Spy and the Thief (7 page)

“So this new employee might be Schultz. Am I supposed to find out if he is?”

Colonel Nelson nodded, brushing a hand through his thinning hat “Exactly.”

“I don’t think I’m really qualified for this assignment, Colonel.”

“Oh, but you are! You see, this man gives his name as Hans Suffern. He claims he served during World War II with the secret French underground organization, the Prosper Network. As you know, most of the Prosper Network was discovered and destroyed by the Germans, and the survivors have died or disappeared. But this man claims he handled their message center. If anyone can trap him in a lie, you can.”

“It would be a negative sort of proof at best.”

“That’s all we need, on something as sensitive as the eel project.”

“Doesn’t it have some other designation?” Rand asked distastefully. “I’m not too fond of eels.”

“Suffern—or Schultz—is. In fact, he told someone that he likes eels better than people.”

“Fine,” Rand said. “I’m looking forward to meeting him.”

The ride through the Scottish highlands never failed to fascinate Rand. He’d come trout fishing in the lochs one summer, and returned almost annually to rest among the peaceful hills. This day; like so many in summer, was bright and cloudless, with only the wind to keep it from being a perfect afternoon.

Rand slowed down as he passed one of the flat dark pools, looking perhaps for the trout that lurked at times just beneath its surface. Then he speeded up and concentrated on his driving until at last the land flattened into a sort of moor and he saw in the distance the endless wire fencing that marked the project’s boundaries.

Fifteen minutes later he was in the company of the man he’d come to question—a short bald little German who called himself Hans Suffern. Rand had been taken to one of the vast circular pools around the back of the buildings, and there he found Suffern bent over a maze of dials. “Mr. Rand, from London?” he asked, betraying only the slightest of accents.

“Correct. And you would be Hans Suffern.”

“I would be.” The little German smiled slightly and glanced about at the other workers. Nobody was within earshot. “These security things are quite troublesome, really.”

“But necessary,” Rand observed.

Suffern shrugged. “But necessary.”

“Where could we talk?”

“This is fine with me, right here. Look down there! Did you ever see a fully grown
electrophorus electricus,
Mr. Rand?”

“No.” Rand stared over the high railing, catching a glimpse of something dark and long and very evil moving through the shadowed waters.

“The actual body of the electric eel—its vital organs—takes up less than twenty per cent of its length. The rest of the fish is mainly a collection of electric cells in special tissue. Its output can knock out a horse at twenty feet, and kill a healthy man on contact.”

“You know a lot about electric eels.”

“I’ve learned.”

Rand cleared his throat as they stepped back from the pool. “You told them you were with the Prosper Network during the war. Communications, you said.”

“That’s right. Though it hardly seems to make any difference at this late date. I come, I offer my services, I offer my knowledge, and instead of being welcomed I am subjected to endless security checks. I am still not allowed access to the laboratory itself.”

Rand waved a vague hand. “You know the circumstances. This is a top-secret project. Frankly, there are only a few men in the world who possess your knowledge of electric eels, and one of them is believed to be a Russian agent.”

“So you come to question me about the Prosper Network?”

“Exactly.”

The man turned and stared up at Rand’s face, which was still reasonably youthful and unlined. “You know a lot about Prosper? You were perhaps active in the war?”

“I was old enough to enlist three days after the war ended,” Rand said, feeling irrationally the old defense mechanism go to work. He’d lived most of his adult life in the midst of men who resented the non-combatant. “But my field is communications. What type of equipment did you have in Prosper?”

Hans Suffern shrugged. “Type three, Mark two. It did the job.”

“You transmitted in cipher?”

“Of course.”

“What kind?”

“We used number groups after a polyalphabetic substitution. They had their direction finders on us, of course. It was a dangerous business. Today I understand that agents often tape the message in advance, and simply transmit it at a higher speed. Much safer, because you’re on the air for a shorter period.”

Rand nodded and they started strolling. The wind was warm against their faces, sweeping down between the distant hills to find a sort of freedom where the moor stretched out to greet it. Perhaps Hans Suffern had found freedom here too.

