The Labyrinth Makers

by Anthony Price

  He passed the beery receiver to Audley. 'He's all yours. Make the most of him.'

  'Hullo, Howard.' Audley was uneasily conscious that he was too ignorant even to ask the right questions, never mind understand the answers.

  'Hi, David. I know your job forces you to consort with that horse-thief Shapiro, but don't tell me you're both moving into my territory.'

  'Just me, Howard. And only temporarily, I hope. But I need someone to fill me in on the current situation over there. Is there a big row on, or anything like that?'

  'What's wrong with your boys Latimer and Ridley? No, those were the Oxford Martyrs, weren't they! That's a Freudian slip if ever there was one. Latimer and Rogers?'

  'You come well recommended.'

  Jake grinned hugely, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger with one hand while giving the thumbs-up sign with the other. The effect was obscene.

  'I do?' There was a mixture of resignation and uneasiness in the American's voice, and Audley knew exactly how he felt. Jake always took twenty shillings in the pound.

  'Well, there's nothing special–except Round Sixteen in the Conservatives-Progressive fight. At the moment the Progressives are on the canvas, because that bastard Shelepin's got the Army on his side as well as the Young Communist League. And of course the KGB is playing its own game. But the Army's been acting up ever since Czechoslovakia showed how efficient they were–they don't think they're getting the appropriation they need. Or the respect they deserve. And they'd like to bomb the hell out of China, too.'

  He paused for a moment. 'European liberals get worried about our generals. If they had one good look at some of the Soviet top brass they'd head for the hills, I reckon! You stick to the Middle East, David: you'll sleep sounder than I do.'

  'Which corner is Nikolai Panin behind?'

  Howard did not reply, even interrogatively. If Jake knew about Panin's visit, then it was certain that the American did. And Panin would be very much his concern, which meant that Audley himself might soon have something of potential value to contribute to the Anglo-Saxon conspiracy.

  'I might be able to help you concerning Panin, Howard –always providing you can help me.'

  Howard took a deep breath. 'Panin's behind all four corners as far as I can see. He's the sort of character who has subscriptions to Ogonyek and Novy Mir, and leaves 'em both lying around for everyone to see. The day you tell me which side he's on I'll get you a Congressional reception. What in the name of heaven and hell is he coming to England for, David?'

  'You tell me, Howard. You've got a nice fat file on him, I've no doubt.'

  'You must be joking. I've just been reading it; we've got a few pages of hearsay and Kremlin scuttlebut, but we've hardly got one solid thing on him since '45.'

  'Nineteen-forty-five?' Gently now. 'He was just a line captain in '45.'

  'He was a major when we met him. We'd picked up some Forschungsamt files–Research Office stuff–in an AA Barracks in Stefanskirchen. Perfectly innocent stuff. But he wanted to see it and we let him have a look. We didn't get another make on him until after Stalin's death. I tell you, David, if you want a line on Panin I'm not your man, and I don't know who is. I wish I did!'

  Audley wondered what the Forschungsamt was. He had never heard of it, so it could be highly secret or, more probably, highly unimportant. Jake's Berlin man, Bamm, would certainly know, but that would mean more favours, and Jake was too interested already. Besides, there wasn't time.

  But Theodore Freisler would know, of course–it was exactly the sort of thing he would know. He had been meaning to phone the old man for twenty-four hours without taking the trouble to do it. Now he had an adequate selfish reason for doing the right thing.

  He thanked Howard Morris as sincerely as he was able to with the grinning Shapiro at his elbow, carefully deprecating his association with the Israeli. Apart from being a pleasant fellow, the American would be a useful contact in the future; the sort of man with whom the nuances between the lines of indigestible Soviet journals could be enjoyably discussed. He thought nostalgically of his old, quiet life, which had ended a thousand years before, just last Thursday.

  Sincerity was not required for his farewell to Jake. That was the one real virtue of their relationship–it was founded on naked and unashamed self-interest on both sides, needing no false protestations of friendship. He was going to miss Jake.

