Dead Secret

by Alan Williams

  He stared into his glass. ‘For the moment, Hawn, I’m treating your problems and this murder as two separate cases. Now, do you know if Norman French had any enemies?’

  ‘He wasn’t a particularly lovable character. He knew a lot of people, but I don’t think many of them were friends.’

  ‘I didn’t ask if he could win a popularity contest. Did he have any enemies?’

  ‘There was an incident about six months ago. French had come back from the States where he’d been working for ABCO, and had apparently been involved in some dirty work and got the sack. But he was living it up — more or less on his new American wife’s money. I went to a party at their place, and just as I was leaving I overheard a row going on between French and an American, who was drunk. At least, the row was on the American’s side. French was just trying to keep his end up. The American was accusing him of every kind of swindle, and shouting that he had ruined several people. I think he said something like, “Nobody skims cream off us and gets away with it”. He’s called Don Robak — the one I told you about whom I met in Venice. Senior European executive with ABCO.’

  ‘We’ll put a call out for him,’ Muncaster said: but his face portrayed nothing.

  Hawn continued: ‘There’s one thing you haven’t asked me about. French’s connection with Toby Shanklin. Shanklin, remember, first suggested I went to French.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Muncaster said moodily. ‘I understood that Shanklin was just trying to be helpful? But I’ll be frank with you — Shanklin’s an important man, he has important friends. I’m not going to put my career at stake by dragging him into a murder case unless I’ve got damn good evidence.’

  ‘Shanklin’s somehow tied up in all this — I’m certain of it. All right, I don’t have the facts, or the proof. But I’ve got a hunch. Don’t policemen work on hunches too?’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Muncaster said, standing up. ‘I’ll walk you back to your car.’

  There was an ambulance in the street outside the hotel. A crowd was being held back fifty feet away. A huge ‘mobile’ in white helmet and breeches placed a leather gauntlet into the middle of Hawn’s chest and said, ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Piss off,’ Muncaster said.

  Two men in white coats had come out of the hotel, their pink rubber gloves smeared red. Hawn finally got his Citroën out, after one of the Pandas had had to be moved, and drove back to the fiat. Anna was asleep, and he did not wake her.

  CHAPTER 11

  Hawn and Anna took three leisurely days to reach San Sebastian, where they spent a day on the beach, braced by the chill Atlantic and the fresh September breezes. Hawn needed time to rest, to think. Doktor Hans Dieter Mönch may have been an old man, but he had survived more than thirty years since the war, and another few days wasn’t likely to make much difference. Besides, French’s death had given the whole scheme of things a deeper dimension.

  They spent another two days driving over the Pyrenees and down through the wooded foothills to Pamplona, then due south across the bleak brown plain towards Madrid. The towns were grey and shuttered and the people had a grey shuttered look. In the evenings a sharp wind blew across the plain and the men crowded the bars, chewed tapas on little sticks and drank purple wine and a thin frothy beer.

  Soria was recommended in the guidebooks on the strength of a ruined convent and a couple of Government-run tourist hotels on two jutting rocks overlooking the narrow town below. Hawn had booked into one of them. A suit of armour stood halfway up the stairs, and the bar in the basement had a jukebox and one of those machines on which you can play tennis with yourself. He and Anna seemed to be the only guests.

  On their first evening they drove down into the town and strolled up the main street. It smelt ripe but not fresh: there was donkey manure on the streets: the meat in the shops was covered with nesting flies: and in the bars there was sawdust and much drinking and no women. The men eyed Anna in silence. It was not a friendly town.

  Hawn’s Spanish was poor, but Anna could manage a rather literate version which she had learnt at university; however, it required a tactful boldness on her part in order to get into conversation with the men, all of whom seemed to regard her presence with interested contempt. She made the point that she was looking for an old German gentleman who had lived in the town for many years and had been a doctor. This was frequently interpreted as un medico — that they were ill and wanted a doctor. Hawn would intervene with doctor profesor. The men were not helpful.

