by Jack Higgins
She chuckled. “Nothing doing. I’ve never felt so wide awake in my life. I intend to curl up on the sofa with a good book until you get back.”
He replaced the receiver and turned to find Sir George standing just inside the room, adjusting his bow tie. “Presumably, that wasn’t for me?” he said.
Chavasse shook his head. “It was Anna. Believe it or not, the manuscript has turned up.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Sir George said. “How did that happen?”
Chavasse explained about Katie Holdt. “I suppose she got into a panic and decided to clear out for a while. Leaving the manuscript with Anna would seem like good insurance against being killed by the opposition if they caught up with her. She could always pull the old bluff about the authorities getting the manuscript automatically if anything happened to her.”
“Yes, I suppose that explains it.” Sir George pulled on his overcoat and sighed. “I wish I didn’t have to go to this damned affair just when things are getting exciting. I hope you’ll let me have a peep at the manuscript before it goes to the authorities.”
“I think we can manage that all right,” Chavasse told him.
“Well, I really must rush,” Sir George said. “Don’t be afraid to ring room service for anything you need.”
When he had gone, Chavasse poured himself another drink. He was filled with a feeling of tremendous exhilaration. The job was as good as finished. Getting the manuscript back to London was simply a matter of routine. There only remained the Hauptmann affair. Admittedly, it would have to be handled by German intelligence, but he still had a deep personal interest in seeing that Steiner and Nagel got what was coming to them. At that moment, a buzzer sounded sharply and he crossed to the door and opened it.
The man who faced him looked to be in his early fifties. He carried a walking stick in one hand and was wearing a dark blue overcoat with a fur collar. His face was round and benign, the flesh pouching a little beneath the eyes and chin as if from overeating. The rimless spectacles completed the picture of a reasonably average-looking German businessman. Only the eyes, shrewd and calculating and never still, gave him away to the trained observer.
“Herr Chavasse, I believe?” he said in German. “I am Colonel von Kraul.”
“How did you recognize me?” Chavasse said as he closed the door after the German had entered.
Von Kraul sat down in one of the easy chairs. “We have a dossier on you in our files. I’ve heard a lot about you. That’s why I came at once after our mutual friend spoke to me from London on the telephone. I trust I haven’t wasted my time.”
“You can judge for yourself,” Chavasse said grimly. “How important would you say Heinrich Hauptmann is to the future of Germany?”
Von Kraul was lighting a long, black cheroot. He hesitated for a fraction of a second and then continued with what he was doing. When the cheroot was burning to his liking, he said, “Hauptmann? No man is indispensable. But in German politics at the present time, Hauptmann comes closer to it than anyone else I know.”
“He’s going to be assassinated at nine-fifteen tonight,” Chavasse said.
For a long moment, von Kraul gazed steadily at him, and then he sighed and looked at his watch. “It is precisely seven o’clock. That gives us two and a quarter hours, Herr Chavasse. I suggest you tell me all you know as quickly as possible.”
Chavasse got to his feet. “Do you know a man called Kurt Nagel?”
“The steel magnate?” Von Kraul nodded. “A very well-known figure in Hamburg life. He’s extremely wealthy and a great philanthropist. As a matter of fact, he’s giving a reception tonight for the peace conference delegates.”
“To which Hauptmann has also been invited to make a speech,” Chavasse said.
For the first time, von Kraul’s calm deserted him. “Are you trying to tell me that Nagel has something to do with this business?”
Chavasse nodded. “He’s a key man in the Nazi underground. I don’t know how large his organization is, but I can tell you who his two right-hand men are. A physician named Kruger, who runs a clinic in Blankenese, and a Hamburg police inspector named Steiner.”
Von Kraul got to his feet and walked across to the table on which the bottles were standing, and poured himself a large brandy with a steady hand. He drank it down in one easy swallow and then stared reflectively into the empty glass. “From anyone else, I would have regarded such a story with incredulity. It is lucky for you, mein Herr, that your name is Paul Chavasse.”
“Lucky for Hauptmann, you mean,” Chavasse said.
Von Kraul went back to his chair. “How exactly does the killing take place?”
Chavasse closed his eyes and let his mind wander back to the room in the castle at Berndorf in which Muller had died. It was an old trick and one that had served him well in the past. “I’ll try to remember Nagel’s exact instructions,” he said, and after a moment, started to speak.
When he had finished, von Kraul sat in the chair, hands folded across the handle of his walking stick, and gazed at the opposite wall. After a while, he said, “Steiner will be there on his own. You are sure of that?”
Chavasse nodded. “That’s the essence of the whole plan – simplicity.”
“And a simple plan may be thwarted just as simply,” von Kraul said. “Is that not logic, Herr Chavasse?”
“What do you have in mind?”
Von Kraul shrugged. “I was thinking that we do not want an unsavory scandal, particularly one which suggested that the Nazis were still active and powerful. Such things are meat and drink to our Communist friends.”
“I’ll go that far with you,” Chavasse said, “but where does it get us?”
“To the grounds of Herr Nagel’s house at Blankenese,” von Kraul said. “It seems to me that two determined men could handle this affair. Are you interested?”
