Artillery of Lies (48 page)

“I see what you mean,” Luis said. “He doesn't sparkle.”

The rest of the journey was silent; and it wasn't until they were on the train, in the restaurant car, each with a drink and a view of the passing wheatfields, that she said: “By the way … Garlic's dead.”

“Yes, I know. It doesn't matter. They don't care.”

“Oh. Well, that's all right, then.” She fingered her lip. “So I bust a gut to find you, I got captured, I bust several other guts to escape, and it was all for nothing. Is that right?”

“Um …” The train was making two pieces of cutlery rattle. Luis separated them. “Well … Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Fine,” she said. “Terrific. Next time I'll stay home and do something really useful, like clean the typewriter.”

“Ah, but you were brilliant last night. Canaris said he thought you were sensational. Fabulous.”

“Did he really?” she asked. Luis nodded. “You're lying,” she said.

“Of course I'm lying. Lying is what I do best.” He took her right hand, very cautiously, and examined the bruises. “Who told you about Garlic?”

“Stephanie Schmidt.” Julie gave him the story.

“Glasgow,” Luis said. “Glasgow … They really sent somebody
all the way to Glasgow. And he actually shot this poor South American lady doctor dead? Because he thought she was Garlic?”

“Don't blame yourself. She wasn't even from Venezuela.” Julie linked little fingers with him. “Sounds like a Noel Coward song, doesn't it? ‘She wasn't even from Venezuela …' Don't squeeze, please. It hurts.”

“Tell me all about last night,” Luis said. “And I'll tell you all about poor old Christian.”

Laszlo Martini became so desperate that he took work. He was deeply ashamed. It had never happened before, and now only the acid nag of hunger drove him to it. He got a job in a fish and chip shop, preparing the potatoes. First he knocked off the worst of the mud, then he filled a machine which he hand-cranked until it had tumbled and scraped the potatoes more or less white. Then he picked out the biggest eyes with the point of a knife. Then, one by one, he fed the potatoes into the chipping machine, which he worked by pulling down a lever time and time and time again until his right arm twitched and flexed long after the last potato had dropped in strips into the bucket. Then it was time to start again, knocking off the mud.

The pay was insulting but he could eat all the fish and chips he wanted, and the owners let him sleep on a pile of potato sacks at the back of the shop. He told them he was a seaman who had missed his boat and was waiting for it to return. They didn't care. As long as he chipped half a ton of spuds a day nothing else mattered. His beard was quite thick by now, so he was confident that no policeman would recognize him from the descriptions given by the people he had robbed.

With a full belly again, he began to think more clearly. There were hours and hours available for thought, while his hands and arms did the work of a machine. Always his thoughts drew him to the same conclusion. He had killed the wrong person. Dr. Rosa Maria What's-her-name could not have been Garlic. That explained the
Abwehr'
s silence. They had not responded to his signals in the
Glasgow Herald
because … Well, why hadn't they?

It had taken Laszlo a long time to work that out. He had been sitting on an upturned bucket, taking out eyes, when the truth, the enormously obvious truth, burst upon him so suddenly
that he pronged his hand. The next few dozen potatoes were tinged pink. Laszlo was too absorbed in his revelation to notice. The
Abwehr
had not responded because
they knew that Garlic was still alive.
How did they know?
Because they were still getting reports from Garlic!
It was dazzlingly, blindingly obvious. By its silence, the
Abwehr
was sending Laszlo the loudest possible signal.

Next day he quit his job. He had had it for nearly a week. He hated the sight and smell and feel of potatoes. He was operating the chipping machine when two drunken sailors standing in the queue began making fun of him. They made obscene jokes which he didn't completely understand but he knew enough to be insulted. Nobody in the shop told the sailors to be quiet. Laszlo quit on the spot. He took his pay, he took his suitcase with his gun locked inside it, and he walked away.

He kept walking until he reached Buccleuch Avenue. By then it was about four in the afternoon. He walked past 22A and gave it only the briefest glance. Nothing had changed. He walked to the end of the road, turned, walked back. Now that he had money he knew exactly what to do. He had to kill the other Garlic, the
real
Garlic, this one, and signal Oster via the
Herald
that Happy Days Are Here Again, Just You Wait And See. Or something like that.

