Artillery of Lies (45 page)

She got out, and put one of the chairs in the fireplace. The chair was too big: she couldn't squeeze past it. She took it out, got back inside and hooked the chair forward with her foot. When she stood on it and reached up, she found that there were projecting bits of stonework to be grabbed. Even better, the chimney was narrow enough for her to press outward with her arms and almost take her weight on her elbows. Maybe if she did the same with her feet …

She got down again. There was a lot of chimney to be climbed and it wasn't going to be kind to her elbows. There was bound to be a lot of soot and her eyes weren't going to like that. She was wearing a linen two-piece: skirt and short coat. Both came off. She tore a bedsheet into strips and bound them around her elbows. Tying the knots was difficult: she had to take one end in her teeth. She kicked her shoes off, got rid of her stockings, flexed her toes. There had been a boyfriend, back in her days at the University of California, who was a rockclimber. He had explained to her the technique for climbing a natural chimney in a rockface without using a rope. You pressed your feet against opposite sides, took your weight on your arms which were likewise braced and went up … how? Somehow. It could be done, that was the main thing. The boyfriend had done it, and he had failed archaeology and anthropology, a gut course so
simpleminded that even football players sometimes passed. Climbing chimneys couldn't be too difficult.

She looked at the chimney and tried not to think of the filth and the blackness, the probably narrowing space, the possible spiders. Julie was not keen on things like cramped caves or tiny tunnels; in fact just thinking about them was like a free horror movie.
Don't stand there,
she told herself,
do it!

She did the thing with the chair again. Standing on the chair she tied a broad strip of bedsheet over her eyes to keep the soot out. Then she reached up and fumbled until her fingers found a couple of hand-holds. She lifted herself off the chair and tried to press the soles of her feet against the opposite sides; she couldn't. Her toes scrabbled against one wall and her heel scraped the other but the damn chimney was just too wide. Also it sloped too much. She had to let go, the chair rocked violently, panic attacked her, she ripped off the blindfold, lost her balance, banged her head, ended up straddling the chair and cursing as she waited for the pain to drain away.

More height. She needed more height.

She dragged a drawer out of the chest and placed it, upside-down, across the seat of the chair. Not enough. She laid a second drawer on top of the first.
What the hell,
she thought, and added the third. It made a shaky heap of wood when she dragged it after her into the chimney, but it still stood. Not for long, however. She got her feet on to the seat of the chair and tried to kneel on the top drawer but she could feel it slipping and suddenly everything overbalanced. It all went over in a clumsy crash.

Cut lip. She sucked the blood as she picked up the pieces and worked out how to do it better next time.

Turn the chair around so that its back was tight against the back of the chimney. Now at least it couldn't tip over backward. Obvious, really.

Julie stacked the drawers on the seat. She stood on the front of the seat. She got one knee on the top drawer and levered herself up until she was standing. She tied the blindfold. The thin wood under her feet creaked, and blood trickled down her chin and fell with a faint spattering. Her hands reached up and found something to grasp. Her arms took her weight. She swung her legs and this time the soles of her feet pressed hard against the chimney walls. It worked. She felt as secure as if she were clamped in place. She began to climb.

*

“Shot dead, you say,” Luis said.

“Stone dead.”

Luis's mind was hunting back through what it could remember of the Garlic file, desperate for a hint of an explanation. “That was a curious way to express your thanks,” he said softly. “Didn't you reward Garlic with a bonus quite recently?”

“No. We asked you if Garlic deserved one.”

“For the report on OWCH, which was excellent and it certainly deserved a bonus. I was pleased to see—”

“Garlic was dead when we made the inquiry,” the voice interrupted. “We knew he was dead. We wanted to find out whether or not
you
knew.”

Luis needed an answer, an explanation. He had nothing. His heart was jerking and jolting. His face was an old photograph, badly crumpled and flattened out. Surely the watchers on the terrace must see he was guilty as sin.

“Did you know?” That was Christian's voice. “If you knew, why didn't you tell us?”

