The Nostradamus Traitor: 1 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  6

  LONDON 1978

  HERBIE KRUGER WALKED DOWN to the Bayswater Road, hailed a cab, and asked for St. John’s Wood underground station. The drizzle was turning to heavy rain now and he had been lucky to get a cab easily. The evening traffic hell was starting to build up to its crescendo.

  At the station he paid off the cab, bought a Standard, and walked slowly up Finchley Road until the blue Rover pulled out of the traffic and halted long enough for him to get in—a feat he performed with amazing speed for one of such a size.

  Worboys ignored the illegal trumpet voluntary of irate horns and pulled back into the traffic. “You’re clean as a whistle,” he said.

  “Nothing?” Herbie sounded disgruntled.

  “I did the whole road before you arrived. Checked the windows. The lot. Clean as a whistle,” he repeated.

  Herbie said that was good, and that Worboys could now drive him home. “Take your time. Do a few of the back-doubles”—pulling down the mirror on the passenger side and watching their own back, occasionally giving directions—“left here, then a quick right…Now pull over and reverse into that road…Wait one minute then we’ll go back the way we came.” Like giving someone a driving test—which, in fact, he was doing: that and more.

  Worboys was less than gracious, being one of those young juniors who think they know it all from the word go. At last Herbie took them to his block, told him to check the car back in (“No joyriding with your girls tonight”), and walked the hundred yards or so that took him to his own apartment building.

  Inside, he built himself a large gin and tonic, then carefully settled down to wait, first selecting the Mahler Fourth because he knew there would not be long to wait.

  In the cab he had switched off the trigger that had been activated by the Nostradamus quotation. Frau Fenderman had worked for the Reich Ministry of Propaganda. Sly Goebbels had used some of those odd and pliant prophecies as propaganda during World War II. He had no exact memory of details, but they were mentioned in several books. Hadn’t he used the famous one?—the one occultists claimed mentioned Hitler—to help soften up the French. Certainly the Psychological Warfare people had used them, or versions of them, for retaliation. Playing them back. Might be worth looking up a file or two.

  Then he thought of the whole ludicrous business of Frau Fenderman and her Claus. Maybe she was worth examining at close quarters. Maybe she could be used. Certainly he’d have to talk with the Americans, who could only be withholding. As for the matter of her husband, the executed spy, it was all so vague and unlikely. Maybe she was working some kind of come-on. Yes, see the boys in Grosvenor Square and ask what they were playing at; what Gretchen Weiss had done for them? How they’d sweet-talked the East into letting Hildegarde Fenderman out for life?

  Had there indeed been a Claus Fenderman? Certainly there had been a Gretchen Weiss. For a second he wondered if Hildegarde Fenderman was the original Hildegarde Weiss from Dresden.

  The bell buzzed from downstairs. “Yes,” he asked the Entryphone grille.

  “Schnabeln,” said the voice from below.

  Big Herbie pressed the electronic lock that would admit his visitor to the elevator. A minute later he was ushering him in—a small man, neat with cheeks like Red Delicious apples. He was one of Herbie Kruger’s new team—the one who was doing the real ass watching.

  “There were two of them.” He took the proffered gin with a nod, then put it down to remove his soggy raincoat. “Two of them, apart from your boy wonder.” He spoke without a trace of an accent.

  “So.” Herbie looked interested.

  Mahler came to an end.

  “I went in and asked about availability of rooms next month. She was the one in the grey suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Running to fat?”

  Herbie nodded.

  “Pity I didn’t have a camera. One was with her. Just leaving as I got there. Tall, mouse hair, thinning, small moustache. Darkblue raincoat. Had DDR written all over him. Thanked her in English and left.”

  Herbie nodded again and began to rebuild his shattered drink.

  “They had a Mini Clubman parked up the street. No cameras from what I could see. You threw them off in the traffic.”

  “When I made the Rover?”

  Schnabeln laughed. “When you made the taxi. They weren’t very good.”

  Herbie smiled, looking extremely stupid. “You were good. I couldn’t throw you and I was giving the instructions to the Wunderkind.”

