The Garden of Weapons (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  “I wonder,” he said again, almost whispering. “Herbie’s been lured, that’s for sure. Miss Grubb’s job was to see we couldn’t follow the dance to the end.” He gave a humourless chuckle. “Dance macabre.”

  “Is there …?” Worboys did not complete the question. He already knew the answer, and it was stupid anyway.

  Fincher put it into words—“Anything we can do? No, Tony. Not a bloody thing.”

  Herbie Kruger watched the rear all the way to Ursula Zunder’s apartment block. Nothing. He also took the precaution of releasing the gun tie, retrieving the weapon from the floor of the car and sticking it into his waistband, butt downwards, hard.

  Schnabeln was told to stop well short of the actual apartment entrance.

  “Your case heavy?” Herbie asked Ursula, eyes never still. It was quiet; hardly anyone about.

  Ursula told him, no. She had done exactly what he had ordered. “An overnight bag. Just my best things, and very few of those. Come up with me, Herbie?” She was, rightly, nervous: hand shaking as she smoothed her hair.

  Of course he was coming up. She would not be out of his sight from now on. Herbie, still alert, gave quick orders to Schnabeln. “Watch. Everywhere. Get out fast if there’s any sign of trouble. Vopos, anything. We’ll make our own way. Just go, yes?”

  Schnabeln did not seem happy at the prospect. “Hurry then,” he said.

  Herbie nodded and spoke to Ursula. When he said go, they would leave the car—fast. “Not running, you understand. Not attracting attention. But we don’t loiter. You keep your eyes on the door, don’t look around you. I shall do that for both of us.” He told her that, as soon as they were inside the building, they would go up the stairs as quickly as possible. “It is then we run. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “I go first up the stairs. You stay behind me and have the key ready.”

  She nodded again. Herbie put one paw on the door handle and the other inside his jacket on the butt of the Browning.

  As they crossed the open space leading to the apartment block doors a dog barked, and Herbie was conscious of the sound of traffic coming from somewhere behind the building. He stayed to the left and slightly behind Ursula, in the classic bodyguard position, his eyes restless, watching windows and the sight-lines on either side—picking vantage spots for hidden eyes. At the door he turned to look back. Down the road he saw the car with Schnabeln. A man and a woman walking, deep in conversation, arms linked, on the far side of the street. For a second he recalled how many times he had walked the same way with Ursula.

  “Okay. Me first,” he spoke quietly to Ursula as they reached the stairs, his right hand withdrawing the Browning, flicking the safety and keeping the weapon just within his jacket—hidden.

  He took the stairs in big, long bounds, two at a time, landing on the toes as feet hit each tread. For a man as large as Kruger he made little noise. Ursula’s shoes clicked on the uncarpeted cement as she ran up after him.

  At each floor, he paused, listening for a second, glancing down the passages leading off the landings.

  At Ursula’s door Herbie motioned her to use the key, then stand back. She nodded, unlocked the door and pushed it open. He could see through the crack as it swung back. Nobody behind the door, but he would not expect that. The movies usually have it all wrong, they say at the school: hiding behind doors is not a safe ploy.

  The gun in his hand now Herbie almost jumped into the room, one hand holding Ursula back, ears straining. Long instinct told him the place was empty. Quietly, he asked where she had put her suitcase. She nodded towards the bedroom door.

  “Okay. You get it quickly.”

  She was away, crossing the room with her loping stride, while Herbie stood just inside the door, his free hand on the edge of the wood, eyes taking in what he knew would be a final look. The Durer: the avenging angel—he had carried that vengeance to its final limit. The ruby glasses with their facet-cut stems. Ursula disappeared inside the bedroom.

  He heard her moving, but suddenly sensed something was wrong in the other silence. Sensed it only a second before it happened.

  The sense was so strong that he was starting to turn when the cold, unmistakable touch of a pistol barrel pressed hard into his neck, and a voice whispered quietly in his ear. “This is very real now, Mr. Kruger. I shall stand back and kill you if you make one move. Place the gun quietly on the floor, then straighten up. Hands on your head.” Somewhere from the distant past Herbie recognised the voice, the inflection in its German speech. As he obeyed the order, knowing there was nothing to be done immediately, the voice spoke to someone else—“See to the woman.”

