Game Without Rules (9 page)

Ah uncomfortable silence was broken by the ringing of the telephone. Larrymore took the call and said, “It’s for you, Mr. Behrens.”

It was Mr. Fortescue. He said, “Would you come round to the bank at once. Use a police car. It can drop you at the Abbey, and you can use the back way. Don’t waste any time.”

“Has something happened?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Fortescue. “Calder’s in Gravesend Hospital. He’s not dead, but he’s quite far down the danger list.”

“I got the message at my Whitehall office, when I got there this morning,” said Mr. Fortescue. “Calder must have been conscious, because he gave the number to the senior houseman at Gravesend and it was he who rang me. It must have happened between six and nine in the morning. Because Calder had already telephoned me.”

He told Mr. Behrens about it.

“I see,” said Mr. Behrens. “He must have missed a third trap. They’re very thorough, these people, aren’t they? Were you able to trace the van?”

“The police traced it. It was stolen in the Borough yesterday.”

“At about what time? Do they know?”

“Before two o’clock. Between one and two.”

Before Mr. Behrens could say anything, Mr. Fortescue stopped him.

“I hadn’t missed the point,” he said. “Take it with the business at Swiss Cottage police station last night, and it adds up to something I’m not at all keen on thinking about. I gather that I’m to see the Prime Minister this afternoon. And I’ve gathered something else, too. Maver is
not
being invited to the meeting.”

From Mr. Fortescue’s office you could hear Big Ben quite clearly. First, the four sets of warning notes, then the ten strokes of the hour. It wasn’t until the last of them had died away that either of them spoke again. It was Mr. Behrens who broke the silence.

He said, “Of course, it was always on the cards that something like that might happen. It’s happened often enough in other countries. We’ve never had it here. I think I’d better go down to Gravesend. If Calder can still talk, he’ll find it easier to talk to me than anyone else.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Fortescue. “I don’t need to tell you to be careful.”

“I shall be extremely careful,” Mr. Behrens assured him.

He was so careful that it took him three hours to reach Gravesend, and he entered the hospital by the tradesmen’s entrance. He found a policeman standing in the corridor that led to the private wards, identified himself and was allowed into an anteroom. Here he found a grim-faced Sister seated at a table, guarding the inner door. She said, “No one can go in without Dr. Henfry’s permission.”

“Then perhaps,” said Mr. Behrens, “you would be kind enough to send for Dr. Henfry.”

This was clearly a breach of protocol. Sisters in hospitals did not run errands for visitors. She rang a bell, summoning a porter. The porter disappeared and silence fell.

Dr. Henfry, when he arrived five minutes later, was large and red-headed, the sort of man who would be a welcome addition to the pack in any hospital rugger team.

He said, “If your name’s Behrens, you can come in for five minutes.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Behrens.

“Will you want the blood transfusions, doctor?”

“I’ll let you know,” said Dr. Henfry. “Come along, Mr. Behrens. And very quiet, please.”

The bed in the room was entirely hidden by screens. Dr. Henfry closed the door carefully and bolted it. Then he moved the nearest screen and Mr. Behrens saw Mr. Calder. He was sitting up in bed reading the
Times.
On the table by his bed were the remains of a pork pie and two bottles of beer.

“It’s not what we like to give our invalids for breakfast,” said Dr. Henfry with a grin, “particularly when they’re at death’s door. But it’s all I could manage. I had to buy it myself and smuggle it in in my instrument case.”

“Do I gather,” said Mr. Behrens, “that you are
not
dying?”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Calder, “but you and Dr. Henfry are the only people who know it, and it’s going to stay that way for a bit. The deputation who called at my cottage last night left a third visiting card, in the form of a few pounds of gelignite controlled by a trembler fuse and a detonator. They left it in the inspection pit in my garage. If I’d driven the car over it, I’d have been blown to Jericho. Luckily I set it off from outside by banging the door. The door hit me and knocked me cold. But it also protected me. I was still unconscious when the milkman came along. He put me straight into his van, bless him, and brought me down here. I’d come round by that time, and I realised what a stroke of luck the whole thing was. I put Dr. Henfry wise, and he’s done the rest.”

