Artillery of Lies (35 page)

Freddy picked up his glasses and found the paper and flattened
it. The Director put his glasses on and read it again. “
Double
buggeration,” he said brusquely. “Just when things were going so well … I assume you've double-checked the decoding and everything?”

Freddy nodded. He said, “It's so short, sir, that there's not much room for error, is there?”

“No, I suppose not. ‘Eldorado to proceed to Berlin earliest opportunity. Authority: highest.' That has to be Canaris.”

“He's as high as you can go.”

The Director cleaned his glasses, and brooded. Freddy stood on the fireplace fender and made it rock, until the Director frowned. “Don't fidget,” he said. “I was never allowed to fidget when I was a boy. Did your parents let you fidget?”

“All the time, sir. My mother positively encouraged it.”

“Lucky devil. Mine gave me a good skelp around the lugs. The result is what you see before you. A man in a virtual catatonic trance.” The Director stopped gesticulating. “What d'you think is going on over there, Freddy?”

“Possibly another medal. He only got the Iron Cross second-class last time, sir, so there's scope for advancement. Or … I can't imagine why, but we shouldn't exclude it … they might want to give him the chop. Kill him.”

“That was my thought. But they've just awarded Garlic a fat bonus.” The Director sat on the end of a sofa and fidgeted, tapping his feet, plucking at the upholstery. “It's such a frivolous request. Fancy wanting to take your chief agent out of the field at a crucial stage in the war! It's irresponsible. I'm most surprised at Canaris, I really am. Berlin, of all places. Eldorado could get hit by a bomb. What then?”

“So I take it the answer's no, sir.”

“Deep regrets, of course. Pressure of work. Pile it on. If we fob him off maybe Canaris will forget all about it.”

After a day and a half of isolation, Stephanie Schmidt was ready to run off at the mouth when Julie came through the door.

She was painfully homesick: for Bavaria, for Wasserburg, for her family, for Emil the spaniel and Coco the cat, who might or might not have had her kittens by now. In Madrid she had
preserved a comfortable selection of warm memories of home and had tinted them with all the sentimentality of the exile. Now she turned them out again: the beautiful garden, all roses and honeysuckle; the romping pets; her mother's delicious cooking; trusty schoolfriends with swinging plaits; favorite cousins in uniform; the awful night when the big beech tree got blown down and just missed Emil but all the neighbors came around with saws and …

Julie lay on the bed and grunted occasionally. Two things became obvious. Not much about the father, and zero about boyfriends. Otto Krafft was probably the first love.

Stephanie was trying to remember the words of a pokerwork poem that hung above the kitchen sink when Julie interrupted. “What d'you think about men, honey?” she asked.

Stephanie was flustered. “I think … I think that God, He created men and … and so we—”

“Forget God. You can't take His word for anything, can you? He's another man, for Christ's sake. They're all out for what they can get.”

“Not all. My father—”

“You hate your father. He's a miserable son of a bitch.” For a second their eyes met, and then Stephanie turned away, defeated. “And if God made men, He did a bum job. Have you seen a man with his clothes off? Gross. Not a bit like those Greek statues. Fat and flabby and covered in hair.”

“I don't know about that,” Stephanie mumbled.

“Come off it, kid. Don't tell me you never think about your hero Otto all naked and shining. Let me put you straight. His private parts look like they just fell off the cold cuts counter at your local deli. Sad but true.”

Stephanie shuffled up and down. She had been given school gym shoes, black and laceless, a size too large. The boilersuit had no pockets. She needed a bath and a shampoo. There was no mirror. She cried out, plaintively, “Why do they keep me here?”

“Why did you come here?” Julie asked. She made room on the bed. “Come and sit here. Look, I know how you feel. I'm a long way from home too, all on account of a guy who swore he loved me.” Briefly, she wondered who she was talking about: Harry or Luis? It wasn't the whole truth, either way. “They'll say anything. Absolutely anything.” Stephanie sat beside her. “Tell me about these three clowns you came with. Which did you like best?”

“I cannot tell. That is all secret.”