He had stopped at a public lavatory and taken from his suitcase the cavernous shoulder-holster and the pistol with the silencer like a beer bottle. He felt a different man with that comforting weight under his left armpit. He strolled up to the front door of 22A but ignored it and followed the path around the side of the building, glancing in at windows and also secretly watching the next-door houses for signs of life. Nothing showed, either way. He reached the back door and it was open. Only an inch, but so what? Open is open. Laszlo touched it and it swung wide. Creaked wide.

Now that scared him. It was a weekday afternoon, he expected what's-his-name … Coelho … to be at work or college or somewhere.

Unless he'd gone out and forgotten to shut the back door.

Laszlo took a pace inside so that he could bring out his pistol without the neighbors seeing it.

The house was silent: no ticking clocks, no dripping taps, no simmering saucepans. It
felt
empty. Laszlo was convinced it was empty. He walked in.

The first room was the kitchen. Half a loaf on the breadboard,
a sink full of dirty cups and plates, spent matches scattered on and round the gas stove. Smell of kippers.

Opposite the kitchen was a big bedroom-cum-study. Books and papers everywhere, desk, wardrobe, single bed by the window. The bed had been made and somebody had been lying on it. The imprint of a body was clear. Laszlo put his hand on the bed. It was still warm. That shocked him far more than the open back door.

He searched the rest of the house in a rush of fright. Guest bedroom: only a camp-bed and a gaping cabin-trunk. Bathroom: empty. That left the front room. He kicked the door open and found no enemies to shoot. He looked behind the sofa and the curtains. Nothing. Nobody. Nil.

Laszlo walked slowly back to the passageway that linked the rooms and he thought hard. He was very unhappy; something here was extremely wrong. Those bedclothes were warm. How long did bedclothes stay warm after someone got off the bed? Ten minutes? Two minutes? It made a difference. He was beginning to hate this house. He hurried back into the bedroom and felt the bedclothes again. They were cool. Damn it, they were nearly cold! So Garlic had been lying here only minutes ago. Now he was gone. Where could he have gone? There was nowhere to go.

The bed was covered by a large quilted bedspread. It reached almost to the floor. Laszlo took a handful in his left fist and ripped the bedspread away. Papers fluttered in the breeze; a china lamp got knocked over and it shattered like a small bomb. Laszlo stood, legs apart, braced for action. No action offered itself.

He kneeled and peered under the bed. Empty. Dark but empty. He sat on his heels and smiled in relief. The whole house really was empty. A silky slithering made him turn his head and he took a thunderous blow in front of his right ear, a blow that smashed his smile into a gaping, lopsided grin and lifted him off his knees and sent him skidding on his rump across the shiny linoleum and thudding into the wall. Pain flowered hugely, hotter and redder than any blast furnace, and it faded as fast to a wretched semi-darkness. When he could feel again there was a burning balloon inside his head and it was threatening to burst and split his skull. He had to open his mouth and let the balloon escape but his mouth was full of splintered rubbish. Whenever he breathed, he choked. When he choked, pain savaged his broken face.

The blow came from José-Carlos Coelho. He had been lying on
his bed, reading a pathology textbook, when he caught a glimpse of this stunted, bearded stranger in his back garden. At once he rolled off, landing softly on his hands and stockinged feet, and slid under the bed. Half a minute later the bed-springs above him moved as Laszlo prodded. Laszlo muttered and mumbled, and then ran from the room. Coelho took a chance, slid out from under the bed and hid behind the door. When Laszlo came back, Coelho saw the gun and knew he would probably have only one chance; so as soon as Laszlo sat back on his heels Coelho made two huge strides and punched Laszlo so hard that Coelho came away with bits of beard and skin on his knuckles, cursing at the pain. He had boxed as a heavyweight for the university for three years, but he had never hit anyone as hard as that, especially without gloves. When Julie Conroy socked Luis Cabrillo she was exasperated and she didn't know how to make a proper fist. When José-Carlos Coelho punched Laszlo Martini he wanted to take his head off with one good shot. Laszlo's head would never be the same again. His jaw was broken in three places and the splintered rubbish inside his mouth was bits of teeth.

