Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  “Doubly appropriate,” Freddy said. “Eldorado’s been doing it to others for ages. Now it’s going to be done unto him.”

  Brigadier Christian never succeeded in remembering the name that Wolfgang Adler had identified as the bad link in the Eldorado Network.

  The more he studied the files at Abwehr headquarters, the less confidence he felt in his ability to re-create his conversation with Adler. The names of the sub-agents jostled in his mind—Nutmeg and Knickers, Haystack and Garlic, Pinetree and Seagull and Hambone—until they were all utterly interchangeable. Christian finally abandoned the chase and went back to the raw material, the files of agents’ reports. If Adler had spotted something incriminating it must still be there. Christian went on the hunt. If the SD had infiltrated their man into the Eldorado Network, it could only be in order to discredit the network and eventually destroy it. Steal the jewel from the Abwehr’s crown and you were halfway to stealing the crown itself. Christian did his best to suppress his anger but that sort of treachery enraged him. He had heard Admiral Canaris say that Eldorado was worth at least one panzer division to the Wehrmacht, and here was Himmler’s SD trying to sabotage that panzer division while it was fighting its very hardest, and all to feed Himmler’s political jealousies! Christian prided himself on being a plain soldier—he certainly wasn’t a member of the Nazi party—and he had a simple code of honor. All those helping Germany win this war deserved the best. All the rest deserved to be shot.

  He saw little of General Oster. After that bizarre and bewildering guided tour of Great Architectural Triumphs That Hitler Never Built, Christian had worried whether the General was suffering from the severe strain of his job. To be Chief of Staff of the Abwehr, a vast organization responsible for German military intelligence throughout the world—that was enough to crack any man. In particular Christian worried about Oster’s sarcastic, sneering remark directed at the Fuehrer: This was a war to satisfy Hitler’s vanity and make him famous. What on earth was that supposed to mean? It made no sense. On the other hand as soon as Christian had spoken up for sanity and had had the courage stoutly to defend the war which was, as he had said, “for the benefit of the German people,” Oster had changed tack.

  But his new tack had been almost as strange: Sooner or later, every war comes to an end. Followed by something about doing a deal with the west, and Eldorado being a very good go-between, so keep his warm and happy.

  That puzzled Christian. He tried to look at it from every angle and he got nowhere. There was nobody he could trust to ask for an objective opinion. He even wrote out a complete transcript of Oster’s conversation, as well as he could remember it. On paper it looked even worse. It was almost too bad to be true. What in God’s name did Oster think he was playing at?

  Christian stared at his transcript. It was laid out like the pages of dialogue in a play. And suddenly he realized: that must be the answer. That explained everything.

  Oster had been playing a part. Christian had arrived in Berlin in very peculiar circumstances. Oster had decided to test his strengths and check his loyalties. Was Christian the sort of man who could be tempted to drift under pressure from the powerful opinions of a superior officer? Did he have a mind of his own, or would he agree to anything just because Oster said so? Lean on Christian, and how did he react? That was obviously what Oster had been trying to find out.

  But how about Eldorado, “the best go-between we could have?”

  Christian solved that one in no time.

  When the Fuehrer unleashed his secret weapon—or weapons, because the news was full of the ceaseless efforts of brilliant German scientists to place revolutionary means of victory in the hands of the fighting man—then hostilities would end overnight. The enemy’s resolve would crumble like a sugar-lump in a rainstorm. How best could the Fuehrer negotiate with a nation like Britain that was in a state of collapse? (And of course without Britain, America was helpless.) Fast, reliable channels of communication would be essential. Who better than Eldorado? That was obviously what Oster had been driving at, and it was a brilliant idea.

  Christian acted. He signaled Madrid Abwehr to get some radio sets into Eldorado’s hands pretty damn quick. When the crunch came, he didn’t want to have to depend on the Spanish diplomatic bag.

  While he was at it, Christian sent a few more signals to Madrid. German naval intelligence had failed to find any sign of the special convoy. Query Eldorado re his Churchill India-bound report, Christian ordered. Luftwaffe intelligence had been skeptical about another item. Query Eldorado re report on Low-level Parachute, Christian ordered. Query Eldorado re Buranda: who/what/where? He signed the signals Oster and went off to a well-deserved lunch.

