Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  Christian was surprised at his own anger. The airplane banked and he was looking at a different area of devastation. Here the buildings were not gutted: they were flattened, erased. It was not possible to make out a pattern of streets, and it was scarcely possible to believe that men had caused this obliteration. Christian’s mind dreamed a fantasy: some careless, thoughtless giant had swept Hamburg away with the back of his hand. But this silliness made him even angrier. The giant was the Royal Air Force, sending five, six, seven hundred heavy bombers, not to hit docks or factories but to burn a city, the second biggest city in Germany. He blinked to clear tears from his eyes. If only they knew, he thought: the harder they hit us, the stronger they make us. Soon, London will look like this.

  The Junkers made a pass over the undamaged suburbs, just for journalistic balance, and flew back to Berlin, where they got out and listened to a spokesman from Propaganda reading a statement: “Deliberate terror raids … martyred for the Reich … negligible effect on war production … morale higher than ever … God will surely punish … a new Hamburg will arise …”

  When they walked to the car, Canaris said, “As ever, the communiqué is interesting for what it does not reveal. No mention, for instance, of the fact that nobody is living in the parts of Hamburg that were not bombed.”

  Christian was puzzled. “Nobody, sir? You mean they’ve been evacuated?”

  “I mean they’ve run away. Wouldn’t you? In the space of ten days their city has been massively bombed on four nights by the British and on two days by the Americans. I ask you: why wait to be blown to pieces?”

  “My information is that one million have left Hamburg,” Oster said. “It’s virtually empty. Did you see anyone on the streets? I didn’t.”

  “I think I saw one policeman,” Canaris said. “I think he waved. Perhaps he was telling us to go away. I don’t suppose they like having airplanes over their city … Did we get any warning from Eldorado about those raids?”

  “No, sir,” Oster said.

  “That’s disappointing. We really need to know these things. Shake him up, will you?” Canaris said to Christian. “Tell him it’s our number-one top-priority area of intelligence. Hamburg wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last, will it?”

  They got into the car. It made good time into the city: Berlin was far less crowded nowadays. “Speer reckons that if five or six more cities get the Hamburg treatment, the war will go out of business,” Oster said.

  “Speer should go and work for the Allies,” Canaris said, and smiled. The others chuckled, although Christian couldn’t see what was funny. Not that there was anything new about that.

  The Abwehr had offices all over Europe, and each had its allotted task. Oslo, for instance, was interested in weather over Britain. Brest concentrated on reports of sabotage. Paris collected information about general living conditions. Madrid’s concern was the supply of arms and other war matériel from America, convoy intelligence and food stocks. Hamburg took care of anything involving the Allied air forces. Agents directly controlled by Abwehr headquarters in Berlin usually supplied political intelligence. It was all very decentralized. Each office guarded its own sphere of operations and had little to say to any other office. When a goldmine like Eldorado came along, of course, Madrid Abwehr didn’t hesitate to take everything he sent and ask for more, even if it fell outside their brief. Nevertheless, Hamburg was supposed to be the primary channel for air-force intelligence, and Christian was uneasy about bypassing Hamburg in favor of Madrid. “They’ll raise holy hell if they hear about it,” he told General Oster. “They’ve become very touchy since the raids.”

  “Screw them. The Admiral wants Eldorado to do Hamburg’s job, and that’s what the Admiral gets.”

  “I’ve drafted this signal. It’s quite short, because now we have a radio link with Eldorado I didn’t want to risk anything long.”

  Oster read it. “Better show it to the old man,” he said.

  Canaris read it. “Too polite,” he said. “It sounds like an order for a dozen linen table-napkins. Kick the fellow’s backside a bit. The Allies think they can win the war with their bombers. We need to know all about that campaign: when, where, how many, what type, which target. Forget the rest of the war. Make him focus on that. It’s crucial.”

  Christian went away and re-wrote the signal. “Better,” Oster said. “Now you’ve tied a rocket to his tail. Now we’ll see what he’s worth.”

