Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  “You mean the Crusaders?”

  The sergeant looked blank.

  “The people who wore the sign of the Cross?”

  “Yes. Those people.”

  Calderwell recalled a history of the Crusades he had picked up from the YMCA library: the Horns of Hattin, scene of one of Saladin’s clever traps with parched knights surrendering long after their water ran out, some spared for ransom, some not.

  “So why didn’t you come up here at night when these fires and lights were showing?”

  He wanted him to admit he was scared but the sergeant was having none of it.

  “We waited for one week but it didn’t happen again. We would have waited longer but we received your message about the first parachute, the one that was made into woman’s clothing, and decided to have a look.”

  “Were you involved?”

  ‘Yes. We found the second parachute very quickly. It was not well hidden.”

  “Was it near the boy?”

  “Come. I’ll show you,” said the sergeant and led Calderwell over towards the body. They had buried the nanny goat and her kids under a cairn of loose stones and covered the boy with his cloak and a horse blanket to try and keep the flies away. The sergeant went to the far end of the large boulder, which had been obscuring the boy’s body, and pointed to quite a flat stone that lent against it. “It had been rolled up and placed under here,” he said, “but a goat or some other animal must have pulled half of it out. That’s how they found it.”

  Calderwell looked and was about to walk away when he spotted something that did not belong among the stones and walked over to see what it was. It was partly obscured by a pebble but even before he picked it up he recognised the portrait of the bearded old salt that was the trademark of Players Navy Cut cigarettes. It was one of the small, ten-sized packets; something he had not seen for at least a year now and it was his brand. All the packets of ten had gone to the troops; both sides as it turned out for not all the Axis spoils in Greece, Crete and now Tobruk were of military nature. In Palestine, when Players were available at all, the NAAFI canteens usually dispensed them from round tins of fifty. Sometimes Spinneys, the Jerusalem grocers, managed to find pre-war packets of twenty but by the time you heard about it they had usually sold out.

  Calderwell was surprised to feel that the packet was not quite empty. Inside there were two cigarettes, slightly crushed but smelling fresh enough to smoke. Even if he had made a few bob on the first parachute, Calderwell couldn’t imagine the boy trying to acquire Players. Far cheaper Egyptian brands would confer just as much status on a teenager. He wondered whether one of the Strike Force patrol had used an old ten packet as a makeshift cigarette case, restocking when he ran out. They were a handy size for a bush shirt pocket. But it looked too new. So if it had not been dropped by one of the patrol or the boy it had been lost by somebody who had been there before them. Somebody who could still get hold of Players in packets of ten.

  “Hashish?” inquired the sergeant. He had once served in the unit that tried to catch the Lebanese smugglers from the Bekaa valley bringing their mule and camel trains through Palestine to their main market in Egypt.

  Calderwell shook his head and pushed the packet into the same pocket as the empty cases of .38 he had expended on the crows. Feeling them made him realise that he had forgotten to check for a very obvious thing. He told the sergeant and they walked back over to where the boy’s body was lying.

  It did not take them very long and was the Arab who spotted it, squatting on his haunches near a boulder a few feet to the right of the body and running his fingers over the ground. It was very easy to miss because it had fallen in a way that had lodged it almost vertically between some loose stones so there was not much metal visible to catch the sun. When he found it the sergeant gave a grunt of satisfaction and held it up end-to-end between his forefinger and thumb the way he had been trained to hold a spent cartridge case that might hold fingerprints.

  Calderwell recognised it immediately. It was a .32 the way the British and Americans measured these things, 7.65 mm on the Continent of Europe. Only a couple of weeks before he had been firing the same small calibre ammunition on the range at Mount Scopus from a flat little German automatic a friend of his had acquired from a Rifle Brigade corporal for two bottles of whisky. Walther’s Polizei Pistole Kriminal, sometimes carried by Luftwaffe aircrew, had originally been designed as a concealed weapon for detectives. Almost everybody in the Palestine Police wanted one, especially now the Stern Gang had started gunning down off-duty coppers. Eighteen months ago, after the big Itie surrenders, Berettas had been fashionable but they were slightly heavier and prone to jam.