  They had come to the end of the street and it was growing dark. The bar was long and narrow, like a cattle-stall, with scarcely space to squeeze past between the drinkers at the counter. A black bull’s head eyed them evilly from the far wall. Hawn found a space at the bar and ordered them both Fundador; they had already had a few drinks and he was beginning to feel easier, more confident. When the barman put their glasses down, Hawn repeated their ritual of questions. The man looked at Hawn empty-eyed, muttered something and moved on. Hawn tried the man on his left, but received only a shrug. He was finishing his thimble of brandy, wandering whether to have another, when someone nudged him in the ribs.

  The man was holding up a glass of wine which had stained his lips black, and toasted them both in Spanish; then, without consulting either of them, he ordered wine for them both. As he did so, he kept kicking the bar softly with his canvas espadrille, like a nervous tic. He was very old, small, frail, in blue dungarees and a workman’s shirt, and his face was tanned to the colour of brown paper — except for his nose which appeared to have suffered some accident. It was thin, bent sideways, and veined with white scar tissue.

  ‘Mönch?’ He pronounced the name with the long Spanish vowel. ‘You are interested?’

  Hawn said that he was.

  ‘You are English?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘And why would Senor Mönch want to meet with English visitors?’

  Hawn bought them all more wine. It had a thick rusty taste, but was not bad after the first three sips. Their new companion drank his like water. Anna put in, ‘We have a special reason for seeing Doktor Mönch. It is a personal matter.’

  The old man gave a crooked smile, his bent nose curved like a question mark over his mouth. ‘You speak good Spanish, Senora. How is your German? Herr Mönch is German, you know.’

  ‘I know. Is he known here as Senor Mönch?’

  The old man made a sound in his throat like burnt toast being scraped. ‘You talk about Senor Mönch. You ask the Guardia about Senor Mönch and they have never heard of him. You ask me about Mönch. You are excellently informed. What do you want to know of him?’

  Anna went on in Spanish: ‘We have a proposition to make to him. My friend here is a journalist. It will be in Senor Mönch’s interest to see us.’

  The man lifted his white nose from his glass and excused himself. Hawn watched him go into the telephone booth at the end of the bar. He was there for ten minutes. When he came back, he said, ‘In half-an-hour. Senor Mönch agrees to meet you. Here is the address.’

  They had two more drinks together, then parted with pumping handshakes. He was the only man to have addressed Anna since arriving in the town.

  Out in the street Hawn looked at the piece of paper the old man had given him. In careful block capitals, in pencil, was written: SENOR ALBERTO MILLAO, CALLE FONCADA 2.

  Anna said, ‘Would you prefer to go alone?’

  ‘Certainly not. Seeing you may make him more at ease, just as long as you don’t blow your stack if he starts trotting out the odd National Socialist sentiment.’

  Calle Foncada was a twisting track with a few small houses set back among olive trees. They found Number TKVO near the end: a single-storey white house with a shallow-tiled roof behind a high iron gate. When the engine stopped, they could hear chickens, and a dog began to bark ferociously.

  The gate was padlocked, but there was a bell pull. They heard it clanging distantly inside the hous
e. The barking grew louder; then presently an old peasant in a beret came out and unlocked the gate without a word, led them to the door, unlocked it, then showed them into a dark tiled passage with stone walls. The air was stale and cold. He opened a door at the end and stood back, allowing them to pass into what appeared to be some kind of old-fashioned parlour. He closed the door and left them.

  The room was furnished in rustic Spanish style: thick wooden furniture, white-washed walls, uneven tiled floor. There were no signed photographs of Adolf Hitler, no SS insignia: just a couple of framed prints of Spanish knights-in-armour, and some earthenware jugs and vases on a side table.

  The dog was still barking, until someone shouted at it, and it went into a low growl. It sounded like a big dog. It was the only German thing about the house. They waited.