They talked of codes and messages for an hour as they walked about, and Rand did not find anything to indicate that Suffern was other than the man he claimed to be. “You understand,” he said at last, “there is no one left from Prosper to identify you. We must have some sort of proof.”

The little German smiled. “I understand.”

“Have you ever been to Brazil?”

“No. Never.”

“Not during the war?”

“No.” He smiled. “I was quite busy in France at the time.”

“Where did you learn so much about electric eels?”

“I studied ichthyology in Berlin before the war, and recently I was employed at an aquarium outside Paris.”

Rand knew the part about the aquarium was true. They started back across the moor, and he wondered what he would tell Colonel Nelson. He’d learned nothing at all—except that the man knew a great deal about codes and ciphers. And electric eels.

That evening he phoned Colonel Nelson. “I don’t have a thing. The man looks clean, Colonel.”

There was a grunt on the phone. “Really?”

Rand recognized the tone of triumph, “You have something?”

“Nothing conclusive. We transmitted a current photograph of Suffern to America by television satellite. A professor there who worked with Schultz says he’s almost certain it’s the same man.”

“All right,” Rand said with a sigh. “Tomorrow I’ll ask more questions.”

He found Suffern back at the eel pool, faced toward the rising sun as he worked the dials on a tank of chemicals. “You’re an early riser,” Rand said, making conversation.

“I rise when my friends do,” he said, gesturing toward the pool.

“You know the nature of the research being conducted here?”

“A bit. As much as they’ll allow me to know. It has to do with a method of counteracting the effects of a certain nerve gas now in Russian hands. The eels—”

“You know a great deal,” Rand interrupted, deciding to try a bluff, “You know things that could only have been learned in America. And at a camp on the Amazon. You’re Schultz, aren’t you?”

“Who? Schultz?”

“Let’s cut out the games. You were a German agent named Schultz more than twenty years ago. An American has identified your picture. And we have other proof too.”

The bald little German smiled. “I doubt that.”

“Something as conclusive as fingerprints. You knew the Prosper Network was all but destroyed during the war, so you figured no one could come forward to dispute your story. But there is one man, and he works for me back in London. He’s the man who sat in a house on the Dover cliffs and took down the coded messages from Prosper. A telegraph operator’s sending is as distinctive to an expert as a fingerprint. Even after twenty years he’ll be able to tell me if it was really your hand that sent the Prosper messages.”

Hans Suffern suddenly looked like a much older man—a man tired of running, perhaps tired of living. And he looked very ill as he gazed into the pool for a moment, gripping the damp railing with his hands. In that instant Rand thought that he might jump in, but instead the old man turned and said quietly. “All right, I admit it. I am Schultz.”

Rand didn’t smile. Was the man at the end of the road? Was that why the confession had come so easily? Rand murmured, “You’re doing the wise thing, admitting it.”

“But I’m not a Russian agent—you must believe that!”

“What are you, then? What brought you here?”

The German glanced around. A few others were up with the dawn, and down the line a workman was beginning to check the tanks. “Come into my office, where we can talk.”

Rand followed him into a glassed-in cubicle at the back of the building. Schultz, his face gray, sat uncertainly behind the desk and tried to light his pipe with shaking hands. For a moment—just for a moment—Rand felt sorry for him.

“You ask what I am, sir, and I tell you I am a man. Nothing more. Yes, I worked for the Germans. Yes, I was in Brazil and in America. My assignment was to spy on the project and to sabotage it if possible.” He held out his hands, palms up. “But that was long ago. A lifetime ago!”

“Then what are you doing here now?”

“The eels. They’re my life—what’s left of it. I learned many things on that wartime assignment. It’s only natural I should try to use that knowledge. I can help the English, just as some of my fellow Germans help the Americans to build their moon rockets.”

“You killed those men,” Rand said, suddenly tired. This was not the assignment he had anticipated. “What about that?”

“I killed the two in Brazil, and the one in America. But it was wartime then. I was a soldier, just as you might have been. The eel pool on the Amazon was no different from the foxhole on the Rhine. I killed the enemy.”