  Calderwell had even asked Mitzi to look out for one for a PPK for him. Mitzi, who was German Jewish and, according to her uniform, a lance-corporal in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, was his current lady friend. At least, as far as he could make out, she was when he was around. At the moment she was attached to some hush-hush outfit in Cairo where he presumed she was putting her German to good use and possibly her other assets though he rather hoped not for he was fond of her and getting fonder.

  ***

  The Templer’s PPK was on the side table close to his chair but he had been dozing for almost an hour, the Palestine Post crash landed on the floor besides it. He flitted in and out of dreams, the usual shadowy satire of life: a familiar female voice telling him that women sometimes fell in love with dreamers but rarely married them; bands and beer at a rally in Munich; his mother’s bewildered face. There was a falling dream involving Heydrich and the girl who wouldn’t marry dreamers. They all had to parachute from a plane, a Lufthansa tri-motor Junkers on which the girl was a stewardess. There was only one parachute, a huge one and she was wearing it. Then the Templer realised that it was not a parachute but wings and she was not a stewardess at all but a Valkerie. When they jumped she was holding the hands of both of them but after a while she let go of his hand and smiled down at him as he tried and failed to catch one of her feet. As the earth came up to meet him he braced himself for the impact, holding his breath to the point where he began to suffocate. He was under water, struggling towards the light. For the first time he became aware of the steady thudding of anti-aircraft fire. Another raid? He willed himself to surface. Someone was knocking on the front door. It was a slow, hesitant knock in groups of three with long pauses in between.

  Adrenaline did not quite consume the last vestiges of sleep. He started towards the door stiff legged and sticky eyed. He had almost got there when he turned back to pick up his pistol. Lang had a key.

  He looked through the peephole and saw a jacketed figure whose face was entirely covered by the large brown parcel he was carrying. As he watched he brought the parcel down to hammer on the door again with his right fist, the Templer glimpsed an olive skinned, full cheeked young man with round, steel framed spectacles and the kind of narrow moustache made popular by Hollywood’s Clark Gable. Having knocked, he stepped back from the door and stood there nervously chewing his lower lip, glancing from side to side. For the first time the Templer saw that, with his linen jacket, the young man was wearing a maroon bow tie. He stuffed the pistol into the hip pocket of his trousers, which could just about accommodate the small automatic, and opened the door just as his visitor was about to renew his attack on it.

  The young school teacher Haratvi stepped back. “Shalom. I have a parcel for you,” he said in English. “From Albert.”

  “From Albert?” the Templer repeated. His tone could have implied that he knew no one called Albert or that the only Albert he knew was not the parcel sending kind. Why was Lang sending a messenger bearing his Sicherheitsdienst code name as a password to this flat? “Albert?”

  “Yes.” Haratvi pushed the parcel into the Templer’s arms. “And I have this.”

  Haratvi’s right hand darted under his jacket. The Templer threw the parcel at him and pulled the Walther out of his back pocket. It didn’t want to come at first.
The foresight snagged the lining and this probably saved Haratvi’s life. He staggered back, the parcel at his feet, his spectacles askew and waving an envelope in his right hand. “No! No!” he screamed. “Don’t shoot.” The words came out in Hebrew. When he had calmed down a little he said in English, “For God’s sake don’t shoot.”

  The Templer told him to open the envelope and pass the contents which he took with his left hand before stepping back into the doorway to read them, his pistol still trained on Haratvi.

  In a short, pencil written note Lang explained that some unexpected business had arisen and he would be back later. How much later he didn’t say. Nor did he explain the events that had delayed him. Meanwhile, the parcel he was expecting was in the safe hands of an old school teaching friend, David Haratvi. “He is of nervous disposition but longs to work for the cause. Speak to him in English. He thinks you are a recently arrived illegal from Poland who does not know much Hebrew.”

