by Len Deighton
‘I heard you come down the stairs with him.’
‘Thanks for your help,’ said Stuart bitterly.
‘You were doing all right.’
Stuart rubbed his grazed and battered face. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
The girl pulled her beachrobe tighter round her body and tugged at its knotted belt. ‘Where’s the other one?’ Stuart asked.
‘One of my boys is taking care of him in the kitchen,’ said the case officer.
‘A neat job,’ said Stuart. It had been a perfect snatch-squad operation. From the twenty-four-hour watch at the airport to seeing Rocky Paz kidnapping Stein as he came out on to the street from the baggage hall, it had been exemplary. But perhaps Stuart was tempting providence to say so, for no sooner were the words out of his mouth then there was the sound of two shots and a cry of pain. As if on cue, the girl dashed for the door. The case officer fired but the bullet went high and ricocheted off the oak ceiling of the hallway beyond.
Stuart ran towards the front door to make sure Stein was in the car, but he was nowhere to be seen and Parker was no longer stretched out on the floor; two more bullets whined past Stuart’s head. He turned and, using Parker’s gun, fired at the upper landing where the gun flashes had come from.
Someone had extinguished the fluorescent lights in the kitchen. The inside of this shuttered house was dark. There were two more shots and the sound of feet coming down the stairs very fast. The big man with ringlets came past, pumping a shell into a shotgun. He kicked the inner door open so that it swung round and banged against the wall. The daylight from the doorway lit the hall like a photo flash. There, in the rectangle of the doorway, Stuart saw the whole scene. There was the unnaturally blue water of the pool, a great transparent cube against the dark greenery, and framing it a fringe of bright flowers. The case officer had gone through the kitchen and now was running along the poolside as the man raised the shotgun.
There was no time to think. Stuart aimed and fired automatically. The ringleted man in the doorway was too close to miss. The bullet shattered his shoulder blade, as Stuart intended that it should, and the shotgun went off and covered the surface of the pool with a thousand tiny splashes. The man was yelling, and kept yelling even after he too had tumbled forward into the hot bubbling water of the jacuzzi.
Stuart ran forward and on to the patio. The case officer had turned towards the sound of the shotgun. ‘Take the car,’ he yelled to Stuart, and already he was kicking open the decorative tea house at the end of the garden to be sure that Stein was not there.
From the front of the house Stuart heard the Cadillac engine as the getaway car arrived. He ran round the side of the house and jumped into it. The driver was tickling the gas pedal nervously. Stuart pushed him aside and climbed behind the wheel. ‘Jesus, what a mess,’ said the driver. ‘Of all places … Beverly Hills, where the cops are thickest. They’ll be all over us.’
Even as the car began rolling forward the double gates were closing. Stuart had studied them closely from the outside during his half-hour of gardening. They were electrically controlled, reinforced with steel cross-braces and topped with a tangle of barbed wire. ‘Hold tight!’ shouted Stuart above the noise of the engine. ‘We’re going to have to get a good run up to it.’ He put the car into reverse and touched the accelerator. The Cadillac shot backwards. Before he could apply the brake, the back of the car had crashed through the conservatory. There was a sound like heavy surf hammering on to the beach as the glass shattered and potted plants and shelving crashed down upon them. A flower pot broke upon the roof of the car, scattering earth and a dozen seedlings over the windscreen. Stuart revved the engine as the rear bumper locked into the bent ironwork. It broke free with a bang and the car sped forward faster and faster until it hit the gates with a clang like a peal of bells. It ripped the hinges and tangled up the barbed wire. With a terrible scream of tyres it broke loose and Stuart brought the steering wheel round as the car skidded across the grass and on to the road. Something caught in the car’s underside, rattled loudly, then broke free. They were free.
‘We lost your dad,’ Stuart told Billy Stein.
‘What in hell does that mean; you lost him?’
The three men were in the sitting room of the Steins’ home. The case officer was in an armchair near the window, pretending to be fully occupied by the view across the city of Los Angeles. Without turning round he said, ‘Your dad was in his underclothes – bright blue shorts and singlet – he came out of the house holding on to a towel round his neck. We thought he was jogging.’
