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Authors: Henry S. Maxfield

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BOOK: Legacy of a Spy
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He entered through the main door, went past the desk, through the main public rooms and into the bar and coffee shop in the back. He sat at the bar and ordered a pilsner.

It wasn’t quite 10:30 yet, and he opened the newspaper. The Zurich paper was one of the best in the world for unbiased, honest reporting, particularly when it dealt with international affairs. Most of the news people were allowed to read was hopelessly biased and often incorrect. Even the publishers didn’t know the facts, nor did many government officials know what frequently lay behind treaties, their sub
rosa
agreements and ulterior motives. Slater knew why and how some of them had started; he no longer believed the rest. A nation’s stated intentions were often so far from the truth.

One article caught his attention, and he read it through from beginning to end. According to the writer, the European satellite nations, particularly Poland and Hungary, might be planning an organized break with Russia. Slater doubted that, without American military interference, any revolution would succeed unless it was just another puppet state whose leaders were working with the Communists. Tito wouldn’t be any help. He was sitting pretty, getting aid from both sides.

At that moment, three men entered the bar from the street entrance. Slater turned enough to see Hollingsworth and two others. He knew Wyman immediately from the pictures. Wyman was handsome in a flashy sort of way. He reminded Slater of an Ivy League fullback he had once known, whose background with a capital B had been obscure, but whose football ability had given him access to the best clubs. He remembered that the club boys had considered themselves quite democratic in accepting him. He had ended up becoming the worst snob of all.

Wyman certainly was big. Slater guessed he was outweighed by at least twenty-five pounds. Slater would have disliked Wyman even if the man hadn’t been under suspicion. He was convinced Wyman was an arrogant freeloader, whose only ambition was to get enough money and power to push people around. Why did Uncle Sam hire men like this? They were perfect bait for Communists.

Slater asked the bartender to bring another bottle of pilsner beer to a booth and walked over to the booth next to Wyman’s. The paneled sides were just higher than a man’s head. Slater could listen without being observed. He put the paper in front of him and pretended to read.

“What’s in Munich that isn’t available here, Wyman?” That couldn’t be George talking. Slater smiled inwardly.

“Or have the local girls seen through you already?” That was George!

“This town is dead, and you know it. A man can really live it up in Munich. Besides,” said Wyman, “I’ve got contacts up there. You should see their place. It’s like a castle. I don’t believe the owner’s
family have
worked for five generations.”

“Really!”
George’s tone was sarcastic. “What are their names?”

“You’re too young.”

Slater was sure George must be blushing. He was surprised that Wyman hadn’t appeared to take offense at Hollingsworth’s attitude.

“Are you driving up?” the other man asked.

“No, I’m taking the four-thirty train this afternoon.”

That was all Slater needed to know.
It was too bad George couldn’t have gotten Wyman to mention the names of his Munich friends. Slater called the waiter
over,
paid the bill and left.

The three men were still talking. Only George looked up at Slater, as he went past their table. George believed there was something familiar about the man. He considered asking one of his companions but, for some strange reason, decided not to. There was something about the man and the way he moved.

George was disappointed that Carmichael hadn’t shown up. He hoped nothing had gone wrong at this early stage of the game.

 

chapter
three

 

SLATER TURNED into the Bahnhofstrasse and walked the length of it back to the Schweizerhof Hotel. He purchased a couple of American magazines and went up to his room. He left a request with the switchboard to call him at 4 P.M.

There were some letters he would have liked to write, but the postmark would place him in Zurich, and he wasn’t sure at this point whether that would be advisable. There were very few people with whom Slater still kept in touch. His father was no longer living, and his mother had remarried many years ago. She had her own life, and his job had prevented him from much personal contact with her. Even his letters were necessarily few and inadequate. There was so much he had to leave out and so much he had to invent.

He went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. He took the glass tumbler and allowed the cold water to cover the bottom, and then passed the glass under the faucet, quickly, so that there was just the least bit more water. He turned off the tap and took a tablet from an aspirin box in his pocket and dropped it into the water.

He re-entered the room and set the glass on the small writing table. He took a ball-point pen from his inside jacket pocket and, seating himself, dipped the pen in the water and began to write. As the pen worked across the paper, there was nothing visible. The only way Slater could be certain he wasn’t writing over the same space twice was the heavy, black-lined paper beneath the sheet he was writing on. He had to keep pen to paper and write continually. When he was forced to dip again, he would carefully mark his place with his left forefinger. Looking at the apparently empty page, Slater reflected that this secret writing was symbolic of these last ten years of his life. He had moved forward continuously and had left nothing visible behind.

