The Nostradamus Traitor: 1 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  “I don’t know.” George gave a sheepish smile. “I still don’t know. The memory plays false on some things but I do remember the dreams most vividly—if dreams they were.”

  “Since then?”

  George gave a negative wag. “there was more at Wewelsburg. Got me through all that.” He looked at his watch. Just gone seven. “You want…?”

  “No. No. No.” Fast, rattling like a gun. “You’ve done enough for one day. Fascinating, George. I’m just sorry to bother you with it.”

  George said that confession was good for the soul, and asked if Herbie could give him any clues yet.

  “I’m afraid not. If we go through Wewelsburg tomorrow morning and, maybe, get a start on—what was it called? Wermut.”

  Wormwood, yes. George looked him straight in the eyes.

  “Home to your good wife, then, George. Tomorrow a little later. Say, ten-thirty?”

  “Wonderful.” At the door he asked if Herbie ever got lonely, living alone.

  Didn’t we all, Herbie countered. In this business loneliness was part of the game. Deep down he felt a stirring. There were always counterploys to loneliness. Drink, yes. Women? If you knew what you were doing. They said good night and Herbie watched George Thomas walk towards the lift. He turned back into the flat for a second and then glanced out again. George was gone, the machinery of the lift whirring. Yet the man’s shadow seemed to be still there in the fully lit hall. An illusion; an optical trick of the light.

  Closing the door, Herbie moved quickly into the kitchen, wound the spool of tape forward, marked and removed it, then fitted a fresh spool. He turned off the machine and carried the used spool into his living room, opened up the sideboard cupboard and delved around among the bottles for the lock to his private safe. Spool in; files out.

  He dumped the files on the table and put the telephone within reach. There was more than one reason he wanted to be rid of George Thomas at this point. Odd, he thought, leafing through the files. For a day, the room had become, most clearly, so many places—Downay’s flat in Paris; the rooms in the SS HQ, Avenue Foche; the streets of Paris; the trains. Yet nothing that yet linked into Hildegarde Fenderman or her sister Gretchen Weiss. Or was there? Did he have the first stirrings? There was that one quatrain, of course.

  He found the file he wanted and quickly ran through its pages. The man was dead, yet somehow one Vital piece of evidence was missing. The thing appeared to be intact, yet there was no doubt in Herbie’s mind that the very first page of the file had been juggled.

  He picked up the telephone and called the duty officer to ask if Registry was still open. It was and old Ambrose would be only too pleased to wait for him. He transferred the call to Pix. Bob Perry was also working late. Herbie said he would be over in half an hour.

  “I’ll be here half the night anyway,” Perry told him. “Rush job for Downing Street.”

  “Doing social functions now, are we?” growled Herbie, adding that they would be providing snaps for the Royals before long.

  “Take their own.” Perry signed off.

  Ambrose Hill was waiting patiently in Registry. The first cross-reference Herbie required was easy. He took it to the end of the long polished table where the researchers spent most of their working lives, and read it through—cover to cover. He then asked if he could see Harold Ramilies’ personal file.

  “Christ.” Ambrose scratched his head. “What years? He had a long innings.”

  Herbie said he knew. From the twenties until he died in 1948. “I want to see his mid-thirties stuff.”

  It was a fat wodge of paper which took Herbie a good half hour to go through, identifying years and dates, times and people. He kept a pad near his right hand to jot down other cross-refs. What he read disturbed him enough to go straight to his own office in the Annexe and make two calls before taking the lift down to Pix.

  The first was to Schnabeln, but it was Girren who was on duty. All was quiet on the Bayswater front. Frau Fenderman had been on a shopping expedition and was now eating dinner.

  Secondly he telephoned the Director’s right hand, Tubby Fincher, at his private number. When, he asked, could he speak with the Director?

  “Not back until next month. I told you.” Tubby was in the middle of dinner and not at all pleased.

  “I said, ‘speak,’ not necessarily see.”

  “Ah.” Tubby became covert, dropping his voice. “You want him briefed?”

