centimetre naval guns with elevations of thirty degrees are being supplied, presumably by the Braganzetta works. A Genoese firm is supplying the mountings. That’s probably the Grigori-Sforza works.” He handed the page back to me. “It goes on to give further details.”
“And you got all that just by looking at those notes?” I queried sarcastically.
He shrugged. “It’s quite clear when you know what you’re looking for. That is probably the draft of his last report to Vagas.”
“I see.” I didn’t see, but it was obviously useless to argue. “Well, it’s all very upsetting, but I still don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
“You don’t!” He made a gesture of exasperation. “Tamara, he doesn’t…”
“No, I don’t,” I snapped. “You know darn well I don’t.” His calm recital of what seemed to me to be a revolting story had both shocked and irritated me.
“It’s really very simple, Mr. Marlow,” said the girl soothingly. “You see, having found out that Ferning was engaged in espionage and murdered him, the Ovra was bound to regard you, Ferning’s successor, with a certain amount of suspicion. You might try the same game.”
“But why didn’t they kill Vagas? Why kill Ferning? He was only the subordinate.”
“Because,” grunted Zaleshoff, “Vagas is too smart for them. He’s got a new variation on the royal and ancient game of grafting and it’s a honey. He doesn’t confine his activities to espionage. That’s where he’s clever. He safeguards himself by doing a little business on the side. Quite a lot of prominent officials would lose slices of their incomes if Vagas was liquidated. They now he’s a foreign agent, but as long as they can feel that they’re stopping him getting hold of anything useful, they’re happy. That’s their mistake, because he gets the goods. He makes them think they’re fooling him, when all the time he’s laughing up his sleeve at them. The secret of it is, of course, that because their private business deals with Vagas are profitable, they want to think that it’s harmless.”
“But what about my passport?”
“There’s nothing new about that. It’s a good way of keeping tabs on you. They know perfectly well that it’s the devil’s own job to get a passport replaced even when there’s every reason to suppose that it has been destroyed. There are endless formalities. When it’s not definitely lost, when it’s just mislaid, when there’s more than a chance that it may turn up, the difficulties are multiplied. That suits them. If you wanted to leave the country, you’d have to get a Document of Identity for travelling purposes from your Consul. That would mean approaching the police for a visa. In other words, you can’t leave the country without their say-so. They’ve got you pretty well taped.”
“And I suppose that the letter opening was their work, too.”
“Sure. They’ve got to keep a check on Bellinetti, too. That’s their way.”
I sat for a moment in silence. In my mind’s eye I was trying to get the thing into its correct perspective. Vagas, Ferning, Bellinetti. Ferning, with his small anxious eyes, his protesting mouth, had been the born victim. Inset: the murdered man. Ferning was the sheep. Vagas and Bellinetti were the wolves-wolves which hunted in different packs. But where exactly did Zaleshoff fit in? There was nothing sheep-like about him. Was he, too, a wolf? Anyway, what did it matter? It was nothing to do with me, I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as Ferning. The less I knew, the better. Ask no questions…
I looked up. “Well,” I said crisply, “it’s very good of you to tell me all this, Mr. Zaleshoff, to warn me of some of the perils of the big city. But, as it happens, your warning is unnecessary. I have already told Vagas that I will have nothing to do with his precious proposition.”
“Do you mean to say,” he said slowly, “that he let you turn him down flat?”
I laughed. I was feeling very sure of myself. “Not exactly. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was left that I should telephone my decision to him. But I had already made up my mind before I saw you this evening.” I paused. “Vagas,” I went on, “must be a cold-blooded devil to put me forward as the next Ovra victim.”
“Vagas obviously does not know that Ferning’s death wasn’t an accident or he would have met you in secret. He might even have thought it a waste of time to contact you at all.”
“But what about Madame Vagas. She evidently holds her husband responsible for Ferning’s death. But how…?”
“Exactly!” he chimed in grimly. “That’s why that note startled me a bit. Madame Vagas knows more than she should.”
