The Rhinemann Exchange

by Robert Ludlum

  Who at the embassy could be bought?

  To attempt corrupting an individual too highly placed could backfire; give him, Spaulding, dangerous information.… Someone not too far up on the roster; someone who could gain access to doors and locks and desk-drawer vaults. And codes.… A middle-level attaché. A man who’d probably never make it to the Court of St. James’s anyway; who’d settle for another kind of security. Negotiable at a very high price.

  Someone at the embassy would be Spaulding’s enemy.

  Finally, Berlin would order him killed. Along with numerous others, of course. Killed at the moment of delivery; killed after the äusserste Überwachung had extracted everything it could.

  David got up from the slatted green bench and stretched, observing the beauty that was the Plaza San Martín park. He wandered beyond the path onto the grass, to the edge of a pond whose dark waters reflected the surrounding trees like a black mirror. Two white swans paddled by in alabaster obliviousness. A little girl was kneeling by a rock on the tiny embankment, separating the petals from a yellow flower.

  He was satisfied that he had adequately analyzed the immediate options of his counterparts. Options and probable courses of action. His gut feeling was positive—not in the sense of being enthusiastic, merely not negative.

  He now had to evolve his own counterstrategy. He had to bring into play the lessons he had learned over the years in Lisbon. But there was so little time allowed him. And because of this fact, he understood that a misstep could be fatal here.

  Nonchalantly—but with no feelings of nonchalance—he looked around at the scores of strollers on the paths, on the grass; the rowers and the passengers in the small boats on the small dark lake. Which of them were the enemy?

  Who were the ones watching him, trying to think what he was thinking?

  He would have to find them—one or two of them anyway—before the next few days were over.

  That was the genesis of his counterstrategy.

  Isolate and break.

  David lit a cigarette and walked over the miniature bridge. He was primed. The hunter and the hunted were now one. There was the slightest straining throughout his entire body; the hands, the arms, the legs: there was a muscular tension, an awareness. He recognized it. He was back in the north country.

  And he was good in that jungle. He was the best there was. It was here that he built his architectural monuments, his massive structures of concrete and steel. In his mind.

  It was all he had sometimes.

  26

  He looked at his watch. It was five thirty; Jean had said she’d be at his apartment around six. He had walked for nearly two hours and now found himself at the corner of Viamonte, several blocks from his apartment. He crossed the street and walked to a newsstand under a storefront awning, where he bought a paper.

  He glanced at the front pages, amused to see that the war news—what there was of it—was relegated to the bottom, surrounded by accounts of the Grupo de Oficiales’ latest benefits to Argentina. He noted that the name of a particular colonel, one Juan Perón, was mentioned in three separate subheadlines.

  He folded the paper under his arm and, because he realized he had been absently musing, looked once again at his watch.

  It was not a deliberate move on David’s part. That is to say, he did not calculate the abruptness of his turn; he simply turned because the angle of the sun caused a reflection on his wristwatch and he unconsciously shifted his body to the right, his left hand extended, covered by his own shadow.

  But his attention was instantly diverted from his watch. Out of the corner of his eye he could discern a sudden, sharp break in the sidewalk’s human traffic. Thirty feet away across the street two men had swiftly turned around, colliding with oncoming pedestrians, apologizing, stepping into the flow on the curbside.

  The man on the left had not been quick enough; or he was too careless—too inexperienced, perhaps—to angle his shoulders, or hunch them imperceptibly so as to melt into the crowd.

  He stood out and David recognized him.

  He was one of the men from the roof of the Córdoba apartment. His companion David couldn’t be sure of, but he was sure of that man. There was even the hint of a limp in his gait; David remembered the battering he’d given him.

  He was being followed, then, and that was good.

  His point of departure wasn’t as remote as he’d thought.

  He walked another ten yards, into a fairly large group approaching the corner of Córdoba. He sidestepped his way between arms and legs and packages, and entered a small jewelry store whose wares were gaudy, inexpensive. Inside, several office girls were trying to select a gift for a departing secretary. Spaulding smiled at the annoyed proprietor, indicating that he could wait, he was in no hurry. The proprietor made a gesture of helplessness.

  Spaulding stood by the front window, his body concealed from outside by the frame of the door.

  Before a minute was up he saw the two men again. They were still across the street; David had to follow their progress through the intermittent gaps in the crowd. The two men were talking heatedly, the second man annoyed with his limping companion. Both were trying to glance above the heads of the surrounding bodies, raising themselves up on their toes, looking foolish, amateur.

  David figured they would turn right at the corner and walk east on Córdoba, toward his apartment. They did so and, as the owner of the jewelry store protested, Spaulding walked swiftly out into the crowds and ran across the Avenida Callao, dodging cars and angry drivers. He had to reach the other side, staying out of the sightlines of the two men. He could not use the crosswalks or the curbs. It would be too easy, too logical, for the men to look backward as men did when trying to spot someone they had lost in surveillance.

  David knew his objective now. He had to separate the men and take the one with a limp. Take him and force answers.

