The Company of Strangers

by Robert Wilson

  ‘We are helping you win the war,’ said Voss. ‘A war that is nearly over, that will see Europe change, that could see – if you persist with your romantic attachment to the East – half of it sheafed under the scythe and beaten with the hammer. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Very poetic,’ said Rose, deadpan.

  ‘It’s not our decision,’ said Sutherland. ‘We put your case, believe me. We put your case very strongly.’

  ‘And my reward?’ asked Voss, holding out his hands. ‘An atomic device will be dropped on Dresden. I thank you for it.’

  ‘Long night ahead of us, you know, Voss,’ said Rose, walking behind Sutherland to the fireplace.

  ‘What we can do,’ said Sutherland, ‘is look after you.’

  ‘Look after me?’

  ‘Here in Lisbon,’ said Rose. ‘You know how it is when you start losing a war. Start spit-roasting the traitors.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Richard,’ said Sutherland.

  Rose crossed his legs at the ankle, made a suave Noël Coward gesture with his cigarette hand. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘You could be comfortable in Lisbon,’ said Sutherland.

  ‘As long as you like your women morena,’ said Rose, staring into him.

  Their argument twitched in Voss’s mind. They know something. Wallis must have seen something. But when?

  ‘Do you think my personal safety has been an issue in any of this?’ asked Voss. ‘Do you think I play this game to save my own skin?’

  Sutherland felt instantly shabby, disgusted. Rose, not so.

  ‘It’s an option,’ said Rose, light as duck down.

  These men are no better than SS Colonel Weiss at Rastenburg, thought Voss. Not only is there never any credit with them, but they’re paid…they’re paid not so much to open the chink into the light, but more to find the slimy crevice into the sweaty cavern of men’s shameful needs.

  ‘What he means,’ said Sutherland, nauseated by Rose himself, ‘is that we will make sure you don’t go down. If they’re closing in on you and we hear about it, we’ll get you out.’

  ‘But that is not why I am here. I thought you understood that,’ said Voss, directly to Sutherland. ‘I’m here…I’m here…’

  ‘Yes?’ said Rose.

  Why was he here? What was his motive? He’d never examined it to be put into words. He’d only assumed it. His country? No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t precise.

  ‘Why are you here?’ pressed Rose, taking delight in Voss’s discomfiture.

  ‘I’m here because of my father,’ said Voss, and nearly wept at the thought of it. ‘I’m here because of my brother.’

  Sutherland looked mortified. Rose had hoped for something more kitsch – I’m here to save my country from the Russian bear – that would have satisfied. That could have been punctured.

  Voss resumed his seat, looked around the room, felt the quality of their silence. Rose? Damn him. Sutherland. He’d tell Sutherland.

  ‘A new type of rocket will be launched at the end of next month,’ said Voss, speaking before he was even aware of it himself. ‘It’s long range and, unlike the V1, which I understand has been named the doodlebug, it is totally silent. It also weighs fourteen tons.’

  ‘Fourteen tons!’ said Sutherland.

  ‘Now come on, Voss,’ said Rose. ‘What’s going to be the payload on something like that? Don’t tell us…’

  ‘I am telling you, if you’re prepared to listen. It is these rockets that Hitler is calling his miracle weapons, but,’ he said, raising a finger, ‘they will still be carrying conventional explosives.’

  ‘Where are the rockets?’ asked Sutherland, cutting Rose dead.

  ‘Underground. They’re in the Harz mountains, not far from Buchenwald. They’ll be nearly impossible to destroy from the air.’

  ‘I can’t believe…’ started Rose.

  ‘You’ll have to believe me.’

  ‘So what is Wolters buying from Lazard?’ asked Rose. ‘Don’t tell us Lazard’s coming back with a million dollars’ worth of TNT.’

  ‘Lazard is out of our hands now. You’ll only find that out when you pick him up in New York. I doubt, if he has any sense, that he’ll be wandering about with a case of atomic material.’

  ‘It’s an interesting coincidence, though,’ said Rose. ‘The new, bigger rocket and Lazard’s trip.’