  One thing that had seriously worried Eldorado’s Abwehr controllers when his first reports began reaching them was his sloppy accountancy. Obviously he didn’t fully understand the British monetary system. The classic case was his claim for a rail fare of £1 23s 18d. Richard Fischer had kept that claim and now he showed it to the four recruits. “This should be a death warrant,” he said. “Anyone in England who thinks this price exists is asking to be caught and shot. What’s wrong with it?”

  They all looked at Docherty.

  “The letter ‘s’ means shillings and the letter ‘d’ means pence,” he said. They were all speaking English and Docherty enjoyed delivering his words in an Irish brogue as thick as shoe-leather. “You get twenty shillings to your pound and twelve pence to your shilling.”

  “So what’s the correct statement for this rail fare?” Fischer asked, and waved at Docherty to be silent.

  Stephanie Schmidt thought like mad and got there first. “Two pounds and four shillings and six pennies,” she said, and held her breath until Fischer nodded.

  “You are in London and you enter a pub and ask for a large whisky,” he said. “The barman serves it, you ask how much, he says eighteen pence. Is he too a spy?”

  “Either a spy or a spycatcher,” Martini said.

  Ferenc Tekeli said, “He could just be a foreigner. There must be thousands of foreigners in London now.”

  “No, he’s English,” Fischer said. “Eighteen pence is a common way of saying one shilling and sixpence when that is the full price. Similarly a price may be quoted entirely in shillings, without reference to pounds. Twenty-three shillings for a coat, for instance.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Martini said angrily. “What have the British got against the decimal system?”

  “And don’t forget,” Docherty warned them, “there’s four farthings to the penny, as well.”

  “In everyday speech,” Fischer went on, “a pound is known as a quid, a shilling is a bob and there is a half-crown coin worth two-and-six that is commonly called half-a-dollar. Perversely the British have no such coin as a crown. Or a dollar. Is that all clear? Now then: weights and measures. Forget the metric system. Twelve inches make one foot, three feet one yard, and one thousand seven hundred and sixty yards equal one mile.”

  “We can’t remember all that,” Martini protested.

  “British schoolchildren master it without difficulty,” Fischer told him.

  “Chinese children talk Chinese,” Martini pointed out. “So what?”

  “I was in China last year,” Docherty said. “Bought a small Chinese infant for half-a-dollar. Spoke perfect English.”

  “Moving on to the British system of weights,” Fischer said. “We start with the ounce. Sixteen ounces make one pound. Fourteen pounds make one stone, eight stone one hundredweight, twenty hundredweight one ton. Right, let’s go over those. Here’s an actual example. Butter costs half-a-crown a pound but your weekly ration is only three ounces, so how much should you pay?” Fischer gave an encouraging smile. Everyone but Docherty looked blankly helpless.

  Schmidt said, “Three ounces?”

  Docherty sucked in his breath. “And lucky to get it,” he said.

  “Put it another way,” Fischer said. “How much change would you expect from a pound note?”
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br />   Next day there was a written examination on British currency and systems of measurement. Schmidt accused Laszlo Martini of cheating by looking at her answers. He denied it, she slapped his face, he bloodied her nose, she kicked him in the balls. It was not the only angry dispute. They all competed fiercely—for practice time on the Morse keys; at the firing range; in the explosives department; in the gymnasium, where they learned how to kill without weapons. There were many squabbles. Brigadier Wagner approved. “Aggression!” he said to Dr. Hartmann. “That’s what war’s all about, isn’t it?” Hartmann returned a bleak smile. As far as he could see, war was all about terrifying danger in squalid discomfort and he intended to stay as far away from it as possible.

  Freddy Garcia found Luis and Julie on the terrace, enjoying a rare spell of sunshine. “Good news!” he announced. “You’re out of jail. Quarantine is over. Where would you like to go?”

  “Templeton said he’d take us to see the Changing of the Guard,” Julie said, “but then he went away.”

  Luis climbed on to the top of the terrace wall. “I want to meet the King,” he said. He began walking, arms outstretched. “Also the Queen.”