“Oh, horsefeathers. Docherty's three doors along the corridor, talking his Irish head off. I had lunch with him. We're going to the cinema tomorrow.” Julie impressed herself with the fluency of her lies. The first prompted the next. “He likes you, you know that? He says you were the best at putting Laszlo in his place. That time in the pub, in Galway. What exactly did you hit him with? Docherty says Laszlo landed on his butt in the sawdust.”

Stephanie laughed. That couldn't possibly be a secret. Not what the
Abwehr
meant by a secret. “I hit him with this,” she said, showing her right fist.

“Wow!” Julie said. She felt her biceps. “Attagirl! I bet he understood
that
message.”

Stephanie talked about the pub. After that she couldn't resist telling the story about Ferenc Tekeli and the nuns in the Dublin train, and was proud of herself when Julie laughed so much she nearly slid off the bed. In the end she talked about nearly everything. But when Julie asked, “What happened to Laszlo?” she fell silent. The past was past; she was ready to be indiscreet about it; but Laszlo was on a mission of crucial importance to the war and to the German people. She had a sacred duty to the Fuehrer not to betray that mission.

“Docherty says Laszlo kills people for fun,” Julie said. “Otto Krafft told him so. Think about it.” She left.

Luis stood in front of a wall-map of the world, colorfully studded with pins, and searched for some good news; some
really
good news. North Africa—nothing there; all gone beyond reclaim. Malta was a lost cause now that Sicily had fallen, which meant that Italy would be next, and that was a gloomy prospect. You couldn't expect the Italians to fight to the last man to keep the Allies out of Germany. No, there was trouble brewing there. Yugoslavia? He shuddered. More and more partisans sucking in more and more German divisions. And Greece? You couldn't trust the Greeks. The whole of the Eastern Front was bad news, of course. The Americans had started bombing Romania and the appalling, ferocious, unstoppable Russians were … Luis looked for Stalingrad, and found it hundreds of miles behind the Russian front line.
What a disaster! By contrast the Allied capture of Sicily was a lost sixpence. That left Britain. Well, there was still some juice to be squeezed out of the U-boat war in the Atlantic but to be honest the
Abwehr
had gone off the boil when it came to convoys. Madrid's questionnaires were often quite tepid on the subject. What agitated Berlin was strategic bombing. Luis looked at the black flatheaded pins marking German cities that had been regularly bombed. What a lot! A moderately athletic caterpillar could have crawled over most of Germany without touching the map.

“It's a dismal picture,” he said.

Freddy looked at his watch. “An hour to transmission time. I really would like to get this signal off to Madrid today. It would show them that we take their request seriously.”

Luis nodded. “What would the Germans most like to happen?” he murmured. “Given this awful map, what would cheer them up?”

He stood still, apart from an occasional blink, for several minutes, until Freddy could stand it no longer. “Suppose the OWCH unit has a catastrophe?” he suggested. “Test flight goes wrong, bomber crashes on American army camp, huge bang, ten thousand killed.”

Luis made a short, thoughtful noise in his throat.

“Better yet,” Freddy said, “crash it on a British army camp. Fifteen thousand dead. Think of the uproar.”

“Do shut up, Freddy. Crashed bombers! Who cares about crashed bombers?” Luis went to his desk and took the cap off his fountain pen. “That's a mere trifle compared to Winston Churchill's heart attack.
Alleged
heart attack. It's being kept secret, of course. Eldorado got wind of it from sub-agent Garlic, who is now at Cambridge University studying under one of the world's greatest heart specialists. Eldorado and Garlic are working around the clock on this sensational scoop.”

“Nice touch,” Freddy said. “Since they like Garlic, let's give them more of him.”

“Now we've sugared the pill. I hate to say no without giving a damn good reason.” Luis finished writing. “You know, I'd quite like to see Berlin,” he said. “I've never been there.”

“You wouldn't like it with seven hundred Lancasters overhead,” Freddy said. Luis blotted the page and conceded the point silently.

*

Two days bed-rest.

Well, it could have been worse; it could have been the sack, discharged as medically unfit, end of a career. Christian was too restless to stay in bed but he compromised by lying on a couch or sprawling in an armchair. Domenik visited, bringing the newspapers. “Hold the headlines up to a mirror,” he said, “and you'll get somewhere near the truth. But then maybe you don't want the truth.”

