Man Who Wanted Tomorrow

by Brian Freemantle

  “Guten Abend, Herr Doktor Köllman,” greeted the man.

  Kurnov gasped, immediately regretting the reaction, knowing the other man would have detected it.

  “Come now, doctor. Or shall I call you Heinrich? Yes, I’ll call you Heinrich. Come now, Heinrich, let’s not have any theatricality …”

  “How do you …?”

  “… Know that the infamous Dr. Köllman would be the person on the telephone? Because it had to be, hadn’t it? Remember what I’ve got from the lake. I’ve always known what you did, Heinrich. Now I’ve got proof. I’ve got the secret you hoped would never come out. So I knew you’d have to come and get it back, if you were alive, no matter where you were hiding … and then, Bock mentioned the files he wanted to buy. So I knew you’d arrived. Just simply deduction.”

  “No matter where you were hiding,” picked up Kurnov. Did that mean the man at the other end didn’t know his new identity? An ephemeral hope. But hope, nevertheless. Bock was right; it was unquestionably a Bavarian accent. Kurnov wished he had had the forethought to have a glass of water on the tiny bedside table, coughing through his blocked throat.

  “Who are you?” demanded the Russian.

  It was a jeering laugh. “You’ll be surprised, Heinrich. So surprised. I can hardly wait to see the look on your face …”

  “You mean … I know you …?”

  Again the laugh. “Oh yes, Heinrich. You know me. That’s what is making this all the more enjoyable for me.”

  Kurnov squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to think. Who? It had to be possible to guess. But there was no one, no one at all. Only Grüber. And Grüber was dead. Yet it was obviously someone who knew him. And knew him well. But there was nobody that close. There never had been.

  “Bock’s broken, isn’t he?” said the other man, defining Kurnov’s earlier thoughts. This time the Russian avoided any obvious reaction. But only just.

  “He’s very dangerous to you, Heinrich,” continued the Bavarian. “You’ll have to dispose of him soon, for your own protection. You’ve decided to kill him, of course, haven’t you?”

  Kurnov’s mouth moved, forming the words, but no sound emanated. He recognized the method: had used it even, to break a person. A cardinal principle was to anticipate the thought in the victim’s mind, as it occurred, so that he became disorientated and muddled, feeling the interrogator could reach in to control his reasoning. But it was necessary to have studied the victim first, for the psychology to succeed.

  “Come now,” went on the Bavarian, the lilt in his voice hinting his elation at his control of the conversation. “There’s no need to be shy with me, Heinrich. I know you. So I know just what you will have been planning over the last twenty-four hours. Bock’s probably necessary as a contact. But that is over now. Remember what you always said, Heinrich—‘Stay alive. Whatever happens, stay alive.’ That was your credo, wasn’t it? Bock’s endangering your chances.”

  Who? searched Kurnov, desperately. Whose knowledge was complete enough to recall remarks he’d made over thirty years ago? In every sentence there was a clue and still he was unable to identify the man. He stared at his hand, vibrating on the table. His nerves were being destroyed, he realized. He would have to conclude everything soon, otherwise he would be reduced to a mumbling apology of a man. Like Bock.

  “You must tell me …” he started, but immediately the German talked him down, enjoying his superiority. Another psychological trick, identified Kurnov. Bully an uncertain man, to keep him jumping.

  “I haven’t got to do anything for you,” insisted the voice, with sudden vehemence. “Nothing. Just as you did nothing for me.”

  Another clue, snatched Kurnov, desperately. It was someone he’d offended, in the past.

  “Look,” tried Kurnov, urgently, gesturing with his free hand. “I don’t know who you are. But you’re obviously someone from the Party … someone I’ve hurt, unknowingly. I don’t know how … unless you tell me. Or why. But I’m sorry. I’m prepared to make any apology. And to pay … to pay very well for what came from that damned lake. There’s no point in this baiting, no point at all …”

  He stopped, abruptly. It was working, he thought, worriedly, analyzing what he had just said. He was capitulating, offering concessions unthinkingly … just like his own victims had, over and over again, when he had practiced the same approach.