Chavasse got to his feet, a smile spreading across his face. “You’re too damned right I’m interested.”
“Then I suggest we be on our way.”
As he stood, Von Kraul said, “You know, there are considerable gaps in your story, and I am a man with a naturally tidy mind. I would be very interested in knowing how you first became involved with Nagel and his friends.”
Chavasse was in the act of pulling on the hunting jacket he had taken from the inn at Berndorf, and he smiled. “Now, surely you know better than to ask me a thing like that, Colonel?”
Von Kraul sighed. “After all, we are supposed to be allies. How much simpler it would be if we were completely frank with each other.” He held open the door. “Shall we go?”
His car was a black Porsche, and he handled it more than competently as they moved through the heavy traffic in the center of the city and crossed the Alster by the Lombardsbrucke.
Chavasse glanced at his watch. It was just after seven-thirty, and he turned to his companion and said, “How long will it take us to reach Nagel’s place?”
Von Kraul said, “Twenty minutes, perhaps even thirty. Certainly not longer.”
Chavasse made a quick decision. “I’d like to call in on a friend, if you don’t mind. Just to let her know I’ll be a little later than I said.”
Von Kraul chuckled. “A woman, eh? Will it take long?”
Chavasse shook his head. “Only a couple of minutes, I promise you, and it’s on our way.”
Von Kraul made no further comment after Chavasse gave him the address, and they continued in silence through the busy streets.
It was a fine autumn evening and the rain had stopped. Chavasse lowered the window and lit a cigarette, feeling suddenly content. Every so often he had a feeling that things were running his way, that the job was going to get finished in exactly the way he wanted.
When the Porsche braked to a halt in front of the apartment house where Anna lived, he got out feeling absurdly happy and grinned through the side window at von Kraul. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.”
Von Kraul smiled, the cheroot still between h
is teeth. “Take your time, my friend. Within reason, of course.”
He went up the stairs two at a time and rang Anna’s bell and waited, humming to himself. There was no immediate reply, and after a moment or two he rang the bell again. Still there was no reply. He tried to open the door, but it was locked and he frowned and pressed the bell-push again, holding his thumb in place for several seconds this time, thinking that perhaps she might be in the bath.
It was only then that he felt afraid. He hammered several times on the door and called her name, but there was no reply and he became aware of the peculiar silence that reigned throughout the entire house.
He went downstairs quickly and knocked on the door of the caretaker’s apartment in the hall. At first nothing happened, and he kicked the bottom of the door savagely, and then he heard slow reluctant footsteps approaching.
The door opened a little and the caretaker peered out. “Yes, mein Herr, what is it?”
“Miss Hartmann,” Chavasse said. “The young woman upstairs. I can’t get any reply.”
The caretaker was a middle-aged man with watery blue eyes and a pouched and wrinkled face. He shrugged. “That is not surprising, mein Herr. Fraulein Hartmann went out nearly an hour ago.”
Chavasse rammed his shoulder against the door with such force that the caretaker was sent staggering across the room to crash into the opposite wall. There was a cry of alarm as Chavasse followed him in, and a gray-haired woman shrank back in her chair, a hand covering her mouth.
Chavasse grabbed the terrified caretaker by the front of his shirt and pulled him close. “You’re lying!” he said. “I happen to know that nothing on earth would make her leave her apartment at this particular moment.” He slapped the man backhanded across the face. “Where is she?”
The man’s head rolled from side to side helplessly. “I can’t tell you, mein Herr. It’s as much as my life’s worth.”
Chavasse slapped him again, viciously and with all his strength. The woman flung herself across the room and tugged at his arm. “Leave him alone. I’ll tell you what you want to know, only don’t hit him any more. He’s a sick man. He was wounded at Stalingrad.”
Chavasse pushed the caretaker down into a chair and turned to the woman. “All right, you tell me and you’d better make it convincing.”
As she opened her mouth to speak, her husband said desperately, “For God’s sake, keep your mouth shut. Remember what he threatened to do if we talked.”
“I know what I’m doing, Willi,” she said, and turned back to Chavasse. “About twenty minutes ago, a car drew up outside. There were two men in it, only one got out.”
“How do you know about this?” Chavasse asked.
“I saw them from the window. The one who came in knocked on the door and my husband answered. He wanted to know the number of Fraulein Hartmann’s apartment. A few minutes afterward, we heard a scream and when we went out into the hall, he was dragging her down the stairs.”
Chavasse closed his eyes for a moment and drew a long breath. “Why didn’t you call the police?”
“He threatened us, mein Herr,” she said simply. “He said that at the very least, he would see that my husband lost his job.”
“And you believed him?” Chavasse said in disgust.
She nodded. “These people have the power to do anything, mein Herr. They are all around us. What chance have poor people like ourselves to oppose them? They got us into the last war – they will have us fighting again before they are done.”
Tomorrow the world, he thought. Tomorrow the world. He turned away from her, a sudden hatred for everything German rising inside him. She followed him to the door and held out a key.
“This is a master key, mein Herr. Perhaps you would like to examine the apartment?”