  He was tempted to phone Theodore from the first call box as he had done before, but his guilt drove him to search out the grimy house behind the vast complex of the British Museum and to climb the interminable and even grimier stairs.

  The huge, brutal face at once creased into a happy smile which hinted at the nature concealed behind it. One of the things that kept Audley from visiting more often was the undeserved welcome he always received. Theodore would stop whatever he was doing, no matter how important, and give him hours of his time.

  'David, you arrive most opportunely! I have just made myself some of this excellent new tinned coffee. A big tin of it I bought at a specially reduced price last Friday, and already I have nearly finished it! And you and Professor Tolkien are to blame.'

  'Professor Tolkien, Theodore? Who's he?'

  Theodore heaped spoonfuls of evil-looking brown powder into a large mug and stirred it vigorously.

  'He is the author of The Lord of the Rings and I'm most surprised you haven't heard of him.' Theodore tapped three substantial volumes with a heavy finger. 'A writer of fairy stories for grown-ups. My friends have been telling me to read him for years, and I was too stupid to take their advice. Now I have done nothing but read him for three whole days–except to wrestle with your puzzle.'

  'I have heard of him, actually, Theodore. But fairy stories really aren't my line.'

  'Your puzzle is a fairy story, my dear David. I have thought and I have telephoned friends of mine in Berlin, and I tell you there is nothing, nothing, that fits your puzzle. Time cancels out the value of things: what would be valuable to a thief then would not be valuable to them now. Not worth their trouble.'

  'We had a tip that it might be the Schliemann collection from the Staatliche Museum.'

  'The Trojan treasures? No, David, the psychology is wrong. Worth stealing–yes. After all, the Russians stole it and it was stolen from them, I know the story. But it was not theirs in the first place, so they would not pursue it. If it had been the amber from the Winter Palace, that would be different. That was theirs. But that was never brought beyond East Prussia.'

  'Never mind, Theodore. It was good of you to take time from Tolkien to try.'

  Audley sipped his coffee. It was surprisingly drinkable.

  The old man was shaking his head. 'No, I have failed you. But even if your thief had catholic tastes and took a thing here and a thing there I find it hard to imagine a collection of objects which would tempt them now.'

  'Tell me about the Forschungsamt instead, then.'

  The great bullet-head stopped shaking. 'What do you wish to know about the Forschungsamt, Dr Audley?'

  'Anything, Theodore. I don't know the first thing about it.'

  Freisler pondered the question for a time.

  'The most interesting thing, of course, is that it illustrates the relationship of the old German bureaucracy to the Nazi Party. If you have time to read the relevant chapter in my book on the civil service between the wars I think that will become apparent to you.'

  Before he could get up Audley managed to restrain him.

  'I haven't really got the time. Just tell me what it was.'

  Freisler looked at him pityingly. 'What it was? Why, it was the office that grew out of the old Chiffre und Horchleitstelle, Cypher and Monitoring. What I believe you would call "passive intelligence". I knew a number of people who worked in it–good Germans, too, not Nazis. That was the remarkable thing about the Research Office: the Nazis were always trying to take it over, but they never really managed to do so.'

  He smiled. 'I think it was partly because
they all wanted it that they failed. Goering was nominally in charge, but all he knew was that he wasn't going to give it up. Let me see –Himmler tried, and Kaltenbrunner tried. And Diels.' He counted them off on his fingers. 'The only one who got close was Heydrich. He managed to move some of his prewar Sicherheitsdienst files into its headquarters on the Schillerstrasse. But then he was killed by the Czechs in '42, and the office was bombed out by your air force in '43. After that nobody really knew what was happening. The records were spread all over the place, and many of them were destroyed in the end to stop the Russians getting them.'

  He looked up at Audley. 'But your clever thief wouldn't have wanted any of them. They had no great value then, and they'd have less than none today, except to the historians. As I recollect, the Forschungsamt officials were considered so innocent that they weren't even called to the de-nazification trials!'

  He rose and picked his way between piles of journals and manuscripts to his bookcase.