  “It’s not nice, is it, Heinrich?” teased the voice, and Kurnov gripped his hands, tightly clamping his mouth together to prevent the exasperation escaping in a sound. He was doing it again! Always the other man was ahead, anticipating the thoughts. It was almost as if the two had worked together, in the early days. Another clue?

  “… This must be one of the first times in your life that you’ve lost control and had to beg … to plead with someone,” the torment went on.

  The sentence broke away into a sniggering, unsympathetic laugh.

  “… Think, Heinrich. How many times have you heard such pleas from people who’ve known you’re going to experiment upon them until they die? It’s not nice, is it, Heinrich, being brought to this level?”

  Kurnov breathed in, deeply, fighting for control. The bastard, making him grovel. How wonderful it would be, he thought, to make the man suffer.

  “What do you want?” he asked. The desperation leaked into his voice and stupidly he snapped his mouth shut. He had to conceal any weakness, he knew. It was part of the psychology, identifying his own gradual collapse. He sighed, reluctantly. It was pointless, he thought. The man seemed to know his weaknesses before he revealed them. He straightened in the chair, angrily. That was exactly the mental attitude the other man was trying to engender, he knew.

  “Want?” echoed the Bavarian. “What do I want? Oh, many things, Heinrich, many things. Money, of course. A lot of money. And I shall get that. I shall get it from you and Bock very easily. And from the yids, too. Those bastards can suffer … because they were born to suffer. They’re good at it, aren’t they. You proved that, years ago.”

  Kurnov seized the word, “yids.” A Nazi. The man had to be a committed Nazi whom he had once known, intimately. But he had known no one that well. By careful design. His very survival had been built upon a platform of remaining aloof.

  “… But satisfaction, too,” continued the man. “Satisfaction most of all. You’re going to crawl to me, Heinrich. You’re going to repeat, again and again, how sorry you are for what you did …”

  “What the hell did I do …?” yelled Kurnov, uncontrolled. The man was right, Kurnov accepted. It was one of the first times he’d had to beg. And it was bad. Very bad.

  The laughter jarred down the telephone, stretching Kuraov’s annoyance.

  “Come now, Heinrich. There’s no point in losing your temper. I’m holding all the bargaining points … don’t forget that …”

  Was it a trap, a Nazi ploy to punish him after all these years? The fear came at him, suddenly. No, he dismissed, immediately. It wasn’t a plot. The Nazis weren’t like that. They’d snatch him and torture him for what he had done. But such a psychological approach was beyond them. Always they had veered towards thuggery. And if they’d had the evidence they wouldn’t be proclaiming it around Berlin.

  “I’ll need to be sure …” be began, but again, confident of himself, the Bavarian cut in. It was a practiced persistence, accepted Kurnov, rehearsed to unsettle him.

  “Of what, Heinrich? That this isn’t some elaborate Nazi plot to trap you after all these years …?”

  Oh God, thought Kurnov. Every time he was being anticipated. He mumbled, sentences not forming.

  “… Got to be sure …” he managed.

  “I really don’t see you can be,” said the other man, lightly. “I don’t give a fuck for the Nazis … they’re like children with an old game … something played years ago and outgrown. But there’s no way I can convince you of that. Or want to, particularly. It’s simply a matter for you. I’ve got the dossiers. If you’re uncertain, then don
’t buy. Leave it to the yids.”

  “I can’t do that,” blurted Kurnov.

  “I know you can’t,” came back the other man. He giggled. “… You wouldn’t believe the pleasure I get from the power, Heinrich. I’m aware it’s not like that you’ve known, conscious that whole camps of men, women and children have quivered and tried to run away as you’ve entered. But it isn’t bad. It brought you running. And reduced Bock to a nervous breakdown. The yids are running around, beside themselves with anxiety. And I expect the Organisation der Ehemaligen S.S. Angehörgen have committed themselves totally to recovering evidence that they think could hang them all.”

  How much he needed a drink, thought Kurnov. He felt like a man abandoned in a desert.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked. The words rasped from him, the defeat obvious.