  ‘That’s why you have to be careful…not to lose Lazard,’ said Voss. ‘Either way you might like to bomb the research laboratories in Berlin-Dahlem. It will give you small satisfaction. I’ve told you again and again, and you must know from your own research, that the industrial activity to produce the substance of an atomic bomb would be enormous. Unmissable. Germany has neither the money nor the material.’

  ‘But you have Hahn and Heisenberg.’

  ‘They are scientists, not wizards. They are just like Dornberger and von Braun.’

  ‘The rocket men?’

  ‘The difference with Dornberger and von Braun, though, is that they have the necessary materials to build rockets. The other two men only have a small half-working cyclotron, a little heavy water left from Rjukan. Even their precious uranium will be thrown at the enemy now that the wolfram supply has been closed off.’

  Sutherland checked his watch.

  ‘You said something about the leadership.’

  ‘What time is it?’ asked Voss.

  ‘Past midnight.’

  ‘Tomorrow on 20th July some time before midday, Hitler will be assassinated by a bomb planted in the situation room at his headquarters in Rastenburg,’ said Voss, calmer about it now, but still expecting to make a big impression.

  ‘How many times did we hear that from Otto John in March?’ jeered Rose.

  ‘But not from me…now,’ said Voss. ‘The assassination will launch Operation Valkyrie. I will arrest or shoot SS General Wolters and any other SS men in the legation. At that point, gentlemen, I hope and presume we will be able to start our proper negotiations.’

  ‘And if the assassination attempt fails?’ asked Sutherland.

  There was a knock on the glass of the door. One of the agents under the colonnade asked permission to interrupt. Rose went outside, talked to the man behind the closed door.

  ‘To answer your question,’ said Voss. ‘Few of us, if any, will survive but it will be a deliv—’

  Rose wrenched the door open, slammed it shut behind him. The glass rattled in the frame.

  ‘Lazard wasn’t on the plane when it landed in Dakar,’ he said.

  Chapter 22

  Tuesday, 18th July 1944, Estoril, near Lisbon.

  Anne walked the warm, quiet streets until she came out into the casino square. She skirted the parking area, keeping to the deeper shadow beneath the dark spread of the trees. She was looking for Jim Wallis but he wasn’t there, not sitting in any of the cars. She went into Wilshere’s garden, through the gate. Waited. Still no Wallis. She knew she should go back up to the house and get some sleep before working on the safe in the early hours of the morning but she didn’t want to see Wilshere. She went down to a café in the square, straightened herself out in the ladies room and looked for Wallis, expecting to see him in the bar looking after her again. She found an empty table, ordered a brandy and soda. Still no Wallis, but people. She needed to be amongst people. She stayed there until the waiters started turning up the chairs. She walked back up to the house and sat in the darkness of the bower until 1.00 a.m.

  She took the shoes off her aching feet and went back up to the house whose windows were dark. She thought about the safe, wondered if she should just go straight in now and open it, but exhaustion hit her as she tripped across the lawn and she stood for a moment rolling her head on her shoulders, thinking of Voss and the room over the Estrela Gardens. Her eyes were half-closed ready for sleep when she went up on to the back terrace, nudged into a piece of the garden furniture which jabbed her thigh.

  ‘Ah,’ said Wilshere, as if he’d been waiting all
evening, relief in his voice. ‘Been working late?’

  She was irritated to find him there, sitting at one end of a bench with bottle and glass in front of him, two packets of cigarettes piled on the table.

  ‘I went out with someone from work.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘The Negresco,’ she said. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Shell must be paying well these days,’ he said, and patted the bench beside him. ‘Have a seat.’

  ‘I’ve had a long day.’

  ‘Drink?’ he asked.

  ‘I just want to go to bed.’

  ‘Just a quick one. Keep an old man company on a long, hot night.’

  She dropped her shoes, sat on automatic, yawning.

  ‘Nothing complicated, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Have to get it myself. Servants really are off tonight.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Like to be alone sometimes,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what a strain it is to be with people all the time. Never have the place to yourself. Never…private. So…every so often…we pack them off. They’ve all got families around here. Bit of peace and quiet. Remind myself how to make a sandwich.’

  He made her a brandy and soda, which she didn’t really want. He lit cigarettes, sat on the bench with his arm along the back.

