The Bormann Testament (The Testament of Caspar Schultz)

by Jack Higgins

  Schmidt nodded. “He boarded the train at Osnabruck, Herr Steiner.”

  “And then?” Steiner asked.

  Schmidt glanced furtively at Chavasse. “I saw him enter this compartment.”

  Steiner nodded. “I see. Ask Dr. Kruger to step in here.”

  Schmidt went out into the corridor, and Steiner turned and held out his hand. Chavasse realized that he was still holding the things he had taken from Muller’s pocket, and handed them over. Steiner examined the letters quickly and grunted. “This man, Hans Muller, who was he? Why did you kill him?”

  Chavasse shrugged. “You tell me.”

  Steiner bent down and picked up the wad of banknotes from beneath the washbasin. He held them up in one hand. “I don’t think we have to look very far, my friend, unless you are going to try to tell me this money is yours?”

  Chavasse shook his head. “No, it isn’t mine.”

  Steiner nodded in satisfaction. “Good, then we are getting somewhere. There was a quarrel, perhaps over this money. He struck you. There is the mark of the blow on your cheek and a cut caused by the rather ornate ring worn on the middle finger of his right hand.”

  “And then I shot him?” Chavasse said helpfully.

  Steiner shrugged. “You must admit it looks that way.”

  At that moment, Kruger came into the compartment. He glanced inquiringly at Steiner, who nodded toward the body. Kruger frowned and dropped down onto one knee. After a brief examination, he stood up. “A clean shot through the heart. Death must have been instantaneous.”

  Steiner put the money into one of his pockets and became suddenly businesslike. “Have you anything further to tell me before I take you into custody, Herr Chavasse?”

  Chavasse shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. There’s just one thing I’d like to ask Schmidt, if I may.” He turned to the attendant before Steiner could reply. “Tell me, Schmidt. Is there an American Army sergeant traveling on the train?”

  Schmidt looked genuinely bewildered. “An American Army sergeant, mein Herr? No, you must be mistaken.”

  Chavasse smiled gently. “Somehow I thought I was.” He got to his feet and turned to Steiner. “Well, where do we go, Inspector?”

  Steiner looked inquiringly at Schmidt. “Have you got an empty compartment?”

  “Yes, Herr Steiner,” Schmidt said. “In one of the other coaches.”

  Kruger stood to one side and Steiner pushed Chavasse into the corridor. The noise of the voices had brought several people to the doors of their compartments, and as Chavasse followed Schmidt along the corridor, people stared curiously at him.

  Sir George Harvey was standing outside his compartment, a bewildered expression on his face. As they approached, he seemed about to raise a hand, but Chavasse frowned and shook his head slightly. Sir George stepped back into his compartment and closed the door.

  Chavasse had decided a good ten minutes earlier that there was little point in sitting in a Hamburg jail for six months while lawyers argued over his ultimate fate. As they passed through the second coach, a plan had already started to form in his mind.

  The empty compartment was at the far end of the third coach, and by the time they reached it he was ready. Schmidt bent down to unlock the door and Chavasse waited, Steiner close behind him. As the door started to open, Chavasse pushed his hand into Schmidt’s back, sending him staggering into the compartment. At the same moment, he whirled on the ball of one foot and rammed the stiffened fingers of his left hand into Steiner’s throat.

  The policeman collapsed on the floor of the corridor. Chavasse quickly closed the compartment door, cutting off Schmidt’s cry of alarm, and turned the key in the lock. Then he stepped over Steiner’s writhing body and ran back the way they had come.

  His intention was to reach the sanctuary of Sir George Harvey’s compartment. There he would be safe, at least until they reached Hamburg. But first, it was necessary to make Steiner believe he had left the train.

  He turned the corner at the end of the corridor and reached for the handle of the emergency-stop lever above the door. As the train started to slow, he opened the door and the cold night air sucked it outward, sending it smashing back against the side of the coach.