  “Oh, Heinrich,” jibed the Bavarian. “I expected you to last out much longer. After all, no one should know better than you how to resist psychological pressure. But now you’ve given in. What a disappointment!”

  “What do you want?” the Russian repeated, dully.

  He would defeat the man, he decided, suddenly. He’d allow himself to be led along, like a bull with a ring through its nose, but he would beat him, in the end. He bit against the knuckle he pressed into his mouth, reinforcing the vow with pain. God, how he’d make the bastard suffer.

  “A meeting, I think, Heinrich,” said the Bavarian, picking up the question. “A meeting, so I can get the pleasure of seeing you physically squirm.”

  Kurnov’s anger evaporated like mist in a summer sun.

  “A meeting? Certainly,” he responded, ignoring the laughter with which the eagerness was greeted.

  “Somewhere open, I think, don’t you, Heinrich? Somewhere like the Grunewald Park?”

  Kurnov winced. It was miles on the other side of the city.

  “Have you a pen, Heinrich?” prodded the Bavarian. “You’d better write it down. You don’t want to get the directions wrong, do you?”

  “I’m ready,” recited Kurnov.

  “Good. Go along the Autobahn, until you see the sign for the Teltower Weg. Go down that filter road until it’s intersected by the Verbindung. The first road leads down to the Sportsplatz. Wait at that junction, Heinrich. Just wait and I’ll come when I’m ready …”

  “Wait,” said Kurnov, desperately. “It’s difficult for me … I can’t wait indefinitely …”

  “You can, Heinrich,” jeered the man. “You can wait just as long as I determined you should. You’ve no control, you know. None at all …”

  “Please …” started Kurnov again, but then stopped as the receiver was replaced.

  Kurnov sat on the bedside, unable to move. He shuddered violently, frustration bunched inside him. Quickly he walked to the bathroom, gulping water, finally immersing his face in the shallow bowl. He stared up at himself in the mirror. In just a week, he saw, he’d become an old man. The strain and fear was marked into his face as if Bock had incised it there all those years ago, with his scalpel. Without any sound he began crying, watching the tears form their own path down his face. Please God, he prayed. Help me. Please.

  The second call from the Bavarian was much shorter and more businesslike. The same Israeli took it, noting the instructions immediately and without challenge, running from the embassy to get to the stipulated meeting place. The phone-box was on Hüfner Weg, near the park. As the Bavarian had promised, the stopping-place was identifiable from the box-number.

  The topsheet from a file upon Richard Glücks, water-stained, was stuck lightly in the page where the Israeli embassy number was listed. As he snatched the page out, the Israeli tore the reference to Glücks. He quickly checked nothing of importance was left, apart from the name that he didn’t want, then hurried away from the box, hesitating momentarily outside to ensure he was not observed.

  Even though Muntz argued they would probably be too late, Frieden insisted upon driving to the telephone-box four hours later when they got the recording of the intercepted message.

  The portly Nazi stumped from the telephone-box, driving his fist into the side of the car in frustration.

  “It’s happened,” he said, definitely. “As the man promised in the call, he left something as proof of what the box contains.”

  He waved the directory in Muntz’s face, so the ailing lawyer could see that the page listing the Israeli embassy had been ripped out. Still adhering was the water-stained strip that had come away when the security man had pulled at the page.

  “He itemized the page it would be on,” reminded Frieden.

  Muntz looked at him, wearily. How pointless it all seemed, he thought. Frieden answered the look.

  “We can’t miss them again,” he said, definitely. “Tell the telephonist we must be called, immediately another meeting is arranged, so that we can get there at the same time as the yids. I don’t care if it costs the man his job. The Organization will pay him for life, just for that one piece of information.”

  “How do we know it isn’t too late?” queried Muntz. “Perhaps the Jews have bought everything already.”

  Frieden shook his head, angrily. The lawyer’s mind was seizing up with his illness, he decided.