  ‘They say the weather’s going to break,’ he said.

  ‘There was a fog in Lisbon.’

  ‘Yes, that’s supposed to mean something but I can’t remember what.’

  His finger came to rest on her shoulder. She glanced at it, set her jaw. She shifted her shoulder while crossing her legs and looked him in the eye, so that he’d know that these invasions were not allowed any more. It signalled something to him. He held her look, returning her cold, hard stare with a slack, expressionless face. The sexual confidence she had to stare him down vanished, and was replaced by undiluted panic. It wasn’t her life she was afraid of losing so much as everything that had just started. To be nothing now, to cease to exist after the beginning of something new would be terrible. She turned away from him.

  ‘Why am I here?’ she asked, taking a large slug of the brandy, needing a bottle to see this one out. ‘Why did you invite me to come and stay at your house?’

  ‘To spy on me,’ he said, quite calm.

  Her breathing shallowed, the blood drained out of her lips, how cold they went. She put the cigarette to them knowing from her short study of the history of spying that nobody says something like that without having drastic intentions.

  ‘Spy?’ she said, a lame effort at denial.

  ‘Cardew’s an amateur. Most of the rest of them think they’re not. Rose, Sutherland, all the people they’ve sent to my door. Do you think I could have supplied Germany with diamonds throughout the war without knowing who’s who in the SIS and all their stupid tricks? Amateurs, the lot of them. The local drama group could do better.’

  It was so still, not even the smoke moved off. Her brain crashed through the possibilities. All she’d heard in this house had been gifted to her. Parcelled. Not one piece of unconsidered information. Lazard. The diamonds. New York. If that was so, there were no variables left. She worked out the equation. Lazard – American IG – Ozalid. Lazard had known Hal Couples before. Hal Couples, still working for Ozalid, had picked something up and was now selling it for the diamonds supplied by Wilshere.

  ‘Hal Couples,’ she said.

  ‘Bravo,’ he said and clapped, a slow sardonic clap. All he could manage for the local drama group.

  ‘What does he have that’s worth that sort of money?’

  ‘Nuclear know-how,’ he said. ‘The core to the atomic apple. Don’t ask me the ins and outs.’

  ‘You’d let Lazard sell that to the Germans?’

  ‘You’re too involved with your own game to see what’s happening on the other pitch.’

  ‘What other pitch?’

  ‘Anything the Germans do to bring closer a united Ireland is fine by me,’ said Wilshere. ‘They can reduce London to ashes and we’ll run the dogs out of the north.’

  She needed to talk. That would extend things. She had to unbalance Wilshere but even then, no Wallis, no back-up.

  And why me? That was another thought that was not helping her.

  Wilshere moved down the bench, put his arm all the way around her, his warm dry palm cupped her shoulder – no sex, avuncular now. The only idea that came up in her head and wouldn’t go away was Judy Laverne, Wilshere’s weakness.

  Why not play out her theory? What had been her greatest fear had probably been Wilshere’s too. Keep twisting the blade stuck in his ribs, see what happens when steel grates against bone.

  ‘There was somebody, wasn’t there, who got through?’ she said.

  ‘None of them…they were all hopeless.’

  ‘You’re forgetting Judy Laverne. She was a professional. When did you find out about her?’ she said, and Wilshere’s arm flinched.

  ‘Find out what?’ he asked.

  ‘That Lazard wasn’t quite telling you the truth.’

  ‘Lazard?’ he said, more intrigued.

  ‘He tried to persuade you that she was seeing other men, didn’t he?’ she said, dredging up the diary. ‘He must have known she was a spy, though. Why do you think he’d do a thing like that? Or maybe you know already.’

  She could almost hear him blinking. He gripped her arm hard, squeezed the flesh.

  ‘You wouldn’t have thought that someone like Beecham Lazard would bother with Shakespeare.’

  ‘Shakespeare?’ he said, confused.

  ‘Othello,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t seem the cultured type, does he? I think it must have just been an innate understanding of the…of the manipulative power of jealousy. I suppose if he’d done it the other way round – told you that she was a spy first – he wouldn’t have had the same measure of control over you, would he? And that’s what Lazard’s after in all his dealings, isn’t it? Control. Whose idea was it to get me to come and stay, yours or his?’