  He moved on quickly into the next coach. He was almost at the end of the corridor and within a few yards of Sir George’s compartment when he heard voices coming toward him. For a moment, he hesitated and then, as he turned to run, the door of the compartment opened silently. A hand reached out and pulled him backward through the doorway.

  He lost his balance and fell to the floor. Behind him, the door clicked firmly into place. He started to move, ready to come up like a steel spring uncoiling with explosive force, but he paused, one knee still on the floor.

  Lying on the bunk in front of him was an American Army uniform with the sergeant’s stripes showing on the neatly folded tunic. On top of the tunic rested a military cap and on top of the cap, a pair of thick-lensed, steel-rimmed spectacles.

  CHAPTER 3

  The man who leaned against the door held an Italian Beretta automatic negligently in his right hand. He was of medium build and his eyes seemed very blue in the tawny face. An amused smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “You do seem to have stirred things up, old man,” he said in an impeccable English accent.

  The train had finally come to a stop and there was shouting in the corridor outside. Chavasse listened keenly and managed to distinguish Steiner’s voice. He scrambled to his feet and the man said, “Steiner doesn’t sound very pleased. What did you do to him?”

  Chavasse shrugged. “Judo throat jab. A nasty trick, but I didn’t have time to observe the niceties.” He nodded toward the automatic. “You can put that thing away. No rough stuff. I promise you.”

  The man smiled and slipped the gun into his pocket. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react when I dragged you in here.” He extracted a leather-and-gold cigarette case from his inside pocket and flicked it open. Chavasse took a cigarette and leaned across for the proffered light.

  He hadn’t been working for the Chief for five years without being able to tell a professional when he saw one. People in his line of business carried a special aura around with them, indefinable and yet sensed at once by the trained agent. One could even work out the nationality by attitude, methods employed, and other trademarks. But in this case, he was puzzled.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “Hardt’s the name, Mr. Chavasse,” the man told him. “Mark Hardt.”

  Chavasse frowned. “A German name and yet you’re not a German.”

  “Israeli.” Hardt grinned. “A slightly bastardized form by Winchester out of Emmanuel College.”

  The picture was beginning to take shape. “Israeli intelligence?” Chavasse asked.

  Hardt shook his head. “Once upon a time, but now nothing so official. Let’s say I’m a member of an organization which by the very nature of its ends is compelled to work underground.”

  “I see,” said Chavasse softly. “And what exactly are your aims at the moment?”

  “The same as yours,” Hardt said calmly. “I want that manuscript, but even more than that, I want Bormann.” Before Chavasse could reply, Hardt got to his feet and moved to the door. “I think I’d better go into the corridor and see what’s going on.”

  The door closed behind him and Chavasse sat on the edge of the bunk, a slight frown on his face, as he considered the implications of what Hardt had said. It was well known that there was at least one strong Jewish underground unit that had been working ceaselessly since the end of the war in all parts of the world, tracking down Nazi war criminals who had evaded the Allied net in 1945. He had heard that its members were fanatically devoted to their task, brave people who had dedicated their lives to bringing some of the inhuman monsters responsible for Belsen, Auschwitz, and other hellholes to justice.

  On several occasions during his career with the Bureau, he had found himself competing with the agents of other P
owers toward the same end, but this was different – this was very different.

  The train started to move, the door opened, and Hardt slipped in. “I just saw Steiner. He’s been raging like a lion up and down the track. It was finally pointed out to him that you were probably several miles away by now and he was persuaded to come back on board. I don’t fancy your chances if he ever manages to get his hands on you.”

  “I’ll try to see that he doesn’t.” Chavasse nodded toward the American uniform. “A neat touch, your disguise. After the crime, the criminal simply ceases to exist, eh?”

  Hardt nodded. “It’s proved its worth on several occasions, although the spectacles can be a bit of a nuisance. I can’t see a damned thing in them.”

  He locked the door, pulled a stool from beneath the bunk, and sat on it, his shoulders resting comfortably against the wall. “Don’t you think it’s time we got down to business?”

