Artillery of Lies (10 page)

HAYSTACK reports that a stolen document from the Ministry of Economic Warfare is circulating in London, revealing that contrary to official statements the average output per man/week in the semi-skilled sector has failed to reverse a decline which cannot be attributed to such negative factors as …

She skimmed the next few paragraphs. “God!” she said. “This is boring.”

“I know. That's what makes it so beautiful.” Freddy came and looked over her shoulder. “It's so boring it's got to be true. Nobody but a government department could come up with anything so boring as that. He's a genius.”

“It's not true? All this Ministry stuff?”

“Certainly not. It's all hokum. But it
rings
true, doesn't it? And if you believe it you're more likely to swallow the rest of the report—burning convoys and bolshy dockers and canceled assaults on Fortress Europe.”

Julie flicked through a few pages. Freddy was right; Luis had a special style: a mixture of B-movie adventure, travelers' tales, gossip, scandal and dense thickets of bureaucratic prose. She had forgotten how impressive it was. “Has the army really canceled any raids on Europe?” she asked.

“I've no idea. Doesn't really matter, does it? As long as the Germans think we might attack, they'll keep lots of men in the
west. Where Luis is so clever is in making bad news look like good news …” The flicker of white pajama trousers caught his eye. “For heaven's sake,” he said. “What is he up to now?”

Luis, still in his dressing gown, was trudging across the grass toward a clump of pines. The wind blew his hair sideways. He stopped to pick up a piece of dead wood; tucked it under his arm; walked on. “He'll freeze,” Freddy said.

“I'll go,” she said.

By the time she caught up with him, he had crossed the pines and was tramping resolutely down a muddy path into a great sprawl of woodland. Treetops creaked and rocked. The air was raw with the threat of an oncoming storm. She was in gumboots and overcoat and was carrying boots for Luis and an old army cape. “Put these on,” she said.

“Don't need ‘em.” He had not looked at her.

“Luis …” She was about to say:
Don't be such a schmuck, you schmuck,
but she swallowed the words. “It could get pretty cold.”

“I'll light a fire.” Without stopping, he showed her the piece of wood. It was thick and mossy and black with damp.

“That's good. Got any matches?”

He nodded.

The track narrowed and she had to walk behind him. They followed a stream, crossed it, climbed a long slope that was broken with jagged outcrops of stone. All the time the air grew colder and the light got worse. Halfway up the slope a fallen tree blocked the path. Luis scrambled over it and lost his slippers. Julie ducked underneath. “Sit,” she ordered, and pointed to a flat rock. Luis sat. She shoved the gumboots on his muddy feet and spread the cape over his shoulders. “Lead on,” she said.

Half a mile away he came upon a place where a rocky overhang created a shallow cave, high above a stand of magnificent beeches. “Fire here,” he said. He still had his piece of black, mossy wood. He looked at it as if deciding which end to light first.

She took it out of his hands and threw it as far as she could, so it went sailing down between the tall, clean-cut trunks of the beeches. “You're a nice guy, Luis,” she said, “but it's obvious you were never a Girl Scout.”

“I can light a fire.” He was angry, but he was also shivering.

“Oh, sure. In Spain you can light a fire, where it's hot and dry.
Who can't? Scratch a Spaniard and start a fire, isn't that right, Luis? But this is soggy old England, so give me the matches.”

Luis refused. He folded his arms and put one foot crosswise on top of the other. His nose was running and he wiped it with the back of his hand. “They're
my
matches,” he muttered.

“Shit!” she said. “To quote an eminent writer.” There was deadlock while she stared at him and he stared at nothing. “OK, I tell you what,” she said. “You light the fire, right? I
make
it and you
light
it. Deal? Terrific” Before Luis could respond she had grabbed his arm and pointed him at some trees. “Get dry wood, thin as your finger. Look for dead branches still on the tree.” She gave him a shove and turned and went the opposite way. “This is fun!” she cried.
You dumb schmuck,
she added silently.

