by Len Deighton
‘We’d have to handcuff them,’ said the policeman. He handed Schlegel two detonators, and a map drawn upon a page torn from a school exercise book.
‘So?’ said Schlegel aggressively. ‘So?’ He looked down the road in the direction of Roetgen. It was several kilometres to the Belgian frontier. There are many such minor roads crossing the border. Some of them are little more than fire-breaks through the mighty wilderness of the Eifel. Even when the Ruhr disgorged its hunters, campers and holidaymakers, you could still get lost among these hilly forests that have to be cut by handsaw.
Here the US First Army faced Germans fighting on home-soil, for the first time. The Americans had been fed into the dense mine-strewn forest like coffee beans into a grinder. There was no room for a tank to pass between the trees, so the infantry had dug deep and listened to the artillery barrage. It chopped the limbs off the trees, and left a legacy of steel that even today tears the teeth out of power-saws.
‘Grim bloody place,’ said Schlegel. He brought out his cigars, but thought better of it and put them away again.
‘Here they come,’ I said.
There were two of them: wretched-looking hitchhikers, bearded, tired and crumpled. It was surprising that they had strength enough to manage the gigantic rucksacks and bedding rolls that were on their backs. The policeman had not handcuffed them, having probably decided that the equipment and accessories were more than enough to hamper their escape. Now the policeman stepped back from them.
The police had found twelve detonators, two Sten guns and some maps – including one of the USAF-Luftwaffe air-base at Ramstein – buried in their camping gear. The taller of the pair looked back at the uniformed officer, and then at Schlegel. ‘I want a lawyer! This is the twentieth time I’ve asked for a lawyer. I know my rights!’ Even Professor Higgins would be hard-pressed to place such an accent: Birmingham, England, at first-hand, perhaps, Brooklyn, New York, at second-hand and a sprinkling of Hollywood, California.
‘So you can count?’ said Schlegel. He didn’t look up. Schlegel seemed oblivious of the pouring rain that was fast reducing the maps in his hands to pulp.
Schlegel passed the maps to me. There were half a dozen of them: small practical Xerox copies of the suburbs of Bonn, the centre of Bonn – some of the more important buildings indicated in additional felt-pen notes – and a Michelin map of this area with the cross-border roads scribbled upon.
Without a word to me, Schlegel reached back for the maps and I gave them to him.
‘Yeah, I can count, Yank!’ said the boy. Schlegel still didn’t look at him. The boy glanced up at the sky, as if looking for some reassuring patch of blue. But the only break in the dark clouds revealed a kingdom sulphurous and fiery.
The boy used both thumbs to ease the weight of his pack and equipment. ‘And you’d just better know it, Yank. ’Cos you’ll find out I can count real good.’ They both wore red-star badges, pinned into the sort of beret that Che Guevara wears in posters.
Schlegel looked up at him and then at his silent companion, who was a few inches shorter, and carried notably less equipment. ‘I haven’t got a great deal of time,’ Schlegel explained, as if the boy had invited him to take tea and cucumber sandwiches. ‘So just tell me where you got the maps, the Sten gun and the detonators, and then I can get some lunch and go back to my office.’
‘Drop dead, Yank.’
‘This is no time to be cute, sonny. Tell him, Barrington. This is no time to be cute, is it?’
Schlegel often made up names on the spur of the moment. I recognized his use of Barrington as a sign of his impatience with my Island Race. ‘It’s not the time,’ I said obediently.
The boy’s lips moved as if he was salivating to spit but it was simply a show of anger. ‘Get stuffed!’ he said. His voice was pure Birmingham now.
Schlegel moved so fast that both boys were caught off balance, but it was only the silent boy that he hit. He walloped him twice, swinging his elbow back in a great show of force, so that the blows looked far harder than they were. But, for a boy with forty or fifty pounds strapped on his back, and metal studs in his shoes, it was more than enough to send him reeling and sliding. A third jab tumbled him into the rain-filled ditch that gurgled under a jungle of thorns and weeds. The boy landed with a splash, and was trapped by the weight of his burden. He let out a scream that was strangled as the cold water took away his breath.