“Excuse me.” Luis made a little show of getting to his feet. All he had to offer was the truth. If he told them
that,
they would send for their polished jackboots and kick him to death. “A touch of cramp,” he said, massaging his right calf. He strolled to the fireplace and picked up the stool. Stout denial would do no good. If they were wrong, he must come up with an alternative. He had about three yards, or ten seconds, to find a good, persuasive reason that they were wrong to say
We knew he was dead.

He trailed the stool behind him. Then he won an extra six or seven seconds by pretending the floor was uneven, seeking out a spot where the stool didn't rock. But finally he sat on the bloody silly thing and cleared his throat.

“Why are you keeping us waiting?” That was Christian again, with a hint of gloat in his voice.

They knew he was dead,
Luis thought and instantly saw the flaw in it as clearly as if it had been red-inked. “I operate on the principle of need-to-know,” he said. “It has helped me to survive. I have been wondering just how much you need to know. As little as possible, I hope.”

“Get on with it.”

Luis hooked his feet on the top rung of the stool and linked his hands around his knees. “You knew he was dead,” he told the darkness, “because you had him shot. Am I right?” He cocked his head. No answer. “Your killer deserves a medal for marksmanship,” he said, “because Garlic is a woman.”

He was a magician. He had whipped his silk handkerchief off the birdcage and the canary was no longer there. The audience was in a slight state of shock. Their silence was total; he could hear, for the first time, the silky rustle of distant surf.
By God,
Luis promised himself,
I'll be an actor when this war is over and I'll act the socks off all of you.

The shock wore off. There were murmurings in the night. Then the voice which was not Christian's said: “Garlic's sex is not relevant.”

Luis allowed himself the luxury of a twisted grin, which they could see, to balance his twisted guts, which they could not. “Garlic would not agree,” he said.

“Do you deny that Garlic is dead?”

“She was very much alive last week. No sign of bullet-holes.” More murmurings.

“May I ask a question?” Luis slowly drew the tip of his forefinger down the left side of his jaw and up the right. “Did your alleged assassin report that he had shot a man?”

Oster told Canaris: “It was a coded message. Mission accomplished, that's all it said. That's all we needed.”

“Correct me if I am mistaken,” Luis said. His fingers found an earlobe and stroked it, which felt wonderfully comforting. “You sent your agent to shoot a man, is that right? He claims to have shot Garlic, who is undoubtedly not a man. Yet your agent did not report this surprising information. Therefore it seems to me very likely that he did not shoot Garlic”

“You
are
mistaken.” This was Christian, and from the tone of his voice he had recovered his confidence. “We did
not
send our agent to kill a man, we sent him to kill a Venezuelan medical student at the University of Glasgow School of Medicine. He signaled success.”

“Then either he lied, or he killed the wrong Venezuelan medical student.”

Oster had been waiting for that. “He killed
all
the Venezuelan medical students,” he said.

“That's … incredible.”

“In war many things are incredible,” Christian said. “You, Cabrillo, are hard to believe. What does it matter if Garlic was male, female or hermaphrodite? We know that he, she or it is dead. So what is your motive in trying to persuade us the opposite is true? How does your behavior serve the Third Reich?”

“Oh dear,” Luis said. The canary was back in the birdcage and he had canary-shit over both his hands. All the optimism drained out of him and despair galloped in to fill the space.

“We need to know,” Canaris said.

With every fresh hand-hold, fresh soot fell on her arms and head and, sometimes, hit her in the face and mouth. She spat it out. The stuff felt disgusting—powdery yet greasy—but it didn't taste too bad. After all, what was it? No different from burned toast. At least her eyes were safe. It was odd that she kept them tightly closed behind the blindfold. Enhanced the sense of feel, perhaps.

The first five or six feet were easy. Her fingers found new places to grip, her feet moved and clamped, moved and clamped. Then the chimney narrowed again. She hung by her arms and tried to reach new places to press her feet against, and she banged her right knee on the stonework. She scrabbled about and managed to secure her right toes in front and her left heel behind, but she was gasping for breath and her arms felt like old string. She rested them and wondered what her Californian boyfriend would have done now.