Julie built a fire on good Girl-Scout principles. Luis shuffled back and dumped a huge armful of dry sticks beside it. She pointed to the spot where he should apply flame. “Put it there, partner,” she said. He broke three matches before he got one to light, but its flame spread like magic and the blaze was a beacon in a dark and wicked world. “Now all we need is marshmallows,” she said.

“For what?” he asked.

“To stuff up your nose!” she shouted. “What else?” She found that very funny and when she laughed, he blinked with bewilderment. His cape had fallen off; his dressing gown hung open; his pajamas were unbuttoned; he was a walking disaster. Yet nothing could disguise his slim and clean-limbed grace. Julie wiped her filthy hands on his chest. It was an action that slipped easily into a hug, and the hug became an embrace. “Is that a bottle in your pocket?” Luis asked, “or am I glad to see you?”

It was half a bottle of sherry: all that Julie had been able to grab on her way out. “Genuine treacle,” she said. “The poor bloody Spanish aren't allowed to get their sticky hands on this.”

Luis took a long swig. “Only wonderful,” he said, and burped. “No breakfast,” he explained.

They sat in the radiance of the fire for the best part of an hour, talking easily, and sometimes not talking, just as easily. In the end, odd spots of rain fizzed into the embers. “We ought to go,” Julie said.

“I'm not going back there.” He picked up an old branch and whacked it on the ground. It snapped. “Rotten,” he said. The tension and gloom were seeping back again.

“What's wrong, Luis?” she asked.

“I'm bored,” he said.

She had heard this before, more than once, but still she was not sure how to handle it. “I can see how you would be,” she said. “What with a world war raging all around you, a fight to the death between freedom and Fascism, I mean it gets sort of tedious and—”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know,” he said. “I know I know I know I know. Don't tell me I should be grateful I'm alive and not hungry and in England, I know all that. Makes no difference.” Luis hid his face in his hands. “I can't write if I'm bored. I hate it. There's no point.”

“But you
are
writing,” Julie pointed out, “and Freddy likes it. Freddy reckons it's hot stuff.”

“That's not
writing.”
The word came out like a kick on the shins. “That's hack-work. Somebody in London picks out the music. I'm just the monkey that dances for them.”

Julie said nothing. Against such self-contempt there was nothing to be said.

“We should have stayed in Lisbon.” He removed his hands and looked into the gold of the fire. “I was happy in Lisbon. It was bloody hard work but it was a marvelous game. Just me and them. Every day I got out of bed and I thought: What can I sell them today? And I invented something, I made up Eldorado, nobody else did that, just me, I created Eldorado, I recruited all his pals and I christened them, Seagull and Pinetree and Knickers and Garlic and Nutmeg, they all came from me. Just me.”

“That reminds me,” Julie said. “About Nutmeg …”

“And it was
fun,”
Luis said with a kind of savage desperation. “It was
exciting.”

“It was damn dangerous. You nearly got killed.”

“Now …” Luis sucked his teeth and spat into the fire. “Now I have to get permission before I can turn around and fart.”

“Come on.” She got up, and pulled him to his feet. They set off into the dusk. “So you're not a one-man-band anymore. So what? You're properly organized now, Luis. Eldorado really makes a difference to the war. You're bigger than ever, kid.”

“You don't understand.” Luis stumbled along behind her, his bare feet sliding and slipping in his gumboots. “Eldorado was my secret. Just me, and later you but you didn't count because we were in love and so we were like one person.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said.

“Now they've taken my secret away. Eldorado's just another department of the British War Office, for the love of Sam.”

“Mike,” she said. “Love of Mike.”

“Why not Sam?”

Julie could think of no reason. “You win,” she said.

They said little more until they came in sight of the house, when she remembered Nutmeg. “Luis … Why is Nutmeg getting twenty-five percent of his last six months' earnings?”

“Income tax demand,” Luis said.

“Tax? That's crazy. How did the Revenue get into the act?”

“He told them about his extra earnings. He said he got the money by selling paintings. Nutmeg is a gifted artist.”

“The
Abwehr
isn't going to buy that, Luis. The
Abwehr's
going to want to know why Nutmeg couldn't keep his fool mouth shut and save them twenty-five percent.”