  A figure brushed past him, heading quickly for the bedroom. He thought Ursula cried out as the door closed; just as he was certain the flitting figure was Kashov.

  By this time Herbie had his gun on the floor and was standing erect, hands on his head. “It’s nice to meet you at last, Herbie Kruger,” the voice said. “You may turn around now.”

  As Herbie turned the man spoke very slowly, a whole mass of mockery in his tone, “A man can teach another man to do good—believe me. Eh?”

  He had hardly changed—though, in the past, Herbie had only viewed him from a distance. Slim, the iron grey hair and deceptively kind blue eyes. Maybe there were a few more creases around the eyes, but the same delicate features had stood up well to the passage of time. He looked very French—elegant in civilian clothes. Most un-Russian. They always said, Vascovsky had French blood in him. It showed close up. Vascovsky? A spectre? No, this was flesh, blood, bone, sinew, intelligence.

  There were other men outside the door. With a flick of his hand Vascovsky unleashed a pair of them towards the bedroom.

  “Don’t …” Herbie started to speak; but, softly, and with a certain amount of charm, Vascovsky told him to move. “Downstairs, quietly, and as quickly as we can, I think. We have your man—the one you left in the car. We want no fuss, Big Herbie—they still call you Big Herbie, I understand. No fuss, though. My people have to work through the Germans, but you know all about that from your side of the fence—neutral Berlin.” He gave a small laugh, derisive but not unpleasant. “We are here only to help. I think we move now.”

  Herbie felt hands on his arms. He did not resist, or shout back. When they have you it is better to remain silent.

  13

  A FLY, SETTLED ON the grille surrounding the one naked light bulb in the stone ceiling of the cell, would probably have sensed the awful, bitter, malign atmosphere—had it the brain and intelligence.

  The cell was bleak enough. Cold, so far below the ground; old, also, with stone flags and damp grey walls. A simple pallet in one corner, a bucket in the other, the usual heavy metal door, the graffiti of past inmates scratched into the walls. In the centre, a small metal table and chair, securely bolted to the floor. There was no window, and, even in the cold, a sour smell filled the small dungeon.

  The big man, dressed in sagging denim prison drab, sat upright, at the table. He did not shift or move. Even a fly of great intellect could not have known that the large man was trying to compose his mind by listening, in his brain, to Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

  For once, though, the ploy of musical memory did not work. Herbie Kruger remained confused and bewildered—in mental chaos for many reasons: not least of all the sudden appearance of Vascovsky’s ghost. Though this was no ghost. Jacob Vascovsky had not died, either by sudden heart attack or bullet fired into a water-filled mouth.

  That was chaos enough for Herbie. He was trapped, and knew what would follow. Russia, probably. Almost certainly. The successes of the past had been revealed as failures. Now the present successes had led to the disaster of entrapment.

  His mind had been so shocked by Vascovsky’s appearance in Ursula’s apartment—reeling under the effort to focus on the facts; wild with concern for Ursula herself—that he had hardly been able to follow the route once they had bundled him into the car and driven fast.

 
; He was almost certain they had taken him to the grim old SSD’s Magdalenenstrasse jail, though he thought the place—had been out of use for some time. It would make sense, though—even if he was its only inmate.

  Vascovsky disappeared soon after the arrival, when Herbie was made to suffer every possible indignity, from a crude medical examination to the dressing in rough denim and, finally, the cell.

  He reckoned two to three hours had passed, and the only consideration had been a mug of tepid, foul coffee, some black bread and cold sausage. Apart from that Herbie Kruger had been left alone.

  The main concern, which endlessly repeated itself—try as he would to blot it out with memories of the Mahler—was Ursula. Was she here? What was happening to her?

  He heard the footsteps long before they stopped outside the cell door. Then the rusty clunk of the key, before the heavy metal swung back and Vascovsky entered, sniffing the air; wrinkling his face in disgust. Herbie just looked at him without a word.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Vascovsky began. “We’ll have you away from here into more suitable surroundings, as soon as possible. In the meantime it’s safe: for us and for you.”

