The Monte Cristo Cover-Up

by Johannes Mario Simmel

  After another sixty miles she announced that she had arranged to meet her fiance in Monte Carlo.

  "Poor fellow," said Thomas. "He won't be able to see much of you."

  At Monte Carlo he drove her at her request to the Hotel de

  Paris. There a note awaited her. Her fiance had been detained in Paris and could not keep the appointment.

  'Til take his accommodation," Thomas announced.

  "Very good, sir," said the reception clerk, pocketing the five-thousand-franc note Thomas passed him.

  "But suppose my fiance turns up after all?"

  "Then he'll have to see what he can do" said Thomas. He drew Helene aside and whispered: "He's obviously the wrong man for you. Don't you see the hand of Providence in all this?"

  At that she was obliged to burst out laughing.

  They stayed for two days at Monte Carlo, then drove to Cannes, where they booked in at the Carlton. Thomas thoroughly enjoyed himself for a few days. He drove with Helene to Nice, St. Raphael, St. Maximin and St. Tropez. They went swimming together. He hired a speedboat. They water-skied and lay side by side on the beach.

  Helene laughed at the same things as he did and liked the same kinds of food, books and pictures.

  When, after a glorious week, she became his mistress, he realized that they understood each other in every respect. Then, during the first hour of their eighth day together—

  Helene de Couville was lying on her bed, her eyes moist and shining. Thomas sat beside her. They were both smoking. He was stroking her hair. Soft music sounded in the room, where only a single small lamp was burning.

  Helene sighed, stirring languidly. "Oh, Will, I'm so happy ..." She called him Will because Wilfried, she said, reminded her too much of Richard Wagner.

  "I too, my dearest, I too."

  "Really?"

  There it was again, that strange, brooding look in her slanting eyes. He stilt couldn't account for it.

  "Really, cherie."

  Helene suddenly flung away from him, so that he could only see her exquisite, golden-brown back. She sobbed into the pillows, so wildly as to alarm him: "I've lied to you! I'm wicked—oh, I'm so wicked!"

  He let her go on sobbing for a while, then said primly: "If you mean your fiance ..."

  She threw herself round on her back again and exclaimed: "Oh, that's rubbish about my fiance! I haven't one! Oh Thomas, Thomas!"

  An icy chill seemed to run down his spine. "What was that you said just now?"

  "I said I hadn't got a fiance."

  "No, that's not what I meant." He gulped slightly. "Did you say 'Thomas' just now?"

  "Yes," she sobbed. Big tears began to roll down her cheeks and throat onto her breast. "Yes, of course I said Thomas. That's your name, my poor darling Thomas Lieven .. . Oh, why did I ever have to meet you? I never loved anyone so much before .. ." Again her .shoulders rose and fresh tears fell. "And it was you of all people I had to do that to—"

  "Do? Do what?"

  "I work for the American secret service," moaned Helene in a tone of despair.

  Thomas did not notice that the glow of his cigarette was getting nearer and nearer to his fingertips. He remained silent for a long time.

  At last he gave a deep sigh. "Oh God, is all that business starting up again?"

  Helene blurted out tragically: "I didn't want to tell you ... I was forbidden to tell you .. . They warned me not to—but I had to tell you the truth after tonight ... It would have choked me otherwise ..."

  "Take your time and start at the beginning," said Thomas, who was gradually regaining control of himself. "I suppose then that you're an American agent?"

  "Yes."

  "And your uncle?"

  "He's my chief, Colonel Herrick."

  "And the Chateau Montenac?"

  "Rented. Our people in Germany reported that you were planning something big. Then you came to Zurich. When your advertisement appeared we were authorized to offer you a loan of up to a hundred thousand francs."

  "Why?"

  'We were sure your advertisement was a cover for some kind of trick but we didn't know what it was. We would have found out in the end and then we would have had you at our mercy. The FBI want to get hold of you at all costs. They're quite mad about you!"

  She burst out crying again. Thomas dried her tears.

  'Then when you asked for seven hundred fifty thousand we put through an urgent call to Washington. And do you know what they told us? That seven hundred fifty thousand was

  crazy. They wouldn't chance it. They put me on the job instead . . ."