In fact there was no alternative. Her toes were beginning to stiffen and her heel was slippery with soot. “Move, Julie!” she said. “Shift your butt.” The words echoed gloomily. She put her fingers to work, and climbed.

The chimney continued to narrow. She was bumping her elbows and shoulders and her backside, and her knees were losing skin. Should have bandaged them. Too late now. The hand-holds were getting worse: smaller and tighter and further apart. What if the damn chimney poked up high in the sky? What if it came to a point? She searched with her toes, twitched her hips, gained a few more inches and both her shoulders rubbed against stone. This felt like the end of the road. It also felt like sweet fresh air: something pleasant was blowing in her face. She released one hand and groped.
Her hand went through a hole. She clung to the edge of it and used the other hand to drag off her blindfold. The moon glared at her.

That was the good news. The bad news was that she was looking at it through a six-inch-square gap in some sort of elaborate chimneypot.

After she'd got some strength back she hit the chimneypot as hard as she could with her fist, and hurt her fist. That chimneypot was built to withstand hurricane winds. Weary American ladies could pound it day and night and it wouldn't budge.

It was easier to climb down without the blindfold; easier, that is, until the chimney really widened and the sole of one foot, slick with soot, lost its grip. The sudden strain was too much for her overworked fingers and she fell six feet on to the chair and its stack of drawers. Pain blazed in a dozen parts of her body. She lay in the wreckage, looking up through her tears at the glimmer of moonlight high above.

“Need to know,” Luis said quietly. “Need to know, need to know.” He did a bit more earlobe-tugging.

“Garlic is dead,” the first voice said. “Secrecy isn't going to protect him. Or her. Is it?”

“I'm not so sure. Appearances can be deceptive.” Luis had no idea what he meant by that.

“The appearance of death? Or the appearance of Garlic?”

“I think he means the appearance of loyalty,” Christian said. “That is certainly deceptive.”

The moon had risen; Luis could make out the soft outlines of the figures on the terrace. “What I mean is,” he said, “people are not always what they seem. Brigadier Christian, for instance, turns out to be Commodore Meyer. Or is it the other way round?” He spread his arms, the picture of innocent bewilderment. “Whom should I trust?”

“Trust me,” said the first voice. “And stop waffling.”

“You want the truth about Garlic”

“Without delay.”

“But which one? That's the difficulty.”

“You mean there is a second Garlic? We killed one and you met the other last week? Fine. Tell us about the other.
All
about the other.”

“No, no, no.” Luis shook his head, like a piano teacher whose pupil keeps missing the B flat. “There isn't
another
Garlic. There are
six
other Garlics. You shot the seventh.”

Utter silence.

“One for every day of the week,” Luis said. “Except Sundays, thanks to you.”

This no longer had anything to do with the great big war. It wasn't even part of the contest between the Double-Cross System and the
Abwehr.
Now it was just Mrs. Julie Conroy versus The Room. She hated its blank, silent stupidity more than the people who had shut her inside, and she was going to get out if she had to chew a hole through the wall.

The skylight looked easier.

She dragged the bed to the middle of the room and stood the chest of drawers on top of it. The chest was less than steady: the mattress did not make a solid base. There were two chairs. She stood one of them on the chest. Its legs reached to the very edge; there was nothing to spare. If it slid an inch it would fall.

That left the second chair. Fix the second chair on the first and it just might add enough height for her to stand on top and reach the skylight. Unfortunately their design made this impossible: the legs splayed out too much, they contained too many struts and braces in awkward places. “Come on, you little bastard,
help
me,” Julie urged as she stood on the bed and struggled. The little bastard refused to help and the whole heap of furniture wobbled. “Sweet suffering Christ!” she said, and gave up and got down before it all collapsed. Then, in a fit of fury and frustration, she seized the bed and tipped it, and spilled her gimcrack creation all over the floor with a gratifying crash.