Artillery of Lies (36 page)

Laszlo wasted a couple of pennies on the
Glasgow Herald.
RUSSIANS RE-TAKE KHARKOV
, the front page shouted.
Nobody cares about Laszlo
was the news in the personal columns. His own message, now making its last appearance, was starting to look pathetic. If these are the really happy days, he thought, God help us when they run out.

There was nothing to do but drink while the pubs were open and hide in the cinema when they weren't. That evening, when he came out of
Edge of Darkness
(Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan) the weather was worse. Dusk had come early; people were hurrying home, heads down against the gusting rain. Laszlo had no home. He got very wet trudging to the pub where he had first seen A. J. Lakram, and he drank too much beer, too fast while he was waiting for another likely-looking merchant seaman to come in. None did.

At chucking-out time the rain was heavier than ever, and bitingly cold. He had eaten nothing since breakfast. His head and his legs were not working very well as he stumbled uncertainly in the blackness. He kept bumping into people but they were gone before he could grab them and show them his pistol and say the words.

Fool,
he told himself,
they can't see the pistol in the blackout.
That was a bad moment, one of the worst. No gun, no hope. Then he thought of a solution. Ask for a light. Ask for a match. Strike the match and say, “See this?” Brilliant solution. Laszlo was grinning as he lurched off the curb and got lightly clipped by the wing of a car.

The driver pulled over, walked back and found Laszlo leaning against a tree, laughing like a schoolgirl. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

Laszlo clutched the man's sleeve. “Have you got a light?” he said. “A light is what I need. Have you got a light?”

“There may be some matches in the car. Can you walk?”

While he was searching for matches Laszlo got into the car and waved his pistol. “Can you see this?” he asked. The man, stocky and curly-haired, was unsurprised. “I see it,” he said. “Is it loaded?”

Laszlo aimed it at him while he screwed on the silencer. “Look carefully,” he said, “because you won't hear anything.” He fired a shot through the roof. It made a bang like a tractor backfiring. “Sorry,” he said. “Now give me all your money. Identity card too.”

Later, scuttling off in the wet dark, he realized that he could have stolen the car. Still, seventeen pounds wasn't a bad haul. He stood in the doorway of a late-night chip-shop to see who he was now. William Kenny, farmer. Good enough.

“The OWCH report is excellent, sir,” Christian said.

“Oh, invaluable,” Canaris agreed.

“
Luftwaffe
Intelligence are fascinated, quite fascinated.” Oster said. “They have a hundred new questions for Eldorado.”

“And that's on top of the eight-engined bomber report, sir,” Christian said.

“We're spoiling them,” Oster remarked.

“But nothing so far on RAF Bomber Command's next big target cities,” Canaris pointed out. “And that's what we specifically asked for.”

“In all fairness, sir, I do think you're pressing a little hard, bearing in mind the obstacles. I mean, we're asking Eldorado to break through a whole army of security systems. It's bound to take time.” Christian shuffled his bundle of folders. “Meanwhile there's this truly startling development regarding Churchill's health. I know it involves Garlic again, but … Is it really wise to pull Eldorado out of England at this precise stage?”

Canaris turned to Oster. “D'you think he's afraid of Berlin? The bombing?”

Oster shrugged. “It's certainly a lot noisier than London. Perhaps that's it.”

“Then make it Switzerland,” Canaris told Christian. “Tell him I want to meet him in Zurich. No excuses. Do it now.”

*

Julie brought Stephanie Schmidt a potted geranium, vivid scarlet, and a small bottle of shampoo. The plant pleased her and the shampoo delighted her: a tear of thanks ran down her cheek. “As soon as you have gone …” she began.

“Why not use it now?”

More tears, which were soon washed away with the grease and dandruff when Stephanie bent her head into the wash-basin. Julie dried her hair, scrubbing it with the towel until the scalp felt purified, and then combed it, and tied it with a yellow ribbon from her own hair. “You look like a million dollars,” she said. “Or two million Deutschmarks.”

Stephanie glowed with gratitude. “You are a wonderful person,” she said.

“I'll drink to that.” Julie took a small silver flask from her pocket. “Where d'you keep the crystal goblets?”

“Oh …” Stephanie shook her head and made the ribbon fly. “In my family, you see, we never—”

“That's not what Docherty says. He says that when you were in that bar in Galway even Ferenc was taking lessons from you.” Stephanie protested prettily but surrendered speedily and they were soon sharing brandy from the cap of the flask. “You liked Ferenc, didn't you?” Julie said.

