Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens

by Michael Gilbert

  Mr. Behrens said, “I should imagine that a certain mental agility is necessary if you are to survive in politics.” He was glad that he was spared having to deal with Pitt-Hammersley’s opening gambit. “Perhaps our best starting point would be if you could tell me something about Thugutt.”

  “Stefan, yes. For a young man he had an extraordinarily alert intelligence. I would suggest a subject. Not necessarily a scientific subject. He would write a paper on it. Anything I cared to suggest. It became almost a game between us. Chess? Claret? Incest? Breakfast foods? It was good practice for his English which was remarkably good already, although there were occasional Teutonic modes of thought which gave him away. You remember how dear old Quiller-Couch used to impress on his students the desirability of using Anglo-Saxon words in preference to their Romance equivalents. With Stefan it was the other way round. The hard, middle-German derivatives were natural to him. He felt he had to introduce occasional French stocks to decorate his prose. Like a bachelor buying a bunch of flowers to decorate his study, and not knowing quite how to arrange them.”

  “And it was these quirks of style which you identified in the writings of Sir Boris Wykes?”

  “Not that alone. Good heavens no. My dear boy, linguistics isn’t guesswork. It’s a science.”

  “Most science is guess-work,” said Mr. Behrens.

  Pitt-Hammersley cocked his head on one side like an old turkey, and then said, “That is either a very sensible or a very stupid remark. Scientific discovery starts as guess-work. The rest of it is a series of co-ordinated efforts to limit alternative explanations for an observed phenomenon. When they have all been eliminated you have established a sequence of cause and effect.”

  Mr. Behrens was saved from having to answer this by the gas fire, which gave a soft ‘pop’ and went out. Pitt-Hammersley got to his feet, in the three or four distinct movements into which an old man divides a simple physical effort, turned the fire off, fed a coin into the meter and relit the fire.

  “A sequence of cause and effect,” said Mr. Behrens. “No money. No gas. No gas, no fire.”

  “Ah! But have you eliminated all the alternatives? There might have been air in the pipe. Eh? It happens sometimes. But in this case, I fancy you were right.”

  “You were saying that there are other similarities. Enough of them to establish a scientific correlation?”

  “Enough of them to establish a strong presumption. A marked similarity of vocabulary. The computer identified one hundred and twenty-five comparatively uncommon words in both samples. But more conclusive than this was the similarity of rhythm. Even an inexpert musician would not confuse the rhythms of Bach and Mozart, would they now?”

  “No, but he might confuse the rhythms of Bach and someone who was trying to imitate Bach.”

  “Perhaps. But people who write are unconscious of their own rhythm. There is therefore no question of deliberate imitation.”

  “I must accept your word for it,” said Mr. Behrens. He was beginning to feel sleepy. “Tell me. What happened to Thugutt?”

  “In 1939 when the authorities belatedly discovered that he was a German, he was interned. Typical bureaucratic stupidity. It turned a valuable friend into a dangerous enemy. Later he was sent over to Canada. The Canadian authorities allowed him to continue his studies at Toronto. It was there that he first seriously took up the study of electronics.”

  “And after the war?”

  “I can tell you that he did not return here. I believe he went back to his home in East Germany and continued his studies, for a time, at Cracow University.”

  “A lot of East Germany,” said Mr. Behrens thoughtfully, “had by that time been incorporated into Poland. If Thugutt was back there in 1946, he and Wycech could have met. I mean, the times and place roughly correspond.”

  Pitt-Hammersley looked at him over the top of his glasses. “So,” he said, “I am not an old lunatic after all. Hey?”

  “That’s just what I’d like to be sure about,” said Mr. Behrens.

  But this was to himself, when he was getting into bed.

  “It was twenty-five years ago,” agreed Mr. Calder, “but I sometimes find it easier to remember things twenty-five years ago than things which happened last week.”

  “That is true,” said Olav Vinstrom. “Alas, the older we get the truer it becomes.”

