The Conduct of Major Maxim

by Gavin Lyall

  The Korn was now clenching his forehead with an iron glove, and he was trying to doze it away while the orchestra on the bandstand played Rossini – at least it sounded like Rossini to him, though so did a lot of other composers – when Sims dropped onto the chair beside him. Maxim struggled awake.

  "Good afternoon." Sims's smile flashed under the blue sunglasses. "Thank you for being punctual. Did you discover anything interesting?"

  "Something, I think. How did you manage with the photographs?"

  "I have them, but there is nothing of importance there.

  Nothing I understand. Tell me your news."

  "They remember the Schickerts, all right: glass eye, spoke English well, good at form-filling, had worked on the land before-that's Gustav, isn't it?"

  Sims nodded.

  "Well, the incident was a loaded bomber crashing there. They lost about twenty-three dead, but that includes three Belgians, who don't really count. But I think we've got the certificates for them. The odd thing is, the certificate for Brigittesaid she died there at 11.30, the time the bomber hit. But two people there remember her being taken into town -here – with a neck wound. Still alive. Along with about six others who died later."

  Sims thought about that. "And who arranged about the certificates?"

  "That's right: Our Gustav. Rainer. He went in with the wounded."

  Sims took out his cigarettes, then glanced around. Other members of the audience were already glaring feebly at them. Sims stood up again. "Come. Tell me everything, carefully."

  There was a monument to Bad Schwarzendorn's war dead of 1914-18 at the corner of the park closest to the shopping streets, and the two of them drifted inevitably towards it. Perhaps because they were talking about a memorial to another war, perhaps even more because a symbol of the dead young was more cheerful than the sight of the dying old.

  "I walked round the Evangelical cemetery myself," Maxim finished up; "and I couldn't find any Brigitte Schickert. Not that that proves a thing. She could be planted anywhere. "

  "It helps. It is strange that she is not there, with the others. It… suggests…"

  "But if he was filling in the forms himself, why fill in something that can be proven wrong so easily? It took mejust one trip out to Dornhausen."

  "Because you know what was on the certificate. But at Dornhausen they do not knowyet, after"more than thirty-five years, what is on that certificate. Why should they know? -people do not go looking up death certificates unless there issomething they have to prove for a lawyer. Have you ever looked one up? No. And perhaps it would have been much more difficult to say she died in the hospital here, where the American doctors are making up records and signing things for all the others who die, but not for her because she isnot dead."

  "Yes…"

  "Now, it would be perfect if the Karls Hospital still had the records to show that Frau Schickertwas treated for a neck injury and was cured after two days."

  "That's pretty hopeful, finding the records of an American Army surgical unit after these many years."

  Sims's smile widened. "I know: I am dreaming. But some proof, I would likesome proof. "

  "A whisper won't do?"

  On top of the stone monument there perched a bronze eagle, blackened and streaked with green oxidisation. It looked sullen and hunched, with its wings half spread as if to dry. To look at it, Sims had his head well back, showing that his light tan was completely even right under his chin and down his throat.

  "In the end," he said slowly, "we are looking for what Eismark will believe is proof. We do not want to destroy him, only to control him by the threat to destroy him."

  "Blackmail."

  Sims brought his head down to a cocked, quizzical position, and for once his smile looked as if it went deep back inside. "Do you disapprove?"

  "There's a war on. "

  "At first it is blackmail. It does not go on that way. It becomes a secret that the two people share, something that brings them more and more together, something that pushes the world further away, outside. You can be closer to a man than his own wife, because she does not share the secret. And that man can come to love you, because every day is another day when you did not destroy him, one more day you have given him. And when at last they catch him, when he goes to confessional with the Electric Priest, you feel that a good friend has died. "

  He sighed rather melodramatically and looked at his watch. "Do you want to take your car back to Paderborn?"

  "I suppose so. If you can take me on to Osnabrück."

