The Rhinemann Exchange

by Robert Ludlum

  “You can’t behave this way!” was the panicked reply.

  “I’m Pavlov, you’re the dog! Now shut up and listen! There’s a mess in Terraza Verde, if you don’t know it by now. Your men are dead; so are mine. I’ve got the designs and Lyons.… Your nonexistent Gestapo are carrying out a number of executions!”

  “Impossible!” screamed Stoltz.

  “Tell that to the corpses, you incompetent son of a bitch! While you clean up that mess!… I want the rest of those designs, Stoltz. Wait for my call!” David slammed down the receiver and bolted out of the booth to the car. It was time for the radio. After that the envelope from Fairfax. Then Ballard at the embassy. One step at a time.

  Spaulding opened the door and slid into the seat beside Lyons. The physicist pointed to the dashboard.

  “Again—” was the single, painful word.

  “Good,” said Spaulding. “They’re anxious. They’ll listen hard.” David snapped the panel switch and lifted the microphone out of its cradle. He pressed his fingers against the tiny wire speaker with such pressure that the mesh was bent; he covered the instrument with his hand and held it against his jacket as he spoke, moving it in circles so as to further distort the sound.

  “Redbird to base … Redbird to base.”

  The static began, the voice angry. “Christ, Redbird! We’ve been trying to raise you for damn near two hours! That Ballard keeps calling! Where the hell are you!?”

  “Redbird.… Didn’t you get our last transmission?”

  “Transmission? Shit, man! I can hardly hear this one. Hold on; let me get the CO.”

  “Forget it! No sweat You’re fading here again. We’re on Spaulding. We’re following him; he’s in a vehicle … twenty-seven, twenty-eight miles north.…” David abruptly stopped talking.

  “Redbird! Redbird!… Christ, this frequency’s puke!… Twenty-eight miles north where?… I’m not reading you, Redbird! Redbird, acknowledge!”

  “… bird, acknowledge,” said David directly into the microphone. “This radio needs maintenance, pal. Repeat. No problems. Will return to base in approximately.…”

  Spaulding reached down and snapped the switch into the off position.

  He got out of the car and went back to the telephone booth.

  One step at a time. No blurring, no overlapping—each action defined, handled with precision.

  Now it was the scramble from Fairfax. The deciphered code that would tell him the name of the man who was having him intercepted; the source four-zero, whose priority rating allowed him to send such commands from the transmission core of the intelligence compound.

  The agent who walked with impunity in the highest classified alleyways and killed a man named Ed Pace on New Year’s Eve.

  The Haganah infiltration.

  He had been tempted to rip open the yellow envelope the moment the FMF officer had given it to him in San Telmo, but he had resisted the almost irresistible temptation. He knew that he would be stunned no matter who it was—whether known to him or not; and no matter who it was he would have a name to fit the revenge he planned for the killer of his friend.

  Such thoughts were obstructions. Nothing could hinder their swift but cautious ride to Ocho Calle; nothing could interfere with his thought-out contact with Heinrich Stoltz.

  He withdrew the yellow envelope and slid his finger across the flap.

  At first, the name meant nothing.

  Lieutenant Colonel Ira Barden.

  Nothing.

  Then he remembered.

  New Year’s Eve!

  Oh, Christy, did he remember! The tough-talking hard-nose who was second in command at Fairfax. Ed Pace’s “best friend” who had mourned his “best friend’s” death with army anger; who secretly had arranged for David to be flown to the Virginia base and participate in the wake-investigation; who had used the tragic killing to enter his “best friend’s” dossier vaults … only to find nothing.

  The man who insisted a Lisbon cryptographer named Marshall had been killed in the Basque country; who said he would run a check on Franz Altmüller.

  Which, of course, he never did.

  The man who tried to convince David that it would be in everyone’s interest if Spaulding would flex the clearance regulations and explain his War Department assignment.

  Which David nearly did. And now wished he had.

  Oh, God! Why hadn’t Barden trusted him? On the other hand, he could not. For to do so would have raised specific, unwanted speculations on Pace’s murder.