  Audley rose too, but in alarm. Once Theodore gave him the book he would be honour bound to wade through it, or he would never be able to face the old German again.

  'Theodore, I really ought to be going.' He looked at his watch. 'I'm lunching with my fiancee and I mustn't be late.'

  But Theodore was already thumbing through a thick volume, as unstoppable and incapable of changing direction as a rhinoceros.

  'Schimpf–Schimpf was the first director. He committed suicide. Then came Prince Christophe of Hesse. He was killed on the Italian front. Then Schnapper, I think … Ah! Here we have it! The office went to Klettersdorf after the 1943 air raid. Then back to Berlin when the Russians were approaching. And then to the four winds!'

  He tapped the book with his finger, staring owlishly at Audley, who had reached the door.

  'Some of the documents I saw in England in 1957, at Whaddon Hall. But there was nothing of interest to you in them. They would have been from the section captured at, let me think now–at Glucksberg, of course.'

  Audley made his way slowly down the staircase. Once Theodore had mentioned passive intelligence he had known that any further research into the Forschungsamt was likely to be a journey up a blind alley. It had been a wasted trip. But as he reached the street doorway he heard Theodore bellowing unintelligibly from above. He stopped guiltily and waited impatiently as the heavy footsteps thumped after him from landing to landing.

  The old German was breathing heavily when he finally appeared. 'David, forgive me! My mind was not listening to you properly. A fiancee, you said–and for a fiancee there must be a gift!'

  Audley's heart sank as he saw the square, untidy parcel, a battered carrier bag lashed down with scotch tape. The famous two-decker history of the German civil service, through all the convulsions of the Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, had cornered him at last.

  'Theodore, it isn't necessary.'

  The great hands thrust the parcel into his and waved his protest aside. It was necessary. It was a small token of deep esteem. It humbly marked a great occasion.

  It was also coals of fire on Audley's head, coals which glowed as Theodore beamed and shook his hand and became increasingly guttural, as he always did on the rare occasions when his emotions outran his vocabulary. Audley had fled in cavalier fashion from an unselfish and undemanding friend. His punishment was just and appropriate.

  As he drove away to meet Faith he resolved to invite Theodore down into the country for a week. Faith would approve of Theodore; not only because of his grave courtesy, but also because they could meet on the common ground of their own high sense of moral responsibility.

  XV

  But in the event Audley did not so easily extinguish the coals of fire. They glowed again even more brightly some hours later when Faith was excitedly unpacking her mountain of shopping in the bridal suite at the Bull.

  'David, what on earth is this extraordinary parcel?'

  She held up the carrier bag.

  'It's our first present, from a very good and honourable man, my love.' He hoped desperately that she wouldn't laugh at it, and he couldn't bear to watch her undo it.

  She ripped away the covering.

  'How lovely! But I've read it, of course. Still, it's something you can read again and again.'

  Audley looked in the mirror at his astonished face, half of it covered with shaving soap.

  'It has written in it "Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn - but may you never be sad". What does that mean?'

  It would be from Heine, Theodore's idol. He turned round: Faith was sitting with the three volumes of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings on her lap–Theodore's own copies.

  But before he could reply there was a light tap at the door.

  Hugh Roskill entered gingerly, as though his feet hurt. Possibly his feet did hurt, if he had spent the whole day exploring the environs of the old airfield. But Audley somehow felt that it was because he had half expected to find some sort of orgy in progress. He seemed quite relieved to see Faith clothed and Audley engaged in the unexceptionable act of shaving.

  But then poor Roskill had had rather a trying day, it transpired. It had been windy and cold, a return to the weather of Friday's funeral–odd, that, for it had seemed pleasant, if not exactly sunny, to Audley.

  They had passed a tiring morning marking pimples and pock-marks on a large-scale ordnance survey map which Butler had brought with him. Roskill had given himself a shock on one of Farmer Warren's electric sheep fences and Butler had slipped into a ditch which was no longer wet, but still muddy.

