The Conduct of Major Maxim

by Gavin Lyall

  The radio said: "Jim," already noticeably fainter.

  "Harry. We're behind him, going south out of town, by the river. Shin"

  The street lights had suddenly ended and they plunged into a moonless darkness and Agnes braked heavily to let the Metro's lights vanish beyond the next corner. Then she snapped on the headlights and tore forward.

  "Jim – check in every ten minutes if you can."

  "Roj."

  One side of the road was a walled dike holding in the river; if the Metro turned, it could only be to the right. That was some consolation for moving in briefly lit rushes and suddenly dark stops as they rounded a bend. But at least the road would be dead flat as long as it clung to the river, and there were occasional tiny villages with lamps up on telephone poles to give them some respite.

  Then, inevitably, came the bend which had no tail-lights showing beyond it. Agnes must have been prepared because the lights came on and she changed to an easy cruising drive. "Get your heads down. He may just be checking his back. "

  They kept going for another thirty seconds or so, and Agnes said: "He turned off. I've gone past, it should be far enough for him not to hear. D'you want to wait, or walk it?"

  The car coasted to a stop and Maxim lifted his head off his knees. "I'll walk it. You follow up in a couple of minutes."

  He ran – which he hadn't wanted Blagg to try and do -back the quarter mile to the corner, where a wooded lane led off beside a disused-looking wooden barn. The Metro, unlit, was parked just on the verge; the van, if it was there, would be up the track beside the barn. He waited a few seconds, recovering his breath. As a hiding place it made good sense, since they could have sat on top of the dike a few yards away and watched the Seesperling come chugging upstream and timed their trip into Goole itself precisely.

  Gun in hand, and using the Metro as cover, he reached the corner of the barn and paused to listen. There was a mutter, a pause, another mutter. Of course: somebody was speaking German on a radio. He eased an eyebrow around the barn and there was the van, a windowless Bedford of some dark colourhe couldn't make out, with a man perched half on the driving seat under an interior light and using a long-lead microphone. There was no sign of any second man.

  Behind, he heard the drone of the Renault heading back. The man with the microphone put it down and shut the door, putting out the light, and the second man came around the back of the van zipping up his trousers. Maxim leaned out around the corner pointing the little revolver and said: "If you move I'll Jh7/you."

  He was fairly sure he was starting a gunfight, although he wasn't worried about the outcome. They would be tensed up, almost certainly armed, reckoning on the darkness and a two-to-one superiority… But then the vital first milliseconds flowed away, they felt the surge in their bowels and ideas of pain and death welled up inside them. Then he was herding them against the side of the van, spread your hands and feet, more, more I said, but staying back and waiting for Blagg and the shotgun. A part of his easy victory was explained already: one man had his right wrist wrapped in a rigid plaster bandage right up to the palm.

  Blagg noticed that, too. "It looks just like somebody shot you there, don't it? And on account of I'm a great detective, I'd say it happened in Rotherhithe, know where I mean? I'd even say it happened in back of Neptune Court, while you was trying to blow me away. Would you remember that?" He was rubbing the shotgun mu/zle up the man's spine.

  "Leave it, Ron," Maxim ordered. The man – 82 – hadn't even been armed.83 had had a Czech VZ5O automatic in his pocket.

  Agnes came from the back doors of the van, "She's in there; all right, I think, but…"

  "Ron, you're in charge."

  "Could I have your.38, Major? The noise of this thing…"

  "You're in poaching country here; Lincolnshire starts about ten metres down that road. Nobody'll lose a drop of sleep over a shotgun going off; just stay well back so you don't get splattered." He wasn't talking to Blagg and nobody thought he was.

  There was a dim interior light in the van, which was fittedwith a bunk bed on either side. Mina lay on the right one, her head on a grubby flower-pattern cushion and her left hand loosely shading her face. She wore a jumble of old clothes including a stretched woollen cardigan. The van smelt of habitation.

  "She's pretty much sedated," Agnes said. She nodded at a box of Valium phials and disposable hypodermics on the other bed. Maxim sat beside them rather than stand in an awkward stoop.

