by Len Deighton
‘And lousy coffee,’ added Schlegel.
‘Do you know how much it costs to hold a chopper on the ground while you dunk that doughnut?’
‘You’re a lot of fun to have around,’ said Schlegel. ‘Did I ever tell you that?’ He opened his shirt and scratched himself.
‘Not lately,’ I admitted.
‘Hit me with one of your dust-packets, will you.’
I gave him one of my French cigarettes.
‘Why?’ he said for the hundredth time. He lit the cigarette.
‘There’s only one explanation,’ I said.
He inhaled and then waved the match violently to put the flame out. ‘Give.’
‘He brought something off that boat.’
‘And unloaded it during the night,’ finished Schlegel. ‘On the other hand, they’ve been making such a good average speed.’
‘It’s all double-think,’ I said.
‘Let’s get back to Nice,’ said Schlegel. He scratched himself again, but this time there seemed to be an element of self-punishment in it.
27
When Champion broke from the department, we set up this small office in Nice. The modest entrance bore the trademark of a well-known British travel company, and three of our staff gave their full-time attention to legitimate travel business.
Schlegel had taken an office on the top floor. He was standing in the window when I entered, looking across the square to Nice railway station. When Cimiez, in the northern part of Nice, had been chic, this section had also been fashionable. But now it was dirty and rundown. The tourists arrived at the airport, and they wanted hotels near the sea. I walked over to the window.
The railway station had hardly changed since the day I waited for Champion to arrive, and watched him being arrested. The tiled floor was a little more chipped, the mural of the Alps a little dirtier, but what else had stayed so much the same? Certainly not me.
Schlegel could always find himself a clean shirt, but his suit was creased and baggy, and the oil-stain on his knee was the one he’d got from the wheel of the big truck. His eyes were red, and he rubbed them. ‘They should tear this whole lousy district down. Put the bus depot and the railroad station in one complex, and stack twenty floors of office accommodation overhead.’
‘Is that why you sent down for me?’ I said.
‘What are you doing downstairs?’
‘Trying to catch up on my sleep. First time since I got up on Sunday.’
‘You want to learn to cat-nap. No. I mean what are you working on down there?’
‘I sent out for some maps. I’m waiting for them,’ I told him.
‘I know all about that,’ said Schlegel. ‘When people in this office send out for things, I get a copy of the requisition. Your goddamn maps have arrived. I’ve got them here.’
‘I can see you have,’ I said.
‘That’s the way I work.’
‘Well, good luck, Colonel. I’ll go back downstairs and try to get a little more sleep.’ I got up and went to the door.
Schlegel suppressed a yawn. ‘OK, OK, OK. We’re both tired. Now come over here and show me what you want the maps for.’
I went around to the other side of his desk and sorted through the survey maps of the country round Champion’s house, and copies of the land registration, and some data about drainage and changes of ownership. I tipped everything – except the map that showed the whole region – into Schlegel’s wastepaper basket. ‘That stuff was just to make it look like an ordinary lawyer’s inquiry,’ I said.
‘You want to tell me what’s on your mind?’ demanded Schlegel.
‘Those five empty trucks. Suppose they unloaded the contents at the Champion house.’ I spread the map.
‘No, no, no,’ said Schlegel. ‘I thought of that, but the gendarmerie patrol that area up there. They fixed a new lock on the back door. They go in there to look round.’
‘Let’s suppose,’ I said patiently.
‘That Champion is sitting in the dark up there, testing the spark plugs in some reconditioned dragster?’
‘Engine parts,’ I said. ‘That might mean pumps, to get the old workings going again.’
‘The mine.’ He snatched the map and unrolled it across his desk. He used the phone, a paperweight and his desk-set to hold the corners. He sucked his teeth as he looked at the full extent of the mine workings: the shafts, seams and the long haulage roads. ‘That was quite a layout.’
I rapped my knuckle against the telephone with enough effort to make the bell tinkle. ‘And just about here, remember – the artillery depot, Valmy.’