  “Don’t know about that, old boy.”

  “You’re bloody useless, Garcia. I bet the Abwehr could get me to meet Herr Hitler.”

  “Let’s go and see the Oxford colleges,” Julie said.

  “Oh, Oxford!” Luis scoffed. He reached a corner and made a tricky turn. “Nowadays it’s just the Latin Quarter of the Cowley Motor Works.”

  “How d’you know? You’ve never been there. You read that in a book.”

  “I’ve read all the books,” Luis said. “Listen, I’m hungry. What’s for lunch?” He jumped down.

  “I’ll find you some jolly good pageantry,” Freddy promised. “You’ll like that.” But as they went indoors the phone was ringing. It was the Director. Freddy went to his office and took the call on his scrambler.

  “Something odd has happened,” the Director said. “Madrid Abwehr has sent a signal saying they want Eldorado to go to Liverpool next Tuesday. They’ve never done that before, have they?”

  “Not since we brought him to England, sir.” Freddy thought hard. “They once tried to set up a rendezvous with another agent but that was a long while back. Anyway, it flopped. Do they say why?”

  “Report from a normally reliable source that Winston Churchill is going to be at Liverpool railway station on Tuesday at twelve noon. Platform one, so they say.”

  “I see.” Garcia’s mind bounced rapidly off the various implications. “I wonder why they want Eldorado to go, sir? I mean, Seagull is in Liverpool. They know that.”

  “Yes. But it was Eldorado who recently reported Churchill en route to India.”

  “Um.” Freddy scratched his nose. “Can we find out if the Abwehr’s information is correct, sir?”

  “Probably. To what end?”

  “Well, sir, if the Prime Minister is not going to visit Liverpool on Tuesday, we’ve nothing to worry about. Eldorado can simply tell the Abwehr he went there and nothing happened.”

  “What if someone who looks like Winston Churchill arrives on platform one? To my knowledge at least two men who could pass as Churchill’s double are in circulation. What then?”

  “Yes, but … I mean, the Abwehr aren’t going to know that.” Silence from the other end. “Are they, sir?”

  “Look, Freddy: my guess is Eldorado’s controllers in Madrid are less than happy. Eldorado promised them a convoy. No convoy, and it seems they’ve got wind of a visit by the Prime Minister to Liverpool instead. Now, if you were the Abwehr, what would you want?”

  “I’d want to know what the dickens was going on, sir.”

  “Quite. And you might even want to reassure yourself that your man in England was absolutely straight. That he wouldn’t lie to get himself out of an awkward corner. How would you do that?”

  “Um … How would I do that? I suppose …” Freddy was talking to gain time to think. “Well, I suppose I’d … Let’s see … Yes, I think the best way would be …” His brain came galloping to the rescue. “Would be to have another agent on Liverpool station next Tuesday. Watching Eldorado, to see what he sees.”

  “And that’s why Eldorado’s got to go to Liverpool,” the Director said. “He must be seen to be there. It’s too risky, otherwise. Do you agree?”

  “Oh, absolutely, sir,” Freddy said. “The whole network might be at stake.”

  “You can use this Liverpool expedition to promote Operation Bamboozle,” the Director said. “I don’t want him coming back still believing we control every Abwehr agent in Britain.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was a pause while they each reviewed the situation. “Of course, I may come back not believing it either.”

  The Director grunted, and hung up.

  Luis and Julie had begun lunch. “Toad-in-the-hole again,” Luis complained. “Tastes even more disgusting than it sounds.”

  “Never mind,” Freddy said brightly. “I’ve just arranged a super outing. We all go to Liverpool on Tuesday!”

  “Not me,” Luis told him. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve decided to become a recluse.”

  “You’d hate it, old chap. And think how much Madrid would miss you.”

  “Fuck ‘em.” Luis put his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands.

  “OK. You stay, we’ll go,” Julie said. “Has Liverpool got much pageantry?”

  “Liverpool has everything,” Freddy said. “It’s the gateway to England. It has a cultural heritage you simply can’t find anywhere else. Its ambience is absolutely … um … unique.” Freddy thought hard. “We have a saying: ‘The man who is tired of Liverpool is tired of life.’”

