The Lucifer Network

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Weiss nicht.’ She made to close the door, but Sam’s foot prevented it.

  ‘Sorry . . . Entshuldigung. Wissen Sie wo . . .?’

  ‘Nein. Weiss nicht wo er iss. Die Frau ist neulich tot.’

  Sam blinked, unsure he’d understood aright. ‘Frau Hoffmann, she’s dead? Frau Hoffmann tot?’

  ‘Letzte Woche. Wer sind Sie?’

  ‘Ein Freund. A friend.’

  ‘Englisch?’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘Später. Versuchen Sie später. Come later.’

  The door pressed against Sam’s foot and this time he removed it.

  ‘Vielen Dank,’ he murmured as it clicked shut. He turned to find that an elderly couple making their slow way up to the floor above had paused to listen.

  ‘You look for Herr Hoffmann?’ the man asked.

  ‘His woman dead,’ his wife added. ‘Letzte Woche.’

  ‘You know where he might be?’ Sam queried, glad of their English.

  ‘Im Friedhof,’ the woman suggested.

  ‘The funeral was yesterday,’ the man explained.

  ‘Do you know which cemetery she’s buried in?’

  ‘The Zentralfriedhof, I believe.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The couple continued on their way. ‘Danke schön,’ he called after them, two portly figures, as puffed as the cream cakes they’d probably just been consuming at a local Konditorei.

  He made his way back downstairs, then extracted a map from his pocket. The cemetery was on the other side of town. He headed back to the U-Bahn.

  HMS Truculent

  Arthur Harris sat spellbound. Suddenly after nearly two hours, his screens had sprung to life. A string of spikes like an earthquake. The same frequency as before. VHF on a band not normally used in this part of the world.

  One of the voices was the same as before, a whingeing litany of complaint in a Moscow accent. The other speaker was from further east. This time the moan wasn’t about lifting boxes. There was a major drama unfolding. A search was under way. A search for a man.

  Harris checked the tape machine was recording, then balanced an A4 pad on his knees, making shorthand notes and logging key words against time codes. The transmissions were uneven, breaking up. Hand-held walkie-talkie sets, he guessed, with a range of a mile or two normally. Given a clear line of sight over the sea, the intercept mast was picking it up at more than twice that distance.

  Suddenly a new voice cut in. Harder. More authoritative. Urging the others on to find their quarry. A voice that to Arthur Harris sounded chillingly familiar. Holding his breath, he jotted harder.

  Find the bastard! Check the Karolina is secure. He may use the boat to escape.

  Circle the island on foot, two men in each direction.

  No violence. We need him back alive.

  Harris felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped. The First Lieutenant stood beside him tapping his wristwatch then drawing a finger across his throat. The window was closing. HMS Truculent was about to dive again.

  ‘Five more minutes, sir?’ Harris pleaded. ‘They’re sending.’

  ‘No can do. Sorry. The masts are coming down now.’

  As he said it, the voices in Harris’s ears turned to hiss. He pulled off the headphones.

  ‘In that case, sir, I have a most exceptional request to make.’

  Lt-Commander Hayes raised a far from co-operative eyebrow. ‘Try me.’

  ‘When we surface for the rendezvous with the helicopter I would like to transmit what we’ve just recorded direct to London.’

  ‘God! The captain won’t like that,’ Hayes cautioned. There’d be no chance of keeping their position secret with their satcom mast radiating like a beacon. ‘How much tape have you got?’

  ‘About five minutes, sir.’

  ‘Why can’t you ship it with the others? It’ll be in Cheltenham within twelve hours.’

  ‘Because it can’t wait that long, sir. I believe I recognised one of the voices. There’s a man at my HQ who can confirm it.’

  Hayes frowned, intrigued suddenly.

  ‘Who is this bloke?’

  ‘Well actually, sir, if it’s the man I think it is, he’s a top Russian scientist. A biological warfare expert specialising in viruses. And a man known to have something of a cash flow problem. The bastard’s been offering his skills on the open market to anybody prepared to pay his price.’