  "Put you on," he repeated idiotically.

  "That was why I started on this journey. It was all a put-up show. That mechanic from Grenoble ..."

  "Oh God, he was in it too! And I, like a fool, tipped him foT his trouble!"

  "The fiance story and everything else was phony, too, Tommy. And now—now I've fallen in love with you and I know that if you won't work with us they'll have you arrested!"

  Thomas got up.

  "Stay with me!"

  "I'll be back later, darling," he replied, lost in thought. "I've just got to think something over quite by myself if you don't mind. It's not the first time, you know, that this sort of thing's happened to me . .."

  He left her sobbing and went through the sitting room into his own bedroom. There he sat down by the window. For a long time he gazed out into the night

  Then he picked up the telephone. When the switchboard answered he said: "I want the chef, please.... Never mind that, wake him up ..."

  Five minutes later the telephone rang. Thomas lifted the receiver. "Gaston? Ott here. I've just had a pretty bad shock. I need something light and stimulating. Make me a tomato cocktail and a few anchovy sandwiches ... thank you."

  He replaced the receiver.

  Well, there's no escape then, he was thinking. They've got me by the short hairs in 1957 just as they had in 1939.

  Thomas Lieven stared out through the open door of the balcony at the deserted Corniche d'Or and up to the remote, indifferent stars glittering above the Mediterranean. Out of the velvety darkness the men and women of his past seemed suddenly to take shape, approach and descend upon him. There were fascinating beauties among them, icily relentless women agents, mighty tycoons, wily petty traders, unscrupulous killers, gang leaders and top racketeers who stopped at nothing.

  His whole previous life came back to him, the wild, adventurous life which had now come full circle since the warm day in May 1939 when it all started ...

  Thomas Lieven could be more formal than the most formal of City gentlemen. But once a week he danced energetically, incognito, in the noisiest club in Soho, and twice a week he took judo lessons in equal secrecy.

  Thomas Lieven loved life and life seemed to love him. He succeeded in everything so long as he carefully refrained from disclosing how young he really was ...

  Robert E. Marlock, the senior partner, was standing in the counter hall of the bank when Thomas Lieven entered, doffing his bowler with solemnity.

  Marlock was fifteen years older than Thomas. Tall and lean, he had the rather disagreeable habit of never fixing his watery blue eyes on those of any person he happened to be talking to.

  "Hallo," he said, looking past Thomas as usual.

  "Good morning, Marlock," said Thomas gravely. "Good morning, gentlemen!"

  The six employees at their desks returned his greeting with equal gravity.

  Marlock was standing near a metal pillar with a glass top within which a little brass teleprinter was tapping out the latest stock market prices on endless ribbons of ticker tape.

  Thomas joined his partner. They watched the quotations together. Marlock's hands were trembling a little. A more suspicious observer than Thomas then was might have thought them typical swindler's hands. But in those days Thomas Lieven's optimistic spirit was anything but suspicious.

  Marlock asked him nervously: "When do you fly to Brussels?"

  "Tonight."
<
br />   "And about time too. Just look how those prices are falling! That's because of that damned Steel Pact of the Nazis. You seen the papers, Lieven?"

  "Of course," said Thomas. He was fond of saying "Of course." It sounded more dignified than "Yes."

  That morning, May 24, 1939, the newspapers had announced the conclusion of a treaty of alliance between Germany and Italy. The treaty was called the Steel Pact.

  Thomas walked through the dark, old-fashioned counter hall into his dark, old-fashioned private office. The cadaverous-looking Marlock followed him and dropped into one of the leather armchairs in front of the high desk.

  The two gentlemen began by discussing what securities Thomas was to buy up on the Continent and what he was to

  get rid of. Marlock and Lieven had a branch office in Brussels. Thomas Lieven, in addition, had shares in a private bank in Paris.

  After the gentlemen had settled this business, Robert E. Marlock broke a lifelong habit. He looked his junior partner straight in the eye. "Ahem! Lieven, I've also got quite a private favor to ask of you. I expect you remember Lucie ..."

