The Nostradamus Traitor: 1 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  They splintered lances, but Montgomery was unable to lower his lance in time. The broken pieces shattered the king’s gilded visor (the cage of gold), putting out an eye and wounding him in the throat. He lingered, and certainly died a “cruel death.” Soon after that, Catherine de’ Medici appointed Nostradamus astrologer royal, and he was a made man. He predicted a rotten death for Montgomery as well. That happened.

  Interspersed with his knowledgeable talk about the prophecies, George had a lot to say about Michel Downay’s book The Prophet of Salon. “Brilliant,” he called it. “Particularly in the original French.” He was, according to George, one of those writers whose words you could pull over your head. He knew about life in the outposts, and at the royal courts, of France during the 1550s and 1560s, and was able to convey the feeling that he had actually been there.

  It was like going on a journey along a route already travelled, but with a companion who had a new eye which gave him the ability to point out all that you had missed before.

  An earnest note crept into George’s voice, “The old ruling house of Valois had never seemed so close; the politics, the banditry, and murder so tangible; the poverty and superstition so dangerous.”

  By any standard, The Prophet of Salon, was a dazzling display: detailed, crisp, and clear with the personality and background of Michel de Nostradame most sharply focused.

  “He teased him into life,” claimed George. “Followed his career, step by step.”

  In particular, Downay was at his best when describing Nostradamus’ early career in medicine. The doctor had a way with the plague, which lingered in pockets of France, especially in Provence. Though the author hinted that it may well not have been the true plague which helped the good doctor make his medical reputation. A hint of the charlatan? Maybe.

  George even quoted a passage from the book. Downay had written, At this time, Medicine and Magic walked hand in hand through Europe, interwoven like twin roots. In the end, it was the occult and magic root which became dominant in the work of the Prophet of Salon.

  “Yes, Michel Downay baited the hook and I bit hard. Maybe that was wrong, psychologically, but I became involved with the work of Nostradamus like you became involved and obsessed with a woman. Didn’t mean I believed it all. But…”

  The involvement had side effects. During the time he spent in the flat, alone, George admitted he did not sleep well. The work became absorbing, and the Blitz put paid to part of each night. When he did manage to sleep George dreamed a great deal—and vividly.

  “One certain dream came more than once. I was back in the little terraced house near Didcot, a child with Maman, playing my favourite game of acting out plays written by myself, with me taking all the parts. I always woke with one of those long-forgotten plays in my head. Christ, I could even smell the inside of that house—smell it in my head.”

  He also remembered how some of the prophecies seemed to have direct links with the present—“Which was, I suppose, what the Rammer wanted.”

  One night, the Blitz had been especially bad. Two landmines fell near Trafalgar Square, and a stick of incendiaries started a blaze in the next street. George recalled it with great accuracy—

  “When the immediate fury died down, I pulled back the curtains and looked out. The road below was bright as a summer’s evening from the fires. They seemed to flow, tangible as water, dancing and moving wherever one looked. The sky had turned to blood, and another of the prophet’s quatrains came singing, wailing, through my mind—

  “There will be let loose living fire and hidden death,

  Fearful inside dreadful globes.

  By night the city will be reduced to rubble by the fleet,

  The City on fire, helpful to the enemy.

  “Herbie, if I’d been the sombre doctor living in Salon all those years ago, this vision would have driven me out of my skull. Perhaps it did for a while. Perhaps that was the moment I started to establish the link with the old boy.”

  There were other quotes:

  “The French nation will be in great grief,

  Vain and light-hearted, they will believe rash things.

  No bread, salt, wine or water, venom nor ale,

  The greater one captured, hunger, cold and want.

  “That made me remember the thick oily cloud of smoke I’d seen from the boat at Dunkirk. It also made me think about Maman and that smart husband of hers. I used to wonder how they were getting on. It was worrying. The wireless was giving us a lot of the ‘under the heel of the jackboot’ stuff at the time.”

