"Fancy your remembering me," said Thomas hoarsely.
"Why shouldn't I, man? We've known each other since we were schoolboys. I knew your father. I don't need to put any questions to you except—how can I help you?"
Thomas said: "As you know, before the war I was a banker in London. