by Mike Ripley
But I knew who it must be.
I pulled the Walther from my pocket and had the presence of mind to flip off the safety catch before sinking to my knees and attempting to take aim. The black-clad figure had not seen me, or if he had, did not feel threatened in the slightest, as he manoeuvred the bike away from the wall of the refuge, revved the engine loudly and steered it in a half-circle and headed down the pilgrim’s trail towards Pont d’Espagne.
My finger was on the trigger of my pistol, but I did not fire. It was no moral problem, it was simply a question of ballistics. The target was too far away for my pistol to be effective and I cursed my rejection of the loan of Vidal’s rifle.
I could still hear the rasp of the motorbike’s engine bouncing down the valley as I reached the refuge’s door, already half knowing what I was to find inside.
In the crude fireplace were the blackened paper ashes of what had been Lunel’s ledger, or at least one of them. Next to the fireplace, sitting propped against the wall almost exactly where I had left him, was Nathan Lunel, his body still warm.
There was one bullet wound in his chest and one directly between his eyes. Either would have achieved the desired result.
How long I stayed there I do not know.
I sank to the hut floor, against the wall opposite Lunel. I apologized to him for being too weak, too slow, too old. For regretting I had not sent Reuben Vidal in my place. He would have gone, probably relishing the challenge, and he would have been stronger and more sure-footed than me. Reuben would have heard the motorcycle coming and, with his rifle, protected the defenceless Lunel. I admitted I had failed him and broken the promise he had not held me to and his silence admonished me.
On the plus side of the account, I had got Astrid to safety, and I thanked him for the trust he had in me in providing her with the second ledger, which was on its way into safe hands. The information it contained would reach the Americans before the banks in North Africa were liberated and the accounts frozen and then appropriated. The members of the cabal would be exposed, and retribution would follow.
A noise disturbed my reverie – or perhaps it had been a soliloquy: the crunch of footsteps approaching the entrance to the refuge.
Daylight was fading and suddenly reduced even further as a uniformed figure appeared in the doorway. The uniform was unmistakably German, as was the pistol in the hand which preceded the body, as was the voice.
‘Albert?’ said the uniform. ‘Is that you?’
‘It’s good to see you, Robert,’ I replied in English, ‘or I think it is. Is it?’
‘You have nothing to fear from me, Albert, although technically you are now an enemy combatant in civilian clothes in the territory of the Third Reich and that means I could shoot you as a spy.’
‘Please don’t, Robert, at least not yet.’
Robert holstered his pistol and stepped into the hut. He produced a small metal flask from the breast pocket of his uniform tunic – a Wehrmacht uniform, not the black SS one we had worn forty-eight hours ago. The flask contained cognac and I was grateful to take a long swig.
‘I could have offered you some Spanish wine,’ I told him, ‘but I think I lost my bag coming down the mountain.’
Robert crouched down on his haunches in front of me so that the dead, accusing face of Nathan Lunel was hidden from me.
‘What happened, Albert? Did Lunel not give you the ledger?’
‘Nothing like that. Lunel played it with a straight bat the whole time. The ledger and Astrid Lunel are by now in Spain and making their way to Madrid. How goes the invasion?’
‘Yours or ours?’ said Robert with a weary smile.
‘Either.’
‘The American landings have encountered some resistance from Vichy French forces, but nothing that will inconvenience them unduly. Case Anton is in full swing and our troops are meeting no opposition. I have been ordered back to Marseilles to expand the Abwehr office there.’
‘So what are you doing here?’
He reached for the flask which I reluctantly returned to him. ‘Firstly, tell me what happened to Lunel.’
‘Nathan broke his ankle on the climb up here and could not go any further. He insisted I made sure Astrid was safe before coming back for him. I delivered Astrid into the hands of our Spanish contact and started back down. Before I could get near enough to do anything about it, a man on a motorcycle turned up and shot him.’
‘And the papers in the fire?’ Robert was as observant as ever.
‘A second ledger. Don’t worry, Astrid is carrying a copy. Lunel must have wanted a duplicate as something to bargain with in case he fell into the wrong hands.’