“Well, at any rate,” I said easily, “it’s no concern of mine. I’d already made up my mind, and what you’ve told me clinches the decision.”
He looked at me thoughtfully and stroked his chin. Then:
“I don’t think you quite understand, Mr. Marlow,” he said slowly.
“Understand what?”
He sighed. “My motives for giving you this information.”
“Well, what were they?”
“I, too, have a proposition to put to you.”
I laughed. “Well, let’s have it. It can’t be as bad as Vagas’ little effort.”
He coughed self-consciously. For the first time I saw signs of embarrassment in his face. “It’s just this, Mr. Marlow,” he began, and then stopped.
“Well?”
“I want you to telephone General Vagas and say that you have decided, after all, to accept his offer.”
8
PROPOSITION
You’d better have another drink,” he added.
And then I began to laugh. They both surveyed me in sheepish silence.
“My dear good Zaleshoff,” I spluttered at last, “you really mustn’t play these lunatic jokes.”
My intention had been to annoy him and I succeeded. He reddened. “It’s not a joke, Marlow.”
“Isn’t it?” Then my own temper got the better of me. I stopped laughing. “If it isn’t a joke, what the devil is it?”
He made a very obvious effort to keep calm. “If you will allow me to explain…”
“Explain! explain!” My voice rose. “You’ve done nothing else but explain. Now you let me do a little explaining. I’m an engineer and I’m in Milan for a specific purpose. I have a job to do and I propose to do it. I am not interested in any proposition that is not aimed at promoting the interests of my company. Is that absolutely clear? Because if it isn’t clear, I must thank you for a very pleasant dinner and go.”
Zaleshoff was sitting with a face like a thundercloud. As I finished, he drew a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak. But his sister forestalled him.
“Just a minute, Andreas.” She turned to me. “Mr. Marlow,” she said coolly, “someone once said that the English were the best hated race on the world’s surface. I am beginning to understand what was meant by that. Of all the stupid, smug, short-sighted, complacent, obstinate, asinine…”
“Tamara!”
She flushed. “Be quiet, Andreas. I haven’t finished. You, Mr. Marlow, come here knowing nothing about anything except, presumably, your business as an engineer. That I can understand. But that you should refuse even to listen to what someone has to tell you about the world outside your own tiny mind, I cannot understand. Haven’t you a spark of vulgar curiosity in you?”
I got to my feet. “I think I had better go.”
She went and stood with her back to the door. “Oh, no you don’t, you’re going to listen to my brother.”
“Let him go, Tamara,” Zaleshoff said quietly. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll do without him.”
For a moment I stood there irresolute. I was feeling embarrassed, foolish and very slightly ashamed. After all, I had refused to listen. Besides, Zaleshoff’s last sentence had touched me on the raw. “We’ll do
without him.” It was the sort of thing you said to children to shame them into doing what they did not want to do. Unaccountably, it was having that effect on me. I have since wondered whether that had perhaps been Zaleshoff’s precise intention. His was a curious, deceptive mind. He had a way of exploiting the standard emotional counters that was highly disconcerting. You could never be quite sure whether his acting was studied or not and, if it was, whether for emphasis or concealment. Now, however, I told myself that I was indeed being childish, that the best thing I could do would be to carry out my declared intention and go. But I still stood there.
The girl moved away from the door. “Well, Mr. Marlow,” she said challengingly.
I sat down again with a sigh and a shrug. “I don’t know what this is all about,” I said shortly, “but I’ll have that other drink if it’s going.”
Zaleshoff nodded. “Sure.” Without another word, without even a hint of surprise, he got up and poured out two drinks. The girl came over to me.
“I’m very sorry,” she said humbly; “that was rude of me. You must think we’re very curious hosts.”
I did think so, but I grinned. “That’s all right. I’m afraid I’ve got rather a bad temper.”
Zaleshoff handed me my glass. “It’s a wonder that some good man hasn’t shot her before this.”
“Probably,” she retorted calmly, “because most good men don’t carry guns.” She examined me curiously. “Why didn’t you throw something at me just now, Mr. Marlow?”