After the message had been completed, he wrote a regular letter over it and addressed it to a man named Fred Stanton at the Hotel de Ville, in Paris. The visible letter was innocuous, and Slater signed it, “As always, Ben.”

He tried to read to while away the time, but the magazines bored him. At lunchtime he went downstairs and ordered another big meal. This time he wasn’t hungry, but he forced himself to eat.

He returned to his room and slept for two hours, waking himself just as the phone rang. It was the girl at the switchboard. He liked her voice and was tempted to talk to her. He thanked her instead and hung up.

At 4:05 Slater checked out of the hotel and crossed the street to the station. He mailed the letter and loitered around the ticket windows, leaning against the concrete wall, apparently reading his paper.

At 4:20 Wyman arrived, and Slater joined the ticket line, two places behind him. He heard Wyman ask for a round-trip ticket to Munich. Slater bought a one-way ticket to the same destination and followed Wyman to the train. He watched with satisfaction as Wyman boarded a first-class car. Slater entered two cars forward of Wyman and found himself a seat in the second-class coach.

After Slater’s passport had been checked for the second time at Bregenz, he pulled his suitcase down from the rack and took it with him along the corridor to the men’s room. The train was going full speed now and rocking from side to side. It was cramped quarters in the men’s room, but he managed to get into Carmichael’s clothes. His biggest difficulty was the toupee. He should have gotten a haircut. His own hair was getting a little too long.

Slater stepped out of the men’s room as Carmichael and headed back to Wyman’s car to claim the seat in Wyman’s first-class compartment to which his first-class ticket entitled him. Slater was prepared to strike up a conversation. What he had heard in Zurich was enough to know the proper approach to Wyman. A little name-dropping of international socialites, and he would be in.

Slater checked his ticket and opened the sliding door to the corresponding compartment. Slater looked from face to face, appeared bewildered, muttered an “excuse me” in German and backed out into the corridor. Wyman was gone.

 

chapter
four

 

SLATER WENT from compartment to compartment. He even went to the dining car, but he knew he had been tricked, and by the oldest one in the book. Wyman had undoubtedly left the train at Feldkirch and would pick up the Arlberg Express. He was probably already on his way to Kitzbühel.

By the time Slater had exhausted all other possibilities, the train was well on the way to Kempten. He stood on the platform between cars, and his cursing blended with the clackety-clacking of the pounding wheels. He lighted a cigarette, returned to the first-class compartment and promptly fell asleep. He didn’t wake up until the train pulled into Munich.

He got a room in a small hotel near the station and started working on Carmichael’s passport. Maybe Slater’s identity was compromised, as far as Wyman was concerned. Probably Wyman was just being cautious. In any case, Slater decided to enter Austria as Carmichael. He took a rubber stamp and ink pad from his suitcase and stamped an Einreise stamp in the back of his passport. It was done carelessly, and the letters were blurred, but it definitely looked like the entry in Slater’s passport. He then compared the numbers and date inside Carmichael’s stamp and stippled them in by dotting the page repeatedly with a fine-pointed pencil, which he had first rolled on the ink pad. The result he smudged lightly with his finger. He again compared the forgery with the original and was satisfied.

It was too late to do anything more, and Slater realized it, but he felt frustrated. He had acted like an amateur, and this was only the first round. If Wyman wasn’t in Kitzbühel, there would be hell to pay. He went down to the lobby and got some change. It was late, but he called several car-rental agencies, until he found one that answered, because it also dispensed gas. He reserved a Volkswagen for 6 o’clock the next morning. There were some protests, but an offer of a few extra marks, and a larger than customary deposit, and the arrangements were completed.

Slater awoke at 5:30 and picked up the car at 6. He drove through a false dawn, all the way to the Rosenheim turn-off, and turned south. The day was cold and still, and deep clouds clung to the mountaintops. He crossed the Austrian border at Kiefersfelden and entered the mountain village of Kufstein.

From there, he began the climb up into the Alps. It was a lonely ride. At night, Slater thought, it must be the loneliest drive in the world. The road was a winding white ditch edged into the mountainsides. The embankments of ice and snow were twice as high as a man’s head, and the icy roadway was narrow and full of ruts. Slater was glad he didn’t have an American car. The Volkswagen bumped and slid, but maintained its headway up the steepest grades. At various places, great sidings had been dug out of the banks, presumably so that one car could pull over, and another, coming in the opposite direction, might get by. Slater was glad that he hadn’t been forced to use one. If he had had to stop, he doubted that he could have gotten enough traction to start again. If two cars met head-on, where there was no siding, he didn’t know what they would do.