Coelho found the pistol and stuffed it in a pocket. He put on his shoes. He kicked Laszlo across the bedroom and into the bathroom. He closed the lavatory seat and dumped Laszlo on it. Laszlo wavered and moaned. He dribbled a mixture so foul that even Coelho the pathologist did not want to see it. Coelho got an old necktie and fastened Laszlo's hands behind him; then he picked up Laszlo by his armpits. He made him stand on the seat and he knotted Laszlo's hands to the ring in the end of the lavatory chain. “Don't fall or you'll break your arms,” he warned. He took the key from the bathroom door and locked it on the outside. He went in search of a telephone and the police.

Laszlo did fall. He fainted. He did not weigh a lot but all that there was of him snatched at the chain with a sudden shock that was too much for the elderly plumbing. The cistern was already cracked; now it split, fell apart, dumping gallons of cold water on or around Laszlo's body and then continuing to pump water over it.

Laszlo recovered a bit. He crawled to the other end of the bathroom, dragging behind him the chain with a jagged chunk of cistern still attached. He knelt, and gripped the chunk between his heels, and began sawing at the necktie around his wrists. It was the sort of thing he'd seen done on the movies dozens of times. It always
worked. The necktie was old and frayed. Laszlo didn't care how much skin went with it. He hacked hard.

When the police car arrived, water was pulsing under the bathroom door and Laszlo had gone. José-Carlos Coelho looked at the bathroom window in disbelief. It was the size of a shoebox. “Nobody could get through that,” he said. “Could they?” He was talking to himself. The police were off and running.

“I don't believe any of it,” the Director said. Freddy Garcia looked startled. “Not
your
stuff, Freddy,” the Director said, waving a thick typescript. “I believe all
this.
You've debriefed the pair of them very well, it's a model of its kind. I don't believe what Canaris says. I think Canaris is lying. I think he's got a racket going. That's the only way this makes sense.”

“What in particular is Canaris lying about?”

“Well, his knowledge of the Double-Cross System, for a start. He wants Eldorado to believe that the
Abwehr
knows we've turned all their agents, for heaven's sake.”

“Most, not all.”

“All right, most. But
we
know perfectly well the
Abwehr
has the greatest confidence in those agents. Has had for years. Many of their reports go straight to the top. We know that for a fact. Canaris wouldn't let that go on happening if he knew the contents were counterfeit, would he? I mean to say, the man's not a suicide.”

“Could he be a peacemaker, sir? Eldorado says he rambled a bit, got slightly emotional, but the general drift was clear enough.”

“I'm sure it was. Ceasefire in the west, keep up the good work in the east. Right? I've heard that song before. Altruistic Germans are constantly popping up in highminded places like Berne or Stockholm or the Vatican and offering us painless ways of avoiding an invasion of Europe. Dust in the eyes, old chap, dust in the eyes.”

“But Canaris claims there is now a genuine anti-Nazi resistance party, or … Well, not a party, more of a group, or—”

“Or two men and a dog. Listen: if they hate their dreadful Fuehrer so much, why don't they simply shoot him?”

“Canaris says he needs—”

“Canaris says, Canaris says. Suppose we give him what he asks
for. Suppose we use Eldorado to pump up the Allied threat. What will be the consequence? Militarily?”

“They'll reinforce their defenses in the west,” Freddy said.

“We don't want that. That's the last thing we want. What chance will our invasion stand if Canaris persuades Hitler to stuff France full of troops?”

Freddy flicked thoughtfully through his own copy of the debriefing. “Even assuming he was lying, sir, why on earth would Canaris tell Eldorado that he knew some of his agents had been turned? Where's his racket?”

“Of course he's lying about it.” The Director put his feet on the desk: for him, a wildly extravagant gesture. “If Canaris isn't lying then we might as well all shut up shop and go home. I'll tell you what I think happened. Canaris got badly shaken by the Garlic affair. First, somebody on his staff persuades him that Garlic is unreliable and must be removed. When that's done—or so he believes—Canaris has to face the awful possibility that Eldorado is crooked too.
Then
it turns out that Garlic's death was an
Abwehr
blunder! So Eldorado is a splendid fellow after all. Well, Canaris can't apologize, he's incapable of that, so he goes to the other extreme. He brags. He lets Eldorado know that he, Canaris, is a masterspy! He knows of every double-agent being run by British Intelligence. In other words he tells a whopping great lie in order to cover his embarrassment over his little mistake.”