‘He did. Magnus Asher, the one man he couldn’t bargain with. A man who wanted the ledger destroyed to protect his investment.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It must have been him. I remember being told that he was a dispatch rider before he took his leave of the British army, so the motorbike would have been a natural choice of transport and the only vehicle that could get up this trail. Thing is, how did Asher know we were on this particular pilgrim’s way? Come to that, how did you?’
‘Asher paid a call on Madame Henneuse at the Lunels’ apartment this morning. She knew enough to tell him the direction you had taken. Remember, Asher had a lucrative sideline in helping people escape into Spain across these trails.’
‘Madame Henneuse would not have betrayed the Lunels!’ I protested.
‘Not without a severe beating, a very severe beating. I had a local man watching the building and, when he felt something was wrong, he called me. Asher had gone but Madame Henneuse was able to tell me what had happened.’ His voice dropped into a solemn drone. ‘It was the last thing she did. I called a doctor for her but it was too late, then Erik got the car and we set off after him, but he had too much of a start.’
Anger overcame fatigue and frustration and I struggled to my feet with Robert’s help. ‘Asher is a loathsome creature. We can’t let him get away.’
‘He hasn’t,’ said Robert calmly. ‘Got away, that is. He is at Pont d’Espagne being guarded by my faithful Erik.’
‘You captured him?’
‘No, he surrendered to us. We stopped to examine the car you abandoned there and heard the motorcycle coming down the trail. As soon as he saw our uniforms, he presented himself to us and said that as good German soldiers we might be interested in an escape route over the mountains used by Jews. He had even killed a Jew attempting to escape the round-ups and could give us full details, even show us the body, to prove what a friend of the Reich he was.’
‘Did you shoot him?’
‘No.’
‘What a shame,’ I said.
TWENTY-THREE
A Perfect Hatred
The Dorchester Hotel, London. 20 May 1970
The music, when it began to float from the large speakers of the discotheque equipment, was surprisingly gentle and reassuring to the more mature party guests. Having seen the equipment being set up, they had feared the worst excesses of guitar-twanging and screamed lyrics, such as they had experienced when subjected to Radio 1 as played on the transistor radios that every builder and plumber carried these days or, horror of horrors, when they had accidentally tuned their televisions into that appalling youth orgy that was Top of the Pops.
The younger guests, accepting they were in the minority, graciously put up with Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington, knowing that the disc jockey, who was of their own age group, almost certainly had more modern and more lively records up his sleeve for later, when the older crowd had drifted away or been carried off to their beds.
The strains of smooth jazz and the accompanying gentle (so far) strobe lighting served Mr Campion’s purposes perfectly. Prying eyes and ears like radar dishes were distracted, allowing Campion to huddle in conference with his inner circle of Amanda, Luke and Lugg, the latter there by virtue of the simple fact that he refused to move away.
‘Now let’s clear up the question
of our foreign guests before your boys in blue arrive to give everybody the third degree,’ Campion addressed Luke. ‘I am working on the premise that the family and friends contingent, not to mention the odd gate-crasher’ – he glared at Lugg – ‘are the unusual suspects in the assault on Freiherr von Ringer. As far as I am aware, none of the domestic guests, with the exception of Elsie Corkran, knew him from Adam.’
‘And you had never mentioned your wartime connection,’ said Luke.
‘Not even to me,’ Amanda whispered.
‘I saw no reason to dwell on my unhappy wartime experiences,’ Campion replied.
‘Until tonight.’
‘That’s right, Charlie, and there’s a reason for that, which I’ll come to. First, though, put your policeman’s helmet on and hear me out.’
Luke, who had not worn a policeman’s helmet for many a year, nodded his acquiescence.
‘Well then, we can dismiss Joseph Fleurey, who had no idea who Robert was and in any case was too young for the war.’
‘So the assault on Ringer has to do with the war?’
‘Yes, Charles, I’m pretty sure it has.’
‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Lugg, who then fell silent and red-faced as three pairs of eyes turned on him.