“He was lovely. Never before have I met a man who finds everything interesting. Everyone liked Ferenc”

“Laszlo didn't.”

“Oh well, Laszlo was always in a hurry, no time to enjoy … Ferenc always had time to enjoy.” Stephanie didn't want even to think about Laszlo: it spoiled the nice warm atmosphere. “And you should have seen Ferenc eat! Did I tell you about the time we all went to the bullfight?” She was off and running.

Julie sat and listened to her cheerful gossip, and kept the little silver cup of brandy going back and forth. When there was a pause she said: “I wish I'd known him. I don't suppose I ever will. Would he have made a very good spy, d'you think?”

Recklessly indiscreet, Stephanie said, “World's worst. He told me so. He only joined the
Abwehr
to get out of prison.”

Julie smiled. “Sounds very, very sensible. I'd do the same.”
She let the smile fade, very slowly. “I wonder …” She touched Stephanie on the knee with the tip of her forefinger; just a tiny touch, but it made the girl's head twitch. “Do you think he knows he's in danger?”

Stephanie tried to shrug it off. “In war, we are all in danger.”

“From Laszlo. Docherty says he thinks Ferenc is in great danger from Laszlo.” She looked Stephanie straight in the eyes. “Where is Laszlo, Stephanie? Tell me.”

But she would not. Julie got a long speech about trust and honor and the sacred duty of the warrior; the longer it lasted the more scrambled the grammar became and the less sense it all made; until finally Stephanie was in tears. Julie capped the brandy and gave her a towel and told her not to upset herself. Another session over.

The Director found Zurich on the map. “Twenty-odd miles from the German border,” he said. “Even worse than I thought.”

“You suspect kidnap, sir?” Freddy said.

“Don't you?”

“I don't know what I suspect, sir. I just wonder what Canaris is going to think if Eldorado says no again.”

“He'll think Eldorado's got flu.”

“Has he?”

“Summer flu. There's a lot of it about, you know.”

The news did not please Luis. “I never get colds,” he said. “I am extremely fit. Besides, how can I afford time off to lie in bed? Look at all the work I've got piling up!”

Julie was present. “I think he ought to go to Zurich,” she told Freddy. “I think he ought to be flown there in an ambulance plane and carried on a stretcher to the Admiral's presence. I think that would impress the
Abwehr
enormously. I see him with the right leg in plaster and bloody bandages wrapped around the head. Feverish, of course, and talking nonsense. And just as they award him the Blue Max for conspicuous bullshit in the face of overwhelming odds, he drops dead. What a movie it would make.”

“Can't drop dead,” Luis said gloomily. “You've got me lying down already.”

“Anyway, it's too late for all that,” Freddy said. “The signal's already gone to Madrid. You've got the flu. Now relax and enjoy it.”

*

Christian began to get giddy at the top of the bunker. It was four stories high, and the laborers were pouring concrete to make a fifth story. He clung to some wooden scaffolding and looked across the street at the roof of an apartment block, while behind him the site engineer explained the design of the bunker to Oster. A crane delivering buckets of fresh concrete swayed alarmingly. Christian had to look away. He found himself watching men with wheelbarrows running, actually running, along the scaffolding planks. He shut his eyes.

“Have you seen enough?” Oster asked. Christian nodded. They began the long descent, one vertical ladder after another into deepening darkness until Christian had lost count of the stages. When at last he stepped off a ladder and saw blessed ground level through a doorway, Oster said: “Want to take a look at the basements? There are three levels. Or is it four?” Christian shook his head. “I want a drink,” he said.

Oster's driver took them to an officers' club. It was not yet noon and the place was almost empty. Christian slumped into a deep leather armchair and let his eyes close. Oster ordered beer. The waiter's shoes clicked away across the parquet floor. “Well,” Oster said. “Feel better now?”

“I feel as if I just climbed the Matterhorn without ropes.” Christian squinted sideways at Oster. “Was that really necessary, sir? The doctor ordered bed-rest, not vertigo.”

“You needed fresh air. Besides, I thought you ought to see what we're building. Some bunker, eh? It fills a whole city block. The external walls are two meters thick. No windows, did you notice that? It's designed to take five or six thousand people but I bet they pack in twice as many when Berlin gets what Hamburg got. Don't you?”

“Perhaps. Probably. I don't know.” Christian was still trying to forget the slosh and surge of cement, and the uncertain lurch of the crane. “It's none of my business anyway.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that.” The beer came, and Oster raised his glass. “Here's to crime.” They drank. “Bunkers like that are going up all over Germany, you know. Indestructible, so that engineer told me. Apparently we learned a great deal about reinforced concrete from
building submarine pens at Brest and St. Nazaire. The RAF bounced a lot of very big bombs off them and they never even cracked.”