  "So here's the last chorus of Plainsong," he said, feeling a sudden weariness. "Did they try to get her to talk?" He picked up the drugs box and shook it. "There's no sign of sodium pentathol or anything like that."

  "You don't need that, "Agnes said, a little angry. "She'sjust an arthritic old lady with no training in how to resist. Fear's the best truth drug for people like her, and itcornescheap."

  Maxim just nodded, reached across and lifted Mina 's hand gently away from her face. Her eyes opened with drugged slowness, then a sudden spasm of revulsion.

  "It's all right, " he said soothingly. "We've come to take you back home. It's all over." He eased the other hand out from under her neck, so that he held each of them, stroking her knuckles reassuringly with his thumbs. "We'll get you back to the Dales. What was the name of the village?"

  "Ramsley," Agnes said softly.

  "Back to Ramsley. Just one thing: did they ask you questions?"

  Mina moved her head fractionally.

  "Did you tell them? Did you say you'd helped kill Brigitte Krone?"

  "Harry," Agnes said warningly.

  "We have to know what they know. Did you tell them?" He reached around and stroked the back of Mina 's neck, as if to soothe a knot of muscles under her back hair. Her eyes widened and she said faintly: "Yes. I did tell them."

  "Fine. You told them you and Gustavhad killed Brigitte."

  "Yes."

  He put her hands back, but she took a moment to discover them, and rearrange herself in slow motion. Her eyes closed.

  "I told you it was cheaper than drugs, " Agnes said in a bitter voice.

  "She's lucky: I saw the last person Sims started questioning. I want to say something. "

  But when they stepped down from the van, all he said was: "Did you bring out the radio?" and she showed it him, propped by the aerial against the barn. He put it on top of the van, for maximum range, then got a pair of handcuffs from the holdall and locked the two men together, wrist to wrist but around the front bumper of the Bedford so that they sprawled awkwardly on the grassy track ahead of it. But they said nothing, and neither did he or the watchful Blagg; it could have been standard moves in a game of chess where, Agnes recalled, you also stay silent and only win by the other side's mistake.

  Blagg sat down against the barn, husbanding his strength. Maxim came back to Agnes.

  "You were going to say something," she reminded him. "Or was that it?" (Why does this man always get me angry?)

  "Yes. Mina – that isn't arthritis she's got. Not in her hands, anyway. The muscles in her left hand are flat, wasted, compared with the right."

  "Arthritis was just what I heard. I'm not a doctor."

  "No, you drive a car pretty well -" (now I remember why I get angry with this man, she thought) " – but you haven't spent six months in hospital or ten years married to an Army nurse. We got a lot of these cases, people applying for a disability award years after the event. A wound sort of hardens up and it can squeeze the nerves controlling a limb. They call it fibrositis when they can't think of a fancier name."

  "So she's been wounded now, has she?"

  Maxim glanced back, but Blagg was interested only in the two men and the radio. "Yes, high up in the neck, where the nerves for the hands come out. You can feel the scar. I think somebody tried operating there, too, probably when her hand started to go numb and seize up."

  "All right, but what's this got to do with anything?"

  "That was the wound the wife,Brigitte, wassupposed to have got in Dornhause
n, back in '45."

  "D'you mean this isn't his sister but hiswife?'

  "Same person. He got his sister pregnant and married her to make it look better. There wouldn't be any problem – they were both using roadnames at the time. If that's the little secret he's been keeping all the time I'm not surprised how hard he's been working at it. "

  "God Almighty."

  "He's seen worse in His time. "

  Chapter 27

  Mina Linnarz-or Eismarkor Kroneor Schickert or her real name in the Dales – lay with her eyes half-closed under the dim light in the van, breathing with a slight rasp but steadily and deeply. The mousy sharpness of the little neat face was unfocused by wrinkles, the hair a thin grey tangle, no longer peroxided for a far more urgent reason than to look truly Aryan. Even if the American officer hadn't wax-pencilled out the young mother in the Dornhausen photograph, probably nobody could have recognised her now. And Gustavhad stifled even that chance by coming back to steal the photograph.