  Dr. Cabezas had had six hours sleep in forty-eight, which was about average for a houseman at Glasgow Central Hospital. The houseman system had two things going for it: firstly, all the consultants had had to do it in their day and so they couldn’t see why the youngsters should escape it now; and secondly, it was cheap. Instead of relays of doctors coming and going you only paid this one battered specimen whose eyes, toward the end, looked like old inkwells. The fact that fatigue might damage judgment was well known but ignored. Anyway, you might be lucky. You might have a quiet time.

  Dr. Cabezas was on duty in Casualty and the time was not quiet. Glasgow generated a stream of damaged humanity: everything from children who had fallen off walls to welders who had fallen off ships, and from heart attacks in the street to brawls in the bedroom. Appendicitis, electrocution, food poisoning, fits, scaldings, dog-bites, boils on the backside, unsuspected pregnancies, fingers hacked by breadknives, dislocations on football fields—the victims of these and many other misfortunes arrived at Casualty in a stream that occasionally, unpredictably, built to a sudden flood of pain.

  Dr. Cabezas came off duty at 6 p.m., too tired to eat and almost too tired to walk to the tram that went up North Hanover Street. Renfrew House was an ugly thing made of red sandstone long since gone black but it was home and Flat 17 contained a wonderful bed. As Dr. Cabezas trudged up the stairs all she could think of was falling into it and sleeping forever.

  Laszlo was standing by the fireplace when she switched on the light. He was startled to see a young woman; a slim, pretty, black-haired young woman, brown eyes slowly widening with shock. Nobody had said Dr. Cabezas was a woman. But nobody had said she wasn’t, either. His arms were folded, hands under his jacket.

  “You are Garlic,” he said firmly and clearly. Two days and two nights of doctoring the sick had left her brain dull and her reactions slow. “I am garlic?” she said. The words were nonsense. They were enough for Laszlo. He unfolded his arms. The pistol swung out and up as if his arm were on a spring and he shot her, aiming at the breastbone and missing and hitting the throat. She was holding the doorknob with her left hand and the impact made her seem to fling herself away from Laszlo in revulsion. He did not like that. But at least it slowed her fall and she collapsed with no more noise than someone dropping a pair of boots, which was lucky because the silencer had been much louder than usual, like someone slamming a heavy book. Maybe it was wearing out. Laszlo held it up and looked at it. Nobody in Madrid had said anything about silencers wearing out. And nobody had said anything about Garlic being a woman. Madrid Abwehr wasn’t half as clever as it thought it was. It had been all wrong about Venezuela. Venezuela was really Bolivia. That’s what Laszlo called really sloppy, making a simple blunder like that, and when he remembered how much extra work it had caused him he got quite annoyed. He had thought hard about the problem all afternoon and finally reached the only possible solution. Garlic had to be a medical student at Glasgow University from South America, allegedly Venezuela. The only South American medical student was Bolivian. Therefore the Venezuelan connection must be wrong, which left the Bolivian medical student, who must be Laszlo’s man. Or, as it turned out, woman. He went over and looked at her.

  Dr. Cabezas lay in an awkward sprawl, not at all like the tidy postures of death that Laszlo had learned from the movies. There was a tremendous amount of blood; it did not seem possible that such a slender creature could flood the floor with redness. He supposed she must be dead; he didn’t want to tread in the blood in order to find out. The pistol felt hea
vy and he let his arm fall to his side. A kind of wistfulness crept over him, a feeling of flatness, of anticlimax. He had come such a long way to do this and now it was over too quickly. Perhaps she wasn’t dead, not completely dead. Perhaps he ought to shoot her again. The more he thought about it, the more it revived him and he stooped to see if he could figure out where her heart was. In the end he decided it was hidden behind her left breast. He couldn’t bring himself to damage a woman’s breast. It was a sacred object: the thought of injuring it made him feel ill. So he shot her in the head. Another big book slammed. That was enough.

  He was satisfied, but he was also bored. He used the poker to lift her purse out of the blood, and he searched to see whom he had killed. Dr. Rosa Maria Cabezas, so her papers said. He took them, and the money; had a look through the clothes in the bedroom, to convince himself that she really was a woman; and stretched out on the bed, just to see if it was as comfortable as it looked.