  14

  Vienna

  THE TRAM STOPPED directly outside the number 2 entrance to Vienna’s vast central cemetery. When the doors hissed open, half a dozen souls got off before Sam, all making for the main gates. On the far side of a wide, cobbled yard stood a row of flower stalls. At the sound of the tram’s arrival, four pinafored proprietresses had emerged from their separate huts and bustled towards the visitors like an operetta chorus line, arms brimming with blooms for sale. On the opposite side of the courtyard, cut-price gravestones were on sale – 50 per cent off for ends of lines. To Sam it seemed he’d arrived at a supermarket of death.

  Passing through the cemetery entrance, tree-lined avenues fanned out into the distance. At the far end of one stood a huge domed church. Sam realised that if Hoffmann were in this graveyard, he would need a grid reference and a GPS to find him. He spotted an administration office. Inside, a helpful young woman looked up the Hoffmann name on her computer and directed Sam to plot D 175. ‘It’s up towards gate number 1,’ she told him. ‘Close to the Israeli section.’

  Israeli. He blinked at her use of the word.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He found signposts pointing to zone D and followed them. To his left and right, mausoleums in marble and blackened bronze held the remains of Vienna’s great and good. Further on the plots became less presumptuous, but some screamed their presence with gaudy displays of red and pink begonias. Large labels stuck into the turf advertised the companies that maintained the graves. But the commercial neatness of the cemetery ended abruptly at the Jewish sector. Here, stones were crooked and untended, their messages obscured by moss. Plots had lost their shape to the weeds, and footpaths were overgrown from lack of use. A red deer using the area for grazing took off at Sam’s arrival.

  He read off some of the names – Adler, Goldstein, Kohn. The dates of death were all before 1938, the year many Austrians had lined the streets to welcome Hitler in. These graves looked like they’d been unattended ever since, abandoned, he assumed, because the families that would have cared for them had vanished in the Holocaust. A moment ago the admin girl had referred to this as the Israeli sector. He pulled from his pocket the tourist map of Vienna. There it was in print. Israelit Abteilung – Israelite sector, as if the nation had taken a conscious decision to forget that the Jews buried here had been Austrians.

  He turned away. Zone D was back in the vast Christian sector, down a gravel track running along the edge of this abandoned ghetto. Here the stones and plots set amongst trees looked new. Dates were from this year and the last, some freshly planted, others still bare earth. Sam rounded a bend in the path and stopped. There, some twenty metres ahead of him sat a dark-suited, silver-haired figure, his backside straddling a folding canvas stool, his chin supported by his hands as he gazed forlornly at a mound of earth.

  Sam held his breath. It felt an invasion of privacy to approach the old spy at such a time, but he reminded himself that this same man had abused the sanctity of his own father’s life without the slightest compunction.

  Sensing his presence, the leathery face turned towards him. It bore a defeated look, as if life had been deprived of its meaning. For what felt like a full minute, Günther Hoffmann stared at him, his expression one of puzzled half-recognition. Eventually he made the connection and his eyebrows lifted. Then for a moment his face registered fear.

  ‘Herr Maxwell . . .’ he exclaimed. ‘Was machen Sie denn hier?’

  Maxwell. Another pseudonym for another time.

  ‘Herr Hoffmann.’ Sam closed the gap between them. ‘Your wife . . . I’m very sorry.�
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  ‘Ja.’ The German stood up with a grimace, then extended his hand. He was a tall man, aristocratically handsome, though age had turned his face into a relief map. His eyes were as slate grey as the Baltic in winter. ‘It was a big shock for me, Herr Maxwell.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Hoffmann frowned. ‘But you are not here because of Ilse.’ He bent down to fold up the chair.

  Sam could see the man’s brain whirring, trying to guess what undeclared aspect of the Papagena case might have emerged unexpectedly from the woodwork.

  ‘No. But I could have chosen a better time, perhaps.’

  ‘Ach, Herr Maxwell, we do not choose time,’ Hoffmann responded, philosophically. ‘Time chooses us.’ He shot a last look at the mound of earth. ‘And for Ilse this choice came much too soon.’ He sucked in his cheeks, holding in his grief. ‘They will plant flowers here tomorrow.’ He seemed embarrassed by the plainness of the grave. ‘Komm. We will go from here. Perhaps I must be grateful to you. If you didn’t come I would stay here until the night.’