“It's the only thing the doctors haven't forbidden,” Christian said. “I'm not allowed to drive a car, ride a horse, ski, swim, shoot, fish, take part in athletics or strenuous sports especially boxing, or have a bath.”

“Why no baths?”

“Might fall down and drown myself. Showers are permitted, thank God, or I'd end up choking on my own stench. Got any new jokes?”

That was when General Oster walked in. “Don't let me stop you,” he said.

“Bit simpleminded, this one,” Domenik said. “An Englishman, an American and a German.”

“Why do your jokes always go in threes?” Oster wondered.

“It's so they'll always have a leg to stand on,” Christian said without thinking. Oster was amused.

Domenik began: “The Englishman boasts: ‘Churchill can stand on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral and see all of London.'”

“Technically untrue, but continue,” Oster said.

“The American says: ‘So what? President Roosevelt can stand on top of the Capitol and see all of Washington.'”

“Rubbish,” Christian said. “Roosevelt's in a wheelchair.”

“The German says—”

“Hang on to your hats, here it comes,” Oster announced.

“The German says, ‘That's nothing—the Fuehrer can stand on a kitchen chair and see all of Berlin!'”

“Not worth waiting for,” Oster said. “A subtly satirical allusion to the effects of bombing, I take it? Feeble.”

“Anyway,” Christian said, “just look out of the window.”

“Jokes aren't about reality, they're about fears,” Domenik said. “Jokes are hostages to ill-fortune. Make a joke and it won't happen.
Of course it always does happen, but at least you get a chance to laugh at the bomb before it kills you.”

“I have a much better joke,” Oster said. He tossed some cushions on to the floor and lay on them. “Our gallant allies the Hungarians have made a secret treaty with the British and American air forces. Hungary promises not to fire on any of their bombers and they promise not to bomb Hungary. Sweet, isn't it?”

“Is that definite?” Domenik asked. “I mean, there are so many rumors …”

“Stefan, old fellow, there is nothing so loud as the sound of bombs not being dropped. Believe me, Hungary is echoing to the racket.”

“Didn't we send a Hungarian to England?” Christian asked. He disliked talking about the disloyalty of Germany's allies; even hearing about it built a swirling tension in his head. “What happened to him? What became of Ace, come to that?”

“Oh, well, you know,” Oster said. “You reckon on losing one or two.” He rearranged the pillows behind his head.

“But surely, sir …” Christian hesitated; he could sense failure ahead; but it was too late now. He might as well put the unasked question into words. “Surely Ace wasn't lost? Didn't we get his message? From Glasgow?” Oster nodded. “So where does he go from there?” Christian asked.

“Good question.” Oster heaved himself up and threw the cushions at Domenik. “Come along, Stefan. We're interrupting the convalescence.” As they went out, he said: “Since you're so concerned, Meyer, maybe Eldorado can take him on. Remind me to suggest it when he comes.” Christian nodded. That “Meyer” really hurt.

The mustache he was trying to grow was so far just a smear but Laszlo liked the feel of it and he was brushing what little there was with his fingertips as he came away from breakfast when the man who ran the hotel said, “Good morning, Mr. Lakram.”

That wasn't good. That wasn't right. The people who ran the sort of hotel Laszlo could afford didn't acknowledge the guests; certainly didn't speak to them by name. They fined them five shillings for burning cigarette holes in the sheets and kicked them out in the rain. If they had to address a guest they called him “Muster” or “Jummy”
but usually they said nothing at all. Laszlo took fright. He replied politely and hurried upstairs to his room, grabbed his suitcase and went out through the back window. It was a six-foot drop to a shed with a corrugated iron roof. He hit it with a crash and a tinkle and bounded along the roof, stamping out a concerto for cymbals, then dropped again into the back alley and ran until he found streets and crowds and safety.

It was a bad start to a worse day. The tinkle that followed his crash on to the roof had been the coins jolted out of his pockets. Laszlo counted his money and found he was left with less than two pounds. Well, you could live for a few days on a couple of quid in 1943 if you slept in the open, but it was raining by noon and that wasn't the worst of it. He had no identity papers. A. J. Lakram's documents were in the hotel-keeper's possession.