  North of Sennestadt, Simsskimmed the Audi in and out of a wide-spaced convoy of Army trucks, their headlights glowing feebly against the late afternoon sun. Soldiers with shining patches of sweat betraying the camouflage cream on their faces stared down at them with dead eyes.

  "There's a load of instant pacifists," Maxim remarked.

  "Not a good day for a war," Sims agreed.

  "It's usually too hot or too cold, or too wet."

  "Do you ever think you are getting too old for it?"

  "It has to happen." And when it does, the Army politely pulls out the chair for you, the way it taught you to do for the lady on your left at a dinner party, and leaves you sitting down for the rest of your career. For Maxim, that was nearly another twenty years: the Army had promised him a career until he was fifty-five – but it had never promised he would rise above major. Majors aged fifty-five are seated a long long way from where the action is.

  "Are you offering me a job?" he asked.

  "You know I cannot. But I think you would get it. "

  It happened, Maxim knew. The Intelligence Service did recruit occasional officers in their thirties. It could always use a new face that was trained in military matters, security-minded and presumably a patriot, though the face was probably most important of all.

  "Yes, I can just see Guy Husband laying out the red carpet for me."

  "Guy is not the whole service, Major. He is not the most loved man in the service. And he will not always be head of the Sovbloc section."

  Maxim glanced at Sims, who shook his head. "No, it will never be me, Major. The service has some rules it does not break. My work will always be with my unit, my own people. No promotion. So I have to care, perhaps more than most, about who is to be promoted. "

  Maxim wondered how much Sims knew about his ownpromotion chances, and despite himself couldn't help feeling slightly pleased that somebody thought he could get, and do, a different job. No matter what that person's motives were in mentioning it.

  He eased the seat-belt that was pressing his sweat-soaked shirt against his chest and changed the subject. "How long had Mrs Howard been working on this?"

  "Some time. There was no reason to hurry. Not until the shooting."

  "Why had she only just got round to getting hold of the death certificate? I should have thought that would be the first thing – once she knew it was there. And she'd know that once she knew about The Bomber at Dornhausen."

  "It would take time, to know the Standesbeamte, to be sure he will take money. You cannot just walk in and say Hello, I wish to bribe you. "

  No, Maxim supposed you couldn't. "Well, what happens now?"

  Sims patted his hands on the wheel. "I think I might like to talk to this Bruno. About the photographs… Mrs Howard was not a fool. To be carrying photographs that mean nothing…"

  "He's a tricky bastard. Or tries to be. He's got an old Luger."

  "Do you have a pistol?"

  "No."

  "I have one… but we will wait "until it is dark."

  Maxim seemed to have been recruited again. There must have been something about the quality of his silence, because Sims glanced across and asked: "Or would you want to ring Mr Harbinger again?"

  But Maxim had trouble enough without that.

  He stopped off at the barracks to change, especially his shirt, and pick up any messages. There was nothing from London, but Captain Apgood had left a large envelope. Maxim opened it i
n the privacy of his room. Along with a nine-year-old copyof Focus on Germany there was a note: I tried ringing you. Herewith the magazine. Page 12 looks like your meat. Bad Schwärzendemhas not been microfilmed yet, but due to start next month. Anything missing will be noticed then, so you have been warned.

  The magazine was a thin, staid but professionally produced affair intended to interest the American and British forces in aspects of Germany outside their normal military round, but not too far out. It gave their wives recipes for German cooking, news of cycle clubs and stamp collecting, articles on places with vague military connections. This one featured Dornhausen, recalling the first days of the occupation in 1945, and spread across the width of the page was a photograph of all the inhabitants in front of the unbombed church.

  "It's very much an Army way of doing it," Maxim explained. "Line everybody up and photograph them, put a caption underneath and just hang it in your office -jpr under glass on your desk – and look at it. You know what armies are like about Must Know Your Men's Names. ' He assumed Sims had been in some army, most likely the East German NVA."Then after The Bomber the American Civil Affairs people just crossed out the ones that had got killed. That's explained in the text."

  "It says also that this picture is hanging in the Wirtshausat Dornhausen."