  “No. I want to talk with him on an unencumbered line. I want to make sure he is alone and that nobody else knows I’m speaking with him.”

  “A quick jet would be easier.”

  Herbie sighed. “There is no time. It’s the Fenderman thing. I’m uncovering dirt. It might just splatter when it hits the fan. I need to speak.”

  “I fix,” said Tubby. “Late tomorrow? Or do you want sooner?”

  Herbie said sometime after seven tomorrow would be fine. “Keep it a twosome, though”—a warning note as he signed off.

  The DO had passed all messages up to Herbie’s office as soon as he had been logged into the building. Nothing of importance. A call from Vermin Vernon-Smith had been fielded by one of the twin-set and pearls brigade; Rachendorf had called twice from the West German Embassy. Would he please return the call soonest? Maybe. Maybe, after he had seen Bob Perry—Mr. Pix himself.

  Perry had kept the prints under wraps—so far under that he could not immediately remember where he put them. There were two. Two out of the five Herbie had taken from the Registry files and cross-references. Ten-by-eight blowups from originals which were small ID size, circa 1940-41.

  One was immediately recognisable in spite of the youthful appearance. The other, Herbie had never seen, but knew in spite of that. Perhaps it was the uniform; or the background.

  Perry placed both prints under a high-powered illuminated magnifying screen, muttering that it was interesting to come across old juiced-up photographs done with this kind of skill. “Wouldn’t show in the small prints.”

  He stepped back and switched on the magnifier. “Look upon this picture and on this,” he quoted.

  “So? Brush up your Hamlet.”

  “The Bard knew about the trade, Herbie.”

  “So did Goethe—Im übrigen ist es zuletzt die größte Kunst, sich zu beschränken und zu isolieren. For the rest of it, the last and greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.”

  Perry nodded, then started to point out certain things that showed up under the lens—a lack of shadow here, a ragged edge there—which made Big Herbie Kruger’s heart beat a shade faster. Someone was not who he seemed. Someone from the past. That very fact might just account for Frau Hildegarde Fenderman’s presence in London.

  39

  LONDON 1978

  HERBIE’S MIND BUZZED WITH possibilities and permutations. There were no irregularities on the other three prints he had given Pix, so he asked Perry to mark up the pair of doctored photographs and had all five put into an envelope.

  Time was short. Work and man hours would be long—forty-eight hours only before he was to dine with Frau Fenderman. The perspective was badly blurred. Really he should have pulled old Harold Ramifies’ PF in the first place. Try now.

  But, on returning to Registry, Herbie discovered that Ambrose Hill had locked up for the night and gone home. Even the security gate was closed, the time lock in operation. He would have to make do with his notes.

  Going back into his office, a whole pack of thoughts, doubts, theories, and ideas started a merry-go-round in Herbie’s head. The centrepiece of this mental carousel was, naturally, Hildegarde Fenderman. Around her, like the images George claimed to have conjured in the past, were a host of supporting characters. George himself, Kuche, Wald, Downay, Ramilies, Maitland-Wood. Maitland-Wood—he should have tried to pull his PF as well. He had a couple of abstracts from it among the Nostradamus files, now split between his office and St. John’s Wood, but not the whole sweep of the Deputy Director’s career.

 
Somewhat absently, Herbie unlocked his office safe and took out the balance of the files, which he pushed, together with the envelope from Pix, into his briefcase.

  It was too late now to ask Rachendorf, the BND man, out to dinner, but he might still manage to make contact. Amazingly, the German was still at his embassy. “There is a function here,” he told Herbie guardedly.

  “I’m only returning your calls. Just got around to them.”

  “Ah, yes. It is simply a small point.”

  “Small so it shouldn’t be talked about on the telephone?”

  “No. Easy. A tiny piece of information. The lady who died. The one who worked for the Americans.”

  “Yes.” He was talking about Gretchen Weiss.

  “There was, apparently, trouble about her passport.”

  “There is always trouble about passports.”

  It was missing, Rachendorf said. Even though she did much work for the Americans (“You know what I’m speaking about?”), she held a Bundesrepublik passport. After her death there had been a delay. “It happens in all bureaucracies.”

