The Striker Portfolio
Page 12
(2) A passing motorist might have seen me crash and stopped to see if he could help in which case he would have kept the adverse party away. If they hadn’t been able to look inside the wreck they would now believe I was dead or so badly creased that I was out of the running. But this assumption had so little value as to be dangerous: a passing motorist would have telephoned the autobahn police patrols and they’d be called in anyway as soon as it was light enough for someone to notice the mess in the trees. The Bonn Telex would be putting out Mystery-Driver-Vanishes-from-Crashed-Car signals before noon today, nationwide. It was safer to assume the adverse party believed I was alive or would be informed at any time. They would continue to look for me and the police hunt would be thrown in as extra.
(3) The ferret was still in fair shape but the hole was now virtually a cul-de-sac. I was blocked off from Hanover, Linsdorf and all communications with people who had accepted me up to now as, persona grata: Philpott of A.I.B., Dr. Wagner, Rohmhild, Boldt, Dissen and the rest of the Striker pilots. (Add Nitri from the time she saw the noon editions. I didn’t know if she would go to the police when she heard they wanted me but I didn’t think so: she had a curious interest in me either because I was probably the only man ever to have turned down the chance of a novel experience or because she believed I could find the answer to the Striker problem before it killed Franz.)
The engine was warm and I checked my few belongings. At the hospital they’d given me back the silk scarf that had been round my arm as a tourniquet: it was a vaguely Freudian design and very Nitri. It was already in my pocket and it could stay there because I didn’t want the police to find anything that could lead them to her if I had to abandon the car. The good Frau Doktor had fixed my arm in a sling so that my stitched hand couldn’t fidget about and I took the thing off and stowed it in the sheepskin coat because during an interrogation you can conceivably keep a bandaged hand out of sight and when they’d tallied the number of the N.S.U. with the number in the motel register they’d be looking for someone in poor condition and a sling would be a positive advertisement.
At eighty-odd minutes before dawn in a wintry street I should have been prey to depression: mentally I was sound except for a patch of retrograde amnesia that couldn’t be critical to the mission but physically I would have less chance than normal if anyone came for me close in and I didn’t like that. Ferris had set me running and after three days I’d had to report that I’d blown my cover and lost the contact and become first suspect in a murder hunt and I didn’t like that either. The opposition had twice tried to smear me out and Parkis was so scared at the size of this show that he wanted to stick a shield on to me so if they tried a third time one of two things would happen: either it would be successful and too late for a shield or Parkis would panic and insist on my having one in which case I’d tell Ferris that if I couldn’t work alone he could signal London for a replacement and pull me out. Then some snivelling bitch at the Bureau would slide her scummy teacup off the Progress Report and scrawl Mission Unconcluded against my name and I liked that least of all.
But as I closed the driving window and shut myself in with the smell of ether and nail varnish and turned the car to face southwards I was elated instead of depressed. I had changed my cover and my nationality and I was on my own now with every man’s hand against me throughout the whole country. From this time on I would follow the ways unknown to other men, digging my own dark tunnels as I went.
There was more stuff along the autobahn, mostly trucks, but I was south of Gottingen before dawn. I went fast and the mirror was clear for a hundred kilometres except once when I thought there was a dark shape drifting in it but it must have been a trick of the light and I never saw it again. Some rain had fallen this side of the mountains and the trees stood wet with it, their branches interlaced with silver in the headlights. Once a hare ran obliquely across my path, its coat already winter-white and its shadow bounding ahead until it found a gap and leapt beautifully, ears’ flat and feet together, vanishing. It was the only time I slowed, except when a rash of rearlights spread through the dark towards the Munden loop-road and I saw the police lamp swinging.
It was well organized: they expected fast motoring along this stretch and though the 17M was piling on through the 130s I didn’t fetch any squeal from the treads pulling up. There were two long-haulers and a private V.W. standing in a queue, with some police cars drawn in on the margin. Of course there had always been this consideration: the choice when I’d left Hanover had been to make a really fast run and reach Neueburg with as little daylight driving as possible or take it slowly and allow a chance of dodging a police block by trying to see them before they saw me. It would have been practicable at a slower speed to pull up quietly with the lights doused and do a soft-shoe turn and get the hell out, give or take a few degrees of luck.
I had opted for the fast run on the assumption that nobody would find Benedikt before daylight at the earliest and that when they did find him there’d be a decent time-lag before the Kriminalpolizei were notified and the motel manager gave them the name and description of the Englander who had joined the deceased for his last meal and had since left without checking out at the desk. I’d made the wrong decision, even in that moment of elation when my faith in myself had burned brightly in the surrounding gloom.
The one on signalling duty just pointed a gloved hand at the queue and I closed up on the rearmost truck, leaving the engine running. If he told me to switch it off I would switch it off but on principle I left it the way it was because if there’s a chance in a thousand you might as well be ready to take it.