  What did he, George Thomas, really believe about the prophecies at that time? “Difficult. Knowing what I know now. I suppose I was at odds with myself—the doubting George Thomas slowly being dragged into a psychological relationship with the writings. In his book, Downay had a theory that time ran like two trains on parallel tracks. Certain people had the ability to view the countryside ahead of schedule.”

  Then, before he knew it, the time was up, and Ramilies ordered him to pack his kit and be prepared for a move. The Rammer arrived in a dung-painted Humber.

  “Where we going?” asked George, seated in the back.

  “Trunky trouble, my old nannie used to call that.” Ramilies did his python lick. “Nosy Parker. Have a butterscotch, they’re not easy to come by these days.”

  They were, of course, going to the Abbey for George to learn what he later called “the algebra of the operation.” From a London flat to the Gare du Nord and the SS, with much more to follow. It was a long jump.

  18

  LONDON 1978

  IT WAS AN EVEN longer jump from George’s arrival in France, 1941, to Frau Fenderman’s arrival in London, 1978, and these present repercussions. Herbie thought that as he switched off the tape and looked at his notes.

  As he studied them, it again surprised him that George could still quote Nostradamus with accuracy. He had his own copy, the paperback, beside him. Checking showed that George had it pat, almost word for word.

  Could he remember the quotation scrawled on the bottom of Hildegarde Fenderman’s letter?—the one from her husband, written just before he left on that last mission. Something about passages for spies.

  He leafed through the book and finally found it in Nostradamus’ “Seventh Century,” quatrain number thirty-three:

  The kingdom stripped of its forces by fraud,

  The fleet blockaded, passages for the spy;

  Two false friends will come to rally

  To awaken hatred for a long time dormant.

  The interpreter had referred the prophecy to the occupation of France in 1940. Line three, she said, described the Germans and the Russians.

  Not gin tonight, thought Herbie. Too much gin in the past weeks; too much brandy with George on the previous night. A quick bolt of Schnapps. He poured and selected some music, so that he could think, The Second Symphony again—“The Resurrection”? Apt, a musical commentary of life’s transitory nature, but ending with faith and hope. Faith that could move mountains. Herbie wanted to move the mountain of mystery which surrounded the transitory link between George Thomas and the 1941 operation, and the German woman Fenderman.

  He was about to settle himself when he realised that there were other matters to be completed first. May be, he considered, reaching for the telephone, that he was, after all, over the hill.

  The switchboard at Scotland Yard put him through to the Special Branch offices. Vernon-Smith was in. Forensics had come up with a quick report. Old ammunition, fired possibly through something like the good and ancient Luger (only pedantic Vernon-Smith called it by its correct name, the Pistole 08). “Always a thorn in our flesh. So many of the bloody things still around. Bet you’ve got one.”

  “A good weapon.” Silent, Herbie, about what you had or had not got in your private armoury.

  “Find us the weapon and we’ll match it.” Vermin Smith sounded boisterous. “See the TV news tonight?”

  Herbie’s heart sank
as he mumbled a negative in German, changing quickly to English.

  “It’s okay. No names. Nice little piece though. Had me on making a comment. Our line’s that it was an isolated drunken discharge of a firearm; something like that. Your bird wasn’t mentioned and we’ve got the watchdogs on.”

  Herbie said, good, and could they please make sure she did not leave.

  The hotel? queried the police officer.

  The country, Herbie told him quietly.

  Tomorrow he would arrange for dinner with Hildegarde Fenderman on Thursday night, and pray that by then he would have pieced together some of the skeins. Always the optimist, he thought that he might even be able to sound her out for employment. Then he thought of the BND minders. The optimism turned to irritation. Rachendorf at the German Embassy would have to be seriously compromised. That would be tomorrow as well.

  He dialled again. This time to the pay phone for Schnabeln and a short conversation which, reading between the lines, meant that Frau Fenderman was not to be let out of their sight for a moment. He wanted none of this business of the woman suddenly disappearing without trace. What he actually said, in his strange mixture of English and German, was “I do not want her to pull a Nacht und Nebel on us.”