  They sat in silence for a while, then Herbie gave Schnabeln his orders. He was to watch the Fenderman woman full-time. He’d get a replacement in the morning so that they could do the job turn and turn about.

  “Go and draw a camera”—scribbling a requisition. “They’ll turn up again and I’d like IDs. They couldn’t possibly be our own? Home Office? SB?”

  “Could. They were clumsy enough. But I think not.”

  None of it makes any sense, Herbie considered. Yet it was interesting. Tomorrow the American; and something else—have a look-see in the Registry files. Nostradamus, the sixteenth-century prophet of doom and destruction. See if there’s anything there. File under what? P for Prophecy or Psychological Warfare Executive? A for Astrology? N for Absurd Nonsense.

  7

  LONDON 1978

  AMBROSE HILL HELD THE exalted title Head of Registry. As keeper of the Archives his charges were all paper: files cases, ops in progress, right back to the long-forgotten, but still-restricted, material of over fifty years.

  Ambrose Hill was probably one of the few men in the West who had access to more blackmail material than anyone else living; and he took the job seriously.

  Registry was in the basement: vast and vaultlike, but always full of activity, which seemed at odds with the sombre aesthetic Hill.

  “Just a riffle through the books, Ambrose.” Herbie looked huge even in the cathedral-like surroundings of Registry.

  “Something special?” Hill had the manner of a shopkeeper, which did not go with the donnish appearance.

  “Just wondered if we had a case file under Nostradamus. Cropped up yesterday. Field name probably.”

  Hill smiled. A rare event. “No, the field name was Caspar. My God, that’s going back a long time.” He opened one of his card-index drawers and walked his first and second fingers through the indexes to withdraw a red card, which he flicked, with the elegance of a card shark, across his desk to Herbie.

  The card gave a file and restricted number and was headed: NOSTRADAMUS. Then a whole list of cross-reference files: STELLAR NETWORK 1941. PWE 2659862/41. CASPAR. MELCHIOR. BALTHAZAR. MICHEL. DOWNAY, M.; THOMAS, G….

  “That our Thomas?” Herbie looked up and Hill nodded.

  “Yes, old George Thomas. His big one. That and the other you’ll find there. All restricted until the year 2025, then the war historians’ll have a field day.”

  Herbie went back to the card and saw that George Thomas’ personal file was cross-reffed. George. Coming up for retirement soon, he supposed. Angular and balding George. He shook his head and went on reading.

  LEADERER S.; SOLDATENSENDER CALAIS: WERMUT (Op. Amp VI)

  “Jesus Christ,” Herbie breathed, for there it was, farther down the list. One name, there under his nose all the time:

  FENDERMAN, CLAUS

  “Can I pull the lot?” He felt short of breath, for his eye had gone racing ahead.

  “Take me a day. Lot of reading, Herbie. Lot of good stuff there. You’ll have to get the Director’s okay to take ’em upstairs.”

  “The Deputy Director,” Herbie Kruger said, sadly. “Good. Pull them. Assemble them. I fix.”

  “Nostradamus, eh?” muttered Hill. “A long time ago. Old George’ll…” But Big Herbie was already halfway out of the vault, fantailing his fat rear between the filing cabinets and desks.

  To himself, Hill muttered, “George’ll have a ball going over that little story. Come to think of it, Willis was working with Ramili
es at the time.” A nostalgic sadness overtook Ambrose Hill, for when the Nostradamus thing broke he was under training at the Abbey. He shook it off quickly. Nostalgia was phoney and dangerous. You were selective with nostalgia, and the kind of war they had all been through was not the sort of thing any of them would really want to repeat,

  At that moment, Herbie Kruger was speaking to Tubby Fincher and requesting an urgent meeting with Sir Willis Maitland-Wood.

  8

  LONDON 1978

  IF BIG HERBIE KRUGER prayed at all, he prayed that time would not wreak revenge on him as it had done upon Sir Willis Maitland-Wood, the Deputy Director. Willis had turned to fat with the years, but it was that sleek plumpness often seen in senior civil servants. He was a smooth man with perfect grey hair, thick and rarely out of place, immaculate of dress and manner.