‘You thought he was jogging!’ said Billy Stein. ‘I hear you talking about guns going off, and girls screaming. You wreck the car, ramming the gates. You thought my dad was jogging! You told me you were going to rescue him.’
‘We did rescue him,’ said the case officer. ‘But he scrambled over the fence and came out through the front lawn of the house next door.’
‘Jesus,’ said Billy Stein. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the old man. Concussed in a car accident, kidnapped by the Russians, held prisoner until you rescue him and then he takes off up the road in his underpants …’
‘We’re laying it all on the line for you,’ said Stuart, ‘because we need to know where he’s likely to go.’
Billy Stein smiled. ‘He won’t come here. He’s not so dumb that he’ll come home where you are waiting for him.’
‘Does he have an apartment anywhere?’
‘What the tabloids call a love-nest; is that what you mean? No, that’s not him at all. My dad was never that subtle, or extravagant. If he had some kind of affair going he’d have brought the girl right back here to the house. You can forget that one.’
‘Clubs?’
Billy Stein shook his head. ‘Only his regular poker game.’
‘We’re going to leave one of our people here in the house,’ said Stuart.
‘That’s OK,’ said Billy Stein. ‘There’s lots of food and stuff.’ He looked at Stuart for a moment before continuing. ‘You’re not kidding about the Russians? Did they really kidnap the old man?’
‘Your dad will tell you all about it, once we find him,’ said Stuart.
Encouraged by the friendly tone in Stuart’s voice, Billy Stein said, ‘It was a frame-up in London, wasn’t it, Mr Stuart? Your people know I didn’t kill anyone?’
The case officer turned his head to see how Stuart handled this question.
‘It was a frame-up,’ Stuart replied. ‘But they could make it stick if you don’t co-operate with us.’
‘I’ll co-operate,’ said Billy, ‘But I wanted to get it clear between you and me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is it OK for me to phone Mary Breslow?’
‘You phoned her this morning,’ the case officer said over his shoulder.
Stuart nodded his approval. ‘But Billy … nothing about your dad, or about the murder charge in London. Just sweet nothings, OK?’
‘Sure thing,’ said Billy.
‘You know Max Breslow was a Nazi?’ said the case officer.
‘You sound like my dad,’ Billy told him. ‘Are you another one of these guys who can’t stop fighting the war?’
‘Go and make your call,’ Stuart said. ‘But remember that the guy in the hall will be listening on the extension.’
‘You’re too damned soft with that kid,’ the case officer said after Billy’s departure.
‘I think he’s a good sort,’ said Stuart. ‘No grudges, no tantrums, no smart-ass remarks. Hell, even when I admit that he was framed in London he practically thanks me.’
‘Rich kids,’ said the case officer. ‘They’re all like that.’
‘Are they?’ said Stuart. ‘Then let’s hope I meet more of them.’
The case officer got up from Charles Stein’s favourite armchair, and took out his cigarettes so that he could light a fresh one from the stub in his fingers. ‘Chain-smoking,’ he said after it was alight. ‘Does that disgust you?’ Stuart didn’t reply. ‘Because it d
isgusts me.’ He stubbed the old cigarette out with unnecessary vigour. ‘OK, so I’m hard on the kid. You’re right; he’s OK.’
The case officer sat down again and watched the sun put on its act of dying. Finally, when the room had darkened, he said, ‘You were the one who got those two agents out of Rostock two years or so back?’
It was a breach of regulations to talk of such things but the two men had got to know each other by now.
‘What a cock-up,’ said Stuart. He could remember only arriving back in London to discover Jennifer’s bed companion.
‘The way I heard it you should have got a medal,’ said the case officer.
‘I didn’t even get paid leave,’ said Stuart.
‘I knew one of them,’ said the case officer. ‘A little Berliner with a high-pitched laugh … liked to wear a blade in his hat. He escaped from a prison in Leipzig back in the fifties when they broke up one of our networks.’
‘I remember him,’ said Stuart. Both the men he had rescued were old-timers, men who had worked for London for many years. If they had been younger and stronger he might have left them to save themselves, but for these two he had gone back through the road blocks and brought them out again with him. Looking back he wondered at the madness of it.