  But no matter. There would be other proof- now they knew what to prove. There would be, in some other Standesamt, the real death certificate of the real Brigitte Krone to prove she died young and not in the parish where her birth certificate was filed. That – and her being an orphan – had been why the Communist underground had picked her to create a new Brigitte. Just as they had created a new Rainer Schickert from the real one whose birth and death certificates were also in different Standesamter. That was standard technique, just as uncovering it would be. No need for truth drugs.

  (But what if Sims had found the time for truth drugs? Agnes smiled as she thought how eagerly Mina musthave confessed to the simple murder Sims's unit had invented for her and Gustav!)

  Oh yes, we will prove it, Agnes thought. But we won't understand it. We shall never know what really happened. A brieflust, or compassion, or even real love between two parent-less children? Or just loneliness? God must forgive much that stems from that most terrible of all troubles. There lies a little old lady whose story I would rather understand than any other in all the computers and files of our registry. But now nobody will understand it, because even Mina and Gustavwill have lost the understanding under the fibrosis of shame and deceit.

  The radio crackled faintly and Maxim grabbed for it. "Go. "

  He thought he could hear Caswell muttering across a crackling infinity, but couldn't be sure.

  "Jim, get out of there. Call me when you're clear of the docks."

  The radio crackled back. Those things had very little power or range; even the Army's 350 set only went five kilometres reliably, and they must be that far from the docks at least.

  Slowly and loudly, Maxim called:"Get – out – of- there -Call – when – you – are – dear."

  "HEY YOU BREAKERS, ARE YOU PLAYING COPS AND ROBBERS OR SOMETHING? AND CAN ANYBODY JOIN IN?"

  Whoever it was must have had an illegally long aerial wrapped around his car or truck, and probably an illegal booster as well. His contribution came through like the chimes of Big Ben.

  It merely infuriated Maxim. It made Jim grab for theoff switch so suddenly – and he was using the radio right-handed, because of his stiff left elbow, which went against all his training – that he lost it. He had climbed onto a stack of timber some earlier ship had unloaded, perhaps eight feet high, and the walkie-talkie tumbled down the irregularly stacked planks like a staircase, lodged a few feet above the dock, and said: "DOES ANYBODY COPY?"

  Caswell took out the revolver and began planning which way to move.

  Maxim Came around the van. "What do we do with these two now? I want to get moving."

  "I don't think it matters, not any more. They can go to East Germany or stay or whatever. Eismark isn't going to cook up any scandal about our people defecting, not once he knows we've got Plainsong. We just have to get that word to him."

  "We can use the van radio. They're probably listening out at that end."

  The Bedford's radio was a bigger affair, roughly built-in, and using the private military 30-70 megahertz band. So perhaps Sims had robbed the Secret Service stores after all.

  He picked up the microphone, then hesitated. "I don't know just how to put this. It'd be a sight easier on the telephone."

  "Make a date to talk on the phone, then. In the morning. He can't sail until midday anyway. "

  "That's right." He pressed the transmit button on the microphone."Seesperling.'"

  He had called several more times before a voice said:"Ja. Erwin, bis Du das?"It was distant, but much better than the CB walkie-talkies.

  "No. I want to speak to Gustav Eismark, please."

  The radio just hummed. Then Sims said: "Major Maxim, I think."

  "Right. We've got the van and everything. None of your people got hurt. It's all over. Can I speak to Gustav Eismark, please?"

  "Not quite all over, Major. We have a friend of yours. I do not know his name, but he had a radio and a pistol. He is being questioned."

  Maxim and Agnes looked at each other. "They captured Jim. Goddamn."

  "Exchange him for the two goons."

  "Yes." He picked up the microphone."Seesperling."

  "Go ahead, Major."

  "We'll do an exchange. Your two for my one."

  "Stand by. I have to ask the Colonel."

  "What? What Colonel?"

  Sims seemed to pause fractionally. "Colonel Manfred Eismark," he said carefully."Gustav Eismarkis not here. Standby."