  Ira Barden was no fool. A fanatic, perhaps, but not foolish. He knew the man from Lisbon would kill him if Pace’s death was laid at his feet.

  Heed the lesson of Fairfax.…

  Jesus! thought David. We fight each other, kill each other … we don’t know our enemies any longer.

  For what?

  There was now a second reason to call Ballard. A name was not enough; he needed more than just a name. He would confront Asher Feld.

  He picked up the telephone’s receiver off the hook, held his coin and dialed.

  Ballard got on the line, no humor in evidence.

  “Look, David.” Ballard had not used his first name in conversation before. Ballard was suppressing a lot of anger. “I won’t pretend to understand how you people turn your dials, but if you’re going to use my set, keep me informed!”

  “A number of people were killed; I wasn’t one of them. That was fortunate but the circumstances prohibited my contacting you. Does that answer your complaint?”

  Ballard was silent for several seconds. The silence was not just his reaction to the news, thought David. There was someone with Bobby. When the cryp spoke, he was no longer angry; he was hesitant, afraid.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yes. Lyons is with me.”

  “The FMF were too late.…” Ballard seemed to regret his statement “I keep phoning, they keep avoiding. I think their car’s lost”

  “Not really. I’ve got it.…”

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “They left one man at Telmo—for observation. There were two others. They’re not hurt; they’ve disqualified.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I haven’t got time to explain.… There’s an intercept order out for me. From Fairfax. The embassy’s not supposed to know. It’s a setup; I can’t let them take me. Not for a while.…”

  “Hey, we don’t mess with Fairfax,” said Ballard firmly.

  “You can this time. I told Jean. There’s a security breach in Fairfax. I’m not it, believe that.… I’ve got to have time. Maybe as much as forty-eight hours. I need questions answered. Lyons can help. For God’s sake, trust me!”

  “I can trust you but I’m no big deal here.… Wait a minute. Jean’s with me.…”

  “I thought so,” interrupted Spaulding. It had been David’s intention to ask Ballard for the help he needed. He suddenly realized that Jean could be far more helpful.

  “Talk to her before she scratches the skin off my hand.”

  “Before you get off, Bobby.… Could you run a priority check on someone in Washington? In Fairfax, to be exact?”

  “I’d have to have a reason. The subject—an Intelligence subject, especially Fairfax—would probably find out.”

  “I don’t give a damn if he does. Say I demanded it My rating’s four-zero; G-2 has that in the records. I’ll take the responsibility.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A lieutenant colonel named Ira Barden. Got it?”

  “Yes. Ira Barden. Fairfax.”

  “Right. Now let me talk to …”

  Jean’s words spilled over one another, a mixture of fury and love, desperation and relief.

  “Jean,” he said when she had finished a half-dozen questions he couldn’t possibly answer, “the other night you made a suggestion I refused to take seriously. I’m taking it seriously now. That mythical David of yours needs a place to hide out. It can’t be the pampas, but any place nearer wi
ll do.… Can you help me? Help us? For God’s sake!”

  38

  He would call Jean later, before daybreak. He and Lyons had to move in darkness, wherever they were going. Wherever Jean could find them sanctuary.

  There would be no codes sent to Washington, no clearance given for the obscene exchange, no radio or radar blackouts that would immobilize the fleet David understood that; it was the simplest, surest way to abort “Tortugas.”

  But it was not enough.

  There were the men behind “Tortugas.” They had to be yanked up from the dark recesses of their filth and exposed to the sunlight. If there was any meaning left, if the years of pain and fear and death made any sense at all, they had to be given to the world in all their obscenity.

  The world deserved that. Hundreds of thousands—on both sides—who would carry the scars of war throughout their lives, deserved it.

  They had to understand the meaning of For what.

  David accepted his role; he would face the men of “Tortugas.” But he could not face them with the testimony of a fanatical Jew. The words of Asher Feld, leader of the Haganah’s Provisional Wing, were no testimony at all. Fanatics were madmen; the world had seen enough of both, for both were one. And they were dismissed. Or killed. Or both.