He drove for miles, high up in the mountains, in and out of the mist, without seeing anything but the narrow track in front of him. He knew that steep-roofed houses must be above and below him, but they didn’t exist for him. He thought of the spring thaw that couldn’t be more than a month away, and he no longer doubted the danger of avalanches was very real. The high sides of the road were not a great deal higher than the snow-covered fields. He got the feeling that they acted, nevertheless, as dikes against the tons of sliding snow.

And finally, just as he was about to believe he would go on driving around and around and up and down, aimlessly and forever, into eternity, he started down out of the mist and into the clear bright sunshine. Below him lay Kitzbühel with pastel-colored, steeped-roofed houses, a church tower,
a
winding stream choked with ice and snow but beginning to move with the warmth of the new day. An electric train was droning its way through the valley from Wörgl to Kitzbühel. This was a ski resort in a picture-book setting. Slater was spellbound.

The main street was almost bare. In another week the slush would be gone. He drove the car slowly past the bright shops, through a medieval archway, and was stopped by the colorful, morning crowd of skiers on their way to the cable car. Slater nudged the car to a parking place in front of the Winterhof Hotel. A porter opened the door for him and took his suitcase.

The small, dark-paneled lobby was crowded, and Slater doubted that he would be able to get a room.

“Yes, sir?”
The clerk at the desk was tall and thin. He was wearing the traditional black suit. His shirt front and cuffs were frosty white, but Slater noticed that the sleeves of his jacket were beginning to shine. The man looked worn and tired.

“I would like a room,” said Slater.

“Do you have a reservation, sir?”

“No.” Slater smiled slowly. “It was foolish of me, but I forgot. I hope you can help me.”

“I am afraid, sir, that all—”

Slater looked down at his right hand, resting on the counter. When the clerk followed the glance, Slater lifted his hand and revealed an American ten-dollar bill. The clerk looked directly at Slater. Slater was still smiling. The clerk bowed slightly. He didn’t appear quite so tired.

“I don’t care if it’s a large room,” Slater said. “Anything will do.”

“Yes, of course, Mr.—?”

“Carmichael.”

“Yes, Mr. Carmichael, I can give you room twenty-three.” The clerk was very businesslike again.

Slater handed over his passport, and the clerk wrote down the number and Carmichael’s home address, then carefully palmed the ten-dollar bill and, without a further look in Slater’s direction, tapped the bell for the porter.

Room 23 was on the second floor and overlooked the main street. There were a double bed, the ever-present wardrobe, a wash basin, a bureau and a night stand. Slater checked his watch. It was exactly nine o’clock. He left his room and headed downstairs for the dining room. He stood in the entryway for a moment and looked around at the diners. He was in luck. Wyman was seated in a corner by himself. Slater had the waiter conduct him to the next table. Wyman looked up as Slater approached. Wyman’s eyes rested on his for a second, looked vague and then passed on elsewhere. Apparently, he had been there for some time. When the waiter came to take his order, Wyman appeared angry.

“Where is Rüdi? I want to tell him about this fast service!”

The waiter was a little old man, and obviously upset. “Rüdi will not be on duty until evening, sir. I assure you I am very sorry for the delay.”

Wyman gave his order as disagreeably as he could. Slater gritted his teeth. People who shouted at waiters and called for the managers inevitably irritated him.

The breakfast was excellent, as much of it as Slater permitted himself. He had noted that Wyman had ordered a large one, a breakfast that would take some time to finish. Slater had a cup of hot chocolate, a roll, some jam, and left.

Back in his room he changed from Carmichael to Slater as fast as possible, only this time he put on ski clothes. They were his own. He hadn’t had them on in two years, and they felt very comfortable. He put on his ski boots but tied the laces very loosely. He didn’t care to walk in the boots because he believed it ruined them for skiing.

Slater was back in the dining room in fifteen minutes, just in time to follow Wyman out the door and into the street. Wyman crossed the street and turned left toward the cable car which carried the skiers up the Hahnenkamm. There was still quite a crowd going in the same direction, and Slater took a chance and got ahead of Wyman. The candy-striped railroad-crossing barrier was down, but Slater stepped over it and gained the other side without calling too much attention to
himself
. He looked for the red ski-rental shack Webber had mentioned in his letter to Putnam. Webber’s memory had been good. There was such a shack and it was the last one on the way to what obviously was the practice slope. Slater asked the woman attendant for a pair of skis. She told him to take his choice.

While Slater was inspecting the various skis, Wyman entered. He asked the woman for Mr. Schlessinger’s skis. The woman went over to a special section in the corner and took out a pair. They were a little short for Wyman, but they were in good condition. They were Erbacher skis. Apparently, Mr. Schlessinger preferred German craftsmanship. Fortunately, several more customers entered and Slater didn’t think Wyman had noticed him.