  Maxim let out a long breath. "Damn. I should have thought of Sims going for Manfred; I knew he knew him. Far easier for an SSD man to sneak out of East Germany than a top politician… and he'd be more used to deals like this. Sims said he wouldn't mind getting a bill of goods on his own father. A bit of a nutter."

  "And now we know why. Those genetics aren't going to help him in his future career – if anybody knows about them. You realise we've got a bill of goods on both father and son? Plainsong's come off better than anybody even hoped."

  "Not yet it hasn't. There's weeks of paperwork before we could prove a thing and we need itnow. To get Jim back. "

  Blagg was waiting permission-to-speak. "Is that right, sir? They've got Jim?"

  "Yes. I'm trying to work an exchange."

  "We could just go and take him back. "

  "Stay cool. It's been a quiet night so far, and there's one thing we didn't find in the van. "

  "Yer…" Blagg had momentarily forgotten the silenced submachine gun. "What do we do?"

  "Wait."

  They waited, and Sims came on the air. "Major – we want also Mina Linnarz."

  "No chance. No chance at all."

  "Standby."

  Agnes found she had lit a cigarette, but only from the annoyed hisses of Maxim and Blagg, worried about the dazzle of her lighter on their night vision. She dropped it and trod it out.

  Sims came in: "Major. All right. Just my two men. Cometothe ship."

  Maxim looked at Agnes. She said: "Somewhere public, middle of town, where he won't want to risk any shooting. "

  "Theship's the place he won't want any shooting. Not with Colonel Eismark on board."

  "Major?"

  "Okay. The ship, twenty minutes. I don't want to see anybody but you and him. "

  "Twenty minutes. Okay. Out."

  Agnes said: "He's going to try something. He didn't push for us giving him Mina, and she's his ticket to ride."

  "He still doesn't want any shooting."

  Blagg had the Goole street map. "That bridge we come over, the last one, and Bridge Street – I mean, it's the only way back into town. They could know that. "

  "But they don't know the Renault. We could be anybody."

  "That's right…"

  "Agnes – you take the old girl, probably in the Metro, I imagine you'd prefer that to the Bedford -"

  "Harry, how are you two going to cope with that lot?"

  "Look – apart from Mina and Gustav, you and me are the only two people who know about Plainsong, the truth of it…"
<
br />   "I can change that the minute I get to a phone."

  "Right, so do that. But what else do you suggest? – you're the little girl who skips pistol practice. "

  "We could quit while we're ahead. We've done ninety-nine per cent of the job and a lot more than Scott-Scobie deserves. Now we just go. They'll almost certainly let Sergeant Caswell go, whatever we do."

  "I've heard things about Colonel Eismark… and Jim's the only cardthey've got now."

  But it was still one of the oldest military problems in the world. You gain your objective by high morale, troops knowing they won't be let down, wasted or abandoned. You also gain your objective by being ready to accept casualties, sending out men who won't come back, abandoning some because to save one might mean losing three or four more. It might even be a good idea to stop all wars until that paradox was worked out. But this wasn't a war. It was just Jim Caswell being persuaded to help out and…

  Maxim said: "Sims could play it straight. He wants these two back; he's very loyal to his own people."

  "It isn't difficult being loyal to your own people," Agnes said pointedly. "The tricky bit is being loyal to an idea. Anyway, he isn't in charge on that ship."

  "Colonel Eismark's got more to lose if he's caught here and identified."

  "Harry – they just want to grab you or Blagg to give themselves a second card."

  "We don't grab easy."

  Under her breath Agnes said so'mething thatsounded like 'fucking supermen' but, given her upbringing, obviously couldn't have been.

  Chapter 28

  The two captives, 82 and 83, were in the back seat of the Renault, handcuffed together (for once a handcuff key had worked, letting them loose from the van) left hand to left hand. That way, they could only move fast by some sort of ballet routine which it seemed unlikely they had practised, although Blagg was taking no chances. He sat swivelled around in the passenger seat with Maxim's pistol – he despised the little Czech.32 automatic taken from 83 – pointed.