  David knew he had no choice.

  When he faced the men of “Tortugas,” it would not be with the words of Asher Feld. Or with deceptive codes and manipulations that were subject to a hundred interpretations.

  Deceits. Cover-ups. Removals.

  He would face them with what he saw. What he knew, because he had borne witness. He would present them with the irrefutable. And then he would destroy them.

  To do this—all this—he had to get aboard the trawler in Ocho Calle. The trawler that would be blown out of the water should it attempt to run the harbor and rendezvous with a German submarine.

  That it ultimately would attempt such a run was inevitable. The fanatic mind would demand it. Then there would be no evidence of things seen. Sworn to.

  He had to get aboard that trawler now.

  He gave his final instructions to Lyons and slid into the warm, oily waters of the Río de la Plata. Lyons would remain in the car—drive it, if necessary—and, if David did not return, allow ninety minutes to elapse before going to the FMF base and telling the commanding officer that David was being held prisoner aboard the trawler. An American agent held prisoner.

  There was logic in the strategy. FMF had priority orders to bring in David; orders from Fairfax. It would be three thirty in the morning. Fairfax called for swift bold action. Especially at three thirty in the morning in a neutral harbor.

  It was the bridge David tried always to create for himself in times of high-risk infiltration. It was the trade-off; his life for a lesser loss. The lessons of the north country.

  He did not want it to happen that way. There were too many ways to immobilize him; too many panicked men in Washington and Berlin to let him survive, perhaps. At best there would be compromise. At worst … The collapse of “Tortugas” was not enough, the indictment was everything.

  His pistol was tight against his head, tied with a strip of his shirt, the cloth running through his teeth. He breast-stroked toward the hull of the ship, keeping his head out of the water, the firing pin mechanism of his weapon as dry as possible. The price was mouthfuls of filthy, gasoline-polluted water, made further sickening by the touch of a large conger eel attracted, then repelled, by the moving white flesh.

  He reached the hull. Waves slapped gently, unceasingly, against the hard expanse of darkness. He made his way to the stern of the ship, straining his eyes and his ears for evidence of life.

  Nothing but the incessant lapping of water.

  There was light from the deck but no movement, no shadows, no voices. Just the flat, colorless spill of naked bulbs strung on black wires, swaying in slow motion to the sluggish rhythm of the hull. On the port side of the ship—the dockside—were two lines looped over the aft and midships pilings. Rat disks were placed every ten feet or so; the thick manila hemps were black with grease and oil slick. As he approached, David could see a single guard sitting in a chair by the huge loading doors, which were shut. The chair was tilted back against the warehouse wall; two wire-mesh lamps covered by metal shades were on both sides of the wide doorframe. Spaulding treaded backward to get a clearer view. The guard was dressed in the paramilitary clothes of Habichtsnest. He was reading a book; for some reason that fact struck David as odd.

  Suddenly, there were footsteps at the west section of the warehouse dock. They were slow, steady; there was no attempt to muffle the noise.

  The guard looked up from his book. Between the pilings David could see a second figure come into view. It was another guard wearing the Rhinemann uniform. He was carrying a leather case, the same radio case carried by the men—dead men—at 15 Terraza Verde.

  The guard in the chair smiled and spoke to the standing sentry. The language was German.

  “I’ll trade places, if you wish,” said the man in the chair. “Get off your feet for a while.”

  “No, thanks,” replied the man with the radio. “I’d rather walk. Passes the time quicker.”

  “Anything new from Luján?”

  “No change. Still a great deal of excitement. I can hear snatches of yelling now and then. Everybody’s giving orders.”

  “I wonder what happened in Telmo.”

  “Bad trouble is all I know. They’ve blocked us off; they’ve sent men to the foot of Ocho Calle.”

  “You heard that?”

  “No. I spoke with Geraldo. He and Luis are here. In front of the warehouse; in the street.”

  “I hope they don’t wake up the whores.”

  The man with the radio laughed. “Even Geraldo can do better than those dogs.”

  “Don’t bet good money on that,” replied the guard in the chair.