  Thomas remembered Lucie quite well. The girl, a pretty blonde from Cologne, had lived in London for years as Mar-lock's mistress. Then something rather serious must have happened. No one knew exactly what it was. But one day Lucie Brenner suddenly returned to Germany.

  "I'm a swine to bother you with it, Lieven," Marlock went on in a gloomy tone, managing with a considerable effort to continue looking his junior partner straight in the eye. "But I thought that while you're in Brussels you might perhaps make a quick dash to Cologne and have a talk with Lucie."

  "To Cologne? But why don't you go yourself? You're also a German, after all . .."

  "I'd be very glad to go to Germany," Marlock replied. "But the international situation . .. And then, I treated Lucie very badly, I'll be quite honest with you about it—" Marlock was fond of saying he'd be "quite honest" with people. The phrase was always on his lips. "To be quite honest, there was another woman. Lucie had every right to leave me. Tell her that I want her to forgive me. I'll make it all up to her if only she'll come back ..."

  His voice had taken on the pathetic accents which the voices of politicians take on when they talk of their longing for peace.

  [2]

  Thomas Lieven reached Cologne on the morning of May 26, 1939. Huge swastikas were flying from the Cathedral Hotel. Swastikas were flying all over the town. The Steel Pact was being celebrated. Thomas saw many uniforms. The stamping of jackboots in the lounge of the hotel clattered like gunfire.

  On the desk in his room stood a photograph of the Filhrer. Thomas leaned his return-flight ticket against it. He took a hot bath. Then he dressed and called up Lucie Brenner.

  As the receiver was lifted at the other end of the wire a suspicious click sounded. But Thomas Lieven did not notice it. In

  1939 the super-agent of 1940 had never heard of such a thing as telephone-tapping.

  "Brenner."

  There was the seductively hoarse voice, that of a heavy smoker, which he remembered so well.

  "Fraulein Brenner, this is Lieven. Thomas Lieven. I've just arrived in Cologne and ..." He broke off. It was not the second click along the wire that he had noticed, but a suppressed shriek from the girl.

  He inquired with a pleasant smile: "Was that a cry of joy?"

  "Oh God," he heard her exclaim. A third click sounded.

  "Fraulein Brenner, Marlock asked me to look you up ..."

  "That blackguard!"

  "No, no ..."

  "That miserable wretch!"

  "Fraulein Brenner, do please listen! I'm to tell you that Marlock begs you to forgive him. May I call on you?"

  "No!"

  "But I promised him ..."

  "Go away, please, Heir Lieven. Catch the first train you can. You don't know what's going on here."

  A fourth click sounded. But Thomas Lieven still did not notice it

  "No, no, Fraulein Brenner. It's you who don't know what.. ."

  "Herr Lieven ..."

  "Just stay where you are. I'll be with you in ten minutes."

  He rang off and pulled his tie straight, with the zeal of a sportsman ready to go all out

  A taxi took Thomas, naturally complete with bowler and carefully rolled umbrella, to the suburb of Lindenthal, where Lucie Brenner lived on the second floor of a villa in Beethoven Park.

  He rang the doorbell of the flat. On the other side of the door he could hear muffled whispers in female and male voices. Thomas was a bit surprised, but only very slightly. For in those days Thomas's optimistic spirit was anything but suspicious.

  The door opened. Lucie Brenner appeared. She wore a dressing gown and apparently little else. She seemed in a great state of excitement. At the sight of Thomas she gasped:

  "Madman!"

  After that things happened fast

  Two men appeared behind Lucie. They wore leather jackets

  and looked like butchers. One of the butchers pushed Lucie roughly aside. The other butcher seized Thomas by the lapels of his coat.

  The banker's self-control, calm and modesty vanished. Thomas caught the butcher's fist in both hands and executed a graceful turning movement, like a dancer's. Suddenly the butcher, to his extreme astonishment, found himself hanging over Thomas's right hip.

  Our hero bent slightly backward. A joint cracked. The butcher, with a piercing scream, went whizzing through the air and landed with a crash on the floor of the little hall. He went on lying there in a painfully cramped posture. My judo training, thought Thomas, was well worth while.