‘You bastard,’ said the Birmingham boy. It was a different sort of voice now: just as bitter, and even more angry, but there was an undertone of defeat there, too. ‘Jerry’s not strong,’ he shouted. ‘Leave him alone, you old bastard. It’s not fair!’
Schlegel had not used his left hand, in which the map and detonators were still clasped. He spared no more than a glance at the boy who was struggling to climb out of the ditch. He stared at the talkative one. ‘It’s fairness we’re talking about now, is it? I thought we were talking about dynamite. About blowing the bourgeoisie into hamburger.’ He waved the detonators about. ‘Not strong, your friend Jerry, eh? Strong enough to carry a machine-gun and two hundred shells, right? And strong enough to pull the trigger, providing both you punks think you’ll get away unhurt.’ By now Jerry had hauled himself up the side of the steep ditch. He was on his hands and knees, shaking the water from his head and whimpering to himself.
Schlegel was close to him. He looked down at him for what seemed like ages. Shivering and wet, the boy did not look up. Schlegel gently put his foot on the boy’s shoulder and pushed. He grabbed Schlegel’s ankle but could not hold on to it. There was a cry of despair as he tumbled back into the ditch.
‘He’ll get pneumonia!’ shouted the boy from Birmingham.
‘Are you a medical student?’ said Schlegel, with polite interest.
The boy swallowed. ‘I’ll talk,’ he growled. ‘I’ll talk. You win, I’ll talk.’
The rain lessened but the wind was cold. Schlegel buttoned his collar tight against his throat, and flicked the brim of his corduroy hat to get the rain off it.
From the clearing where our chopper had landed, there came the sudden clatter of a two-stroke motor, and then the terrible scream of a chain-saw biting into wood. I shivered.
‘You heard me, Yank. I’ll talk!’
Schlegel said, ‘Go ahead, son. I’m listening.’
‘Outside the American Express in Amsterdam – that place on the pavement, you know …’ He looked at his friend sprawled in the ditch.
‘I know,’ said Schlegel.
‘A guy named Frits – he bought hot dogs for us. The next day we went back to his pad and smoked. He had a friend … least, he said he had a friend. There was a thousand guilders for starters. Another fifteen hundred for delivery of the stuff to an address in the village of Schmidt. We thought it was pot, honest we did.’
‘Sure. And the Sten guns you thought were pipes, to smoke it,’ said Schlegel. ‘Come out of there, you stinking little fairy.’ He reached down and grabbed the rucksack straps of the boy in the ditch. With apparent ease, he hoisted him back on the road. ‘OK,’ said Schlegel. ‘I’ll believe you.’
‘Can we go?’
‘You sort that one out with the German cops,’ said Schlegel. ‘Come on, Barrington. Just standing downwind of these little creeps makes me throw up.’
‘We could identify Frits, the man in Amsterdam. Do a deal … huh?’ said the boy.
‘A man for all seasons,’ said Schlegel. ‘I don’t do deals with kids like you – I squeeze them; and they drip.’ He flicked the boy away, as he would some insect buzzing around his head.
‘In Schmidt. We had to meet our contact in the Haus Rursee,’ added the boy anxiously. The police officer took the boy’s arm.
‘Come on,’ said Schlegel to me. He turned and I followed. The scream of the chain-saw grew louder. When we reached the clearing the tree was dismembered, the amputations marked by bright circular wounds, and pools of sawdust.
The police pilot sat at the controls of the heli
copter waiting for the order to go. Schlegel did not give it immediately. We sat back on the seats, with rain forming puddles underfoot, and the world multiplied ten thousand times in the raindrops on the Plexiglas.
‘It’s Champion, no question of that,’ said Schlegel. ‘He wanted us here, but what the hell are we supposed to do?’
‘They are just stupid kids,’ I said.
‘I know they are,’ said Schlegel. ‘But I had to know if they were more than that.’
‘Could those trucks be across the border by now?’ I asked.
‘They were going like hell all last night,’ said Schlegel. ‘No reason why not.’
I looked at Schlegel.
He said, ‘Why should he stage a diversion like this, while the trucks cross the border? They have diplomatic protection: borders make no difference in this case.’