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ he said.

  ‘You are hurting my arm,’ she said, feeling stronger now.

  He stopped squeezing, stroked instead.

  ‘What’s going to happen to you has already been planned,’ he said, ‘but keep talking, you’re amusing me.’

  ‘But you don’t answer, do you?’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re being fair.’

  She reached for her drink. He grabbed at her arm, then let her pick up the glass, put it down for her. They smoked.

  ‘I was relieved at first,’ said Wilshere.

  ‘That she was a spy?’

  ‘It explained everything,’ he said, and Wilshere’s confirmation spooled out the ramifications.

  ‘Except one thing, surely.’

  ‘Ye-e-es,’ he said, and never had the affirmative been so despairing.

  ‘How did it come out…that she was working?’

  ‘Beecham caught her. She got careless one day, disturbed things on his desk, which made him watchful. So eventually he left the office and came back suddenly to find her…in flagrante.’

  ‘What was she looking for?’

  ‘The diamond trail. There’re two ways to stop rockets falling on London. One is to bomb the launch sites, except that bombing isn’t accurate and rebuilding the damage is comparatively easy. The other way is to stop the rockets being built in the first place. Cut off the diamond supply, no more precision tools…end of rocket programme.’

  ‘How did the Americans know that Lazard was the broker between you and the Germans?’

  He seemed on the brink of an automatic answer but then stopped to think. Maybe it wasn’t so obvious.

  ‘They knew about him from when he was an executive at American IG.’

  ‘I mean specifically diamonds?’

  ‘I suppose it must have just…They knew he was handling a lot of business for the Germans…so they put her in there.’

  ‘But who told you she was a
fter the diamond trail?’

  ‘Lazard, of course.’

  ‘But how did she get to you? I’m sure Lazard doesn’t leave notes around his office saying four hundred carats of diamonds from Wilshere received 20th May 1944, does he?’

  ‘I think…I think what it was…it was that she saw Lazard and I together in the casino.’

  ‘One of your little transactions with the high-denomination chips?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the only way she could think of getting close to you was to fall in love with you?’

  Wilshere’s cigarette travelled to his lips on trembling fingers. He drank heavily from his glass, topped it up again from the bottle.

  ‘Lazard caught her, as I said. She talked her way out of it brilliantly. She was so…charming…so vivacious. It was impossible not to believe every word she said. Lazard accepted her cover story and that night came to see me. He said…’ Wilshere swallowed hard, ‘he said she had to be…what were his words? Neutralized, that was it…she had to be neutralized before she could be pulled out. I was vehemently against it. I didn’t…I couldn’t believe it…And, I mean, why kill her? What did she really know, after all? Let her go, I said. But Lazard said that it wasn’t the way things worked, that he had to know what she knew, and what the Americans knew about his operation, so that he could protect his business. I still couldn’t accept it. He said: “You’ll see, Paddy, she’ll be here tomorrow telling you she’s got to go…mother’s dying or something, and that’ll be it. We’ll be exposed.” What else did he say? Yes…that was it: “I know you’re sweet on her, Paddy,” he said, “but she’s a spy. Whatever there is between you and her isn’t real, not from her side anyway. We’re going to have to cut her out.” My God, as if she were a cancer or something.

  ‘I saw her that night. We met in the casino. We danced, played cards, some roulette, had a few drinks. I walked her home. We made love in her single bed and, you know, she wasn’t just calm…she was serene. She was serene and appeared deeply happy. Lazard was wrong, I thought. He just had to be wrong.’

  Wilshere hugged Anne to his chest. Smoked the cigarette down to his fingers, which were steadier now that the story was coming out. He lit another and drank more. Anne was silent, her desperate thoughts being interfered with now by Karl Voss and whether that was ‘real’ and how do you know what’s true about anybody anyway? Karl Voss hadn’t known about his father’s first love. Throwing his ashes on a stranger’s grave. And, unbidden, like a piece of dream from the night before that suddenly becomes clear, the image of Mafalda appeared, taking the clay figurine out of her hands, the blindfolded woman – Amor é cego. Love is blind.