  The guard on foot laughed again and proceeded east on his solitary patrol around the building. The man in the chair returned to his book.

  David sidestroked his way back toward the hull of the trawler.

  His arms were getting tired; the foul-smelling waters of the harbor assaulted his nostrils. And now he had something else to consider: Eugene Lyons.

  Lyons was a quarter of a mile away, diagonally across the water, four curving blocks from the foot of Ocho Calle. If Rhinemann’s patrols began cruising the area, they would find the FMF vehicle with Lyons in it. It was a bridge he hadn’t considered. He should have considered it.

  But he couldn’t think about that now.

  He reached the starboard midships and held onto the waterline ledge, giving the muscles of his arms and shoulders a chance to throb in relief. The trawler was in the medium-craft classification, no more than seventy or eighty feet in length, perhaps a thirty-foot midship beam. By normal standards, and from what David could see as he approached the boat in darkness, the mid and aft cabins below the wheel shack were about fifteen and twenty feet long, respectively, with entrances at both ends and two portholes per cabin on the port and starboard sides. If the Koening diamonds were on board, it seemed logical that they’d be in the aft cabin, farthest away from the crew’s normal activity. Too, aft cabins had more room and fewer distractions. And if Asher Feld was right if two or three Peenemünde scientists were microscopically examining the Koening products, they would be under a pressured schedule and require isolation.

  David found his breath coming easier. He’d know soon enough whether and where the diamonds were or were not. In moments.

  He untied the cloth around his head, treading water as he did so, holding the pistol firmly. The shirt piece drifted away; he held onto the line ledge and looked above. The gunwale was six to seven feet out of the water; he would need both his hands to claw his way up the tiny ridges of the hull.

  He spat out what harbor residue was in his mouth and clamped the barrel of the gun between his teeth. The only clothing he wore was his trousers; he plung
ed his hands beneath the water, rubbing them against the cloth in an effort to remove what estuary slick he could.

  He gripped the line ledge once again and with his right hand extended, kicked his body out of the water and reached for the next tiny ridge along the hull. His fingers grasped the half-inch sprit; he pulled himself up, slapping his left hand next to his right, pushing his chest into the rough wood for leverage. His bare feet were near the water’s surface, the gunwale no more than three feet above him now.

  Slowly he raised his knees until the toes of both feet rested on the waterline ledge. He paused for breath, knowing that his fingers would not last long on the tiny ridge. He tensed the muscles of his stomach and pressed his aching toes against the ledge, pushing himself up as high as possible, whipping out his hands; knowing, again, that if he missed the gunwale he would plunge back into the water. The splash would raise alarms.

  The left hand caught; the right slipped off. But it was enough.

  He raised himself to the railing, his chest scraping against the rough, weathered hull until spots of blood emerged on his skin. He looped his left arm over the side and removed the pistol from his mouth. He was—as he hoped he would be—at the midpoint between the fore and aft cabins, the expanse of wall concealing him from the guards on the loading dock.

  He silently rolled over the gunwale onto the narrow deck and took the necessary crouching steps to the cabin wall. He pressed his back into the wooden slats and slowly stood up. He inched his way toward the first aft porthole; the light from within was partially blocked by a primitive curtain of sorts, pulled back as if parted for the night air. The second porthole farther down had no such obstruction, but it was only feet from the edge of the wall; there was the possibility that a sentry—unseen from the water—might be stern watch there. He would see whatever there was to see in the first window.

  His wet cheek against the rotted rubber surrounding the porthole, he looked inside. The “curtain” was a heavy sheet of black tarpaulin folded back at an angle. Beyond, the light was as he had pictured it: a single bulb suspended from the ceiling by a thick wire—a wire that ran out a port window to a pier outlet Ship generators were not abused while at dock. There was an odd-shaped, flat piece of metal hanging on the side of the bulb, and at first David was not sure why it was there. And then he understood: the sheet of metal deflected the light of the bulb from the rear of the cabin, where he could make out—beyond the fold of the tarp—two bunk beds. Men were sleeping; the light remained on but they were in relative shadow.