  It had taken Mr. Calder two days of hard work to find Olav. There had been no difficulty about his initial contacts. His credentials had secured him co-operation from the General Director of the Nor-Jensen factory, but it was not the heads of the outfit that he wanted. They had been the people Dick Raphael had talked to in 1960. The General Director remembered Raphael. He had produced a photograph of Wycech and it had been compared with the photograph on his temporary identity card which had been filed away in the archives. The resemblance was reasonable enough. But it was not the photograph alone. Wycech – or Wykes, as he by then was – had furnished Raphael with a great number of names and nicknames, personal recollections and factory gossip, all of which Raphael had quickly checked.

  Too quickly, perhaps, thought Mr. Calder. But in 1960 Raphael had been a sick man. He had died less than a year later. Was that why he had only spent one morning in Oslo and half a day in Warsaw? When the grey shadow is creeping up, other matters may become relatively less important.

  What Mr. Calder had been looking for was a man who had worked with Wycech. Not necessarily alongside him, but in the same department. In the end he had found Olav Vinstrom. And Vinstrom had given him the lead he wanted.

  “A nice boy, Boris,” he said. “A good worker. He and his friend, Tadeus Rek. Both bright, intelligent lads.”

  “Tadeus was a close friend?”

  “Certainly. They were both exiles from Poland. Boys of about the same age. Tadeus was a Danziger. I heard that he had gone back and was working in the shipyard.”

  Twenty-four hours later Mr. Calder was talking to Colonel Mauger, British Military Attaché at Warsaw, and an old friend. The colonel said, “I’ve made a few enquiries. Rek is certainly alive. Very much so.”

  “You mean that he’s an important man now?”

  “Not in the sense of being a prominent business man or politician. Far from it. On the face of it, he is no more than a workman. The sort of position he occupies in the shipyard would be called a chief shop steward. That is to say, it would be if they had unions and shop stewards. He is referred to as a ‘man of confidence’. The man the management go to if they want rows settled quietly.”

  “Can you tell me anything more about him?”

  “A little. He and Boris Wycech both came back from Sweden early in 1946, no doubt full of patriotism and anti-Russian feeling. By that time the old resistance fighters were split. One part of them wanted to parade the streets and drum up enthusiasm. They were easy meat for the Russians. The others went underground, and young Tadeus went with them. They had learned their lesson from Russian history. Keep your heads down and work through the workers. They grow in power every year. If ever there is a serious strike in Poland you can be sure the NSZ, as they are called, will be behind it.”

  “And Tadeus is one of their leaders?”

  “Impossible to say. I do know that he has a personal reason to hate the Russians. In 1946 his brother was shot for his part in organising the pro-Anders revolt at Cracow University.”

  There had been something in Mr. Behrens’ report about Cracow University. Mr. Calder groped for it, but lost it. He said, “Can you put me in touch with someone in Danzig who could arrange a meeting for me with Rek?”

  “Do what I can,” said Mauger. “Don’t expect miracles. Telephone me the name of your hotel when you get fixed up. May take some time.”

  “In this particular case,” said Mr. Calder, “time is not important.”

  It was in the evening, three days later, when Mr. Calder was debating whether he would dine out or sample the table d’hôte of the modest quayside hotel where he was lodging that th
e car drove up and a thickset man got out and said, “Herr Kaldor?”

  “I expect that’s me,” said Mr. Calder. “Who are you?” His own Polish was elementary, and he normally spoke in German, which he found most Poles understood.

  “From Tadeus,” said the man.

  “Splendid,” said Mr. Calder. He was motioned into the front seat beside the driver. The thickset man climbed into the back beside a second man who was already sitting there. All three men wore dark, nondescript suits which might have indicated anything from a clerk to a workman in his best. All three, to Mr. Calder’s practised eye, looked tough.

  The car threaded its way through the tiny, cobbled streets around the waterfront, branching off finally into one so narrow that the overhanging roofs of the houses seemed to be propping each other up. The car stopped. The two men at the back got out, motioning sharply to Mr. Calder to follow. The driver, too, had climbed out and was close behind him. Mr. Calder had an uncomfortable feeling that he was a prisoner under escort.