  In the afternoon Richardson returned from his assignment in Cambridge with the latest equipment for detecting buried metallic objects, the archaeological department's newest toy.

  'DECCO,' explained Roskill, 'which Richardson claims is short for Decay of Eddy Currents in Conductive Objects. But it just looked like a souped-up mine detector to me.'

  Unfortunately, either Richardson had failed to master DECCO's intricacies or DECCO had developed some minor fault. Having lugged the device two miles or more across country to the most promising pimple they had had to carry it all the way back unused. Richardson had returned with it to Cambridge and neither had been seen since.

  Shortly after he had retired from the field Stocker had arrived with Panin, and Stocker had not been noticeably pleased to find that Audley was not present (though it could be simply indigestion, since the timing of his arrival suggested that he had not been able to linger over his lunch).

  'I rather got the impression,' said Roskill, 'that he expected to find us at work with pick and shovel, with you standing over us with a rope's end. I'm afraid Butler was a bit short with him. We told him you'd been on the job continuously …' He paused fractionally as the other implications of that statement flashed through his mind, but recovered splendidly '… since Friday. I said you were probably chasing the Pole, anyway, and he cooled down a bit.'

  It must have been a trying day for Stocker as well. After the early morning Panin call, the hitherto subservient Audley had turned awkward. Then Panin had rushed him out of London at uncomfortable speed, only to find two disgruntled but unintimidated operatives doing nothing in particular.

  'Not to worry, though,' Roskill reassured him, mistaking his silence. 'Butler showed him his map, all covered with meaningless red and blue crosses and lines and circles–Jack could snow the recording angel if he set his mind to it. He went back to London happy enough, I think.'

  'What about Panin?'

  'Our Russian colleague?' Roskill cocked his head. 'The Professor–that's how Stocker refers to him, by the way–is still very much with us. As a matter of fact he's sinking beer with Butler in the bar at this moment. But I don't think Butler snowed him: I've got a feeling he's a downier bird altogether. He doesn't say much, but Butler's talking cricket to him at the moment, so he hasn't had much opportunity yet anyway–when I left them Jack was just launching into his favourite story, about the time Bill Farrimond played for Engla
nd and Lancashire Second.'

  'Is he alone?'

  'Oddly enough he is. Or he appears to be. But Butler and I are going to have a scout round after dinner. If he's alone then he's top brass, isn't he?'

  'Panin's top brass, Hugh. No doubt about that. But tell me how you got on yesterday.'

  'Wash-out, I'm afraid, sir.' Roskill shook his head sadly. 'We couldn't track one of 'em at all. And the other one shut up tighter than a clam.'

  Then he smiled. 'Actually, I rather liked the old boy Ellis. He was regular RAF. Joined as a boy when there were still Bristol Fighters around and his last station was supersonic. He'd seen it all!'

  'He wouldn't talk about Steerforth?'

  'Oh, he talked. But he didn't give anything away. I think Ellis knew every racket that'd ever been thought of. But he liked Steerforth–said he was a gentleman, which means that Steerforth always paid the rate for the job in advance. And he practically told me I warn't a gentleman for checking on another pilot!'

  'Then Butler appealed to his patriotism and he just laughed at us.' Roskill's eyes flashed. 'He said that he knew his pilots, and patriotism was one thing and a bit of smuggling on the side was another. He said he's been on an air-sea rescue station where the Warwicks ran a regular service from Iceland with the lifeboats under their bellies full of nylons and whisky and ham. That'd stopped when they had to drop a boat to a ditched crew, and the chaps were picked up roaring drunk, but if Steerforth had put one over on us, so much the better. He was a splendid old boy!'

  So there was no help there. Panin was waiting and his bluff was in danger of being called. When Roskill had gone he stood silent, staring at the dried shaving soap on his face.

  Faith put her hand on his shoulder. 'No good, David?'

  He shrugged. 'We're simply running out of time, Faith love. We never had much in the beginning. But instead of playing for it I've just speeded it up. I'm rather wondering now if it was the right thing to do.'