As soon as Slater saw Wyman leave, he picked out a pair of skis and poles for himself, had the harness fitted to his boots and went outside. The sunshine was dazzling, and it took a moment for Slater to adjust to the brightness. He looked for Wyman’s green and white sweater, but couldn’t find it. There were so many colors that they all blended into a moving, shapeless crazy quilt.

He went over the base of the cable station and looked at the long ticket line. Wyman was in the middle. Slater spotted
a girl three places
ahead of Wyman and then joined the line at the end.

After he had bought his ticket, he looked for the girl and found her leaning against the wooden railing, sunning herself on the wide veranda just below the cable car entrance. He had picked her out of the ticket line because her hair was the color of copper, and he thought she wouldn’t be hard to find again. As he approached her now, he saw she was unusually attractive. Subconsciously he thought
,
I must have spotted her for much more obvious reasons.

“Excuse me,” he said in German, “but I have a favor to ask.”

Her green eyes looked him over with mild, but not unfriendly, interest.

“Your German is excellent, but you must be American,” she said. “No German would cut off so much of his hair.” She smiled, and her smile was charming. “You may ask your favor in English if you wish.”

“Well,” Slater hesitated. Her eyes made him feel strangely self-conscious. “I wondered if you would be good enough to trade tickets with me. I have discovered an old friend,” he went on hurriedly, “who is riding up in your car, and I would like to go up with him.”

“What number do you have?” she asked.

“Thirty-one.”

“I would have to wait another half hour.” She was indignant.

“I would be glad to pay you.”

“No,” she looked away from him, “if he is your friend, he will wait for you at the top, or he will trade his ticket with someone in your car.” She turned her eyes back to him. “Now, please, go away. You are standing between me and the sun.”

“I’m sorry, Fräulein.” Slater turned away.

He felt like a fool. He stepped down from the veranda and walked over to his skis. He wanted to look back at the copper-haired girl with the cat-green eyes. It took him several minutes of fumbling with his skis to get over his embarrassment. Finally, he turned to have a look. She was walking across the veranda to pick up her skis. Her car number was about to be called. Slater liked the way she walked. It was both supple and graceful. Her shoulders were broad. She was saved from having an hourglass figure because of her long slim legs. Wyman was right behind her. Slater was bitter. Wyman would not pass that up—no man would.

It was a perfect day for skiing. The sun was warm on his back and the snow would have at least a three-inch powder cover up on the mountain. He had never skied in Kitzbühel before. There were other things he should do with the morning now that he had lost Wyman, but Slater kept working around the problem, until he had almost rationalized himself into thinking that a morning’s skiing would be an excellent conditioner for whatever he might run into; and that, after all, he should know the lay of the land up there—which ski trails went where, etc.

Slater waited for his car number to be called, handed his skis to the attendant to put on the rack outside on the front of the car, and got in.

A ride in a cable car to the top of a mountain is a unique sensation. It’s not like flying, and it isn’t like being on top of a high building. Slater always had an insecure feeling. The ground was a long way down; and when the occupants or the wind caused the car to sway and he looked up at the cable, he inevitably had the eerie sensation of hanging by a thread in the middle of space. The scenery was what made him forget to be concerned. The great expanse of white that opened up, the ever increasing vista of mile after mile of snow-covered peaks, the air so clear that it appeared to turn, suddenly, into a clean blue, all made the journey seem too brief. The cable car seemed a floating tower of Babel with its passengers describing their reactions in five different languages. Slater thought that the German name for this swaying gondola was more descriptive. The Schwebebahn approached its steel and cement harbor and slowed perceptibly, until at the entrance it almost stopped and nudged its way in, bumping slightly against the concrete piers. Slater took his skis from the rack and stepped out into the snow. He watched a pony-driven cart with two passengers moving slowly along the shoulder to a hotel just below the top of the adjacent peak. He walked along the shoulder, looking down into the next valley and across to the mountain beyond. According to the map, it was approximately six thousand feet, and he could barely make out the posts of a chair lift which would carry a skier from the valley floor to the top. He could see from his map that there was another chair lift opposite which would take him back up to the hotel on his side of the valley.

The first trail dropped off to the right and came out by the practice slope. This was the Streif and, according to Webber’s letter, must be the Olympic run. Slater decided against trying it until he had had a little practice. He changed his mind abruptly when he saw two skiers coming down from the hotel. He saw the green and white sweater and the coppery red hair. Apparently, they had just had coffee at the hotel and were about to ski the Streif. He bent over to put on his skis, pretending to be unaware of the newcomers. They came to a stop about five yards away from him. The girl was asking Wyman if he had tried the Streif before. She was speaking English.

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