  “Dr. Johnson,” Luis said. “And it was London, not Liverpool.”

  “He was misquoted.”

  Luis looked at him with suspicion. “Can I get fresh sardines in Liverpool?” he asked.

  “Luis, if you can get them anywhere in Britain you can get them there,” Freddy said. “That’s my solemn promise.”

  Luis pushed his lunch away, only half-eaten. The tip of a sausage poked through a crust of batter, like a whale breaking the surface of a golden-brown sea. The longer Luis looked at it, the lower his eyelids sank. “Mr. Churchill did not sail to India in a convoy,” he said softly. “The British navy canceled the convoy when they discovered that so many U-boats had been diverted to intercept it.” He prodded the sausage with his fork and made it submerge.

  “Of course they did,” Freddy said. “Will you write it?”

  Luis stood. “I might,” he said.

  Everyone noticed that Laszlo Martini was in much better spirits since the Abwehr armory had issued him with a pistol. What gratified him as much as the weapon was its silencer, an attachment as big as a beer bottle. He wore the gun in a huge holster that dangled under his left armpit. It made him feel tremendously strong.

  Laszlo had never shot anyone in his life; indeed he had never even struck anyone. He was small and not muscular; it was wise to stay out of fights. The night after he got his pistol he went out and shot two men. Their names were Stefano and Joaquim. They were large men who made a living as debt-collectors: they beat up people who owed money. It was a family concern. Stefano’s uncle lent the money at high rates; when repayment was late his nephews found the borrower and hit him. Laszlo had suffered at their bruising hands more than once. Now he found them in a bar and invited them to come outside. In the alley behind the bar he shot one of them in the shoulder and the other in the leg. They fell down. The pistol made little noise, just a gasp like suppressed surprise. It was all so easy. Laszlo wished he had done it long ago. Nevertheless he took no further chances. He went straight to the German embassy and stayed there until the end of the agents’ training. Then Brigadier Wagner decided that they all deserved one last night out on the town, at the Abwehr’s expense.

  He took them and the controllers to an expensive restaurant. Laszlo felt fairl
y secure there. Ferenc Tekeli ate and drank hugely; Docherty was relaxed and amusing; Stephanie Schmidt became tearfully patriotic and offered to sing the Horst Wessel song. That was when Brigadier Wagner suggested they move on and see a bullfight. Laszlo was reluctant to show himself in public but he really had no choice, and so he put a good face on it. “I was a matador once,” he announced. “I was the youngest matador in Spain.”

  “Good for you,” Franz Werth murmured.

  They awarded me both ears five times,’ Laszlo said. “Once I got both ears and the tail.”

  “A meal in itself,” Ferenc said.

  “That’s nothing,” Docherty said. “In Dublin cattle market I could have got you the ears and the tail and both kidneys with a good pound of ox-liver thrown in at no extra cost. They know me well in Dublin cattle market,” he told the Brigadier.

  “Very gratifying, I’m sure,” Wagner said.

  Five of the eight advertised bulls had been killed by the time they reached the ring. It was very early in the season and the experiment of holding midweek bullfights in the evening was not hugely popular, so the Brigadier’s party was able to get good seats. The sixth bull was a disappointment: stupid and slow and speedily brought to its end. A disgruntled shower of seat cushions and oranges flew into the arena, and the band played a paso doble very loudly. Ferenc Tekeli went off and came back with whole trays of salt peanuts and blood oranges and sugar doughnuts. He was having a wonderful time.

  Laszlo was nervous. He felt dreadfully exposed, surrounded by all these people. Any one of them might be an enemy, or might report his presence to his enemies. He began searching for someone staring at him, for the fatal flicker of recognition.

  Richard Fischer saw Laszlo looking about him and said, “Quite like old times for you, I suppose.” Laszlo needed a couple of seconds to understand the remark.

  “Yes,” he said. “I killed my last bull over there.” He pointed to a distant stain in the sand. “He was colossal, the greatest bull in Spain.” Then he fell silent. He was convinced that someone was watching him. Anxiety made his heartbeat skip and stamp.