Artillery of Lies (18 page)

Nobody had anything to say.

“Get plenty of sleep,” Fischer advised. “Tonight we're really sending you into Ireland.”

Christian was dashing up the stairs, taking them two at a time with no thought for his supposed limp, when he suddenly lost confidence, turned, and hurried back to his office. He stared at the colored cards pinned to the walls and his confidence returned. He had been right. It was all there. This time he unpinned a dozen cards and took them with him.

Oster already had a visitor: Domenik. Nevertheless he was pleased to see Christian. “Try it out on the Commodore, Stefan,” he said genially. Christian wasn't interested in Domenik's jokes but he had no choice. He forced himself to be patient.

“Question,” Domenik said. “How much does it cost to become a U-boat captain?”

“Don't know. How much?”

“How much have you got?”

Christian shuffled his squares of cardboard while they watched him. “Is that it?” he asked. “That's it,” Oster said.

“I see.”

“That means he doesn't see,” Oster said.

“It's all about U-boat losses,” Domenik said. “There's a certain lack of volunteers. If you want the job, it's yours. Get it? That's what the joke is about.”

“Oh.”

“Try him with the air-raid joke,” Oster suggested.

“You are in the middle of a one-thousand-bomber raid. Huge
bombs are exploding all around. The city is an inferno. What, according to the official advice, should you do?”

Christian shrugged.

Domenik said, “Place a paper bag over your head and walk, do not run, to the nearest bunker.”

“Why not run?” Oster asked immediately.

“You don't want to start a panic, do you?” Domenik said. They both laughed.

“Very good,” Christian said. “Most amusing. I have something you ought to see—”

“Tell him the one about the eighteen-franc note,” Oster said.

“Man walks into a bar …” Domenik began.

“It's Garlic,” Christian said very firmly. “He's the joker in the pack. It's all here.”

“Thank you, Stefan,” Oster said. “We'll have lunch, yes?” Domenik smiled and left. “Garlic,” Oster said. “Show me.”

“You have to take a long broad view. Each individual report could be explained away, but …” Christian was spreading his colored cards on Oster's desk. “It's what happens when you relate Garlic's work with the stuff coming from elsewhere that gives the game away.”

“Which color is Garlic?”

“Green. For instance, look at last September's report, sir. All that stuff about convoys leaving the Clyde and so on. As you know, the details turned out to be wrong.”

“Not necessarily Garlic's fault. The British could have changed the sailing orders after the convoys left.”

“It's possible, I agree. Our friends in Naval Intelligence were not impressed, though, were they? However, that's not my point, sir. My point is that Garlic couldn't have been anywhere near Glasgow or the Clyde last September, as he and every other medical student at Glasgow University had already been transferred to Newcastle. Why? Because three large unexploded bombs had been found next to the medical school. Six weeks the students were away. It was reported in the English newspapers. The bomb-disposal officer was given a medal.” Christian gave Oster a cutting of the story. “I must have been blind to have missed it for so long,” he said.

Oster read the report. “I grant you it looks odd,” he said, “but there may be an explanation. What else have you got?”

“A lot, sir. Just compare each Garlic card with the one beside it. Here … Garlic on Commando training in the Scottish Highlands, which he claims to have observed. There … Haystack reports a ban on travel by foreigners of more than thirty miles. Garlic is Venezuelan.”

“Haystack could be wrong.”

“Yes, but could they
all
be wrong, sir? Look there: you can't believe Garlic on minefields if what Seagull says about railway sabotage is true. Garlic says
this
about food rations, Nutmeg says
that.
Garlic's report on oil tankers doesn't make sense if you believe what Hambone says about fuel stocks. And so on and so on. Is everyone out of step except Garlic?”

Oster said nothing. He continued to say nothing for about ten minutes, while he read and re-read the colored cards. Christian went and sat on a couch. Once, the telephone rang and Oster, without looking up, took it and said: “No calls,” and put it back. An airplane droned somewhere out of sight. Eventually it came into view, very small and slow. Christian watched it until it flew behind a tiny fault in the windowglass, was lost, then reappeared. By moving his head slightly he put the plane back in the fault and kept it there, a helpless, unseen prisoner. Domenik's last line sidled into his head:
Man walks into a bar.
It sounded like the absurd title of some absurd modernist painting. Christian's head would move no further: the plane appeared and escaped.