‘There has to be a reason,’ I said. ‘Something happened when those trucks went across the border. And that something would have told us what the plan was.’
‘The drivers were all checked at the dock gates. All of them are French-born professional drivers, with at least eight years’ experience. Already we have checked their fingerprints with London, Washington, Paris and Bonn. Not a whisper of a clue.’
‘No, it must be the vehicles.’
‘You think Champion is inside one of those trucks?’
I said, ‘I only wish I had a theory.’
‘What happens to trucks when they cross a frontier?’ Schlegel asked the pilot of the police helicopter.
‘They check the manifests and the personal papers. They make sure the load is firmly secured. Perhaps they check the brakes and the roadworthiness. It’s according to how busy they are.’
‘No,’ I told Schlegel. ‘It’s not going to be something that the customs men would notice. It’s something that would only seem strange to you or me, or to someone who knows the situation. Otherwise there would be no point in staging a diversion that would take our attention.’
Schlegel sat hunched forward in his seat, while the rain beat down upon our plastic bubble. ‘They must be on the Autobahn to Cologne by now,’ he said finally. He reached for the pilot’s map and opened it on his knees. ‘If they are going to Bonn, they will turn off the Autobahn at that big clover-leaf there – Autobahnkreuz Köln West – and follow the circular road as far as the next cloverleaf.’ He stabbed the place on the map. ‘From there, it’s only a lousy twenty kilometres to Bonn.’ He looked at me and then at the pilot. ‘When those trucks get half way between Cologne and Bonn – we stop them, and screw the diplomatic ruckus.’
‘You want me to radio for permission?’ the pilot asked.
Schlegel looked at him unenthusiastically. ‘I’m giving the orders, Baron von Richthofen! You just pull the levers! Let’s go!’
The pilot clipped his helmet chinstrap tight, and twisted the microphone wire so that it was close to his mouth. Schlegel, having made his decision, twisted his nose in his hand, and then pinched his own cheeks as a physician might help a patient recover from a coma.
I looked at the pilot’s map. On both sides of the River Rhine, from Cologne to Bonn, the land is flat and, by the standards of the great industrial complex of the Ruhr, comparatively lightly inhabited. But there were towns there – Wesseling and Niederkassel – I wondered how they would like being expendable in favour of the great cities each side of them.
The starter banged and I watched the pilot’s lips moving as he began his litany of radio signals. I guessed he would call the traffic police who had been tailing the convoy of trucks at a discreet distance.
The helicopter tilted forward and lifted away over its cushion of downdraught. It, too, belonged to the traffic police and the pilot was used to flying through this sort of weather. Even at tree-top height, black puffs of cloud scudded past us like Indian signals. I stared at the scenery. The forest stretched as far as I could see. To the south, yellow sky was reflected in the ruffled water of the Rursee, so that it looked like a fiery volcano just about to boil over.
26
By the time the River Rhine gets to Bonn, it is wide and grey and cold, smeared with fuel oil and flecked with detergent. And north of the capital it meanders through flat featureless land that continues all the way to Holland and the North Sea, and the wind makes the river choppy.
The police helicopter came low over the waterway, lifting enough to clear the masts of a liquid-gas tanker, and then of a big Dutchman, low in the water, with a deck-cargo of yellow bulldozers. Once over his cranes we crossed waterlogged fields and high-tension cables that sparkled in the rain, like a spider’s web wet with dew. And then we saw them.
The helicopter reared, and turned abruptly as we came to the concrete of the rain-washed Autobahn. The five trucks were keeping to a steady fifty miles per hour and the pilot had timed our approach to coincide with a burst of speed by the two white Porsche cars that had been following them.
The flashing police-lights made long reflections on the road, and the trucks slowed and followed the police cars into the heavy vehicle park of a service area. Our helicopter put us down gently just before the huge diesel trucks cut their engines, one by one.
‘Perfect,’ said Schlegel. I’d never heard him use that word before.
The policemen got out of their Porsches, put on their white-topped caps and stretched their limbs. They had been providing us with a commentary for the last half hour. Now they saluted Schlegel and awaited instructions.
‘Ask them for their driving licences,’ said Schlegel derisively. ‘Jesus Christ! Don’t tell me a traffic cop can’t find something wrong with everybody.’