“You were a spy, not a soldier.”

Schultz spread his hands again, putting down the futile pipe. “I wouldn’t expect that of you. After, all, I was the same as you are now. Aren’t you a soldier? How many men have you killed?”

Rand looked away, the distaste growing within him. “I don’t kill men.”

“Not directly, perhaps. Not with your own hands. But we all do it. Killing is part of the business, part of the war. And our war never ends.”

“It ended for you when Germany was defeated.”

“Yes, and what could I do? Could I reveal my identity, with three dead men on my record? Could I come home from the war like my brothers in uniform? No, I could only go on with the deception. And that is what brought me to Scotland, Mr. Rand. Not an assignment for the Russians or anybody else, but only the need to make a living before I die—and to be near those creatures in the pool.”

Rand looked away, out toward the concrete pools with their strange secrets. “You can hardly expect them to let you remain here.”

“Why not? The war has been over a long time. I have scientific knowledge they need.”

“You betrayed them once.”

“Not at all. I spied on the Americans, but I betrayed no one. I am a man of honor, who only wishes to do some little good in the little time I have left.”

Rand got to his feet. He didn’t want to talk with this man any longer, because he didn’t know the answers to the questions he was being asked. Colonel Nelson and the others could take it from here. “I’ll be going now,” he said. “I’ll tell them what you said. Maybe they’ll see it your way.”

Then he went out to his car and drove back the way he’d come, across the moor and past the dark pools where the trout waited. No eels, only trout.

Rand didn’t have to journey back to London. Colonel Nelson was waiting in the village where Rand had spent the night. Over a beer in the pub Rand told him what had happened.

“Interesting,” Nelson said. “Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know—I really don’t know. I guess I keep thinking about myself and what I’d do if I ever got out of this business. It’s not like a soldier taking off his uniform. If a U-2 pilot goes to work for an aircraft manufacturer, or a Double-C man gets a job with a television network, or Schultz goes back to his eels—well, who’s to say at what moment the spy retires and something else takes over?”

“At the moment they stop paying him.”

“No, not at all. An ex-spy might easily want to keep on taking money for nothing, and an unpaid spy might well gather information in hopes of a future sale. Payment or nonpayment is no sure measurement of what goes on in a man’s mind.”

“We don’t have to know what goes on in his mind, Rand. He admits being Schultz, to murdering three men. We could order him arrested, or even killed.”

“I know,” said Rand quietly. “It’s an awful decision to make.”

“Not so awful, Rand. I make them every day.”

“Maybe that’s what’s so awful. Maybe in Concealed Communications it’s different. Maybe I’m in this game for the puzzle and not for the kill.”

Colonel Nelson looked up as he rose. “You didn’t finish your beer. Where are you going now?”

“Back to Schultz. And back to his eels.”

The day was hot, and the road dusty. By the time he reached his destination, Rand was thirsty. This time he found Schultz inside, carefully manipulating the slimy body of an eight-foot eel with his specially insulated gloves.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Rand asked.

“Not at the moment. We’ve been discharging him for days, and he needs time to recharge. They’re amazing creatures.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said this morning.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think there’s much chance, Schultz, that they’ll let you stay on here.”

“No. I suppose not.”

“They couldn’t take the risk.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

The German bowed his head. “So am I.”

Rand stopped for a drink of water, then went back to his car. The little German, looking even older, even more ill, was waiting there for him. “One thing I wanted to ask you, Mr. Rand. That radio operator who contacted Prosper—you made him up?”

“I made him up. But it was an idea. We could have checked on it to make sure.”

“You’re an intelligent man.”

“With puzzles. Not with people.”

Rand wheeled the car away and headed back toward the village.

Colonel Nelson found him at supper time. “Our bird just tried to send a message, Rand. A telegram to someone in Paris.”

“Let me see it,” Rand said.

Colonel Nelson passed him the yellow form. “What do you make of it?”

Rand studied the printed words.
Rudolph: Am nearing decision. Have Ernst Reisch entertain Mother until Sister takes Aunt Clara to town or not. I guarantee his tip.
It was signed
Hans.