“Yes,” Oster said. “Yes indeed.” He linked his hands behind his head and looked down at Christian.

“I should have brought the relevant files,” Christian said. “Stupid of me. I can easily—”

“Forget the files. We're going to see the Admiral and, believe me, Canaris won't waste time checking your paperwork. Come on!” Oster was through the door and heading down the corridor at a quick jog-trot.

Admiral Canaris heard the news without a blink. “And you really think the SD is behind all this,” he said.

“Who stands to benefit except Himmler?” said Oster. “Not Eldorado, obviously. The last thing
he
wants is a rotten apple in his barrel. Not us. Not the OKW. No, the only explanation that adds up is that Garlic was infiltrated by the SD so that in due course Himmler can expose Garlic and denounce us, thus scoring points twice over—first for discovering a traitor inside the
Abwehr,
and then for saving the Reich from the consequences of our alleged monstrous folly. Next step: the SS takes over the
Abwehr.”

Canaris took off his wristwatch and carefully, thoughtfully, wound it up. “There is one other possibility,” he said. “The British Secret Service may have stumbled across Garlic and turned him.”

“Yes, sir, they may,” Christian said. “But Garlic was recruited by Eldorado and he reports to Eldorado. If the British grabbed Garlic they would never be satisfied with one sub-agent. They would roll up the entire network.”

“Like a carpet,” Oster said.

“And we'd spot it,” Christian said, “and they'd know that we'd spotted it, and so the game would be over before it began.”

“It was just a thought,” Canaris said. He was still holding his watch, following the second hand as it marched stiffly around the dial, sixty paces to the minute. “What now?”

“What do you suggest, sir?” Oster asked.

“Kill him quick,” Canaris said.

Even when the police had taken them all to the stationhouse, Luis treated his arrest as a huge joke. The police were not amused. They could tolerate his rant-and-rave speeches in German—if it was German—but when he tried to steal the inspector's pistol they promptly locked him in a cell. “I'll give you a good price,” Luis shouted. “Thirty feet of salami and all the sauerkraut you can eat.” They ignored him and got on with questioning Freddy and Julie. Soon Luis fell asleep.

When he awoke it was daylight. Freddy had made the necessary phone calls; the police had satisfied themselves that Freddy really was in MI5; apologies all round; they could go. Luis demanded breakfast.

“Don't be such an idiot,” Freddy said wearily. “There's plenty of breakfast just up the road.”

Luis looped his arms around the bars of his cell and hooked his fingers together. “Breakfast,” he said. A policeman tried to unhook his fingers.

“Don't damage him, for God's sake!” Freddy said. “He needs those to write with.”

In the end Luis got his breakfast: fried bread with Daddies sauce and a mug of tea. “What's wrong?” Julie asked from an uncomfortable armchair. “Gone off your sauerkraut?”

“Mother?” he said, turning his head like a blind man. “What on earth are you doing in a dreadful place like this?”

It was not a very funny joke; not at that time of day; not after a long, dreary night. Even so, Luis might have got away with it; but he had woken up feeling fresh and then the victory over getting served breakfast had made him cocky. Now he found his own remark irresistibly clever. He tittered at it. Tittered like a schoolboy.

There was a brief, frozen silence.

Julie got up. “I'll wait in the car,” she told Freddy.

Nobody spoke during the short ride back to Rackham Towers. Julie took a bath and went to bed. She slept badly and had a series of drab, exhausting dreams; or maybe it was only one dream endlessly repeating itself. She awoke at midday with just enough strength to dress and walk downstairs. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the flowers were florid. It was a truly lousy day.

She found a couch to lie on, and stared at the ceiling. Decorative plasterwork, very complicated, very tiring. Why did people have to make life so difficult? Luis came in, singing. It was one thing he had no talent for, his timing was sloppy, he couldn't carry a tune in a bushel basket, she wished he would shut up and go away. No, not go away: stay but change. Stay but change? Then he wouldn't be Luis. She gave up.