  “We know from the blasted tape,” he insisted. “They had no idea we would intercept that conversation. So what would be the point of stage-managing what happened tonight? None at all. The final handover will be in a house or an apartment. It has to be. They’re hardly going to exchange an ammunition box for a million pounds in the middle of a public park, are they?”

  Muntz nodded reluctant agreement.

  “I’m very frightened, Max,” said the lawyer, unexpectedly. “I’ve a feeling we’re going to be beaten.”

  The millionaire stared at the other man, the anger returning at the easy capitulation. It was difficult to argue, however. Because Frieden was experiencing the same doubts.

  These were increased four hours later by the announcement in Jerusalem that there had been further Israeli contact with the man purporting to hold the Toplitz box.

  “We are confident of a major development within days,” asserted Moshe Dayan. “We have information already about Richard Glücks.”

  The Politburo listened patiently to Mavetsky’s report. Toward the end, Shepalin began nodding, but the minister was unsure what the gesture meant. Mavetsky paused, looking back to the last page of Suvlov’s report, picking up the sentence.

  “… And certainly from the oddness of his behavior, disregarding the caution that any normal Russian would show during a foreign visit, it would seem that Kurnov’s control is fast slipping away,” he read aloud. “The thought that he might be under surveillance does not appear to have occurred to him.”

  The minister looked up.

  “I think,” he said to the assembled government, feeling it wise to voice the fear, “we should be careful of that development. I am concerned at the continued freedom we are allowing the man, matched against this reported deterioration …”

  Shepalin smiled at the anxiety.

  “… But we have your assurance that he’s adequately guarded,” the chairman prodded gently. “And don’t forget that West Berlin is an encircled city. There’s nowhere he can go, is there?”

  Mavetsky abandoned the argument, sitting down. The protest had been registered, which was sufficient for the moment, he decided. He’d definitely infiltrate more men over the Wall, he thought.

  At that moment, in West Berlin, Kurnov was returning to the hotel after spending four hours waiting, as instructed, at the junction in Grunewald Park. He slumped in his room, head hanging forward on his chest, his mind fumbling to understand what was happening.

  The man was playing with him, he knew, like an angler tiring the fish that had seized the hook but could not be immediately taken from the water. He straightened at last, trying to breathe in courage. He’d refuse any demand when the man made contact again, he determined. He wouldn’t be jerked and made to d
ance, like a marionette, with no control over himself. Worriedly, he began reviewing his behavior over the last few hours. Control was being taken away, he realized. He was behaving like one of Pavlov’s dogs, obediently performing to any command.

  Certainly the man possessed something he had to have, to ensure his continued survival. But Kurnov had money, and that gave him some lever. Next time he’d definitely resist!

  Then the telephone sounded stridently and Kurnov jumped at the noise, looking fearfully toward it, knowing before he replied he would do exactly as he was told. Pavlov’s dogs had reacted to bells, he remembered, picking up the instrument.

  (15)

  “Cold wait?” jeered the Bavarian, as soon as Kurnov identified himself. The Russian’s mouth twitched, forming the obscenity. Then he pulled back, knowing the man wanted just such a response. He had to fight, to pull himself from the apathy being woven over him by the other man.

  “Why?” demanded Kurnov, tightly.

  “Well done, Heinrich! That shows better control,” praised the German, mockingly.

  Here it comes again, thought the scientist; the constant anticipation.

  “Why?” threw back his tormentor. “Several reasons, of course. I had to be sure you’d be alone. That was the most important. I couldn’t imagine how it would have been possible, but you might have got some helpers in the city … people who would help even you for sufficient payment. So I had to make sure I wouldn’t be creating a trap for myself by meeting you …”

  “… You mean you watched me? All the time I was there, you were watching me …?”

  Kurnov felt chilled. Another manifestation, he realized. The experiments always shivered under attack, feeling physical coldness.

  “Oh yes,” said the Bavarian. “Do you know what? I actually pretended to fix you in the sights of an imaginary rifle, I pulled the trigger, three times. You died today, Heinrich. Three times. Twice in the heart and once through the head. It would have been so easy, to kill you … it almost seemed a wasted opportunity …”