  Five minutes later, the door was opened again by the peasant. He beckoned to them, and they followed him out, back down the passage to a heavy mahogany door. A clock began chiming somewhere. The peasant knocked and turned the handle. Hawn and Anna walked past him.

  It was an unusual room for such a house. They both had the sense of entering some ecclesiastical library. Except for a Gothic stained-glass window, hideously bloodshot and jaundiced in the evening sun, the walls were covered in uniform leather volumes behind glass cases. In one of the armchairs sat the frail old man with the white crooked nose, whom they had met half-an-hour ago in the bar. He was dressed in the same dungarees and espadrilles.

  He grinned at them both with his stained teeth. ‘You are the first English visitors I have had in ten years. My English is not very perfect. Would you prefer that I spoke Spanish?’

  ‘My Spanish is not good,’ Hawn said. ‘And Miss Admiral here does not speak German.’

  Anna said, ‘You go ahead. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘We can speak German,’ Hawn said.

  ‘So you know German?’

  ‘I studied for a year at Heidelberg.’

  The old face brightened. ‘Ach, Heidelberg! What a fine city. So you know all the old drinking songs? “Ich habe mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren, auf einer lauen Sommernacht…!” How sweet, how sentimental. I am an old man now, and like all old men I live on my memories.’ (What memories? Hawn wondered.) ‘But stop, we have not yet been formally introduced! It is most incorrect of me to talk to you so, without the proper formalities.’

  Hawn duly introduced Anna and himself, and Mönch got up and fetched them three glasses of good Spanish brandy. He was not an obviously wealthy man, but what money he did have he had certainly lavished on this room. Hawn tried to read some of the titles in the bookcases, but most of the bindings were so old that the lettering had faded. He did read one title, however: The Christian Man in the Modern World.

  Mönch toasted them both. ‘Herr Hawn, I understood your ladyfriend here said that you are a journalist? That is correct? So I must presume that this meeting is a professional one. Now let me be honest. I have lived here for a long time, and I have lived in peace, without problems. As you will no doubt know, I spent two years after the war in an American prison. Not because I was a war criminal — I had not murdered Jewish babies and burnt synagogues — but because I had been a functionary of the State. The Americans were not very discriminating in those days.

  ‘However, during my duties for the Reich, I was privy to certain secrets. I served, as you may know, in a department under the Ministry of War Production. There are many things I know which I have never told, and which have never been told. But I hear that the young generation of Europeans have become very interested in the history of the Third Reich. I presume, therefore, that you have come to interview me in order to further enlighten that generation?’

  ‘More or less. It would depend, Herr Doktor, on what you have to say.’

  ‘That I appreciate. But you too must appreciate that I am a very old man now, I am sick, and I have little in this world besides this house, my books and my chickens. And God the Father, through the Blessed Saviour, the Lord Buddha. You are not, by any remote chance, Herr Hawn, a Buddhist?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, quite.’ The old man nodded. ‘It is most indelicate of me to mention the subject. But if I recount my memories to you I must expect some reward.’

  ‘Certainly — I wouldn’t presume on your hospitality for nothing. But of course, it will depend on the material.’

  ‘You will not be disappointed,’ Mönch said, with a rapine grin. ‘For instance, you may know that Hitler was something of a mystic. He was against the Established Church, which he saw as a spiritual irrelevance to his Modern Germany. But he was not altogether against Christ. Christ had been murdered by the Jews, the apostles of Satan. But although Hitler had much wisdom, despite his mistakes, there was one thing he did not know. Christ was a Buddhist.

  ‘I surprise you? But the evidence is not only strong, it is conclusive! It is only the arrogance and fanaticism of Christianity which prevents the truth being known. I ask you, what was Our Lord doing between the ages of twelve and thirty? History does not tell us. History is silent. The Church is silent.’ He was leaning forward, squeezing his brandy glass so tightly that Hawn feared it might break in his hands. ‘During those lost twenty-one years, Christ was studying the teachings of the mighty Buddha! He travelled widely, and he listened to many wise tongues. Christ was the reincarnation of Buddha.’