“I’ve had a gaggle of reporters round here already,” said Dr. Henfry. “I told them you might recover – with luck and devoted nursing. You’d had three blood transfusions already.”

“Excellent,” said Mr. Calder.

“I’d better take Mr. Behrens out now, or Sister will start worrying. I’ll show him the back way in along the balcony.”

When they were alone together, Mr. Calder said, “You can tell Fortescue, of course. But no one else. I’m going to clear out as soon as it’s dark. Dr. Henfry is fetching me.”

“I assume you’re going undercover?”

“We both are. We’ll use Mrs. Palfrey’s.”

“Is this just general caution . . . or something special?”

Mr. Calder was busy pouring out the second bottle of beer and did not answer for a moment. Then he said, “That fuse on the plastic explosive under the grill was micrometer set. I shouldn’t have needed to turn the gas on. The lightest touch on the switch would have set it off. When I’d immobilised it, I took some photographs. The whole thing had been beautifully concealed. Even if you stooped down you could hardly see a thing. All the wires were taped, and the tapes themselves had been fish-tailed and folded under at the end. Do you remember that sergeant at the demolition school? ‘Five minutes extra work, gentlemen. But it may well make the difference between success and failure.’
He
always fish-tailed the ends of
his
tapes. It was when I saw those tapes that I decided to go undercover.”

“I have on my books at this moment,” said Mr. Fortescue to the Prime Minister, “twenty men and four women, any two of whom – they usually work in pairs – I
might
have allotted to this particular assignment. I selected Calder and Behrens, and I telephoned both of them on Wednesday evening. The line which
I
used is, I can assure you, secure. They both saw me on Thursday morning. It is true that they came quite openly, and my office in Richmond Terrace might be watched – although, as Commander Elfe will tell you, the Security precautions are such that it would be very difficult for anyone to do so without themselves being observed.”

Commander Elfe, who was the only other person present, nodded and said, “Not impossible, but so difficult that I think we might rule it out.”

“In any event,” went on Mr. Fortescue, “Calder and Behrens were not the only people who saw me that morning. I had routine matters to discuss with at least six other members of my department.”

“So,” said the Prime Minister, “up to that time, no one would have any reason to connect them with this particular job. What did they do next?”

“Behrens visited the Records Department in the new Defence building and went from there to call on Professor Gottlieb. Calder went to Campden Hill to talk to the inspector in charge of the Nicholson inquiry.”

“At either of which points they could have been picked up and followed.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Mr. Fortescue. “Only Mr. Behrens did not reach the Gottlieb flat until a quarter past two, and Mr. Calder went to Campden Hill even later – at three o’clock. The van which was used for the visit to Mr. Calder’s cottage was stolen between one and two. It was clearly stolen for that job, and was abandoned when it had been done.”

The Prime Minister looked at Elfe, who looked at Mr. Fortescue, and said, “What it amounts to is this: the only people who could have known by midday that Behrens was on this job were the staff of the Defence Ministry. If they knew Behrens was on it, they would have assumed Calder was involved as well.”

“I’m afraid that’s right,” said Mr. Fortescue.

“Gentlemen,” said the Prime Minister, “I am not an alarmist. And thirty years in politics has taught me not to jump to conclusions. But if you add that last fact to certain others – the way in which Behrens’ assailant was liberated; the method and execution of the attack on Calder – I’m afraid that a very distasteful possibility emerges.”

“You mean,” said Commander Elfe, bluntly, “that Security Executive are playing politics.”

In a comfortable bed-sitting room, in that area of bed-sitting rooms which lies between the station and the Rugby Football Ground at Twickenham, Mr. Behrens poured out a cup of tea for Mr. Calder and said, “How many so far?”

“Seventeen near certainties,” said Mr. Calder. “Seventeen cases of public servants driven out. Nine of them have gone to live abroad. Two are in institutions. Six, including Bax, have taken their own lives. And, if those are the ones we know about, you can be certain that the true total is twice or three times as great.”