  None of this bothered Herbie. He had some knowledge of Maitland-Wood’s past—who hadn’t in the department? A war record which could not have been bettered, followed by the steady climb up the ladder—a climb which led him out of field work and into that coldest of areas: stalking the corridors of power.

  It was the veneer of pomposity, the clubland manner, and outrageous sense of his own importance which, for Herbie’s money, were Maitland-Wood’s besetting sins. He was ruthless, sure, you had to be ruthless to survive in the Whitehall jungle. What Herbie mourned was the passing of a personality which had once been vibrant and adaptable, clear and concise. The personality had now taken on a rigid shape in tedious matters, a profound schoolmasterish attention to trivia, and an almost obsessional lack of foresight. The havoc of time had brought bureaucratic conformity.

  Herbie slumped in the armchair in front of Maitland-Wood’s desk while the Deputy Director completed a protracted, ingratiating telephone conversation with a senior member of the Treasury.

  Yes, old boy, we must have lunch sometime to talk the whole thing over. Of course. Oh, and how is lovely Helen… and the children? Oh dear.

  While the conversation rolled on, Herbie realised that he disliked the Deputy Director even more than he had imagined. Disliked him from the pelt of grey hair to the dark and beautifully cut pinstripe suit, the stiff white collar, and perfect pearl-silk tie.

  “Herbie. Sorry. Very difficult with the Chief away. Got to keep the wheels of politics turning. Oil. Most of my time’s taken up with oil. Pouring it. All over our lords and masters.” Maitland-Wood leaned back in the padded chair and fixed Herbie with a look which fell halfway between the friendly and the suspicious. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  Herbie told him.

  “My God, that’s an awful lot of paperwork. Must run into a hefty batch of files—and so long ago. Really worthwhile?”

  “You’ve seen the Chief’s memo to me?” Big Herbie was not inclined to argue.

  “Mmmm.” Maitland-Wood nodded, and started to talk about the necessity for spending so much time researching the past because of some tiny hint coming from an untried and unknown source.

  Herbie cut in, telling him that he really was anxious to recruit the Fenderman woman if she was clean. “Sometimes the burrowing is worth it.”

  The DD rose and paced around the desk, tapping lightly at his smooth cheek, as though checking that this morning’s shave was holding.

  Then, as though to himself, he began to talk. “It started off as one of those odd operations run by the people who finally formed the nucleus of PWE—Psychological Warfare Executive. I was around. Helping various people and running a network from over here. Knew a lot about it. It was George’s big show. George Thomas. Recruited and trained specially.” He ran on like someone thinking aloud. Hadn’t talked about it in years. Didn’t suppose George had either. Rum show the whole thing. Ramilies constructed it (You wouldn’t remember him. Died in ’47, or was it ’48?). Did all the running; and it went wrong. Wrong for George that is. Nobody knows if the idea behind the op paid off. But, Christ, it put George in a pickle. Hard to believe what George went through. But then, it helped as well. One door closed and another opened, that kind of thing. Crazy though, the whole idea, to push phoney occult predictions into the Nazi mind and set the SS at odds with the Wehrmacht. Nostradamus, bloody sixteenth-century seer who wrote a book of prophecies.

  Herbie said that he knew about Nostradamus and his historical context. What with the leaning towards the occult these days, people were still reading the famous quatrains and making them fit the facts.

  “Odd those prophecies.” The Deputy Director leaned back against the edge of his desk. “Some of them are uncanny. Mentions Hitler, you know.”

  Herbie knew.

  “Old Goebbels used them. Think that’s what gave Ramilies the idea.” He paused, looking at Herbie—hard, the eyes like gunmetal. “You’ll have to talk to George as well. Odd story. My God, it’ll shake up the historians when they finally get to see the files. Himmler and all that; and the other fellow.”

  Herbie quietly asked if he could have the DD’s okay.

  There was one more moment of hesitation, then Maitland-Wood nodded.

  As he was about to leave, clutching the signed requisition form, Herbie received another admonition. The Deputy Director did not actually wag his finger, but his tone of voice said it all.

  “You’ll get some surprises, Herbie. Reports on file don’t tell you everything. Talk to people like George when you’ve read the stuff, and remember that even he’ll only recall that which he wants to be retained.”