  ‘It was sudden, her death?’ Sam asked as they began to walk.

  Hoffmann took a cigarette pack from his pocket and lit up. His fifty-a-day habit had turned his slicked hair yellow at the temples.

  ‘It was her heart. She have two attacks before this year . . .’ He shrugged, as if the rest was obvious.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ja . . .’ Hoffmann sounded dismissive. ‘But we all must die, Herr Maxwell.’ A largish stone lay in the middle of the path and he moved it aside with his foot.

  ‘She wanted to be buried here? Not in Germany?’

  ‘Because she was born in Vienna,’ he explained. ‘And brought up.’

  ‘I see.’

  Hoffmann paused to tuck the folding stool into a carrier bag. He pointed to the wilderness on the far side of the path. ‘Jews.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sam. ‘It’s a mess.’

  ‘Austrians have never felt they must conceal their anti-Semitism,’ Hoffmann explained, matter-of-factly. ‘They weren’t re-educated after the war like we Germans. The Allies chose to believe that Austrians were innocent victims of the Nazis instead of collaborators. So there was no pressure for a change of attitude.’

  The old man sounded almost envious of Austria’s freedom to be prejudiced. They carried on walking, a silence developing between them. Overhead a jumbo jet growled powerfully as it climbed to altitude from the airport a short distance to the east of them. Hoffmann scowled up at it.

  ‘I hate those things,’ he muttered, grouchily. ‘I never fly these days.’

  When they reached a T-junction the German’s curiosity finally became too much for him. He looked at his watch – it was nearly five – then squared up to Sam.

  ‘Why you have come, Herr Maxwell?’

  For a couple of seconds Sam let him sweat, enjoying the discomfort in Hoffmann’s eyes. ‘Because of Jo Macdonald,’ he told him eventually.

  Hoffmann blinked. He took a small step back. Then as quickly as he’d reacted, his face was still again, calm and expressionless. The steady gaze of a poker player.

  ‘Jo Macdonald,’ he murmured, as if the name were new to him.

  ‘She knew you as Johann, I believe,’ Sam prompted.

  For a few seconds Hoffmann remained as still as a statue. Then without replying, he took Sam by the elbow and they began to walk up the long avenue of poplars towards gate number 1. Red squirrels darted across the stones in front of them. After a minute Hoffmann stopped again and studied Sam’s face with a new intensity.

  ‘You know, Herr . . . Maxwell.’ He laid an ironic stress on Sam’s cover name. ‘At this time of the afternoon in Vienna, it is customary to visit a café. You have a saying in English: when in Rome . . . So, if you want to talk about things that happened a very long time ago, then we should find somewhere more gemütlich than a graveyard.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  They walked more briskly towards the gate.

  ‘You still have your boat?’ Hoffmann asked.

  ‘Unfortunately not. Lack of time,’ Sam explained. Time was what Hoffmann was playing for, he realised. Giving himself space to think.

  ‘You miss it, of course,’ Hoffmann insisted.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I too. Vienna is a long way from the smell of the sea.’

  They reached the gate and crossed into the middle of the road to wait at the tram stop.

  ‘But Vienna has its compensations for you,’ Sam continued. It was a nonsense conversation which he longed to abandon. ‘You go to the opera a lot.’

  Hoffmann rambled on for several minutes about the variable standards at the Staatsoper, then, to Sam’s relief, a tram came. On the ride back into the centre of the city, they hardly spoke. At one point when the machine stopped at traffic lights, their view was blocked by a political poster – the smiling, film-star face of a charismatic politician called Jörg Haider on which a small, black moustache had been daubed.

  ‘They have elections here next year,’ Hoffmann commented, pointing to it. ‘I think maybe this country will see big changes.’

  ‘To the right, you mean?’

  ‘Ja. This Freedom Party says in public many of the things that Austrian people think inside their heads. Particularly about foreigners. Uberfremdung they call it. Too much immigration. They want to stop it. Even I as a German am not always welcome here.’

  ‘You mean the Austrians didn’t all support Hitler’s invasion . . .’ Sam remarked.