  Herbie agreed and asked how badly this had happened.

  “Six months.”

  How six months?

  “What I am telling you is that six months elapsed before any block was put on her passport. Our control people visited Frau Fenderman, who now occupies the Weiss apartment. She had not seen the passport. Knew nothing. Does it help?”

  Herbie wanted to be sarcastic, but did not know if Wolfgang Alberich Rachendorf would appreciate the finer nuances of that particular art. “It helps,” he said plainly. “It would also explain how Fraulein Gretchen Weiss managed to make a visit, of two months, to this country last autumn—some time after her death.”

  Rachendorf used a German oath of extreme obscenity.

  Vermin Vernon-Smith was not obscene. He was acid. “Try to get you people during the day and I have you invading my privacy after office hours.”

  Herbie said he thought policemen—like priests, doctors, and members of the security organisations—did not have office hours.

  Vernon-Smith only grunted.

  “I’m only returning your call.” Herbie stayed exceptionally polite. He presumed Vernon-Smith was calling about friends Nachent and Billstein, both formerly of the West German Security Service.

  “Who else?” echoed the Special Branch man. “Thorns in my flesh those two; but you’ll probably be pleased to learn that the Bundesrepublik want us to toss ’em back.”

  So, the BND wanted words with their failures. Herbie asked if they had made a court appearance.

  “Yes. Very helpful magistrate, when the facts were pointed out to him—irregularities in Herr Billstein’s papers; carrying concealed weapons. The car was dodgy as well—not to mention the quiet request from your Deutsche caped-crusaders. Not the brightest of lads. Nachent and Billstein. Okay?”

  “Vermin, you’re a brick—as we English say.” At his end of the line, Herbie’s face contorted into one of his massive grins.

  “A what?” Veron-Smith’s voice rose an octave.

  “Wiederhōren, Vermin.”

  He did not feel like lugging the heavy briefcase around Whitehall in search of a cab, so Herbie pulled rank on the duty officer and whistled up a car from the pool. It was outside in a matter of minutes with a small, handy-looking driver. Pole or Czech, Herbie thought. The department was lousy with East Europeans. “Buy them by the boxed set from the KGB,” Maitland-Wood had once joked. The bon mot had been considered to be in bad taste—particularly among the young trainee intellectuals from Oxford.

  Big Herbie gave his address to the driver, who said he already knew it. “I stop on the corner, yes?”

  The large head nodded twice. Routine was a killer. All ex-field men knew that—and most of the public, now that kidnapping and terrorism were so fashionable. Each day, Herbie varied routes to and from Whitehall. Official cars usually had to be instructed. Often he got them to drop him in the next street; sometimes he slipped from the car and did the last bit on the underground. Keep in trim, Herbie, he told himself. Become accustomed to the pace—make it second nature to you now, he hummed. This driver must have spent time in the field.

  They stopped at the corner—around the corner, but at a point where the driver could observe Herbie all the way down to the apartment block. Nearly two hundred yards, in old money, Herbie smiled. He thanked the driver, who said, okay, not to worry. “I see you in”—the motor running and lights switched off.

  Herbie was halfway down to the building with its trim frontage—clipped lawns, shrubs, and a low wall bordering on the pavement—when he felt suddenly very vulnerable. It was not unusual. His size did not help. He had always been conscious of his height and breadth, conquering any obsessions by making use of the physical attributes. Big Herbie. Big Dumb Herbie.

  He glanced back, a casual flick of the head. Nothing. A car on the opposite side of the road starting up, the lights flaring. Nothing unusual, but…then the sudden squeal of rubber upon road surface and the full gunning of the engine. The car coming out at speed. A getaway driver’s takeoff with full revs, brakes off and the clutch let out fast. Expensive on tyres.

  Herbie began to run. Instinct. Doesn’t matter if you’re wrong. Glance back. He was not wrong. The headlights were doused and one spotlight shattered the sodium-lit street, blinding him. He turned his head away and closed his eyes, running on memory. In the bright after-image he was conscious of his own car, around the corner, moving out with lights on.