  Thus satisfied, Big Herbie Kruger went back to his Mahler and Schnapps, but his mind weaved and danced, getting nowhere. Continually he was drawn back to the terse reports about the incident outside the Devonshire Hotel that morning.

  She was still really quite attractive. If she’d only dress less severely. Possibly do something about her hair. Clearly in his mind he saw Hildegarde Fenderman come down the four steps from the hotel door and begin to walk up the street.

  Then the yellow Cortina and the shots. A scream, and the woman, like a chicken with its head cut off, uncertain which way to go, knowing the bullets were for her.

  It was always afterwards that you were frightened. At the time, surprise, sudden and unexpected near catastrophe, produced numbness, freezing you to the ground; panic.

  Big Herbie knew all about those things. He tossed back a large Schnapps and drew comfort from it. The nightmares chased each other around his head: a man on uncarpeted stairs screaming and clutching at his throat; the smell of cordite; a dark street near the Wall and the shots echoing; the smack of death on stone. The shadows.

  Mahler echoed his funeral oratory and Herbie closed his eyes. Again the Cortina. He could see the driver clearly now—the skull face and cloak. He felt Frau Fenderman’s fear, as he had felt it many times in his many lives. Death, with perhaps an old Luger, driving a stolen Cortina in Bayswater.

  19

  LONDON 1978

  GEORGE, THANK HEAVEN, WAS in early. Herbie got him on the internal line and asked if they could cry off the afternoon session. If he had cleared Tuesday and Wednesday that would give them enough time. They always had Thursday morning as a backup.

  George seemed pleased about it. Better to have started today, but Herbie wanted to get the whole reasoning behind the operation into his head before they began the forward journey from the Gare du Nord.

  Frau Fenderman was at breakfast when he telephoned the Devonshire. Big Herbie was at his most obsequious. He was terribly sorry to bother her, but he really thought he might have some news. It would take a couple of days. To be safe, say Thursday. Would she dine with him on Thursday evening? She would be delighted. What sort of news? Until then. Not yet. Except one thing. Yes? Her husband did not die at the Tower of London. Only one Nazi agent was shot there during the Second World War. Only one, and he couldn’t have been her husband. Till Thursday evening, then. About eight? Good.

  Wolfgang Alberich Rachendorf, his BND contact at the West German Embassy, would love to lunch with him and was free today. “Monday’s always a slack day,” he said, which seemed strange, because in Herbie’s experience all the dramas’ occurred over the weekend, and Monday was hell on earth.

  He could never make up his mind about Rachendorf. Had his father been a devotee of Mozart who had lost his nerve about giving his boy Amadeus as a middle name? Or was it a sinister baptism? Was the father really a Wagnerian who hated the child so much that he named him for the ugly Nibelung? Herbie’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.

  He had brought the files from his flat. Now he arranged them with those left in the office over the weekend. Carefully he selected five photographs of five people who had been engaged in the murky events of 1941. After clearing the action with Tubby Fincher, he called up Pix, who came and collected the photographs to copy and enlarge. Maybe he could use them on Thursday when dinner was finished and he had Frau Fenderman in a pliable mood.

  On the dot of twelve-thirty, he met his BND contact outside an Indian vegetarian restaurant near the British Museum. What, Herbie thought, could be more logical than a German national and a former national, both in the trade, meeting at a place like that. Besides, he knew the restaurant and Rachendorf did not. He would be off guard and not at ease.

  The meal came on large, circular, segmented dishes into which you probed and chose. Rachendorf was not happy with this. Good-looking, in an old Prussian kind of way, he was a bit of a dandy who thought the best cover in London would be a well-cut dark suit, bowler, and roller umbrella. In the street he was seldom seen without a copy of The Times.

  The BND man was about to take the plunge, gastronomically, when Herbie whispered Hildegarde Fenderman’s name.

  “So?” Rachendorf hesitated. The puzzled look could be almost genuine.