  ‘No. Of course not. But Germans are more acceptable here than most foreigners, so if I feel some hostility, what must it be like for people from other countries?’

  The tram sped on, transporting them to Schwarzenbergplatz where they found a secluded booth in a café smelling of fresh-baked cakes which overlooked the Russian war memorial. They ordered mélange and small glasses of schnapps.

  ‘So . . . You came because of Jo Macdonald,’ Hoffmann sighed.

  ‘She showed me your letter,’ Sam explained.

  ‘And you think that I was Johann.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused, then let a little smile play on his lips, like a child caught cheating but who didn’t care. ‘You are correct, of course . . .’ He examined Sam’s face with the intense eye of a portrait painter trying to get the mouth right. ‘You know, Herr Packer,it is strange that in all the times when you and I are meeting, I never make the connection. You look so like him.’

  ‘So people keep telling me.’

  ‘A remarkable coincidence that I use the father to help protect communism, then I am used by the son when it failed.’ He smiled grimly. ‘You call it turning the table, I think.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Hoffmann nodded reflectively. ‘Please, tell me about Jo.’

  ‘She’s terminally ill.’

  Hoffmann’s face crumpled. ‘I feared it. Because she will not reply to my letter. You have seen her?’

  ‘Yes. She’s not expected to last much longer.’

  Hoffmann nodded sombrely. Then he frowned. ‘How did you find out about her?’

  ‘It’s a long story which began with one of your old Russian buddies defecting to America with a list of names.’

  ‘So you began to investigate your father’s life . . .’

  ‘. . . and found a photograph of him with Jo.’

  Hoffmann licked his lips. ‘But why you have come to see me?’

  ‘To hear your side of the story. I always try to be professional.’

  The waiter arrived with their coffees, a slender young man with a single gold earring and a bearing that was overtly gay. Hoffmann fixed him with a look of loathing, then stared down at his coffee as if it had been contaminated.

  ‘Such men disgust me,’ he hissed, after the waiter had left them. ‘We must be grateful for AIDS – don’t you agree?’

  Sam was surprised by his vehemence. He ignored the comment.

  ‘I want to know what information
my father gave away,’ he said.

  Hoffmann shook his head. ‘For that you must ask the GRU. Twenty-seven years ago I was only their messenger boy.’

  ‘But a persistent one, according to Jo.’

  ‘I also have always tried to be professional,’ Hoffmann countered.

  ‘Jo Macdonald told me the GRU weren’t satisfied with the stuff my father handed over.’

  ‘They said it was old,’ Hoffmann confirmed.

  ‘And they sent you back for more.’

  ‘Ja. But then he became sick, your father, so I told the Russians he was no more use to them. Jo . . . she didn’t explain this to you?’

  ‘She did, but I wanted to hear your version.’

  Sam felt disappointed. He’d expected more from Hoffmann. He watched the old spy sip his coffee then throw the schnapps back in one.

  ‘You know, I really don’t understand you.’ Sam’s remark made the German look up. ‘You had no qualms about ruining a man’s life, yet you cared enough about him to send flowers to his funeral.’

  ‘A good general cares for his soldiers,’ Hoffmann countered, ‘however rough he must use them to fight his war.’

  ‘And Jo Macdonald? Why did you write that letter of apology to her?’

  ‘Because in war we always do things we feel bad about after.’

  ‘But she was just my father’s girlfriend . . .’

  There was mockery in Hoffmann’s eyes. Sam groaned inwardly. The camera in the bedroom that had caught his father in flagrante. Jo Macdonald’s wide-eyed bafflement as to how it got there.

  ‘It was not very original,’ Hoffmann apologised. ‘Using a prostitute to catch Navy men.’

  ‘You’d recruited her first,’ Sam grunted. Hoffmann nodded. ‘For money, or were you blackmailing her too?’

  ‘Not blackmail,’ Hoffmann protested. ‘She was afraid of nuclear war. So I could persuade her that if she helped me get information about how the British would launch an attack, then it could help prevent one. And yes, I paid some money. Expenses.’

  ‘So she was never in love with my father?’

  ‘Oh yes. She fell in love. She even wanted to tell him what she has done, but I warned her it would make her his enemy. Better to live with a lie . . .’