He took it from her without a word and went slowly up the stairs. There was no life left in him at all, and he unlocked the door and went inside and switched on the light.
She’d put up a struggle, that much was obvious. The carpet was rucked up and the table in the center of the room was overturned, the telephone lying on the floor. The table and chair by the window were in their usual positions, the Hebrew textbook and notebook lying open, almost as if she had been working a moment before and had simply left the room for a little while.
He looked into the bedroom. She had obviously changed on coming in and undergarments were strewn carelessly across the bed. He picked up a nylon stocking that had fallen to the floor and stood with it in his hands, staring blindly into space. After a while, he dropped it onto the bed and returned to the living room, and discovered Colonel von Kraul in the act of righting the upturned table.
CHAPTER 13
“You were so long, I began to worry,” von Kraul said as he picked up the telephone and placed it on the table. “Your friend has gone out?”
Chavasse nodded slowly. “Yes, and I’m very much afraid she won’t be coming back.”
“There would appear to have been a struggle,” the German said. “Don’t you think you should tell me about it, my friend? Presumably, it has some connection with the business we have in hand.”
Chavasse sat down. After a moment or two, he looked up and said, “There doesn’t seem much point in keeping it to myself now, does there?”
“Not really,” von Kraul said. “In any case, I may be able to help.”
Chavasse shook his head. “Somehow, I don’t think so.” He stood up and walked across to the window and looked out into the darkening street. “I came to Germany to find Martin Bormann. We’d heard that he was alive and that he’d written his memoirs.”
Von Kraul’s eyes had narrowed slightly, but his face remained calm. Only the whiteness of his knuckles as his hands tightened over the handle of his walking stick betrayed the fact that he was considerably moved by what Chavasse had just told him. “And were these facts true?”
Chavasse nodded. “In the main – Bormann died some months ago in a village in the Harz. Apparently, he’d spent most of the postwar years in Portugal. His valet, a man called Muller, got hold of the manuscript of the memoirs and tried to make himself a little money. He approached a firm of German publishers and got the Nazi underground on his track. He then tried a British firm – that’s how we got onto him.”
“Did you ever meet this man Muller?” von Kraul asked.
Chavasse nodded. “I was present when he was beaten to death by Steiner and another man in Nagel’s castle at Berndorf.”
“This is all beginning to sound very involved,” von Kraul said. “And how does the young woman you were hoping to meet here fit into things?”
“She was working for an unofficial Israeli underground organization,” Chavasse told him. “The same people who tracked down Eichmann.”
“I see,” von Kraul said dryly. “She and her friends were also after Bormann. It would appear that everyone was in on the affair – except for German intelligence.”
“She telephoned me at the Atlantic an hour or so ago,” Chavasse continued. “Without going into details of how and why, she found Bormann’s manuscript waiting for her when she returned to the apartment this evening. It had been delivered by mail.”
“Presumably, that’s what the opposition were after when they came here,” von Kraul said.
Chavasse shook his head. “I think they were looking for Anna. It was just luck that she happened to have the manuscript.”
“It must make interesting reading.”
Chavasse nodded. “I understand Bormann washed a lot of dirty linen in public and gave names. People who’ve always insisted they never really supported Hitler – important people.”
“Presumably, Nagel must be included,” von Kraul said.
“He probably has a chapter to himself,” Chavasse told him, and at that moment the phone rang.
He lifted the receiver and said, “Yes, who is it?” knowing full well who it was.
Steiner’s voice floated over the wire. “Now, that’s a superfluous question. Su
rely you expected me to call?”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Because I’ve had the place under observation since we left.” Steiner sounded full of confidence.
“Let’s cut the talk and get down to business,” Chavasse told him. “What have you done with the girl?”
Steiner laughed harshly. “You know, you’re not as bright as I was led to believe, Chavasse. You allowed us to follow you all the way from Berndorf to the girl’s apartment.”
“You’ve got the manuscript,” Chavasse said. “What more do you want?”
“Ah, yes, the manuscript. Providential that she had it with her when we called. I’m sure you’ll be interested to know that I’ve reduced it to ashes in the furnace of the establishment from which I am now speaking. It made a fine blaze.”
Chavasse sat down. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and the room seemed unbearably warm. He cleared his throat. “You’ve got what you wanted. Why don’t you let the girl go? She can’t harm you now.”
“But that’s exactly what I intend to do,” Steiner said, “with your cooperation, of course.”
Von Kraul was crouched beside Chavasse, his ear as close to the receiver as possible, and he looked up, eyes expressionless.
Chavasse moistened his lips. “What do you want me to do?”
“I’m so glad you’re being sensible,” Steiner said. “To be perfectly honest, we’ve found you a nuisance, Chavasse. We’d rather you were out of Germany. Now that the Bormann affair is finished, there’s really nothing to keep you here. A London plane leaves the airport at ten o’clock. If you’ll give me your word not to trouble us any more, you and the girl can leave together on that plane.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” Chavasse asked.
“You don’t,” Steiner replied, “but if you feel like taking a chance, be outside Altona station at nine o’clock. A car will pick you up there and take you to the girl.”