“I have had a very fertile morning,” he said. He pronounced “fertile” to rhyme with “turtle,” in the American way. This was done to annoy her, so he was obviously in top form. “Go piss in your hat,” she said, and that amused him, which made her realize that she had reacted just as he wished. Damn.

“I found a new Twenty Committee memorandum waiting on my desk,” he said. Now he was jigging around the room, fox-trotting between the furniture, his heels tap-tapping on the parquet. “And I have already written five thousand outstandingly brilliant words. You are in the presence of the most prolific man who ever lived. Since breakfast I have created six new squadrons of heavy bombers, a division of infantry and two convoys.
And
my loyal and hardworking servant Wallpaper has discovered an amazing new invention which can double the range of an American Flying Fortress. It is called the Ski Jump. The
Abwehr
will love it, Eldorado will get a huge bonus and I shall buy you a pair of French silk knickers—two pairs, I mean who deserves them more? And I too deserve a reward since I have created so much creation and yet I feel gallons of creativity still gurgling in my loins and is that couch comfortable or shall we frolic and fumble on the fireside rug? ‘Frolic and fumble,' I got that out of a sixpenny
romance. Come on, Julie, take your American knickers off.” Luis was rapidly undressing, leaving a trail of clothing around the room, until he stood by the couch, naked except for his socks.

Julie had not moved. “You're not even a sixpenny romance, Luis,” she said. “You think that all you need to do is wave that sawed-off frankfurter at me and I'll come running. Well, fuck you, buster.”

Luis didn't know what to do with his arms, so he folded them; but that felt as if it looked formal. He let them hang. That felt gawky. He gave up. “I just thought that we …”

“No you didn't. You never think ‘we.' You think ‘me.'” Even as she spoke, part of her was registering the beautiful body standing there, slim and muscular, olive-skinned and lithe. “I don't want you,” she said. “I don't need you. Go fuck yourself and I hope you both enjoy it.”

She got up and walked away.

“There was a time—” Luis began.

“Several hundred years ago,” she said. She stopped at the door. He hadn't moved. “You look stupid in your socks.”

“The floor is cold,” he said.

She went out.

Oster and Christian flew to Brest in one of the latest Dornier 17E reconnaissance planes. Christian was impressed by this display of the top-level influence of the
Abwehr:
after they left Canaris they drove to the nearest
Luftwaffe
field, Oster spent five minutes with the station commander, and an aircraft was theirs. Two hours and twenty minutes later they landed at an airfield outside Brest. Brigadier Wagner was waiting on the tarmac. “I'm starving,” Oster told him. “We can talk while we eat.” They went to the officers' mess. “You tell Wagner what it's all about while I order,” he said to Christian. “Have you got lots of ham and several eggs and vast amounts of fried potatoes?” he asked the waiter. “Also some iced beer?”

Christian told Wagner what it was all about; all except the supposed involvement of the SD. Wagner was surprised but not shocked. “Garlic,” he said. “If it had to be anybody I would expect it to be Garlic. Medical students are notoriously hard-up. It looks as if Garlic got a little bit too greedy.”

“Kill him,” Oster said.

This time Wagner was slightly shocked, or perhaps hurt. A dead Garlic meant a lessening of Wagner's authority, especially when it was done on Oster's orders. “Is that absolutely necessary, sir?” he asked. “I'm thinking of the morale of the network. How will Eldorado feel if—”

“Listen, Wagner,” Oster said. “We haven't come rocketing down here from Berlin on a whim. Eldorado is the hottest property the
Abwehr
has ever had or is ever likely to have.” He stopped talking as the waiter approached with plates of food, and waited until he had left. “Eldorado could be a turning point in this war,” he said. “I'm not exactly sure what a turning-point is or does, to tell the truth.” He took a forkful of ham.

“I think it means—” Christian began.

“I don't honestly care, thanks,” Oster said. “It's bound to be different in the navy anyway; everything always is. What matters is that Eldorado
works.
He works his little Spanish tail off for us. Maybe the Fuehrer really has a secret weapon, maybe he hasn't, but until something better comes along Eldorado is the best secret weapon we have. Your turn,” he said to Christian.