  "Not in the main room. And nobody mentioned it. That's nine years old." It didn't much matter what he said: he still knew who would be going back to have a look the next morning.

  Sims had his jeweller's eyeglass out again. But there were around fifty people in the picture, which was reproduced hardly bigger than a postcard, and no glass could see through the Civil Affairs' officer's bold wax-pencil strokes. "That is him, is Gustav." But that wasn't difficult to guess, because he and a Goliath who must be Field Engineer Scholz were the only two young men in the scene. Next to Gustavand crossed out they could just make out a blonde woman, a few inches shorter, who held a baby.

  "Is the baby the right age?" Sims demanded, shuffling a small pack of head-and-shoulders photographs.

  It was a long time since Chris had been of a size to hold in your arms… until three months you had to support the head, didn't you? This one was older than that but didn't look of crawling age.

  "About five months, yes, it could be."

  Sims put down one of his photographs. "I am sure it is him, see?'

  The stern, confident young man could easily be the one in the village picture, but the clothes seemed too neat and recent.

  "Is that Eismark?"

  Sims chuckled. "Yes – but the baby, Manfred. You can see he is his father's son, no? The most early one we have of Gustavis this." The bones of the face were the same, but this was a forty-year-old shipping manager, balding in front and wearing a moustache and glasses.

  Maxim put the photographs and magazine down on the low table. They were sitting in Sims's motel room, part of a low modern block behind an all-nightcaféjust off the Autobahn. It was quiet, comfortable and cool – and instantly forgettable because it didn't belong to a place, but in between places. Sims hadn't even bothered to make it more his own by scattering things around: only the litre bottle of Scotch on the table and a portable sun-tan lamp on the dressing table, with a reflecting aluminium collar that fitted around your neck. His under-chin tan was explained now.

  "Did you know the Eismarks – either of them?" It was the first time he had given any hint that he knew of Sims's origins, but no bad thing after Sims had shown what he knew about Maxim.

  "Gustav, I did not know him. He was still mainly in Rostock, he came to Berlin only for meetings. But Manfred, yes, I knew him. He was crazy. Then he was only a captain, but crazy already. There was a story – I believe it – that once he beat a man in his office so much that he died. It was called something else, he hanged himself in his cell or jumped from the windows… probably he jumped from the windows, it would fit better. But do you know what that man had done?

  Nothing – only his brother had escaped to the West. Manfred believed he should have known it would happen, that the man should have stopped his brother. Do you understand that?" He cocked his head with a sly smile.

  "Did Mina Eismark'sdefection hurt Manfred?"

  "He was only a schoolchild, and she was just his aunt. But it leaves a smell. I think he believed he must try harder, in the SSD, because of it. And perhaps a psychiatrist would say it was beating his father in that office."

  "Perhaps a psychiatrist would say anything that would get his name in the papers, or am I being cynical?"

  Sims laughed cheerfully. "I think you have psychiatrists in your Army, too. Would you like a proper drink now?" He waved the whisky bottle.

  "Not just yet. But how would Manfred take the idea that his father had deserted his mother, then committed bigamy?"

  "I think he would like it-if it was only he who knew it. Then he would have control of hisfather, his fatherwho is on the Secretariat. One day, Colonel Manfredthinksalso he would like to be on the Secretariat."

  "Everybody a contender." Sims looked at him, puzzled "Sorry, go on."

  "It would not be strange for a father to help his son. And who will knowwhy he is helping him? Also, Uncle Bear likes Manfred. They want strong men, since the strike. The Democratic Republic will have many years of paying for that, now…" His smile blurred for a moment and he poured himself another Scotch.

  Maxim said slowly: "Somehow… compared with the strike and defection and getting beaten to death… I don't know, but somebody just walking out on his wife a long time ago – doesn't it sound a bit thin to you?"

  Sims smiled". "Ring your friend Bruno. He won't let you go there right away, he will want time to be ready. We can have time for dinner, then."