Mr. Behrens said, “It was the technique which convinced me, much more than all that working out of times and places. It was such an exact reproduction of the interrogation techniques which both sides brought to horrible perfection during the war. If you wanted to break a man down, what did you do? First you made him uncomfortable. It was far more demoralising for a man to be cold, or filthy, or sleepless, or thirsty than actually to be hurt. Discomfort weakens. Torture builds up a resistance. The Russians discovered that long ago. The interrogator’s second weapon was to find something – it didn’t matter what – but something which his victim was ashamed of. Some weakness, some slip. If he harped on it skilfully he could take the man to pieces,”

Mr. Calder stirred his tea, and looked round the comfortable, lower-middle-class sitting room. Mrs. Palfrey’s grandfather and grandmother stared back at him from fading brown oleographs over the mantlepiece. He found reassurance in their Victorian rigidity.

He said, “Public servants are sitting ducks. They loathe fuss. They eschew scandal. And they can’t run away. That’s the point. They’re nailed to their jobs. Take a man like Nicholson. He had to be within reach of Westminster and Whitehall. The only way to go out was to go right out. I wonder what they had on him. And how many times he paid up.”

The arrival of Mrs. Palfrey, with a kettle of hot water and the evening paper, saved Mr. Behrens from having to reply. He found an item at the foot of the front page which seemed to interest him. He read it out: “A party of bird-watchers on the Cooling Marshes yesterday discovered, in one of the salt-water dikes, the body of a man. He has not yet been identified. The following description has been issued. Age, about forty-five. Height, five foot six. Stoutly built. A marked malformation of the upper lip.”

“Do we know him?” said Mr, Calder.

“My acquaintance with him,” said Mr. Behrens, “was limited to poking him with my umbrella. I cannot regard him as a great loss.”

“Quick work, all the same,” said Mr. Calder. “They don’t believe in leaving loose ends about, do they? I wonder what they’ll do next. . .”

Richard Redmayne and Paula Gottlieb sitting on the seat in Green Park made a handsome couple. His conventional dress could not conceal a certain long-limbed, co-ordinated strength, the product of a school which was unfashionable enough to think athletic prowess important; the girl, dark, lively and very young.

She said, “Have you heard from Mr. Nicholson?”

“He’s arrived in Canada,” said Richard. “I had a short letter. He and his sister have got a flat in Toronto. He says they’re settling down very happily.’

“‘We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, lived in his mild and magnificent eye, learned his great language, caught his clear accents, made him our pattern to live and to die.’”

“That’s poetry,” said Richard suspiciously.

“Robert Browning. ‘The Lost Leader.’ You remember? ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us.’”

“It wasn’t money in his case,” said Richard. “It was fear. How’s your father?”

This change of subject did not appear to surprise Paula. She had reached a stage of intimacy with Richard when such sudden jumps were part of the fun.

She said, “If only he’d make up his mind. It’s the uncertainty which is so horrible. If he’d only tell me – tell someone – what it’s all about. He just sits at home. He hardly goes out at all. I had a job to persuade him to go out this morning and get his hair cut.”

“That’s two o’clock striking now,” said Richard. “I’ve got to get back. But I’ll walk home with you first.”

As soon as Paula opened the door of the flat, she knew something was wrong.

“What’s up?” said Richard.

“Where’s Fritz?” There was panic in the girl’s voice. “We left him to guard the house . . . he always runs out to meet me.”

Through the open door of the drawing room they could glimpse the chaos within. Overturned chairs, broken glass, something seeping under the door and staining the hall carpet.

Richard said urgently, “Don’t go in there—stop.”

But he found himself unable to hold her. She burst past him and threw herself into the room. As he grabbed the telephone, he heard her give a single choked scream.

When the police and her father arrived together five minutes later, she was still on her knees, sobbing uncontrollably, with a brown and black head cradled on her lap. . .

In the hot blacked-out room, half laboratory, half office, two men pored over the microfilm reader.

“It’s here if it’s anywhere,” said Sand-Douglas. “November 2nd, 1940. That was the day he arrived. The main interrogation would have started the day after. We usually gave them a night’s rest.”

Old Mr. Happold, as thin and as indestructible as dried sea-weed, fed a second roll of microfilm into the reader and adjusted the reading glass. He was unaffected by the heat and closeness of the room.