‘Jesus!’ whispered Schlegel. ‘They’ve got atomic shells in that store.’ For the first time Schlegel took the idea seriously.
‘Nuclear artillery shells – at Valmy! And you knew that all along?’ I said.
‘It was need-to-know,’ said Schlegel defensively.
‘And I didn’t need to know?’
‘Keep your voice down, mister. You were going to sit in Champion’s pocket. Telling you that there were nukes in Champion’s back yard would have been stupid.’
I didn’t reply.
‘It wasn’t a matter of trust,’ said Schlegel.
‘You’re a stupid bastard,’ I said.
‘And maybe you’re right,’ he admitted. He ran his thumb and index finger down his face, as if to wipe the wrinkles from his cheeks. It didn’t work. ‘So what do we do about this?’ He smacked the map with his fingers so that he made a tiny tear in the brittle paper.
‘We’d better tell Paris,’ I said.
‘If we’re wrong, they’ll hate us. If we’re right, they’ll hate us even more.’
‘You’d better tell them,’ I said.
‘You don’t know those people like I do,’ said Schlegel. ‘Champion was once one of ours – that’s all they will need to blame us for everything.’
‘We’ve had these maps from the municipal authority – and that’s on record – you’ve been told about the atomic shells – and that’s on record, too. They will crucify us if we don’t tell them immediately.’
Schlegel looked at his watch. ‘They will have packed up by now. I don’t want to spend an hour explaining things to the night-duty officer.’ He looked up at me. ‘And I know that you don’t, either. Let’s go out to the house and take another look at it. It might be just another false trail. If it’s worth a damn, we’ll tell Paris in the morning. What do you say?’
‘I don’t like it,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like it,’ I said, ‘because when we get out there, you’ll want to go inside. And then, you’re going to want to find the entrance to the mine. And then you’re going to want to go down there … and all the time, you’re going to be holding me in front of you.’
‘How can you say that! Did I ever do that to you before?’
Before I could answer, Schlegel picked up the phone to get a car.
28
It was dark. I fidgeted enough to send the blood back through my dead arm, and looked round to where Schlegel was hiding, in the scrubland just a few feet away. The western horizon was still pale. But there was not enough light to see the Tix house, except through the night-scope that we’d set up on the rise behind it.
There was precious little moon, just a well-honed sickle, cutting its way out of the clouds every few minutes. But it was during such a flicker of light that the ’scope showed a movement at the back door. I held my breath: it was a man, tall enough to be Champion. He had a gun slung over his shoulder, and was wearing a helmet and some sort of boots or gaiters. I released the trigger on the night-scope so that the intensifying tube could build up a fresh charge. I used it again as the man started to walk across the yard, picking his way past the mud, and then climbing the wooden stairs to a vantage point on the platform outside the hayloft. It made a good sentry post; too good – if he turned this way he’d need no night-scope to see us moving.
Schlegel moved closer. ‘Cha
mpion’s people,’ he said. On the cold air his voice was dangerously loud. He rubbed his mouth, as if to punish it, and when he spoke again it was in a whisper. ‘Not real policemen; I checked the patrol times before we left.’
The dew had soaked my clothes and there was enough of a breeze to make me shiver. I nodded, lest the tone of my voice revealed the state of my morale.
We’d already seen another such man, standing at the place where the tracks divided for the house and the quarry. Equipped with a radio-phone it would be easy to warn of the approach of the gendarmes on their regular patrols.
Schlegel elbowed me aside, and took the eyepiece of the ’scope for a moment. There was a movement beyond the clump of half-dead olive trees that we were depending upon to screen us from the house. Lying full-length in the grass, I felt the vibrations of a man stamping his feet to keep warm. He was not more than forty metres away from us. Perhaps only the woollen scarf wrapped round his head, plus the numbness that comes from long spells of sentry duty, had prevented him from hearing Schlegel’s voice.