  When he awoke it was past midnight. He took a bath, ate all the tinned food in the kitchen (there was very little) and went back to bed. He had even found a pair of her pajamas that fitted him quite well.

  “In case you’re thinking it’s black market, it’s not,” said the Director.

  “Never entered my head, sir,” Freddy Garcia lied. They were sitting down to lunch in the Director’s flat and he was looking at a dish of poached salmon, something he had not seen in two years.

  “I have an old friend who fishes the Tweed,” the Director said, “and he caught this fish on a Jock Scott, just below Norham Castle, yesterday tea-time, and he had it sent down by the fast London train for me, so you can relax and enjoy it, for you’re not breaking the law. Bread and salad and bottled Bass are all off-ration, are they not?”

  “Indeed they are.” Freddy tucked in. He had never before been invited up here and he felt a bit nervous.

  “I have something of an apology to make,” the Director said. I must admit the legality of the mayonnaise is slightly suspect, it came from an American PX; however that is not what I wish to apologize about. I made an error of judgment concerning Matchbox, Teacup and Lampstand. It was obvious at a very early stage that they were making for Liverpool, and the implication had to be that they aimed to meet Eldorado.’ He concentrated on pouring the Bass correctly.

  “Where did they land, sir?” Freddy asked.

  “Galway Bay. It’s an obvious place. We have a man in Galway. He says they came into town like a three-ring circus. They even bought him drinks. I made sure they got waved through at Dublin and Liverpool—excellent passports, by the way, well up to the Abwehr’s high standards—and I thought it would be a clever idea to let them reinforce Bamboozle.”

  “Ah,” Freddy said. “Eldorado meets Abwehr agents at every turn.”

  “Exactly. Or perhaps I mean inexactly. I wanted the arrival of Matchbox, Teacup and Lampstand to be a genuine surprise to your people … What were they called?”

  “Hammer and Anvil, sir.”

  “Yes. Nicely Teutonic. The general effect I was hoping to achieve was of a railway station awash with German agents, all strangers to each other, thus generating a high pitch of tension all around and especially in Eldorado and his lady.”

  “I think you achieved that, sir.”

  The Director ate some salad. “Nevertheless, it was foolish of me not to inform you of those Abwehr agents. The danger in this racket is that one is tempted to play the stage-director a little too much.”

  Freddy busied himself with his napkin and let the apology quietly fade away.

  “What about the fourth agent, sir?” he asked.

  “All I can tell you is he didn’t get off the ship at either end. We’ve searched it three times. I don’t think he’s on board.”

  “Curious.”

  “Yes. However, the enemy don’t seem particularly concerned, so I assume that Deckchair was expendable. I’ll tell you what they are concerned about, highly concerned. They want to know where Bomber Command goes from here. We’ve just decoded a very urgent signal for Eldorado. You can almost smell the panic”

  “This is because of Hamburg?”

  “Probably.”

  “It’s rather flattering that they should turn to Eldorado.”

  “Flattering and worrying,” the Director said. “They want to know the names of the next six cities on Bomber Command’s list.”

  “But that’s absurd.” Freddy mopped a little mayonnaise with a bit of bread and examined the pattern revealed on the plate, as if it held an answer. “They can’t seriously expect Eldorado to find that sort of information.” He chewed the bread slowly. “On the other hand, we can’t afford to damage Eldorado’s reputation, can we?”

  “Have some more salmon.” The Director nudged the dish toward him. “They say that fish is good for the brain.”

  Christian woke up with a wild snort and the flies on his face took off in all directions as if they’d been scrambled to meet an incoming raid. His face felt strange: stiff and sticky. He raised a hand to touch it and at once his body began to slip. This frightened him and he grabbed something to stop the slide. It was wood; flat wood. He was lying on the open-step staircase that led to his flat at the top of Abwehr headquarters.