  Holding his real concern in check, Herbie asked where he was. Vascovsky lit a cigarette. Then, as an afterthought, handed one to Herbie. They were British: John Player King Size. Vascovsky gave an amused shrug.

  Herbie asked, flatly, where he was; coughing on the cigarette.

  “Alive,” Vascovsky smiled. “Alive, Herbie—I shall call you Herbie for I have known you as Big Herbie for many years. Alive, and in my safe keeping. You are confused, yes?”

  Not particularly, Herbie told him.

  “My entrance was not a shock to you? After what you believed?”

  Of course it was; Herbie had to admit that.

  “Pride is not encouraged in our profession; but you know that better than any of us. However, I cannot deny feeling a small pride in this operation. It took a long time.” He inhaled deeply on his cigarette and looked hard at Kruger. “We will have to talk a great deal, my friend. You understand this? I shall have to ask many questions—but in more conducive surroundings than these. I think, also that some gaps—which may puzzle you—will have to be filled in. But we do that later. I bring you a letter.” He felt inside his jacket and produced a thin blue envelope, which he held lightly between finger and thumb. “A letter from Ursula Zunder.”

  Herbie could hold back no longer. He started to speak, but found his voice abnormally weak. He coughed and spoke again, from the beginning. “What have you done with her? Where is she?”

  Vascovsky looked blank, emitting a sound half way between surprise and irritation. At this Herbie was suddenly very alert; his head clear; the first signs of disbelief beginning to appear over the horizon of his mind, like the early warning of thunderclouds.

  “I am sorry,” Vascovsky looked serious.

  “You haven’t? … You …?”

  “I foolishly imagined you had cleared your mind. Worked it all out. That’s why I left you alone in here—to give you a chance to adjust.” He paused again, placing the cheap blue envelope on the metal table. It was addressed to Herbie, the writing unmistakable: clear and bold without flourish. Ursula’s handwriting had always struck Herbie as being the least feminine thing about her.

  “I should leave you alone a little longer.” Vascovsky began to edge towards the door. “If you don’t understand all of it, no matter. But you have to know, now, Herbie. You went for my necromancy all the way. Ursula Zunder was mine from the very start. She is Trapeze, Herbie.”

  The door closed behind the Russian. For a second or so Herbie Kruger’s mind went blank. A trick, he thought. It has to be some kind of horrible, sadistic trick. Then, looking at the envelope, and seeing Vascovsky’s face—hearing his voice—in the mind, he knew this was no illusion.

  The demons broke from inside Herbie’s head, a snarl from his lips, followed by a long howling scream, as he scrabbled to open the letter. Far away, he seemed to be looking at himself, and clearly thinking this was the kind of echoing noise Shakespeare intended King Lear to make on finding Cordelia dead—Howl. Howl. Howl. Howl! O—you are men of stones.

  Slowly now, with his hands shaking, Herbie unfolded the thin paper, covered in Ursula’s writing. There was a bitter stab as he read the first line—

  My Darling Herbie—it began—

  I have no right to call you that, it is true, yet you will forever remain so. You will not feel anything but hatred for me. That is punishment enough, for the rest of my life. You will feel and know that I have betrayed you, and your personal standards of loyalty will revolt against that. I understand. I wish to try and make you understand also. For me, and for my people, there is one thing more sacred than the love of two human beings. That, as you well know, is the love and loyalty one must bear for country and ideal. In this case, you should know by now that I am Russian-born. I am also a true believer in the right of my political creed, which you will call Communism. There is no changing that. It is like the true Roman Catholic refusing to marry a Protestant unless he changes his faith. I have no illusions that you will ever alter your way of thinking, even though my whole heart and mind cries out, calls to you, pleads with you to do so.

  Remember that, in spite of my deceptions, I loved, and still love you as a man. You are the only man with whom I have ever found the qualities I could respect; the only man with whom I have truly felt the rewards of physical, emotional and mental love—except in the most vital sense for me: the political creed. Please try to forgive me. Remember me.