‘You were the big hero of the department at the time,’ said the case officer. ‘There were guys in East Germany who would have had you canonized.’
Stuart laughed. ‘You have to be dead to be canonized.’
‘I didn’t know before,’ said the case officer apologetically. ‘I wouldn’t have kidded around with you if I’d known you were the agent who brought those two guys out of Rostock – that was really something!’
The two men sat in silence for a while. Then the case officer said, ‘I heard a rumour that these Hitler Documents – or whatever they are – have been destroyed.’
‘I heard the same thing,’ said Stuart.
‘But the department will keep the file open?’
‘The department will keep the file open,’ said Stuart. ‘That’s one thing you can be sure about. My orders are unchanged; I’ve got to locate Stein and Kleiber, then ask London for instructions. Kleiber is now the centre of all London’s queries.’
‘We’ll find Stein,’ said the case officer, as if reading Stuart’s mind. ‘I’ve put every last man I can spare on to it. I’ll locate him, I promise you. It wasn’t such a fiasco tonight. At least it will make the Russians run for cover and maybe think again before kidnapping anyone else at the airport. When Stein does show up we’ll have a free hand to work on him.’
‘I like Stein,’ said Stuart.
‘He’s a crook,’ said the case officer. ‘And from what I hear the concussion has made him a little crazy.’
‘But I like him,’ said Stuart. ‘And this is not the sort of business where one can be too choosy about the crazies.’
Chapter 44
To the casual observer, Charles Stein might have appeared a little drunk, but the uniformed studio policeman scarcely gave him a glance. The suit he wore was an old one; it had been in his locker at the club in Roscoe ever since he’d played squash there many years ago. They had had all shapes and sizes going through the studio gates that morning. Goodness knows how many actors must have attended those earlier downtown auditions, he wondered, when so many had been selected for these screen tests with make-up and costume.
Charles Stein’s concussion had produced many of the symptoms of drunkenness and yet, like those people who gain a reputation for being able to hold their drink, Stein learnt how to disguise and hide those symptoms. But he could not shake off the belief that Aram was still alive and well, and events following his accident on the autoroute were confused and somewhat hazy in his mind.
Find Max Breslow. It was as if this was the coherent, rational, all-consuming motive for everything that Charles Stein did. It had been in his mind when he fought his way back to consciousness after the car crash. It had troubled the dreams he had had in the upstairs lounge of the jumbo and screamed in the voice of its engines. Now his lips moved as he gave himself that same instruction and clasped it to his mind as fiercely and as lovingly as he cradled the gun in his arms.
‘Breslow?’ The corridor stretched to infinity and the doors were set close together. Puny doors on flimsy hinges which, with a little extra effort, Charles Stein could have ripped away.
‘No.’ Adolf Hitler, dressed in a well-cut grey jacket and plain black trousers, shook his head. ‘No,’ he said again.
The next room was little different. Adolf Hitler was admiring himself in a full-length mirror. He waved Stein away with an imperious hand. ‘Breslow!’ shouted Stein, his voice echoing in the narrow corridor. In the next room, a third Adolf Hitler was tying a shoelace. Charles Stein slammed the door very hard. A voice complained loudly from somewhere at the other end of the building.
The fourth Adolf Hitler was sitting slumped in his chair. He did not respond to Breslow’s name. The fifth was crouched over a table, staring closely at a mirror as he combed his hair over his forehead and positioned it with a long squirt of hair spray. The sixth Adolf Hitler was applying make-up, touching his cheeks with greasepaint and rubbing it carefully into the surrounding colouring. Dozens of bare yellow bulbs outlined his reflection, so that another Führer touched foreheads with this one. And the images – reflected from one mirror to another – made a long golden tunnel peopled with Adolf Hitlers, their balletic gestures synchronized to perfection.
‘Breslow!’
A thousand Hitlers stood up and glared at Stein, raising their hands mockingly in mute salute to him.