  Down a passage, through a side door, up a flight of steps and into a back room. The only window was shuttered. There was a table, with half a dozen chairs round it, but no other furniture. Behind the table sat a black-haired, hook-nose man in his middle forties. There were other men in the background, but he was the only one seated. He radiated the sort of authority which clothes a man who has fought a hard road to the top.

  Mr. Calder stepped forward, held out his hand, and said, “Tadeus Rek?”

  The hand was ignored. The man said, “That is my name. What is your name? Your real name, I mean of course. Perhaps you have several names, just as you seem to have several languages.”

  “My name is Calder.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he noted one of the men at the far end of the room stirring. Mr. Calder had an impression of snow-white hair, a brown face and a broken nose. A distant recollection. He turned his attention to Rek.

  Rek said, “You must excuse my caution. The man who contacted me on your behalf is known to be a police spy.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Calder. “He was the only contact available.”

  “I trust that your explanation for intruding on me will be satisfactory. The last man who forced his attentions on us, unhappily turned out also to be a police spy. What became of him in the end, Peter?”

  The man who had brought Mr. Calder in the car said, speaking also in German, “He had an accident. He slipped and fell into the dock. Unhappily he broke both arms when falling. Not being able to swim, he drowned.”

  “I trust—” said Mr. Calder. But before he could say any more the white-haired man had come up to the table. He peered into Mr. Calder’s face, then seized him and kissed him on both cheeks.

  He said, “This is no Russian spy, Tadeus. It is a very old friend. An Englishman. A splendid person. He helped me to murder three Gestapo agents in Albania in 1943.”

  “One of the servants,” said Mr. Behrens, “making a final round of the college, smelled gas coming from Pitt-Hammersley’s sitting room. He went in and managed to get a window open. The door to the adjoining bedroom was open. Pitt-Hammersley was in bed. They tried everything, but it was no good. So that, I’m afraid, is really the end of it.”

  “Why?” said Mr. Fortescue sharply.

  “Because of what was found on his table.”

  “A confession?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. It was a paper he must have been working on for the last few months. His magnum opus, you might say. He’d just that moment finished it. Then, no doubt he pottered off to bed leaving the gas fire on, and it blew out. Air in the pipe. He told me that happened sometimes.”

  “But—” said Mr. Fortescue.

  “It was the paper,” said Mr. Behrens unhappily. “He has proved, using the most ultra-scientific modern computerised linguistic methods that Boswell didn’t exist.”

  “If he didn’t exist, who—?”

  “Johnson was Boswell. He wrote his own biography.”

  “But that’s mad,” said Mr. Fortescue. “Quite apart from his Life of Johnson, Boswell wrote other works. He was a known historical character. There are dozens of independent witnesses to his existence.”

  “Quite so.”

  “You mean that this paper proves that Pitt-Hammersley was mad?”

  “Not exactly. But it does mean that if his version of linguistics is capable of producing a result like this, then one can surely place no reliance at all on his identification of Wycech with Thugutt.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Mr. Fortescue. He was unaccountably angry. “It also means that his death may have been accidental.”

  “It never occurred to me that it could have been anything else,” said Mr. Behrens. “I agree that it would have been an easy way of finishing off the old man. Anyone could have gone along when he was asleep and turned the gas on. Doors are rarely locked in a place like that.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Yes. But we’re arguing in a circle. If Wykes really was a mole it would have made sense to remove and discredit the man who was threatening to expose him. But we’ve just concluded that he isn’t.”

  The telephone on Mr. Fortescue’s desk purred. He lifted the receiver, said, “No. I’m busy. Who? Oh, well perhaps you’d better put him through.”

  He listened in silence for some minutes while the voice at the other end spoke. Then he said, “All right, Ben. He’s here with me. I’ll tell him.” And to Mr. Behrens, “That was Thom. He has now had a chance to analyse the paper which was found on Pitt-Hammersley’s table, by the most modern ultra-scientific methods, and has concluded that Pitt-Hammersley didn’t write it. I think you’d better get back to Cambridge.”