“Because,” said her brother sharply, “there wasn’t anything handy. Now, for goodness’ sake, Tamara, get on with your sewing. Are you married, Marlow?”
“No. Engaged. She’s a doctor in England.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t want to appear inquisitive, but is there any particular reason why you should have taken this job here?”
“Yes. I got caught in what is politely called a trade recession. I couldn’t get a job worth having in England. My savings were nearly all gone. I was feeling desperate one day, and I accepted an offer from Spartacus.”
“I see. Then I suppose you wouldn’t object to Vagas’ two thousand lire a month if I could give you a good enough reason for taking it?”
I hesitated. “Frankly, Zaleshoff, I don’t think there’s a good enough reason in existence. At this very moment I’m telling myself that I’m a damn fool to sit here listening to you when I might be catching up on some of the sleep I missed last night. But I’m curious. I can’t believe that you’re such a half-wit as to spend an hour putting me off Vagas’ offer so thoroughly if you really wanted me to accept it.”
“I wasn’t putting you off. I was giving you the facts.”
“The distinction is too much for me. I’m not quite crazy, you know. Do you suppose I want to share that poor devil Ferning’s fate?”
“I do not suppose anything of the sort. But there’s no reason why you should share his fate.”
“That’s precisely what I’ m thinking. You, I gather, have something up your sleeve.”
“No. I just want to put a situation to you.”
“Fire away.”
“Do you ever read newspapers?”
“As little as possible, these days. Why?”
“Have you ever heard of a little thing called the Rome-Berlin axis?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“Have you ever looked at what it means on a map?”
“I can’t say I’ve bothered to.”
“You should. It’s interesting. A solid, strategic unit from the Frisian Islands in the North to the toe of Italy in the South. The toe is waiting to kick Great Britain in the pants. The head is there to gobble up what’s left. The Rome-Berlin axis is one of the most effective principles of European power-politics that has ever been stated. It gave Italy and Germany a free hand in Spain. It changed Austria from an independent state to a memory. It made England launch the most gigantic peace-time armament-making drive the world has ever seen. It cocked the biggest snook yet at the League of Nations idea. It deprived France of her little Entente allies. It’s frightened the rest of Europe so badly that it lives now in a permanent state of jitters. Even the United States have become uneasy. The world is slowly beginning to turn on the Rome-Berlin axis and already the strain is telling. Something’s got to snap, something’s going to snap; and if it’s not the Rome-Berlin axis, it’s going to be you and me. The statesmen of the so-called democracies, France and England, are busting themselves in their efforts to make it the axis that goes first. And they look like failing. Things are moving too quickly for them. They try to buy off Italy and fail. They try again. They can’t hit out for fear of hurting themselves. They’re out of their depths and they know it. They’re as mixed as my metaphors. They’re confused and confounded. And meanwhile we drift nearer and nearer to war. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are getting ready to go; and, Marlow, if those boys ride out again across Europe, you can say good-bye to all your dreams. It’ll be a war that’ll make the world safe for everything except mankind. A government will be formed with King Typhus at the head of a parliament of corpse-fed rats.”
He paused for a moment. “I dare say you’re wondering where all this is leading. I’ll tell you. It’s leading to a question-this question. If someone told you that by taking a certain course you could make a very, very small, but very, very positive, contribution towards putting a kink in that axis we’ve been talking about, what would you say?”
“I’d say that he had a bee in his bonnet.”
He grinned. “H’m, yes. You probably would say that. But supposing that he hadn’t got a bee in his bonnet, supposing he was talking good hard sense, and supposing he could prove it. What would you do then?”
I fidgeted. “I’m not very fond of these beautifully simple parables, Zaleshoff. Vagas has a weakness for them, too. Let’s get down to cases.”
“Just what I was going to do.” He put his hand in his pocket. “You wanted the dope; here’s the first bit. It’s the card from that file in my office, card number V. 18. Take a look at it.”
His hand came out with the card folded in two.