“Nutmeg is a retired officer of the British Indian army,” Luis declared, with a tinge of reproach in his voice. “He is an honorable man. He wouldn't cheat on his taxes and I for one would never dream of suggesting that he should.”

“Pardon me all to hell and back,” Julie said.

They went inside.

Dr. Hartmann surprised everyone, including himself, by being the first to recruit a new spy.

Hartmann wasn't much interested in people. He wasn't even excited by war. What gripped him was science, especially the science of radio, and barometric fuses, and what blast-waves did to concrete buildings, that sort of thing. He approved of the war because it gave him so much opportunity to develop his interests, and he enjoyed analyzing Eldorado's contributions, especially as the fellow wasn't there to argue. But apart from that, Hartmann preferred chess to people. It was at a chess club in the old part of Madrid that he met Laszlo Martini.

Laszlo was about thirty, thin and bearded, and he dressed like a crook who had bought the local police chief and doesn't care who knows it: snakeskin shoes, midnight-blue suit with cuffs on the sleeves and a little too much flare in the lapels, hand-painted silk tie that looked like an explosion in a Chinese paint factory. Dr. Hartmann
disliked him on sight and when he saw the fingernails—too long and not clean enough—he despised him. But then he overheard Laszlo speak a few words of English to the barman: “That's OK. And keep the change.” Later Hartmann introduced himself and invited Laszlo to play. They tied after five games: two wins each, one stalemate. So the fellow was not stupid. Whether or not he was foolish was something else. His use of English suggested he might be vain. And perhaps lonely, if he had to go around impressing barmen with his superiority.

“Please forgive me if I intrude,” Hartmann said (they were speaking Spanish), “but yours is a name I have not often encountered in Spain before.”

“My family is not originally Spanish,” Martini said. “The full name is Martini-Hoffman-de-Seversky-Danacek.”

“With your permission I shall confine myself to Martini.” Hartmann cranked up a small, respectful smile. “Does it relate perhaps to the great Italian house of Vermouth?”

“On my mother's side, alas. I shall never inherit.” He shrugged one shoulder: what was a lost fortune to a man like Martini? “And you, señor, unless I mistake myself, you are not a native of this country?”

Hartmann explained that he was a commercial attaché at the German embassy.

Martini leaned back and looked at him with sudden interest. “Deutschland,” he said. It came out like an incantation.

“That's the place,” Hartmann agreed. “
Uber alles,
as the saying goes.”

“You know, Herr Doktor, we have more in common than chess,” Martini said, and took in a deep breath as if to brace himself for a major statement. “I volunteered for the Blue Division,” he said. “I wanted to march against the Comintern, to fight with the last drop of my blood to stop the Red menace crushing western Christian civilization.” Hartmann stared: either the words or the clothes were wrong; they did not fit each other. “One of the greatest tragedies of my life,” Martini went on. “At the medical examination they discovered that I am color-blind. Their standards are high. I was rejected.” He made a small gesture of helplessness and looked away: for him, the war was over.

Hartmann said carefully, “No doubt you would still like to stand alongside the German soldier and help him to victory?” Martini nodded. “Perhaps I can arrange something,” Hartmann said.
“Not the Blues versus the Reds, what with your eyesight, but maybe something in the gray area.” He gave Martini his card. “Come and see me in the morning. Shall we say ten o'clock?”

Laszlo Martini arrived at ten to ten, dressed as soberly as a banker. By eleven his English had been tested (and found to be American) and he had agreed to become an interpreter and translator; by twelve they were talking about his willingness to travel and work alone; before lunch he was a full-time trainee intelligence agent, keen to be parachuted into England. Dr. Hartmann was slightly alarmed by the speed of his recruitment. “You do realize, don't you, that this work is really quite dangerous?” he asked.

Martini almost smiled. “I am ready to live and die for the cause,” he said.

“Oh, you mustn't die,” Hartmann said. “That would be no good to anybody.”

The other controllers were impressed by his find. “How did you do it?” Richard Fischer wanted to know. Otto Krafft and Franz Werth stopped what they were doing and waited for the answer.