  He had signed it “Albert”, a sop to security that only succeeded in increasing the Templer’s irritation. Lang had no business sending errand boys around to the apartment. He had no business sending any unexpected person knocking on the door so that he went to it with a gun in his hand. He had very nearly shot him. And what if curiosity had got the better of this errand boy and he had decided to open the letter? Or if his sympathies were well enough known for him to be subjected to some casual police search? Madness.

  He looked at Haratvi who was dabbing at his sweating brow with a handkerchief. “Next time my friend you had better take more care about how you deliver your messages,” he said, wondering if he sounded even remotely like a Pole speaking English.

  After the schoolteacher had left he undid his delivery and tried on the uniform. He found the waists of the bush jacket style tunics could still have been taken in a bit more but the trousers were a much better fit. They were leaving Haifa for Jerusalem in the morning where Lang’s friends had arranged another flat for then. He understood the city was full of rear echelon officers who had fled Cairo. It was important to look the part. He burned Lang’s note in one of the large glass ashtrays around the place and promised himself that he was going to have some very sharp words with his pupil when he came in.

  But he didn’t have a chance. It was dark by the time Lang returned, slamming the front door behind him. He came in without a word of apology and with a vigour that was not entirely congruent with his costume. This was the black, buttoned up dress of one of the many schisms of the Hasidim complete with the full-grown beard and side curls of these Orthodox Jews who regarded the Zionists as blasphemers for daring to redeem the land before the return of the Messiah. His own mother would not have recognised him - not that Lang had given her the chance.

  “So what do you think of this?” he said, holding up the front page of that day’s Palestine Post.

  The main headline and several smaller ones all referred to the same story. A report had just reached London from the Polish underground alleging that the Germans were systematically murdering thousands of Polish Jews. It was estimated that as many as seven hundred thousand, including children, had already died. The survivors lived a half-life. Six hundred thousand had been crammed into the Warsaw ghetto and were shot if they tried to leave. It was common for a dozen people to be living in a single room. There was typhoid and other pestilence and hundreds died every week. There were also reports of pogroms elsewhere in Eastern Europe, particularly Rumania where another hundred thousand were said to have perished.

  “Propaganda,” said the Templer and meant it. The numbers were ridiculous. Much too high. Look how long it had taken them to avenge Heydrich with a few hundred Czechs.

  “I thought you’d say that.”

  “Well, it’s too much of a coincidence isn’t it? Where does this report come from - London? What’s the source? A report some Polish trade unionists, Bolsheviks, are supposed to have smuggled out. What exquisite timing for the British! Couldn’t be better could it. Just when Germany is about to enter Palestine, and a number of its more revolutionary citizens are thinking this is no bad thing, so this report comes out.”

  “Not a bad argument,” said Lang. They had moved to a table on the balcony and a bottle of whisky, glasses and a carafe of water had been produced. A full orange moon with a coy chiffon of cloud about its middle was suspended above the sweep of Haifa bay. “Not a bad argument at all. Somebody said almost exactly that this afternoon at this meeting I was obliged to attend.”

  “The meeting was called because of this report?”

  “Yes. We thought the whole matter ought to be discussed.”

  “And what were your conclusions?” The Templer took a large sip of his whisky. Was it possible he had already become an embarrassment?

  “Well, for a start we dismissed the notion that this was British propaganda. It’s too double-edged for them. True, it should help recruit the Jews of the Yishuv to their side but most of the misguided fools already are. And from a propaganda point of view the report is a disaster when you consider the feelings of the Arab majority here. I mean you can hardly expect them not to welcome the idea that the Germans appear to be organising the worst pogrom in recorded history.

  “No, exaggerated they might be but we came to the conclusion that these stories are, in essence, true. It is also obvious that every puppet government in Continental Europe seems to be jumping on the anti-Semitic bandwagon.” He tapped the newspaper. “You’ll find another paragraph buried away in there somewhere saying that Vichy has ordered all French Jews over six years of age to wear a yellow star on their clothing. Of course, the British could have made that up as well but somehow I doubt it.”