  Herbie nodded and was mildly shaken when Maitland-Wood wished him luck with the Fenderman woman.

  He flashed the requisition down to Ambrose Hill, who said the paperwork would be ready tomorrow, and did the requisition allow him to take any of the stuff out of the building?—by which he meant was Herbie’s apartment clean and regarded by the upper security echelons as a safe place for highly restricted documents? It was. There was more than just wit in calling it a grace and favour flat.

  Herbie glanced through his “in” tray. Made sure that he was up to date, checked that Schnabeln had not called in, and rang his man in Grosvenor Square. They made a date for lunch on the following day—“You come over here, Herbie, old buddy. Our cantina does better steaks than yours.” There was no hint of the subject for conversation from either end.

  A few cryptic scribbles went into Herbie’s private notebook, ready for the Grosvenor Square dance, as he thought of it. Now for George; leafing through the internal directory. George Thomas, whose name appeared on the same cross, reference file as Claus Fenderman.

  George was head of Forward Planning (Europe)—heavy desk assignment with a great deal of responsibility. That meant his income tax returns would show him as a very high-grade civil servant. Top bracket and ranking almost with an ambassador in the Foreign Service.

  Herbie dialled the number, got past a silken-voiced watch bitch, and asked George if he could see him.

  9

  LONDON 1978

  IT STARTED OFF AS one of those odd operations run by people who finally formed the nucleus of PWE. The Deputy Director’s words did a slow and continuous ellipse around Big Herbie’s mind. Then, later—It went wrong…But even then it helped as well.

  The problem really was why Registry still carried such a bulk of files on a PWE op thirty-six years old. It was way out of their fields—particularly files which would remain restricted until the year two thousand and dot, You would expect cross-refs from things like George Thomas’ personal file. But they had the lot here in the building. Most of the restricted SOE and kindred orgs stuff was kept at the Public Records Office. Even the Yard, as he knew, still held the files on executed Nazi agents, going back to the start of World War II.

  So Herbie pondered as he took the lift up the main building to the warren that was the fourth floor—George Thomas’ domain.

  As he ruminated over the strange anomaly of the long-kept files, he regarded his feet and thought how large and clumsy they were. He couldn’t even disguise them with elegant shoes. The years s
pent slogging around East Germany in heavy badly made boots had not helped: there was a legacy of fallen arches, hard skin, corns and bunions. Herbie’s feet were part of his personal cross.

  Suddenly, as the lift slid up past the third floor, he felt very much alone and would have given a lot to go back immediately to St. John’s Wood, a large gin and the Mahler Fifth—that reconciliation of opposing worlds of grief and frenzy, as someone had written.

  Grief and frenzy he knew. Just as he knew the desire to escape, and the sense of being alone among hostility. Certainly he knew its source: a nexus with the past; for there had been so many times in the field when things got bad, and all he wanted was a drink and Mahler.

  As the lift hissed to a halt, Big Herbie was in another of his own many worlds—dangerous nights waiting in the open, or making a house call in daylight when watchers could pick him off like a monkey nips fleas from its mate. He thought of the deaths.

  The fourth floor was alive. Telephones rang from behind doors; at the end of the long corridor a teleprinter ticked urgently. Young women moved patiently from office to office. An occasional whizz kid slid out of one door and disappeared through another. George at least made them look busy.

  The watch bitch in George Thomas’ anteroom turned out to be a lady nudging late fifties and doing her best to make mutton look like young sheep. She did not seem pleased to see Herbie, but she knew who he was without asking, and buzzed George straightaway.

  Unlike Maitland-Wood, George Thomas had run neither to fat nor pomposity. Herbie always thought of him as bald and angular—typed him, in fact, and was always surprised when they were together to find out he was wrong.

  George Thomas was a tall man, even beside Big Herbie, but his natural build, being slim, occasionally gave the impression of angles. It was deceptive at a distance; for, apart from the nose, there was nothing angular about him. Nor was he bald. His lank fair hair had thinned out and left a small tonsure of baldness, but his hairdresser was skillful enough to give him the appearance of having more, and thicker, hair than was really the case.