Probability: the manager had gone up to see if he could do anything for Benedikt soon after I’d left. He’d been worried about him during dinner: ‘He looked ill. Is he all right?’ That would have brought the K.P. into the picture long before I’d reached Nitri’s apartment but they wouldn’t have decided on road-blocks until a bit later. Coming south from Hanover I had passed Linsdorf five kilometres to the west and was now heading away from it. That was why there hadn’t been a police trap until now: they expected Martin to be moving away from the scene of the killing. There was probably another trap north of the Linsdorf loop-road along that side of the autobahn and I had passed it but not seen it because of the anti-dazzle screens along some sections of the centre strip.
It was a cold-storage truck standing in front of me, Frankfurt-registered : Vollmond Gesellschaft. Twelve delineation lights and the company’s trade-mark: a full moon framing a laughing pig, so happy to be knifed in the abattoir and minced into sausages for the friendly bipeds to eat.
‘Your papers, please.’ Local, by his accent.
A cloud of diesel gas spread out from the long-hauler at the head of the line as it lumbered away. The uniformed figures stood half-obliterated.
I gave him my papers.
If the probability were correct and the manager had in fact gone up to see if he could do anything for Benedikt he might have decided to knock on my door - it was only the third along - for the sake of immediate human company because he would have been white and shaking by that time, or he’d thought I might have some sort of clue about what had happened since I’d been dining with Benedikt only half an hour ago. It could have started from there: Herr Benedikt dead and Herr Martin missing. Polizei
‘When were you born?’
‘17 February, 1924.’
He was young and very military, keeping his head up and holding my identity card straight in front of him, only his eyes going down to read it.
‘Where?’
‘Hamburg.’
Glare began bouncing off the back of the truck and the laughing pig was slowly lost in it. The shadow of the patrolman appeared there like a gaunt secretary-bird, black and beakless. His colleague with the lamp hurried past and the sound of nearing thunder came from behind me and the light grew strong in the mirror.
‘Switch off your engine please.’
I switched off my engine.
The thunder rolled loudly and there was a crash of gears. It sounded like a fifteen-tonner with trailer to match and I began wondering if he’d manage to pull up in time because if he chose this moment to leak some hydraulics I’d be no better off than the laughing pig, crashed, minced and canned in one labour-saving operation.
The torch-beam flickered back to my papers and then on to my face again and I grasped at a small hope: he was less efficient than he looked because if you shine a torch full into someone’s face his eyes are going to screw up and they won’t be screwed up in the photograph. He might make other mistakes.
A monstrous hiss came from the long-hauler and then the brakes dragged again and there was the shunt of heavy couplings. He’d dipped now and I could see better. What I could see most was the shine on the patrolman’s holster just about eye-level from where I sat. He turned as another one walked up, an older man in Hauptmann’s uniform, very smart-looking and big in the body, his head like a sculpted rock. They stood looking at my papers and suddenly I was unnerved and it had nothing to do with them.
I had missed a trick and that wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do at all. The subconscious had been working busily during the crisis and now it presented its findings. Cancel all probabilities: it hadn’t been the motel manager or anything to do with him. It had been the adverse party and this was their third try: they’d stopped my run at this section of the autobahn as surely as if they’d set up an ambush.
The front of the long-hauler filled the mirror and the lights went out. Voices. The diesel clattered to silence. Ahead of me the group of police stood back and the Volkswagen pulled away.
They had managed to go down into the trees and look inside the wreck of the N.S.U. and when they saw it was empty they’d beaten around a bit and then gone up and used the nearest emergency phone and told the Kriminalpolizei to check on an Englander named Martin who had been staying at the motel in Linsdorf where a man named Benedikt was now lying dead in his room. They should also check up on his car which they would find alongside the autobahn. The informant’s name was Schmidt and he was telephoning in the interests of justice. It had begun then.
I didn’t know how much sleep I’d had in Nitri’s apartment after I’d passed out: it wouldn’t have been more than four or five hours and it had been recuperative and not restorative but that was no excuse for missing a trick on this scale. Instead of being so perversely content that every man’s hand would soon be against me I should have assumed it was against me already: should have assumed the people who had finished Benedikt would automatically try to pull off a double by sounding the alarm before I got too far.
I should have come south from Hanover like a mouse with a cat in the room.
This wasn’t very good and I sat in my sweat and watched them checking the papers. Situation: they stood about five yards from the car and they weren’t looking at me and there was a flush of light rising from behind the long-hauler as someone else came homing in on the trap and in ten seconds or so they’d be dazzled by it if they looked in my direction so it wasn’t a question of yards but of seconds and increasing candle-power.
The main police group was vetting the Vollmond truck in front of me, one of them climbing into the cab to have a look round: the theory they would be working on was that Martin might have thumbed a lift somewhere in the Linsdorf area after crashing the N.S.U. and might have offered the driver a fistful of deutschmarks to shove him under the seat if anyone turned nosey. The patrol with the lamp would be back there signalling the new arrival to halt: I could see his shadow stretching across the road-surface as the light brightened. Both trucks and the 17M had their engines switched off the newcomer was already producing a bit of background noise that would get louder until he stopped. No one would hear me open the door and I didn’t have to slam it shut after me.