  Herbie repeated the name, like a question.

  “So, you have asked before. I have given you her whole file. The lot, including the intelligence report. As I remember it—Nothing known or suspect.”

  “Come off it, Wolfie. You gave me stuff the Americans didn’t give me. But if you’ve no interest, why the sharks?”

  Rachendorf looked positively shocked—though Herbie thought that might be due to his first mouth full of food. Sharks?

  Gently, with his big hands showing, almost ominously, Herbie pointed out that since her arrival on the scene, Frau Fenderman had been minded and watched—“Seemingly with her own knowledge”—by a pair of BND thugs.

  “We have no thugs.”

  “What do you call Hans Nachent and Markus Billstein, then?”

  “Billstein?…Nachent?…” The brow creased horribly.

  Herbie told him to come on and talk. “Me? I’m so old-fashioned I still think of your lot as the BND. All my colleagues talk about you as the FIA. Federal Intelligence Agency. I’m still German at heart, Wolf. Billstein and Nachent.”

  Rachendorf floundered. “They went private.” He flapped a hand as though waving good-bye.

  Herbie’s stomach contracted for he smelled truth here. Truth and something unpleasant.

  Rachendorf shook his head. Billstein and Nachent never worked England. Both came a cropper last December. He shrugged and looked sheepish. “The Bonn Ministry of Defence thing. They got pensioned off. True, my friend. God’s truth. Other people would have been very harsh. I heard they went private.”

  “Then…” Herbie was leaning over the table. Rachendorf looked frightened. “Then you wouldn’t mind if I had them snatched?”

  He would be most grateful. He would show his gratitude. It would please him much. He did not like the idea of these two boys swimming around London. Come to think of it, he didn’t like the idea of them being mixed up with Frau Fenderman.

  Neither did Herbie. Back in the office he almost called Vermin Smith, but thought better of it. What difference would a couple of days make?

  About four in the afternoon he sent a flash to Girren, who was on duty again, warning him to watch out for the leeches. Then back to St. John’s Wood for another session with George on tape.

  This time, he listened on the headphones, with the spiral notepad on his thigh. He listened to the whole of that first session, ears strained particularly for repeats, long pauses, uncertainties, hesitations. He made a lot of notes and then went
back to listen again to George’s version of his briefing for the Stellar network and the scope of the operation which took him by Lysander to occupied France in February 1941.

  20

  ENGLAND 1940-41

  THE OLD HUMBER TOOK George and Ramilies straight to the Abbey—the natural country seat of an ancient and noble family, just saved from going to seed when the crisis of 1939 blew.

  Parts were Tudor, particularly the main building, though large hunks of the east and west wings were early Victorian Gothic. The vast parkland in which it stood was by God.

  Some said it was a relief to the family—handing the Abbey over to the War Office, but they had got their good furniture and carpets out before the military moved in. Now it was stripped for action: bare, functional, makeshift, and smelling of floor polish.

  The occupants, George quickly discovered, treated each other warily, and there was no shop talk in what was called the mess, once a large drawing room. They were a strange mixture—civilians, and uniforms of all kinds: a lot of French, a few Poles and Czechs. Men and women. Most of the women wore the uniform of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. The FANY.

  There was also a sprinkling of older men. Grey-haired or bald: distracted people with sombre faces who would gather in small huddles away from the main herd.

  George was also kept away from the crowd. They gave him a room to himself, and Ramilies instructed him to go on working at Nostradamus. He also provided more books—astrology, the casting of horoscopes, general volumes on the occult. George felt unsure and strange. “A bit of an outcast.” The books were to be kept in his room all the time and he was not allowed to take them beyond the door. Even a trip to the bathroom, just down the corridor, meant locking them in a cupboard and carrying the key with him. He was to speak to nobody about his subject.

  Not that anyone else spoke about their subjects. They all seemed to be busy, and he got an almost rude rebuff when trying to make the most innocent of passes at one of the pretty FANYs.