  Reluctantly, Maxim reached for his notebook and Fraulein Winkelmann's phone number.

  Guy Husbandcarneinto Number 10through the connecting door with the Cabinet Office, the usual route for anybody from Intelligence or Security since it bypassed the tourist-haunted front door in Downing Street. He was wearing a midnight blue dinner jacket and ruffled shirt since he was supposed, at that moment, to be boarding a helicopter at the City Helistop to fly down to Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne. He didn't look in a very good mood.

  "Very kind of you to drop in at such short notice, " George told him. "You do know Agnes, of course? Do you feel like a spot of something? – it's about that time, I think."

  Husband refused the drink and glanced suspiciously at Agnes. She took a postcard-sized picture out of her handbag and offered it. "Do you recognise this man?"

  Husband put on his tinted glasses and studied it. "Yes. Yes, it's one of Dieter's team. I can't recall his name right now."

  George gave a long contented rumble and sat back in his desk chair. Husband switched his suspicion to him, then back to the photograph. "He looks a bit odd, mind you, but -"

  "Oh, he's odd, all right, " Agnes said. "He's in the mortuary at Guy's Hospital waiting for somebody to identify him, on account of a couple of gunshot wounds he received in Rotherhithe last Friday night." She let that sink in, smiling cheerfully, then added: "He was also identified by Leni Pfaffinger, more or less of the BBC World Service, as one of two men who came around posing asour agents and trying to get Mina Linnarz'snew address. "

  Husband cleared his throat. "Well, I'm not absolutely certain it's the same chap…"

  "But you canbe certain just by stepping round to the hospital and having a look-see. "

  "I suppose it does make more sense," George said, "it being one of your people on the Rotherhithe business. If ithad been the SSD it would imply that Gustav Eismarkhad called them in, and since it's evidence about his own bigamy that we're chasing, that really isn't too likely."

  "I assure you," Husband said stiffly, "that I had absolutely no knowledge of this. Dieter Sims was acting entirely off his own bat. "

  "Whatever you say," George agreed. "But somebody's going to have to step across the road and tell Scottie. Would you prefer the honour?"

&nbs
p; At first, Maxim was surprised that they didn't go to the all-nightcaféitself, but then he realised it would be the very opposite of the anonymous motel room. It was open, public, almost part of the Autobahn itself with travellers flowing through, and the people who would remember Sims would be busy, travelling people. So they ate in a small, candle-lit Italian restaurant and Maxim chose escalopeal marsala.

  "Now what were you saying?" Sims prompted. He was on whisky again, that andfegato Veneziana.

  "I've only been involved in this, in Plainsong, sort of step by step," Maxim said carefully. "I didn't get any real briefing on it until a couple of days ago, and you heard how much that was. I assumed your people had got a lot more data… I hadn't started thinking about what Brigitte Schickertwas doing. And I'm damn sure she wasn't just sitting there while Gustavhauled her baby off to the Russian Zone. She'd go completely spare. And apart from anything else she'd go back to Dornhausen to see what they knew. "

  Sims shrugged. "When he took the baby from Dornhausen he could give it to her, while she got better from the wound, then leave her later."

  "She'd still go back to Dornhausen. She'd go everywhere she could think of. Somebody had stolen herbaby. Are you taking this seriously?"

  "Perhaps not so much."

  Maxim put down his knife and fork with a clang. "All right, Mister bloody Mystery, find yourself a new errand boy for the next -"

  "Yes, we believe Gustavleft her. But not alive."

  Maxim peered at him through the flickering gloom. "And you don't mean The Bomber now?"

  "No. Then the certificate would say she died in hospital, and she would be in the cemetery. We believe she died later, somewhere else. Because when he had got the certificate accepted, and in the file of the Standesamt, then it would be alicence to murder her, no? And he must hurry, to kill her before somebody who thinks she is dead will see her. All he must wait for is to get the papers so he may become Eismark again, who is suspected of nothing. It is a good murder, I think, to wait until you have proof of the death by accident first."