  The Templer drank half his glass and put it down. “Germany didn’t invent anti-Semitism,” he said. He was watching Lang closely. He was even beginning to wonder whether it had been altogether wise to have put his pistol back on the side table.

  “I quite agree,” said Lang, amiably enough, pausing to sip his whisky which had far more water in it than his companion’s. “We all played a aprt. It’s just that Germany, being the most efficient nation state on the planet, has managed to perfect it.”

  “The British can be quite efficient when it comes to killing people. Look what -”

  But Lang did not wait to hear whether the Templer had in mind the RAF’s latest raids on Cologne and Hamburg or General Dyer’s massacre of the Indians at Amritsar. “As far as we’re concerned,” he said, “the essential difference between Germany and Britain is that Nazi Germany is a foe but Britain, whose Arab interests dictate that Palestine must never be transformed into a Zionist state, is our enemy. We decided that it was still perfectly possible to enter a pact with a foe whose policies have caused Zionism to flourish but not with an enemy which occupies and denies us our homeland.”

  The Templer took a deep breath. “So your enemy’s enemy is your friendly foe?”

  “Something like that,” said Lang.

  The Templer raised his glass. “Let us drink to Friendly Foes,” he said.

  8 - The Flap

  They had just finished Lili Marleen, first in German and then in English, the German words learned from the original Lale Andersen recording because ever since Yugoslavia’s surrender, Soldatensender Belgrad had made it their short wave evening close down music, a good night kiss for the Afrika Korps and their Tommy eavesdroppers. “Vor der Kaserne vor dem grossen Tor, Stande eine Lanterne...”

  Their English rendition had been a comic version involving a sergeant-major and a very idle squadron on parade. “Some zilly bleeder shouts, ‘Right dress!’ You should haf seen, ze bloody mess...” Max Südfeld had bellowed, his several chins quivering, hands clasped comfortably across his large belly. For a middle aged Austrian Jew of cloistered employment he was surprisingly well versed with the current Eighth Army songbook.

  “What shall we do next?" asked Mitzi Fendelbaum when they had finished. She was sitting next to David Hare who was at the wheel of the open topped Be
ntley Tourer. Calderwell’s latest amour liked to sing with the Signals captain. It was not all that often that she found a man who could hold a tune though, just lately, some of them had not been around long enough for her to complete her investigations. “Any requests from the back?”

  “What about the one about the rabbit running? Appropriate don’t you think?” The suggestion came from the man squashed next to Südfeld in the Bentley’s wide rear seat. The car didn’t have a boot sand they were jammed between their luggage: a large tin trunk, a couple of cheap suitcases, an old leather portmanteau, a canvas army knapsack, and two large round cardboard hat boxes. “You know, the one about the rabbit running from the farmer coming with his gun.”

  The request came from Carl Maeltzer, the schoolteacher David Haratvi’s stepfather and father of Haratvi’s half-brother Jacob, and it was the first time he had spoken for some time. Soon after they had left Cairo driving east into the rising sun Maeltzer had closed his eyes and generally made it plain that it was too early in the morning for conversation. He was a large man, not far off his seventieth year; but unlike the obese Südfeld he radiated a kind of ponderous, ursine menace with a full patriarch’s beard and small eyes so dark brown they glinted like newly cut coal. For most of his adult life Maeltzer had been a journalist. As a young reporter he had covered for a Zurich newspaper the South African war from the Boer side, delighting in the dance the Afrikaners had led the English and more recently rarely missing a chance to remind that it was the riders of the veldt who had donated the word Commando to Britain’s military lexicon. And even if Klopper, the general who ten days before had surrendered Tobruk, was obviously of Boer descent, Maeltzer could rarely resist an opportunity to gloat over the military misfortunes of his current employers. “Run rabbit,” he said. “Isn’t that it?”