When the second man stamped his feet, a third sentry moved. This one was up the slope to the rear of the house. I swung the night-scope to see him. He’d unbuttoned his overcoat and, after a considerable search of his clothing, he brought out cigarettes and matches and lit up.
‘That lame-brain is asking for it,’ whispered Schlegel.
It was true that he’d offered himself as an easy target to anyone within range. For a moment I was puzzled by his action.
Even an imbecilic sentry should know enough to step behind cover while he strikes a match, if only to keep it secret from his sergeant. And then I understood. ‘They’re not sentries,’ I told Schlegel. Each one of them was facing the wrong way, which was probably why we’d got so close without being detected. ‘They’re guards.’
I crawled forward to get under the shelter of the low stone wall that separated the yard from the long meadow. Would they patrol, I wondered, and which side of the wall did our fellow keep to?
I waited while Schlegel moved up to me. ‘Champion is in there,’ I said. ‘They are holding him.’
He didn’t answer for a moment or two. Then he said, ‘The imbecile would be our best chance.’
The kitchen door opened, making a bright-yellow smoke-filled prism. Out of the kitchen came a man. A smell of burning fat confirmed that he was the cook. To be that indifferent to the police patrols they must obviously be about to pull out.
‘Champion is a prisoner in there,’ I told Schlegel.
‘I heard you the first time,’ he said.
‘I want a closer look.’
He thought about it for a moment or two. ‘Give me that night-scope.’
‘I’d better look inside the house,’ I said. He didn’t reply. I wondered if he’d heard my whisper.
He stretched forward to hand me a Walther P.38 and four magazines of bullets. I pushed it into the waistband of my trousers.
I waited until the nearest guard moved down to exchange a word with the man who was still coughing his heart out in the back yard. I vaulted over the low stone wall, lost my balance on the dew-wet stones, and slid down the incline, to land in a heap against a neatly stacked log-pile. I remained dead-still, hardly daring to breathe, but the lung-racking coughs were loud enough to prevent the clatter of my fall from reaching the men in the yard.
I looked back to where Schlegel lay hidden. The lens of his night-scope caught the light from the kitchen window, and flashed like a searchlight. Seen from this end, it was a dangerous toy, but I could do nothing to warn Schlegel now.
Beyond the stacked logs there was the door to the dairy. I crawled forward, and pressed gently against it. It was ajar and swung open with hardly a sound. There was a smell of cheese. A glimmer of light, from the kitchen at the other end of the hall, glinted on the big stone crocks that held the separated milk. I could hear the cook still coughing, and I could feel the draught of air that was clearing the kitchen of smoke.
If I was to get to Champion’s study, I would have to get through the kitchen while it was still empty.
I peered into the smoke. The spilled fat was still burning with fierce flames on the coal-fired cooking stove. I held my breath but the acrid fumes made my eyes water, and took a layer off the back of my throat. I ran into the smoke.
I remembered the two steps down to the scullery, and the slippery mat that was at the bottom of the back stairs. When I reached the entrance hall, I planted myself in the recess under the stairs and listened. Someone was coming. I heard unhurried footsteps on the upstairs landing. The balcony creaked as someone put his weight on the rails, and looked down into the hall. There was a whirr of clockwork and then the longcase clock struck the half hour. The footsteps moved away.
Before I could move, the front door opened and one of the guards came into the hall. He was a huge man, an Algerian, in raincoat, helmet and gumboots. He wiped his feet on the doormat, plucked the chinstrap loose, took off the helmet carefully, and placed it on the hall table. Then he discarded the raincoat, too, leaving it in a heap in the hall, like the skin shed from some shiny black insect. Under the policeman’s coat and helmet, he was dressed in blue overalls. He came past me close enough for me to smell the garlic on his breath, but he looked neither to right nor left. He stopped in front of Champion’s study. He sorted through a bunch of keys, then opened the door and went inside. I waited. Soon there was a noise that I’d always associated with the generator that supplied electricity for the household. Now I had another theory.