‘What about Fleurey’s father?’
‘Well done, Charles, you remembered the note from Robert. Except it did not refer to my old chum Étienne Fleurey, who owed his arrival in England and the safety of his family to Robert. I can’t really see a motive there.’
‘Surely you can’t suspect Corinne?’ said Amanda. ‘She seems delightful: frightfully bright and far too sophisticated to stab a man in the back.’
‘But quite capable of shooting a few, if Albert’s war stories are to be believed,’ Luke observed dryly.
‘That was then,’ said Mr Campion, ‘this is now. Corinne had no direct contact with Robert, at least not while I was in Marseilles, though perhaps she did later, but I can assure you her motive for being here tonight is not remotely to do harm to Robert – quite the reverse, in fact.’
Lugg pursed his fleshy lips and pushed his face aggressively into that of Charles Luke. ‘Did you follow that? Because I sure-as-shooting didn’t.’
Luke did his best to ignore him and turned on Campion. ‘Then why is Corinne Thibus here? Didn’t you say her presence was requested by the French Embassy?’
‘I did,’ said Mr Campion, ‘and this is where I have to blush and giggle in the manner of a schoolgirl – something I was always rather good at. The truth is Corinne Thibus is here tonight to give me a medal. It was supposed to be a surprise for everyone.’
Amanda, open-mouthed, grasped her husband’s arm. ‘Oh my goodness! Not the Légion d’honneur?’
Mr Campion patted his wife’s hand gently. ‘Not quite, my love. It’s the Order of Liberation, which I’m told comes a close second. They don’t give many to foreigners, just the important ones like Churchill, Eisenhower, the late King George, and me. It’s for services to France during the Occupation, and it seems part of the reason I got gonged was down to Robert putting in a good word for me.’
Luke made as if to speak, paused, thought, and then spoke. ‘You’re getting a French medal for resisting the Germans on the testimony of a German army officer?’
Mr Campion allowed himself a weak smile. ‘Yes, funny old world, isn’t it? I knew the story would come out one way or another tonight, so I thought I would pre-empt the speeches and tell Perdita the story, as she was the only one who has ever expressed an interest in what I did in the war.’
Lugg’s temper and complexion bubbled up like magma. ‘Strewth, that’s rich! You’ve kept schtum about all this for twenty-five years, not saying a word no matter ’ow ’ard people tried to wheedle it out of you. Anyone wiv eyes could see you’d changed when you came back from the war, but you never let on what happened to yer.’
‘Until tonight,’ Luke pointed out.
‘Well, I thought I had better get my side of the story out before Madame Thibus started tongues wagging when she made her presentation. That, of course, has now been postponed as she specifically wanted Robert von Ringer to be present.’
‘Did she now?’ Luke could not prevent his policeman’s eyebrows from rising.
‘Don’t give me that look, Charlie,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Madame Thibus is in the clear.’
‘Are you sure, dear?’
Now three pairs of eyes turned on Amanda. ‘You call her Madame Thibus,’ she said, ‘but that’s her maiden name, isn’t it? She never married?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware, darling, but that’s not a criminal offence as far as I know, even in France.’
‘Mebbe it should be,’ grunted Lugg, who was ignored.
‘What happened to that Free French man who helped you in Toulouse? The one she was madly in love with as a girl?’
‘Ah-ha!’ grinned Campion. ‘So, you were listening to my memoirs over dinner!’
‘It was difficult not to. The sound of your voice can be quite …’
‘Sonorous? Distinguished? Hypnotic?’
‘I was going to say persistent. Olivier, that was his name.’
‘Yes, Olivier Courteaux, and Corinne was indeed infatuated with him.’ Mr Campion became serious. ‘He was a real hero and did get his fair share of medals. Sadly, they were awarded posthumously. He was killed by the SS; members of the Das Reich division who went on the rampage in the Dordogne in 1944. Put up against a wall and shot out of hand in a place called Souillac. There was a memorial service for him and other heroes of the Resistance after the war. General de Gaulle was there, as was Elsie Corkran, I believe.’