  If they had any experience, he considered, they would reach his apartment and divide, one man cautiously going inside to listen through the door, ascertaining the subject’s presence, the other remaining outside, far enough from the entrance to be unobserved. And common sense would dictate that the man unknown to David would be the one to enter the apartment.

  Spaulding removed his jacket and held up the newspaper—not full but folded; not obviously but casually, as if he were uncertain of the meaning of some awkwardly phrased headline—and walked with the crowds to the north side of Códoba. He turned right and maintained a steady, unbroken pace east, remaining as far left on the sidewalk as possible.

  His apartment was less than a block and a half away now. He could see the two men; intermittently they did look back, but on their own side of the street.

  Amateurs. If he taught surveillance, they’d fail his course.

  The men drew nearer to the apartment, their concentration on the entrance. David knew it was his moment to move. The only moment of risk, really; the few split seconds when one or the other might turn and see him across the street, only yards away. But it was a necessary gamble. He had to get beyond the apartment entrance. That was the essence of his trap.

  Several lengths ahead was a middle-aged porteña housewife carrying groceries, hurrying, obviously anxious to get home. Spaulding came alongside and without breaking stride, keeping in step with her, he started asking directions in his best, most elegant Castilian, starting among other points that he knew this was the right street and he was late. His head was tilted from the curb.

  If anyone watched them, the housewife and the shirt-sleeved man with a jacket under one arm and a newspaper under the other looked like two friends hastening to a mutual destination.

  Twenty yards beyond the entrance on the other side, Spaulding left the smiling porteña and ducked into a canopied doorway. He pressed himself into the wall and looked back across the street. The two men stood by the curb and, as he expected, they separated. The unknown man went into his apartment house; the man with the limp looked up and down the sidewal
k, checked oncoming vehicles, and started across Córdoba to the north side. David’s side.

  Spaulding knew it would be a matter of seconds before the limping figure passed him. Logic, again; common sense. The man would continue east—he would not reverse direction—over traversed ground. He would station himself at a vantage point from which he could observe those approaching the apartment from the west. David’s approach.

  The man did not see him until David touched him, grabbed his left arm around the elbow, forced the arm into a horizontal position, and clamped the man’s hand downward so that the slightest force on David’s part caused an excruciating pain in the man’s bent wrist.

  “Just keep walking or I’ll snap your hand off,” said David in English, pushing the man to the right of the sidewalk to avoid the few pedestrians walking west on Córdoba.

  The man’s face grimaced in pain; David’s accelerated walk caused him to partially stumble—his limp emphasized—and brought further agony to the wrist.

  “You’re breaking my arm. You’re breaking it!” said the anguished man, hurrying his steps to relieve the pressure.

  “Keep up with me or I will.” David spoke calmly, even politely. They reached the corner of the Avenida Paraná and Spaulding swung left, propelling the man with him. There was a wide, recessed doorway of an old office building—the type that had few offices remaining within it. David spun the man around, keeping the arm locked, and slammed him into the wooden wall at the point farthest inside. He released the arm; the man grabbed for his strained wrist. Spaulding took the moment to flip open the man’s jacket, forcing the arms downward, and removed a revolver strapped in a large holster above the man’s left hip.

  It was a Lüger. Issued less than a year ago.

  David clamped it inside his belt and pushed a lateral forearm against the man’s throat, crashing his head into the wood as he searched the pockets of the jacket. Inside he found a large rectangular European billfold. He slapped it open, removed his forearm from the man’s throat, and shoved his left shoulder into the man’s chest, pinning him unmercifully against the wall. With both hands, David removed identification papers.

  A German driver’s license; an Autobahn vehicle pass; rationing cards countersigned by Oberführers, allowing the owner to utilize them throughout the Reich—a privilege granted to upper-level government personnel and above.

  And then he found it.

  An identity pass with a photograph affixed; for the ministries of Information, Armaments, Air and Supply.

  Gestapo.

  “You’re about the most inept recruit Himmler’s turned out,” said David, meaning the judgment profoundly, putting the billfold in his back pocket. “You must have relatives.… Was ist ‘Tortugas’?” Spaulding whispered harshly, suddenly. He removed his shoulder from the man’s chest and thrust two extended knuckles into the Nazi’s breastbone with such impact that the German coughed, the sharp blow nearly paralyzing him. “Wer ist Altmüller? Was wissen Sie über Marshall?” David repeatedly hammered the man’s ribs with his knuckles, sending shock waves of pain throughout the Gestapo agent’s rib cage. “Sprechen Sie! Sofort!”

  “Nein! Ich weiss nichts!” the man answered between gasps. “Nein!”

  Spaulding heard it again. The dialect. Nowhere near Berliner; not even a mountainized Bavarian. Something else.

  What was it?

  “Noch ’mal! Again! Sprechen Sie!”

  And then the man did something quite out of the ordinary. In his pain, his fear, he stopped speaking German. He spoke in English. “I have not the information you want! I follow orders.… That is all!”

  David shifted his stand to the left, covering the Nazi from the intermittent looks they both received from the passersby on the sidewalk. The doorway was deep, however, in shadows; no one stopped. The two men could have been acquaintances, one or both perhaps a little drunk.