  "And now for you," he said, approaching the second butcher.

  The blond Lucie started screaming. The second butcher stepped back, stuttering: "N—no, p—please, sir. Don't try that again ..." He drew a revolver from his shoulder holster. "I warn you. Be reasonable."

  Thomas stood still. Only an idiot fights unarmed against a butcher with a revolver.

  "In the name of the law," said the butcher nervously. "You're under arrest."

  "Arrest by whom?"

  "By the Gestapo."

  "Oh boy," said Thomas Lieven. "What a story for the club!"

  Thomas Lieven loved his London club and the club loved him. The members, sitting around the open fire on the hearth with glasses of whisky in their hands and pipes in their mouths, were in the habit, every Thursday evening, of listening to the wild stories that were going the rounds.

  When I get back this time, thought Thomas, I'll have a story to tell that's not too bad either.

  The story was certainly not a bad one and it was destined to get better and better. But it was doubtful when Thomas would be able to tell it in his club and indeed whether he would ever see his club again.

  He was still in a perfectly cheerful mood on that day in May 1939 as he sat in an office of the Special Department D at the Gestapo headquarters in Cologne. Naturally the whole thing's nothing but a misunderstanding, he was thinking. I shall be out of here in half an hour.

  Haffner was the name of the inspector who received

  Thomas. A stout man with cunning pig's eyes, he was also careful about his toilet. He never stopped cleaning his fingernails with an endless collection of toothpicks.

  "I hear you've been assaulting one of my colleagues," said Haffner angrily. "That's going to be a damned awkward business for you, Lieven."

  "I'm still Herr Lieven to you. What do you want with me? Why have I been arrested?"

  "Breach of the currency regulations," said Haffner. "I've been waiting for you quite long enough."

  "For me?"

  "Or your partner Marlock. Ever since that girl Lucie Brenner came back from London I've had her watched. I thought to myself, One of these days one of you two impudent scoundrels is going to pop up again and then—whoops!" Haffner pushed a file across the desk. "I'd better show you what evidence we've already got against you. Then perhaps you'll sing a bit smaller."

  Well, that really makes me curious,
thought Thomas. He started turning the leaves of the thick file. After a while he couldn't help laughing.

  "What's so funny about it?" Haffner asked.

  "Well, look here, this is the most comic affair!"

  It appeared from the file that the London private bank of Marlock and Lieven had pulled a fast one on the Third Reich a few years ago. They had exploited the fact that owing to the political situation German mortgage bonds had for a considerable time been worth only a fifth of their nominal value.

  Marlock and Lieven, or whoever had been operating in the name of that firm, had acquired such bonds |n Zurich in January, February and March 1936 with illegally transferred German currency. Then they had put up a Swiss citizen to buy certain paintings of the kind called "decadent art" which had no value in Germany but commanded high prices abroad. The Nazi authorities were delighted to export the paintings in question. For in the first place they could thus get rid of these "undesirable" works and secondly they would be paid for in the currency so necessary for German rearmament, since the Swiss figurehead had agreed to pay thirty per cent of the purchase price in Swiss francs.

  But they did not find out until much later that he had paid the other seventy per cent with German bonds which on arrival in their native land commanded their normal value,

  in other words one fifth of what Marlock and Lieven had paid for them in Zurich.

  Thomas Lieven thought, as he studied the relevant documents, Well, it wasn't I who put through this comic transaction. So it can only have been Marlock. He must have, known that the Germans were after him, that Lucie Brenner was being watched, that I would be arrested and that nobody would believe a word I said. He must have realized that in that way he could get rid of me, and have the bank all to himself. Good God, good God in heaven ...

  "Aha," said Inspector Haffner complacently. "So now the old babblebox shuts up at last, does it?" He took a fresh toothpick and turned his attention for a while to using it in the normal way.

  Damn it, what on earth am I to do now, thought Thomas. An idea struck him. Not a very good one. But he couldn't think of a better. "May I use the telephone, please?"

  Haffner screwed up his pig's eyes. "To whom do you want to speak then?"