  Once, on a happy evening, in what I still like to think of as our apartment in Berlin, you asked me how people clung on to the faith of Communism, when they saw the injustices, and had seen suffering during bad political leadership. Your question, then, was rhetorical. I would have been foolish—in my situation—even to have attempted an answer. Now I feel free to do so. I do it by illustration, and know you will understand. Have you ever heard of Daniel Averbuch? He was a leading member of the Communist Party in Palestine—in the nineteen-thirties. In fact he was sent by Moscow to promote Communism in the Mid-East. He fell foul of Moscow and, in the end, was not even allowed to leave Russia after his return: accused by Stalin of working against the Party. Many, many years after this a friend of mine met Daniel Averbuch’s widow—poverty-stricken, old and infirm. She told him—“My husband, my sons, my brother, my husband’s brother—they were all arrested and assassinated. I’m the only one still alive. But, you know, in spite of what happened, I have not stopped believing in Communism.” This may help you to understand, my dearest Herbie. I can never stop believing in Communism—though it has assassinated your love for me; and rent us apart. I love you for ever. Forgive me—

  Ursula

  Herbie Kruger smoothed out the paper, gently folding it with his huge hands. At that moment he felt nothing—a numbness, perhaps; maybe disbelief. It was not that he wanted to bury his head in the sand of time. Time was what he needed. There were too many questions to be answered if Ursula’s letter was, in truth, real.

  He was still sorting it out in his mind when they came for him. This time he was taken to a more comfortable room. There was coffee and plenty of cigarettes. There was also Vascovsky, and Herbie reasoned that this might be the start of what he knew must be a long interrogation.

  He remained dumb, accepting coffee and a cigarette, waiting for Vascovsky to begin, which he did: coming to the point quite quickly.

  “It is best that I fill in some of the gaps, those you cannot work out for yourself.”

  Herbie tried to assume indifference. Since the arrest and reading Ursula’s letter, he had set his mind upon two of the puzzles. If it was all true, Ursula Zunder had to be a professional, even when he—Herbie—had recruited her. But as there was a hermetic situation, no interrelationship, between any of the Telegraph Boys, how had she lifted the information from the maze? There was no real way. So had Peter Sensel been the real vill
ain? The one who helped lead her to the others: watching, following, keeping their eyes on the handler’s backs?

  Also, why the elaborate charade? The faked death for Vascovsky? Mistochenkov’s defection? Why did they need him, Herbie Kruger, to be lured into the East again? Reluctantly, he concluded this was an entrapment of monumental complexity.

  “You know my situation,” Herbie said quietly. “I am in your hands. What is done is done. Am I to be charged? A show trial?”

  Vascovsky told him it depended very much on what happened during the next few weeks. “What you tell us. Even how much you know.”

  Herbie did not smile. With no feeling he answered, “I am not at liberty to tell you anything, Colonel-General.”

  “Please, you must call me Jacob. After all, we have known one another for a long time.”

  “There is very little I can offer you, Jacob.”

  They would see how things went, Vascovsky smiled. Herbie found the constant smile irritating; half way between the sardonic and a smirk.

  “As I have said, it is only fair that you should know certain things.” How much of the picture had Herbie managed to paint? the Russian asked.

  “You tell it.” Better admit to nothing than give away any strengths without really being aware.

  “You must have some questions?” Vascovsky had a habit of touching the bridge of his nose with a forefinger. Later Herbie would realise that the Colonel-General wore spectacles—but only when absolutely necessary: a question of vanity. The frames tended to slip on to the bridge of his nose, and the habit was acquired by pushing them back.

  Herbie allowed a small concession. “How much did Pavel Mistochenkov really know? He fooled me. I admit it.”

  “Poor Pavel,” Vascovsky leaned closer. “Pavel was always a dupe. You really imagine that Pavel Mistochenkov could have kept much from you? Misdirected you, Herbie? No. There were certain things, easy things, things that I thought you would wish to swallow. In fact Pavel Mistochenkov is the start of the whole story.”