They didn’t smile, and neither did the men who climbed down from the cabs of the trucks.
‘Check the manifests, check the customs seals, check the brakes,’ said Schlegel. He tapped my arm. ‘You and me are going to give them the once-over lightly, before we open them up.’
They were gigantic fifty-ton diesels: twelve forward speeds and two reverse. Cabs like glasshouses, ergonometrically designed seats, and behind them a rest bunk. There were racks for vacuum flasks of coffee, and cheap transistor radios were taped to the sunshields. A set of Michelin maps was duplicated for each of the five cabs, and there was a German phrase-book and a repair manual. They had been on the road for almost twenty-four hours. The cabs had become a smelly clutter of empty cigarette packets and butts, squashed paper cups and discarded newspapers.
‘We would see it,’ Schlegel reminded me. ‘Champion was frightened that we would see it, smell it, or hear it. Otherwise there was no point in arranging that charade with those kooks.’
One of the traffic policemen brought the manifest to Schlegel. It was the same as the ones we’d got from the dock office in Marseille. It described the load as a general consignment of engine parts, construction materials, fabrics and chemicals. Schlegel handed it back. ‘Frisk all of them,’ he told the policeman. ‘If you find as much as a pocket knife, it might be enough to hold them for inquiries. And I want the exterior of the trucks examined by someone who knows how many differentials a truck like this needs and where to find them.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the policeman.
There was a steel towing-cable padlocked to the underside of the chassis and, in special cradles behind the cabs, there were steel wheel-chocks. Schlegel rapped one of them. The metal was too heavy to get an echo out of it.
Schlegel looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘When you can put it inside so easily?’
‘I suppose you are right,’ said Schlegel. ‘We’re going to have to bust them open.’ The vehicles were so large, and the wheels so big, that we were able to get right under the chassis without crouching very low. ‘Look at the suspension,’ said Schlegel. ‘With one of these brutes you could schlepp Cologne cathedral away in the middle of the night, and still throw the opera house in the trunk.’
‘And it could take plenty more, too,’ I remarked. We looked at the massive le
af springs. The upper one was still curved, and the lower, supplementary spring not yet tensioned.
‘That’s got to be it!’ said Schlegel, in great excitement. ‘You’ve hit it.’
‘The weight!’
‘Exactly. These trucks must be almost empty. Look at that! We should have noticed that from the way they were sitting on the road.’
‘And a customs man would have noticed. In fact they might have put them on a weighbridge while the manifest was stamped.’
‘Why? Why? Why?’ said Schlegel. He punched the great rubber tyre.
‘So that we would be talking about fifty-ton diesel-truck suspension, somewhere on the banks of the lower Rhine, while Champion is earning a promotion from colonel of propaganda to general of god-knows-what.’
Schlegel grunted, and came out from under the truck. He waved to the policeman. ‘Forget it,’ he called. ‘Let them go.’
‘They say they are going right the way down the Autobahn to Munich,’ said the policeman.
‘Are the papers in order?’
‘They say they are going to get new papers in Bonn.’
‘Let them go,’ said Schlegel. ‘They can keep going all the way to Vladivostok for all I care.’ He smiled. ‘That’s all, boys: go get yourselves some coffee.’
The policemen looked at Schlegel with that same inscrutable superiority with which they look up from your driving licence.
Schlegel turned back to me. ‘Munich,’ he said with disgust. ‘And after that, Brindisi or Lisbon – it’s a merry dance he’s been leading us.’
‘There’s something else,’ I said.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know – but he didn’t send five empty trucks from Marseille docks to Bonn just to grab our attention.’
‘Why not?’ said Schlegel. ‘He did it! And while we chased them, he got to where he wanted to go.’
‘You don’t know Champion,’ I said. ‘That’s not fancy enough for him.’
Littered with old food wrappings, smelling of spilled fuel and warm fat, these coffee shops on the Autobahns are the most desolate places in Europe. An endless succession of strangers gobble mass-produced food and hurry on. The staff are glassy eyed and melancholy, trapped in a river of traffic, which swirls past so that the fumes, noise and vibration never cease.