The picture of Vagas was obviously a photostat of a photograph taken some years before. There was more hair on top of the head and the sides were cropped. The skin of the face was tighter. He wore a high tubular stiff collar with a broad, flat tie. Below the photostat was pasted a square of typewritten paper.
Johann Luitpold Vagas (I read) born Dresden 1889. Heidelberg. Army 1909. 6th Bavarian Cavalry. Berlin 1913. War Ministry. 1917 Iron Cross and Star of Leopold. 1918 refugee to Belgrade. Yugo-Slav citizenship 1922. 1924 Yugo-Slav agent for Cator amp; Bliss Ltd. of London. Returned Germany 1933. Returned Belgrade 1934. Rome 1936. Milan 1937. See S. 22, J. 15, P. 207, C. 64, F. 326.
I looked up. “Well, what’s it all about?”
Zaleshoff frowned. “Does nothing there strike you?”
I read the card again. “Well, he appears to have been agent for a British steel firm.”
“Yes, he sold guns to the Yugo-Slav government; but that’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“He was a German officer. In nineteen-eighteen when the revolution broke out he skipped to Belgrade and later took up Yugo-Slav citizenship. But ”-he stabbed the air with his forefinger-“in nineteen-thirty-three he returned to Germany. Note the date-nineteen-thirty-three. What happened in nineteen-thirty-three in Germany?”
“Hitler came into power.”
“Precisely. Germany went Nazi, so he returned.”
“And left again the next year. What about it?”
“Just this. Vagas went to Germany a Yugo-Slav. He returned a German. From nineteen-thirty-four to nineteen-thirty-six Vagas was the principal German secret agent in Belgrade. It was a cinch for them. Here was a patriotic but expatriated German officer with a Yugo-Slav passport and well in with the Belgrade War Ministry by virtue of his position as an armament salesman. What more could you want? The
German Secret Service have always been tightwads, and I dare say the fact that he was drawing a fat commission from Cator amp; Bliss and didn’t want anything except the honour of serving his country was an additional attraction. Besides, an unpaid agent is always a sounder bet than a guy who may pass on unreliable information to justify his wages.”
“Yes, I see. But if he was so keen on the honour of serving the Nazis, what’s he doing here now working for the Yugo-Slav Government?”
Zaleshoff lounged back luxuriously on the divan. “There now, that’s fine!” He smiled seraphically. “We’re getting right to the heart of the matter. What, indeed?” He leaned forward. “I’ll tell you. The answer is-’nothing.’ He’s not working for the Yugo-Slav Government. He’s working for the Nazis.”
“He told me…”
“There’s a good old-fashioned word for what he told you-‘boloney.’ Listen. On October the nineteenth, nineteen-thirty-six, the Italian Foreign Minister, Ciano, met the German Foreign Minister, von Neurath, in Munich. At that meeting the Rome-Berlin axis was forged. A fortnight later Mussolini hailed the Rome-Berlin axis publicly in a speech in the Piazza del Duomo just round the corner. The crowd sang ‘Deutschland uber alles’ and the Horst Wessel song at the top of their voices. The blackshirts and brownshirts whooped it up together. Italy and Germany swore eternal friendship.” He paused impressively. “A fortnight later Vagas packed his suitcases and moved into Italy.”
He sipped at his whisky. “Have you ever watched a cat and a dog lie down on the same floor, Marlow? Maybe they’ve been brought up together, maybe they’re used to one another, maybe they’ve got the same interest in a common owner. But they’re never entirely at their ease. The cat is always watchful, the dog self-conscious. They can never quite forget that there is such a thing as a cat-and-dog fight. There’s an undercurrent of mutual suspicion between them that they can never quite forget. So it was with the Nazis and the Fascisti. They’d come to an agreement over Austria. They’d agreed on parallel action in Spain. They’d agreed to boycott Geneva. They’d agreed to present a united front to the Western powers. But Johann Luitpold Vagas was sent into Italy. The dog was keeping one eye open, just in case.”