  For several seconds he clung to the staircase while he worked out the difference between horizontal and vertical and just where he lay between the two. That was when he noticed the blood, a lot of blood, right in front of his face. Explains the flies, he said to himself, and felt quite proud of his quick thinking. But the flies don’t explain the blood. There was something wrong with that. He worried at it for a short while and gave up. The stairs were hard and uncomfortable. He could either go down or go up. He was pointing up. He climbed on his hands and knees to the top of the stairs, got cautiously to his feet, wobbled into his flat and went to the bathroom mirror. He looked dreadful. Nose, lips and chin were thick with congealed blood and a bruise like a small plum was coming up on his forehead. The eyes that gazed back at him were dull as old pennies.

  That was at 7 p.m. Next morning he called in at Domenik’s office. “Know any good medical jokes?” he asked.

  “Medical,” Domenik said. “Well, there’s quite a ripe one about Goering and enemas that’s going about, but it’s a bit early in the day for that sort of thing. Why?”

  “Funny thing happened to me last night. I was going up to my rooms, using the stairs, when I must have had a blackout. Fell flat on my face, banged my nose, severe nosebleed. Blood everywhere. Or so I assume. I mean, how do I know what happened? I was unconscious at the time.” Christian dropped into an armchair and put his feet on Domenik’s desk. “What d’you make of all that?” He sounded jaunty. He wished he felt jaunty.

  *

  “How long before you came to?” Domenik asked.

  “Oh … judging by the volume of blood, about a day and a half … I don’t know. Two or three minutes, probably.”

  “And is there any history of this sort of thing in your family?”

  “Not that I know of.” Christian’s fingertips were sending Morse on the armrest.

  “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” Domenik said, “but did you bite your tongue? Or wet yourself?”

  “Good God, no. No to both.” Christian swung his feet off the desk and stood up. “I fainted, that’s all. I didn’t disintegrate. I’m a fully house-trained adult, remember?”

  “It crossed my mind that you might be epileptic, and don’t look so damned offended. It happens in the best of households. Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, not to mention some of my smartest friends … Anyway, you’re probably not clever enough to be epileptic. Are you worried?”

  “Why should I be worried?”

  “It might happen again.”

  “Yes, of course I’m worried. Last night I woke up every hour on the hour, just to make sure I wasn’t dead, I suppose. Mind you, I might as well be dead for all the good I’m doing here.” Christian prowled around the room, whacking the tops
of filing cabinets with the flat of his hand.

  “Don’t do that,” Domenik said. “There are people trying to sleep in there.”

  Christian stopped doing it, and looked out of a window. “It’s not a joke to me,” he said.

  “That wasn’t a joke,” Domenik said a little wearily. “My files are full of insomniacs.”

  Christian wasn’t listening. “Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I kept thinking: maybe this is my last chance to do something for my country while I’ve still got a body to give. I’m forty-seven. Bits of my system are beginning to wear out. I’m not interested in medals or promotion, I simply want …” He sighed, and clenched his jaw, and fell silent.

  “Would you do anything for Germany?” Domenik asked.

  “I’m ready to give my life.”

  “Would you commit treason? For Germany?”

  Christian stared. “Is that another of your jokes?”

  “Ah. So there are limits to your patriotism.”

  Christian gave a brief, displeased grunt. “I’m afraid I’m not in the mood for your comedy today.”

  “Look at it this way,” Domenik said. “Sometimes you have to turn things upside-down in order to stand them on their feet.”

  “That’s not funny either.”

  “I know,” Domenik said sadly. “It’s the way I tell them.”

  Each flat had its own letter-slot and the postman delivered Dr. Rosa Maria Cabezas’s mail while Laszlo was in the kitchen, eating a breakfast of toast with marmalade and sweet tea.

  He opened her letters. Not much: a bill, a medical journal and a letter in Spanish from a passionate boyfriend in Edinburgh. Too passionate for Laszlo’s liking. So much yearning for intimate physical contact with a stiff corpse struck him as improper, and he burned the letter in the sink.

  The bill was from the gas company, and it gave him an idea. He found her checkbook in a little writing-desk and forged her signature, copying it from a hospital identity card, and put the bill and the check into an envelope, which he addressed and stamped, to be mailed later. Dead woman pays gas bill! Let the police pick the bones out of that.