  Hawn nodded with a patient despair. He was listening not to a dangerous ex-war criminal, but to a sad senile man whose mind had wandered into the fantasies of religion. He hadn’t the heart to point out that until recently Buddhism had been an exclusively oriental religion, and that the first Westerner to penetrate the Far East had been Marco Polo. He said: ‘With great respect, Herr Doktor, I have come to discuss more material matters. Matters concerning your job with the Ministry of War Production.’

  Mönch held up his hand. ‘I understand. But first you, too, must understand. I have already told you that I have lived here a long time without problems. However, I do take precautions. The situation here in Spain has changed much since the death of the Caudillo. We German exiles are not quite as welcome as we used to be. So I cannot rely for my security in the normal state of things. You understand me?’

  ‘Do you still consider yourself in danger after so long?’

  The little man shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘It is always possible. There is a tiresome Jew in Vienna called Wiesenthal. You have no doubt heard of him? He makes it his life’s work to hunt down former National Socialists and bring them to what he calls “justice”.’

  ‘I thought the Wiesenthal Office was only interested in the big fish. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but from what I have heard, you would hardly qualify for Wiesenthal’s attentions.’

  ‘That is a strange compliment, Herr Hawn. Perhaps you underestimate Wiesenthal. Or perhaps you underestimate me. Maybe I am a big fish — or used to be. I know all the dossiers describe me as an important functionary in war production. That is not all the truth. There were many aspects to that production. For instance, there was much slave labour. I was not personally responsible — it was merely the system — and the Americans could not prove my guilt. But there are others — not just the Jew in Vienna or his masters in that gangster-state, Israel. There are others who might be even less scrupulous. That is why I have to be very careful with visitors.

  ‘But you look too young to be of the dangerous generation. Besides, you are English — neither of you are Jewish —’ although he shot a quick glance at Anna, at her straight profile and reddish hair — ‘and you both have honest faces. I am prepared to trust you. Now what is it you want to know?’

  Hawn told him. He told him the heart of his theory, then S-DS-E97 elaborated — without names — on the various incidents that had occurred since he had returned from Venice. Mönch waited until he had finished, then poured more brandy.

  ‘What is it you want me to give you, Herr Hawn?’

  ‘Herr Doktor, I know it may
sound an outrageous idea. But as I’ve told you, things have made me believe that it could be true — or at least, have a large amount of truth in it. But I need proof. Information, and, if possible, corroboration.’

  When Mönch said nothing, Hawn added: ‘Did you ever hear of a Doktor Alan Oskar Reiss?’ The old man’s face was blank. ‘An Anglo-German scientist who worked in Germany during the war, was trained as a double-agent, pretended to defect to America through Mexico where he got a job with ABCO — before he disappeared in 1945.’

  Mönch was silent. When he did speak, it was not to answer Hawn’s question.

  ‘How did you hear about me?’

  ‘A friend who used to be a Colonel with British Economic Intelligence. He interrogated you in 1946. A Scotsman called MacIntyre.’

  The German laid a finger along the edge of his bone-white nose and slowly began to rub it. It made a dry sound like someone rubbing very thin paper. Hawn found it obscene.

  Mönch said, ‘I do not remember. I must have been interrogated by a hundred people. You British were best. Far more civilized than the Americans. It is a pity that you have become so degenerate in recent years.’ He sipped some brandy. ‘What are your motives, Herr Hawn?’

  ‘The exposure, and possibly the destruction, of an over-powerful, multinational organization which knows no morals, owes allegiance to no government, no principles, and has no motives except those of profit.’

  Mönch gave a slow laugh. ‘Are you a revolutionary? Don’t be afraid to answer. I have always believed that the modern generation of Anarchist revolutionaries are not so very different in their philosophy and ideology from the early National Socialists. They certainly have the same passions. The people I abhor are these intellectual libertarians, these Jewish internationalists. What you call multinationalists.’