“Good.”

“Yes, it's reassuring to know that something will be left standing.”

Christian thought about that, began assembling a remark about the enduring spirit of the German people, and gave it up before it was complete.

Oster waved his tankard at the room. “I don't suppose this place will survive. A single thousand-kilogram bomb down the chimney and half the street will be in the gutter.”

“It may not be as bad as that.”

“The bunker-builders seem to think it will.”

They drove back to
Abwehr
headquarters. Christian was glad to get inside; he found being out with Oster vaguely alarming. The familiar buff walls and the polished mahogany, and the steady chatter of invisible typewriters, put him at his ease. Passing secretaries smiled as they walked along a corridor. Oster was repeating something he had been told by the engineer, something about the setting time of really hard concrete, but Christian was hardly listening; he was wondering if he ought to see a specialist about his head and also how it was that the
Abwehr
always got such very attractive secretaries. Domenik came round a corner. Christian slowed his pace; he wanted to hear today's joke. Then Domenik did a curious thing: he stopped abruptly, so abruptly that the two men walking behind him stumbled. He knelt to re-tie his shoelace and they stood flanking him: medium build, average height, interchangeable apart from their suits, one dark blue and one dark brown. When he stood up, Domenik's face was as blank as a board and he walked past Christian without a sideways glance. The blue and brown suits kept pace with him. Christian looked to Oster for an explanation and Oster was nowhere to be seen.

For a few seconds he stood in the empty corridor, feeling slightly offended by these rebuffs, until four men in SS uniform appeared, carrying cardboard boxes full of files, and marched past him. The only sensible thing to do was to follow them, get out of the building, go for a long walk and have a quiet lunch. Christian went the other way. He went to Domenik's office. More SS men were emptying the filing cabinets, collecting every scrap of paper from the desk.

Christian tried to find Oster. His secretary, looking pale, said he was in a meeting with Admiral Canaris. “Domenik's been arrested,” Christian told her. She knew already. “Why? What's he done?” he
asked. She didn't know. “You mean they just walked in here and arrested him?” he said. “How can they do such a thing?” She looked at him.
They can do anything,
her look said.
You know that.

Laszlo thought too much and ate too little. The less he ate, the more he thought. One of the things he had too much time to think about was why General Oster did not respond to his signals in the
Glasgow Herald.
Oster must know he needed money. If he needed money he needed food. So Oster knew he was hungry. Laszlo brooded over this in the long bleak hours when he sat on a variety of park benches and watched the same grimy clouds drifting in from the Atlantic and tried to ignore his complaining stomach. Garlic was dead. The
Abwehr
must know that. How could they not know it? Six messages, six days, they
must
know. So why didn't they answer? Tell him where to go, who to meet? They had agents, the agents had money, it was wrong to leave him waiting like this. Exposed. Isolated. In danger. Hungry. Poor.

Laszlo couldn't afford the cinema anymore. He had even given up buying the
Herald;
now he read the free copy in the public library. The seventeen pounds he stole from the farmer ran through his hands with frightening speed. Black-market clothing coupons bought in a pub cost him five pounds: far too much, Laszlo realized when it was too late to argue, the man had cheated him, had conned him blind; but he desperately needed these coupons, his socks were ruined and his underwear was foul. Then he went and spent too much on new socks and underwear and a shirt. His suitcase fell to bits in the rain and he had to get another. William Kenny's identity card was good for two nights, maximum; after that the police were bound to be waiting for him to use it. Another man in another pub sold Laszlo a blank identity card for two pounds but it turned out to be useless because it had to be stamped with an official stamp, so he moved on and swapped it (plus a pound) for a very tattered RAF identity card that had once belonged to LAC Wallis, Peter John. It all cost money. Everything cost money. Even doing nothing cost money. Laszlo tried to save by not eating. He had the gun, he could always rob somebody. Trouble was he felt too depressed to be violent. He kept wondering where he had gone wrong. Maybe he hadn't killed Garlic after all. The
Abwehr
had screwed up once already. They'd said Venezuela when it wasn't Venezuela. How could it be Venezuela when there
wasn't anyone from Venezuela at the university? So maybe it wasn't Bolivia either. Maybe it was really Brazil. Laszlo took out his scrap of paper.
José-Carlos Coelho, 22A Buccleuch Avenue.
Maybe this was Garlic. Laszlo thought about it all day every day until his poor brain didn't know what to think.