I looked at my watch. Fifteen minutes had already passed. I stepped across the hall and to the door of the study. I put my ear to it. No sound came from inside and I leaned forward to look through a crack in the door. As far as I could see it was empty. I pushed the door and went in.
I walked through Champion’s large study. I looked behind the curtains and behind the inlaid Sheraton bookcase. There was no sign of the Algerian sentry and there was only one other door. It was open, and I stepped into a small ante-room, in which Champion kept filing cabinets, typewriter and office materials of a sort which might make his elegant study unsightly. I stepped inside. The second of the filing cabinets was unlocked. I slid the drawer open and found inside, not documents, but a phone and a panel with buttons marked ‘open doors’, ‘close doors’, ‘top floor’ and ‘lower level’. I pressed the last button. The sliding door closed. A motor mechanism whirred, and the lights dimmed. This was the sound that I’d mistaken for that of the generator. Very slowly at first, the whole room began moving. It was not a room at all: it was a lift.
It stopped at what I guessed was about fifty feet below ground level. I pushed against a heavy metal door, keeping flat against the cabinets, but when the door was fully open I saw only a short corridor, brightly lit by fluorescent lights. There was no one in sight. I pulled the gun out of my waistband and moved warily along the corridor until I reached a large office-like room. It too was empty. I breathed a sigh of relief, and tucked the gun away again.
It was a square room, with cheap wall-to-wall carpet, and a plastic sofa arranged to face an office desk, swivel chair and telephone switchboard. It could have been the reception office of any penny-pinching little company, except for the notice that said ‘No Smoking’ in both French and Arabic.
But now I knew what to look for, I had no difficulty noticing the tiny gap that ran down the mirror from floor to ceiling. And then – on the telephone switchboard – I found a switch around which the paint was exceptionally worn and dirtied. I pressed it. The mirrored doors slid apart.
This was another shaft, but quite different to the one behind me. This was a part of the original nineteenth-century workings. From up the shaft there came the draught that is the sign of an active mine. And the draught smelled sour, as the dust it carried hit my face.
The Tix mansion was built on a rise that brought its ground floor level with the old winding gear. The lift from Champion’s study had brought me down to the le
vel of the old fan drift. This was the upcast shaft, which had been built only for the filled tubs to come out.
This was not a lift – it was not a padded box with concealed lighting, Muzak and seats for the elderly – it was a cage. It was an open-fronted cage, with rusty chain-link sides, a wire-netting top, to catch falls of rock from the roughly hewn shaft, and an expanded-steel floor, through which I could see a glimmer of light a thousand feet below me. I stepped inside and the cage jiggled and clanged against the stay-wires. The sound echoed in the dark shaft, so loud that I expected some reaction from below, but I saw none. I locked the safety bar in place in front of me, and swung the crude lever mechanism to close the outer doors. For a moment I stood in the pitch darkness, listening to the whirr of engines and cables. Then, with a sickening lurch, the cage dropped, gathering speed as it went. The winding mechanism screeched loudly, the pitch of its cry growing more shrill as the speed increased.
The cage stopped suddenly, so that it bounced on the springing. I was at the bottom of the mine. It was dark. There was a steady beat of the pumps and the hum of fans. I reached forward, to touch the rocky face of the shaft but a crack of light showed that I faced doors with a crush-bar opening device.
I could hear the pumps somewhere close at hand, and under my feet, in the bottom of the shaft, there was the sump and its running water. I opened the doors, and found the shaft-landing brightly lit with fluorescent light. This must have been one of the earliest shafts sunk. The landing was a large one, with concreted walls and lockers and safety notices, and a time-keeper’s box that contained all the comforts of a ramshackle home. These ‘No Smoking’ notices were only in Arabic. From here stretched three galleries, forming a junction at the corner of the landing. One gallery was sealed. The other two had rails for the tub-trains. One gallery’s tracks were rusted and dirty, but the other’s were shiny bright and slightly oiled, like a guardsman’s rifle.