  “Maybe the same ultra-scientific methods will tell us who did write it,” said Mr. Behrens hopefully.

  ‘’Certainly not,” said Thom. “To do that I’d have to have lengthy samples of the output of everyone here. What I was able to do without difficulty was to spot that the Boswell paper was a clumsy fraud. Linguistics may not be an exact science, but it will show up a phoney right enough. Anyway, I think it’s clear who wrote it. We’ve got a certain amount of dope back in Washington on this man Mitos. It was partly to keep an eye on him that I came over here.”

  “Then,” said Mr. Behrens, who was slowly trying to absorb this new idea, “you think that there is something in Pitt-Hammersley’s theory, and that Mitos was instructed to remove him and throw ridicule on it at the same time.”

  “There’s no certainty about it, but that eminent functionary who watches over our incomings and outgoings—”

  “The hall porter.”

  “That’s the joker. He sleeps over the gate. He tells me he heard Mitos’ car driving off at about one in the morning. He thought it was unusual, because he’s never known him stay so late.”

  “What the devil are we going to do about it?” said Mr. Behrens. He felt curiously helpless.

  “I agree with your invocation of the devil,” said Professor Thom, “because it’s a diabolical situation. All that we have to go on so far is surmise and guess-work. But let’s add two and two together for a moment and see where it gets us. Suppose Wykes is a plant. He’d be a very valuable plant. He’d need watering and tending. He’d also need a handy method of getting information back to base. Now Mitos has a bungalow on the river bank, three or four miles below Cambridge. He sits on his landing stage in the evening, fishing. Wykes is a punting and canoeing enthusiast. You follow what I’m thinking?”

  “I follow you completely,” said Mr. Behrens. “But if we’re going to move against Mitos, on the sort of information we’ve got, we’re going to need a clearance from higher-up.”

  “Right from the top,” said Thom. “But if you figure on their reactions when they think that there’s now a chance – an outside chance, I grant you – that the Russians have managed to get their hands on a big slice of the East-West Early Warning System, I would surmise that the gloves will be off and Queensberry Rules
will be discarded.”

  “I must apologise,” said Tadeus Rek, “for your somewhat dramatic reception, but we are well aware that the authorities are becoming frightened of our influence, and would give much to discredit us. In particular, by some purported involvement in espionage. Now that I understand what you want, I naturally acquit you of any such intentions. What you have told me is a curious story. It might be true.”

  “How well did you know Boris Wycech?”

  “For two years, as boys, in Sweden. We had been very close. When we came back here, we both obtained places at the University at Cracow. Stefan Thugutt, fresh back from internment in Canada, was there too. Boris joined with enthusiasm in all the patriotic anti-Russian demonstrations. So did my brother. Me, I was not happy. I was younger then, and inexperienced, but not stupid. A riot was planned in favour of our war hero, General Anders. I saw trouble coming. I removed myself from the University, and took a job as a workman. The riot gave the Russians’ puppet Radkiewiz and his political police, the chance they wanted. Thugutt acted as spy and agent provocateur. I learned of that later, after the riot had been stamped on, and the leaders shot, my brother among them. As you may imagine, when I learned of this, I took all possible steps to trace Thugutt. But he and Wycech had both disappeared. It was astonishing. It was as though they had never existed.”

  “One possible explanation would be, wouldn’t it,” said Mr. Calder slowly, “that Russian Intelligence saw an opportunity of carrying out one of their favourite substitution tricks? There was the superficial resemblance between the two young men, and the fact that their studies had been in the same field. Add to that the fact that all of Wycech’s family were dead. His uncle’s reputation would ensure his substitute a friendly reception in England. All that was necessary was to extract from Wycech every detail of his past, and to prime Thugutt with this background information. Wycech is obliterated. Thugutt comes to England, changes his name to Wykes, and lives quietly for at least fifteen years before he starts to move into a sensitive job. The chances of discovery would become smaller every year.”