‘It must have hit Corinne hard,’ said Amanda. ‘She was still very young.’
‘It spurred her on to become a lawyer,’ said Campion, ‘specializing in war crimes. She eventually tracked down a couple of the SS men who had been in the firing squad and brought them to justice. She was tenacious in that regard.’
Luke pressed the point Lady Amanda had left hanging in the air. ‘Consequently, Madame Thibus has little love for Germans …’
‘You’re giving me that “Anything you say may be taken down” look again, Charlie. As I understand it, Corinne’s enquiries about Nazi war criminals received the full cooperation of the West German security services and a certain Robert von Ringer, who had already proved himself to be no Nazi. He’s the one who should be getting the medal. In fact, our government should have given him one or two.’
‘Well, if you’re sure Corinne did not have the motive to stab Robert …’
Amanda began the unasked question, but it was Charles Luke who finished it as a statement. ‘That leaves the Spanish lady, Señora Vidal. I’d better have a word with her. Where is she?’
‘Over there, near the bar,’ said Campion, ‘talking to Perdita. She’s a bright girl, Perdita. I think she might have guessed already.’
‘Guessed what?’ Luke asked sharply.
‘That you really should be talking to the daughter.’
Quietly and unobtrusively, Campion, Amanda and Luke made their way across the hotel foyer, now an ad-hoc dance floor, through the crowd of chattering, drinking and even occasionally dancing guests. As it was impossible for Lugg to be inconspicuous under any circumstances, he was dispatched by a circuitous route to the Park Lane doorway where, in case a suspect should try and flee the scene, he was to use his considerable bulk to block the exit.
By the makeshift bar, Perdita was nursing a glass of white wine and Señora Vidal was, judging by the ashtray she held, chain-smoking. They were both silent and looking slightly furtive as Luke and the Campions approached.
‘Astrid, we need to talk to you,’ said Mr Campion, ‘but before we do you should know that Mr Luke here is a senior British policeman investigating the attack on Freiherr von Ringer. You will be pleased to hear that my friend is not seriously hurt and is recovering in hospital, from where he sent me a message which I believe is what he heard just before the attack.�
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Señora Vidal stubbed out her cigarette and carefully placed the ashtray on the bar, then turned and squared up to Mr Campion, her eyes on his, unblinking.
‘Yes?’
‘Whoever attacked Robert Ringer said, “For my father”, just before striking with a knife taken earlier from the hotel.’ The small woman remained impassive even as Campion pressed on. ‘Who else here tonight would say such a thing, except someone who blamed the Germans for the death of a father, moreover a father they never knew? Where is Prisca, Astrid?’
There was still no reaction from the Spanish woman, and Campion felt Luke push out his chest and flex his shoulders as a prelude to entering the fray, but it was Perdita who broke the deadlock.
‘She’s in their room upstairs. Her mother smuggled her up there in the general confusion. I think she must have blood on her, as Mrs Vidal has a very damp red handkerchief in her handbag.’
‘How very observant of you, my dear,’ Campion said with pride. ‘Keep an eye on this one, Charlie, she could be after your job.’
‘It was all my fault,’ said Astrid Vidal. ‘Prisca must not be blamed.’
‘I’m afraid she may have to be,’ said Luke. ‘This is a very serious matter.’
Campion turned his head in to Luke and spoke quietly. ‘Robert is not the sort to press charges against a girl who is possibly unhinged and his injuries are not life-threatening.’
‘A crime is a crime,’ said Luke out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Blame me!’ cried Astrid. ‘I confused her. I should have told her everything or nothing at all, then this would not have happened.’
‘She asked about her father, didn’t she?’ Amanda said gently.
Astrid nodded her head violently and fumbled for another cigarette, instantly happier to be able to talk to a woman of her own vintage.
‘When she was twelve or thirteen I told her about Nathan, my first husband, and how he had been killed during the war. She knew well enough that Reuben Vidal was not her father – we married when Prisca was five – and that she was really French, not Spanish; but as she learned about the war and heard stories about the persecution of the Jews, she wanted to know more.’