  Spaulding clenched his right fist, his left elbow against the wall, his left hand poised to clamp over the German’s mouth. He leaned against the slatted wood and brought his fist crashing into the man’s stomach with such force that the agent lurched forward, held only by David’s hand, now gripping him by the hairline.

  “I can keep this up until I rupture everything inside you. And when I’m finished I’ll throw you in a taxi and drop you off at the German embassy with a note attached. You’ll get it from both sides then, won’t you?… Now, tell me what I want to know!” David brought his two bent knuckles up into the man’s throat, jabbing twice.

  “Stop.… Mein Gott! Stop!”

  “Why don’t you yell? You can scream your head off, you know.… Of course, then I’ll have to put you to sleep and let your own people find you. Without your credentials, naturally.… Go on! Yell!” David knuckled the man once more in the throat. “Now, you start telling me. What’s ‘Tortugas’? Who’s Altmüller? How did you get a cryp named Marshall?”

  “I swear to God! I know nothing!”

  David punched him again. The man collapsed; Spaulding pulled him up against the wall, leaning against him, hiding him, really. The Gestapo agent opened his lids, his eyes swimming uncontrollably.

  “You’ve got five seconds. Then I’ll rip your throat out.”

  “No!… Please! Altmüller.… Armaments.… Peenemünde.…”

  “What about Peenemünde?”

  “The tooling.… ‘Tortugas.’ ”

  “What does that mean!?” David showed the man his two bent fingers. The recollection of pain terrified the German. “What is ‘Tortugas’?”

  Suddenly the German’s eyes flickered, trying to focus. Spaulding saw that the man was looking above his shoulder. It wasn’t a ruse; the Nazi was too far gone for strategies.

  And then David felt the presence behind him. It was an unmistakable feeling that had been developed over the recent years; it was never false.

  He turned.

  Coming into the dark shadows from the harsh Argentine sunlight was the second part of the surveillance team, the man who’d entered his apartment building. He was Spaulding’s size, a large man and heavily muscular.

  The light and the onrushing figure caused David to wince. He released the German, prepared to throw himself onto the opposite wall.

  He couldn’t!

  The Gestapo agent—in a last surge of strength—held onto his arms!

  Held his arms, threw his hands around David’s chest and hung his full weight on him!

  Spaulding lashed out with his foot at the man attacking, swung his elbows back, slamming the German back into the wood.

  It was too late and David knew it.

  He saw the huge hand—the long fingers spread—rushing into his face. It was as if a ghoulish film was being played before his eyes in slow motion. He felt the fingers clamp into his skin and realized that his head was being shoved with great strength into the wall.

  The sensations of diving, crashing, spinning accompanied the shock of pain above his neck.

  He shook his head; the first thing that struck him was the stench. It was all around him, sickening.

  He was lying in the recessed doorway, curled up against the wall in a fetal position. He was wet, drenched around his face and shirt and in the crotch area of his trousers.

  It was cheap whisky. Very cheap and very profuse.

  His shirt had been ripped, collar to waist; one shoe was off, the sock removed. His belt was undone, his fly partially unzipped.

  He was the perfect picture of a derelict.

  He rose to a sitting position and remedied as best he could his appearance. He looked at his watch.

  Or where his watch had been; it was gone.

  His wallet, too. And money. And whatever else had been in his pockets.

  He stood up. The sun was down, early night had begun; there were not so many people on the Avenida Paraná now.

  He wondered what time it was. It couldn’t be much more than an hour later, he supposed.

  He wondered if Jean were still waiting for him. />
  She removed his clothes, pressed the back of his head with ice and insisted that he take a long, hot shower.

  When he emerged from the bathroom, she fixed him a drink, then sat down next to him on the small couch.

  “Henderson will insist on your moving into the embassy; you know that, don’t you?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Well, you can’t go on being beaten up every day. And don’t tell me they were thieves. You wouldn’t swallow that when Henderson and Bobby both tried to tell you that about the men on the roof!”

  “This was different. For God’s sake, Jean, I was robbed of everything on me!” David spoke sternly. It was important to him that she believe him now. And it was entirely possible that he’d find it necessary to avoid her from now on. That might be important, too. And terribly painful.

  “People don’t rob people and then douse them with whisky!”

  “They do if they want to create sufficient time to get out of the area. It’s not a new tactic. By the time a mark gets finished explaining to the police that he’s a sober citizen, the hustlers are twenty miles away.”

  “I don’t believe you. I don’t even think you expect me to.” She sat up and looked at him.

  “I do expect you to because it’s the truth. A man doesn’t throw away his wallet, his money, his watch … in order to impress a girl with the validity of a lie. Come on, Jean! I’m very thirsty and my head still hurts.”

  She shrugged, obviously realizing it was futile to argue.

  “You’re just about out of Scotch, I’m afraid. I’ll go buy a bottle for you. There’s a liquor store on the corner of Talcahuano. It’s not far.…”

  “No,” he said, interrupting, recalling the man with huge hands who’d entered his building. “I will. Lend me some money.”

  “We’ll both go,” she responded.

  “Please?… Would you mind waiting? I may get a phone call; I’d like the person to know I’ll be right back.”

  “Who?”

  “A man named Kendall.”