  Chavasse nodded. “All right, but you first. How much do you know about this affair?”

  “Before I start, just tell me one thing,” Hardt said. “It is Muller who is dead, isn’t it? I heard one of the other passengers say something about a shooting and then Steiner marched you along the corridor.”

  Chavasse nodded. “I had a cup of coffee just before Osnabruck. Whatever was in it put me out for a good half hour. When I came round, Muller was lying in the corner, shot through the heart.”

  “A neat frame on somebody’s part.”

  “As a matter of fact, I thought it was your handiwork,” Chavasse told him. “What exactly were you looking for in my compartment?”

  “Anything I could find,” Hardt said. “I knew Muller was supposed to meet you at Osnabruck. I didn’t expect him to be carrying the manuscript, but I thought he might take you to it, even to Bormann.”

  “And you intended to follow us?” Chavasse said.

  “Naturally,” Hardt told him.

  Chavasse lit another cigarette. “Just tell me one thing. How the hell do you know so much?”

  Hardt smiled. “We first came across Muller a fortnight ago when he approached a certain German publisher and offered him Bormann’s manuscript.”

  “How did you manage to find out about that?”

  “This particular publisher is a man we’ve been after for three years now. We had a girl planted in his office. She tipped us off about Muller.”

  “Did you actually meet him?”

  Hardt shook his head. “Unfortunately, the publisher got some of his Nazi friends on the job. Muller was living in Bremen at the time. He left one jump ahead of them and us.”

  “And you lost track of him, I presume?”

  Hardt nodded. “Until we heard about you.”

  “I’d like to know how you managed that,” Chavasse said. “It should be most interesting.”

  Hardt grinned. “An organization like ours has friends everywhere. When Muller approached the firm of publishers you’re supposed to be representing, the directors had a word with Sir George Harvey, one of their biggest shareholders. He got in touch with the Foreign Secretary, who put the matter in the hands of the Bureau.”

  Chavasse frowned. “What do you know about the Bureau?”

  “I know it’s a special organization formed to handle the dirtier and more complicated jobs,” Hardt said. “The sort of things MI5 and the Secret Service don’t want to touch.”

  “But how did you know I was traveling on this train to meet Muller?” Chavasse said.

  “Remember that the arrangement with Muller, by which he was supposed to contact you at Osnabruck, was made through the managing director of the publishing firm. He was naturally supposed to keep the details to himself.”

  “Presumably, he didn’t.”

  Hardt nodded. “I suppose it was too good a tale to keep from his fellow directors and he told them everything over dinner that same evening. Luckily, one of them happens to be sympathetic to our work and thought we might be interested. He got in touch with our man in London, who passed the information over to me at once. As I was in Hamburg, it was rather short notice, but I managed to get a mid-morning flight to Rotterdam and joined the train there.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how the people who killed Muller knew we were supposed to meet on this train,” Chavasse said. “I can’t see how there could possibly have been another leak from the London end. I don’t think it’s very probable that there’s also a Nazi sympathizer on the board of directors of the firm I’m supposed to be representing.”

  Hardt shook his head. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got a theory about that. Muller was living in Bremen with a woman called Lilli Pahl. She was pulled out of the Elbe this morning, apparently a suicide case.”

  “And you think she was murdered?”

  Hardt nodded. “She disappeared from Bremen when Muller did, so they’ve probably been living together. My theory is that the other side knew where he was all along, that they were leaving him alone, hoping he’d lead them to Bormann. I think Muller gave them the slip and left Hamburg for Osnabruck last night. That left them with only one person who probably knew where he had gone and why – Lilli Pahl.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” Chavasse said. “It sounds reasonable enough. But it still doesn’t explain why they shot him.”

  Hardt shrugged. “Muller could have been carrying the manuscript, but I don’t think that’s very likely. I should imagine the shooting was an accident. Muller probably jumped the person who was waiting for him in your compartment and was killed in the struggle.”