  Eyes open again. Almost at the low wall. After that a zigzag through the shrubs to the entrance. The oncoming spotlight blazed and dazzled the whole area ahead while the sound of the engine pulled him in, absorbed him as it closed fast.

  A thousand images from the old days. Running. Streets at night with the rattle of feet following; narrow walled alleys; spotlights coming on suddenly at the Wall in Berlin. Shouts. Running.

  The low wall. Herbie leaped and began the slalom through the shrubs. He heard the crash as the car fractured the wall. He could feel it now with its tyres biting the grass. He took a final dive, full-length, rolling at speed towards the enclosed doorway, then balling his body hard into the entrance for protection.

  The car slewed sideways and hit the brickwork, less than a foot from where he had landed. He could see neither driver nor number plate—only conscious of the grind of metal on brick, and then the frenzy of the engine and the wheels trying to grip the damp grass as the machine slid past, out of control, then steadied and headed away, smashing through the low wall again and out into the road where Herbie’s own car caught it broadside, pushing it, skewed over the road.

  He saw his own driver start to open the door, then close it, as the rogue vehicle gunned forward and took off down the road. A German car: Opel Kadett, souped and probably reinforced, but the plates were obscured.

  Herbie picked himself up, aware of people now—craning from windows, a couple of young men coming out from the lift—“What in God’s name’s going on?” “You drunk or something?” “Christ, look at the wall and the front here.”

  It was okay, Herbie told them. Car. A drunk probably. He had seen the whole thing (“Get the law,” one of the young men ordered his companion).

  They waited with Herbie, as though guardians of public peace. They were obviously highly suspicious of him. The law arrived in the shape of a panda car. One young constable. Both the burly men wanted to tell the story, but Herbie quietly stepped in to say he was the one who had seen it happen. If the officer would come up to his flat…

  Once inside and alone with the constable, Herbie flashed his ID and asked if Vernon-Smith from Special Branch could be alerted, and would he get his little panda car the hell out of it. The policeman started to say something about reporting to his superiors when the telephone rang.

  “You’ve had trouble.” The duty officer. “I’m afraid Zshlapka lost him.”

  Who was Zshlapka? The driver. Did he need help? Jus
t get the law out and Vermin in. He would give a description of the car. The ball would be in Vermin’s court.

  The young panda man took some persuading, but finally left to take radio instructions. His personal transceiver was not operating well in Herbie’s flat, which was not surprising when you considered the built-in deflectors.

  His leg hurt. Bruised in the final roll, Herbie thought, building himself a large vodka. Down in one, then a trip to the bathroom. His leg was grazed, nothing bad. He combed his hair, sluiced his face, washed his hands, and limped out again. The limp was odd—two or three normal steps he could manage, then a couple of small steps. Mahler had a trick walk as well, he consoled himself, looking at the briefcase on the table then going over to unlock the long drawer in the sideboard. If things were hotting up, Herbie Kruger would take no more chances. The wicked dull-black Sauer M 38H felt snug and reassuring in his big paw. It was a long time since he had carried. But always the M 38H—little known outside Germany and one of the best pistols of its time. Sensible now. Even an idiot could tell something stank from the past. Shots at Frau Fenderman. A car aimed at Herbie Kruger. He dialled the duty officer, asked after the driver, and said he wanted someone good to keep an eye out. Schnabeln and Girren were the only pair he could use from his own private army (the others were off on short courses all over the place). The DO said he could spare Worboys. Anyone could spare Worboys, but he was better than nothing. “Tell him to watch it and give him a shooter,” Herbie ordered.

  Vernon-Smith arrived; irritable but concerned. Was he sure it wasn’t just an accident? Of course Herbie was bloody certain—“And I hope I get the bastard before you do.”

  Vermin went away puzzled, while Herbie took the last slice of quiche from the fridge, built himself a spectacular vodka, opened his briefcase, and began to scatter the files over the floor. He took the remainder from his safe and added those to the pile, arranging and rearranging them into a kind of family tree. Nostradamus and his progeny of the 1940s.