I turned my head and saw a couple of yards of empty road-margin and a line of thick brush. It was naked thorn but then they wouldn’t like it either and its main value was visual: it would be like shooting through a smoke-screen.
A faint shrilling began and the shadow on the road was waving the lamp more insistently and I now had very little time to make the decision and my right hand was already reaching across to the other door because that was the way I’d be going out if I went out at all but the chances were about fifty-fifty. I knew I could get through the first of the thorn and break across open ground before they could draw and fire and the initial surprise phase would give me time to go a fair distance towards the next cover, but a loose shoe is more laming than a leg-wound and it would take up to three seconds to wrench both shoes off and a barefoot run across rough terrain would slow me critically.
And I would be committed.
The new arrival had stopped behind the long-hauler and the scene went dark. The last clear image on the retina was of the two uniformed men moving towards me, the senior holding my papers, I took my hand away from the door. It had been mostly stomach-think, not brain-think: the instinctive need of a trapped animal to free itself, the temptation to go as the hare had gone, ears flat and feet together. Brain-think had warned me. There had been a fifty-fifty chance of getting clear but my very freedom would’ have comprised another trap: I would have been committed, exposed as the man they were looking for. Martin. There was still a fifty-fifty chance of getting clear by sitting here with my nerves and sweating it out and if they finally let me drive away I would be uncommitted. Rodl.
‘Good-morning.’ A punctilious salute, the big hand swinging to touch the rock-like head, a hand that would come down with hammer-force if it sensed a wrong move.
‘Good-morning,’ I said.
‘Where have you come from?’ The robot tone of a speak-your-weight machine.
‘Hanover.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Munden.’
‘Why are you on the road at this hour?’
‘To avoid the traffic.’
I played it dead straight, not making a joke. Anyone trying to avoid the traffic and fetching up jammed between thirty tons’ worth of truckage might think it rated a laugh but he wouldn’t see it that way. Making a joke is fatal unless the worst thing on your mind is a duff rearlight because if they think you’re not taking them seriously they’ll have your shoes off and check them for hollow heels just to show how serious they can get.
It had gone very quiet now. Last man in had been told to switch off his engine. The Hauptmann was tapping my papers on the joint of his thumb. He said:
‘What is the advantage of a hemispherical head?’
I looked a bit thrown, as if I hadn’t quite caught on, because being too quick on the uptake can be as suspect as making a joke.
‘Well, it cuts down turbulence, and if you’ve got twin overhead camshafts you’ll want to incline the valves anyway so a hemispherical head’s almost obligatory.’
‘Have you any opinions on water-vapour?’
‘In the carburation? I’d say it’s a help in most conventional engines, in fact Schneider make a limited suction-feed system that anyone can fit. When my friends try to argue about this I always ask them why their car seems to run smoother on a wet day.’
The sweat was on my face now and I hoped he wouldn’t notice. If he were going to keep me waiting five seconds before he spoke again it was going to be five seconds of purgatory, like waiting for the exam results. He wasn’t only trying to find out if Karl Rodl, Mechaniker, knew his stuff on engines. He also wanted to test my German for mistakes in technical terms because any good linguist can come unstuck on words like camshaft. And the ice had been wafer-thin: the Striker wasn’t internal-combustion and I hadn’t needed this kind of terminology since the Nurburgring mission and the memory had had to pull it out of some very cold storage.
Visual accommodation was improving now and in the light of
their torches I could see the group by the truck talking to the driver and his mate. One of them was still in the cab. The driver was shaking his head all the time - ‘Nein, nein!’ The trouble with police traps is that even though they might be set up to intercept a man on the run they’ll do what business is offered from an out-of-date licence to a crate of cocaine stowed under the seat and that means delay for everyone in the queue.
I didn’t look up at the officer. I’d said my bit and now I was taking an interest in how the truck-driver was making out because he was being very emphatic about something and there was nothing else here to interest me.
‘Very well.’
He handed my papers back. I turned my head after a second as if I’d just remembered them.
‘Thank you.’
It wasn’t the all-clear yet but the sweat began drying up. There were only two things left to worry about: they might ask for the car papers and they might ask me to get out. If they saw the car papers they’d want to know why I’d had to borrow the 17M in case it was because I’d had the bad luck to wreck an N.S.U. last night. And if I got out of the car I’d have to keep my bandaged hand and my split shoe out of sight and that wouldn’t be too easy. It wasn’t a black-and-white question of was I or was I not an Englishman named Martin. It was a question of watchful suspicion on their part, a trained eye open for minor irregularities, small inconsistencies, something not quite as it should be: a thread, however fine, that they could get between finger and thumb and pull and go on pulling till it thickened to a rope.