  Chavasse frowned, considering everything Hardt had told him. After a while, he said, “There’s still one thing which puzzles me. Muller is dead and that means I’ve come to a dead end as far as finding Bormann goes. I can’t be of any possible use to you, so what made you go to the trouble of saving my skin?”

  “You could say I’m sentimental,” Hardt told him. “I have a soft spot for Israeli sympathizers.”

  “And how would you know that is what I am?”

  “Do you recall a man named Joel ben David?” Hardt asked. “He was an Israeli intelligence agent in Cairo in 1956. You saved his life and enabled him to return to Israel with information which was of great service to our Army during the Sinai campaign.”

  “I remember,” Chavasse said. “But I wish you’d forget about it. It could get me into hot water in certain quarters. I wasn’t supposed to be quite so violently partisan at the time.”

  “But we Jews do not forget our friends,” Hardt said quietly.

  Chavasse was suddenly uncomfortable. “Why are you so keen to get hold of Bormann? He isn’t another Eichmann. There’s bound to be an outcry for an international trial. Even the Russians would want a hand in it.”

  Hardt shook his head. “I don’t think so. In any case, we aren’t too happy about the idea of leaving him in Germany for trial, for this reason. There’s a statute of limitations in force under German law. Cases of manslaughter must be tried within fifteen years of the crime – murder, within twenty years.”

  Chavasse frowned. “You mean Bormann might not even come to trial?”

  Hardt shrugged. “Who knows? Anything might happen.” He got to his feet and paced restlessly across the compartment. “We are not butchers, Chavasse. We don’t intend to lead Bormann to the sacrificial stone with the whole of Jewry shouting hosannas. We want to try him for the same reason we have tried Eichmann. So that his monstrous crimes might be revealed to the world. So that people will not forget how men treat their brothers.”

  His eyes sparkled with fire. He was held in the grip of a fervor that seemed almost religious, something that possessed his heart and soul so that all other things were of no importance to him.

  “A dedicated man,” Chavasse said softly. “I thought they’d gone out of fashion.”

  Hardt paused, one hand raised in the air, and stared at him, and then he laughed and color flooded his face. “I’m sorry, at times I get carried away. But there are worse things for a man to do than
something he believes in.”

  “How did you come to get mixed up in this sort of thing?” Chavasse asked.

  Hardt sat down on the bunk. “My people were German Jews. Luckily, my father had the foresight in 1933 to see what was coming. He moved to England with my mother and me, and he prospered. I was never particularly religious – I don’t think I am now. It was a wild, adolescent impulse which made me leave Cambridge in 1947 and journey to Palestine by way of an illegal immigrants’ boat from Marseilles. I joined Haganah and fought in the first Arab war.”

  “And that turned you into a Zionist?”

  Hardt smiled and shook his head. “It turned me into an Israeli – there’s a difference, you know. I saw young men dying for a belief; I saw girls who should have been in school, sitting behind machine guns. Until that time, my life hadn’t meant a great deal. After that, it had a sense of purpose.”

  Chavasse sighed and offered him a cigarette. “You know, in some ways I think I envy you.”

  Hardt looked surprised. “But surely you believe in what you are doing? In your work, your country, its political aims?”

  “Do I?” Chavasse shook his head. “I’m not so sure. There are men like me working for every Great Power in the world. I’ve got more in common with my opposite number in the KGB than I have with any normal citizen of my own country. If I’m told to do a thing, I get it done. I don’t ask questions. Men like me live by one code only – the job must come before anything else.” He laughed harshly. “If I’d been born a few years earlier and a German, I’d probably have worked for the Gestapo.”

  “Then why did you help Joel ben David in Cairo?” Hardt said. “It hardly fits into the pattern you describe.”

  Chavasse shrugged and said carelessly, “That’s my one weakness. I get to like people and sometimes it makes me act unwisely.” Before Hardt could reply, he went on. “By the way, I searched Muller before Steiner arrived on the scene. There were some letters in his inside pocket from this Lilli Pahl you mentioned. The address was a hotel in Gluckstrasse, Hamburg.”