‘Breslow!’ Stein’s voice was so loud that it made the thin hardboard walls of the dressing room rattle as they echoed back the sound of it. ‘Breslow!’ It was more like a cry for help than a threat. ‘Breslow!’ shouted Stein again. He was beginning to realize that Max Breslow controlled a thousand Führers. It was Breslow he would have to finish off. Breslow had become the focal point of all Stein’s anger, sadness and frustration. Through the painful haze of his concussion, he blamed Breslow for everything from Aram’s death to that of Colonel Pitman.
‘I’m coming to get you, Breslow!’ Stein shouted again.
‘Close that door!’ called the make-up assistant. ‘Every kook in town is auditioning for this Hitler role,’ he muttered. ‘And that fat guy toting the old gun has got to be the noisiest ham in the building.’
‘The moustache is coming off again,’ Hitler told him quietly. ‘Will you give me a little more of that gum?’
Max Breslow had counted the days to when he would first enter the studio and see the Reich Chancellery set. First and foremost came his anxieties about the film itself. This was the most expensive set and it was important that, in the jargon of the trade, its ‘production value’ got to the screen. He ran his hands across the twenty-foot-high doorway of simulated green marble. Over the entrance Adolf Hitler’s initials were carved into a gigantic shield. Max Breslow pushed open the mahogany doors to the Führer’s study, remembering the two black uniformed SS guards with their white gloves and impeccable jack-boots who used to stand there.
Yes, this was it. Nearly a hundred feet wide and fifty feet across, with dark red marble walls nearly forty feet high. Max Breslow had often been in the Führer’s study. He remembered the great cofferwork ceiling of rosewood and Lenbach’s full-length portrait of Bismarck over the marble fireplace. Facing him there were the windows that gave on to the colonnade and the Chancellery garden. Once the big lights were illuminating the trees and shrubs and the painted background, it would all come to life. All the batteries of photographic lighting were dark and idle, for the time being there was only the feeble studio lighting that enabled the technicians to see their way round the set. And yet this too helped to bring the place alive for Breslow, for there was an artificiality to film lighting, a whitewash effect which even the best-designed sets could never survive. This shadowy place was more like the one he had once known.
Breslow reached out to the silk-shaded light on the Führer’s desk and switched it on. It was ‘practical’, and its light shone across the Gobelin tapestry on the wall. Breslow had never lost his admiration for the technicians who were able to produce such convincing imitations of woods and metals. He looked at the Führer’s desk inlaid with leather. The set dresser had prepared everything for tomorrow, the first day of shooting. The green blotter, the telephone, some reference books and the pen set had all been faithfully copied from old photographs taken by the propaganda service soon after the new Chancellery was built. Breslow went round the desk and sat down to survey the set from Hitler’s high-backed brown leather chair. Often, when bringing messages to the Führer, back in those exciting days of the war, he had wondered what it would be like to sit here seeing the world from the point of view of the man who had changed it out of all recognition. Well, now he knew. From Hitler’s point of view, the world consisted largely of that huge painting of Bismarck at the far end of the room. Was it the daily sight of Otto von Bismarck which had provoked Hitler into ever greater excesses? Had it driven this mad fool to the final smash-up?
Max Breslow sat for a long time, lost in contemplation of the events which had taken him from the Reich Chancellery and brought him in a complete circle back to it again. Staring into the gloom of his imposing set, Breslow’s eyes moved down from the Bismarck portrait to the armchairs grouped round the fireplace below it. He leant forward to stare into the darkness.
‘It’s me,’ said the voice of Charles Stein. ‘It’s me, Breslow. I knew you’d come.’
Breslow stood up. He felt his heart beating at abnormally high speed. ‘What the devil do you want? I thought you were dead.’
‘I’m going to kill you, Max. I’ve been waiting here a long time. I’ve been waiting to kill you. That’s what kept me alive, Max.’
Breslow reached for the carved wooden armrest to steady himself. He was frightened by the tone of Stein’s voice. There was some quality in the voice that persuaded Breslow immediately that he was in earnest. Breslow held tight to the arm of the chair and felt the palm of his hand sweaty under his grip. There was not much light here. He could only just see the gross shape of Stein slumped in the big armchair, his crumpled white suit visible against the dark red marble wall behind him. Breslow had mistaken the white shape for a dust sheet thrown over some genuine piece of antique furniture.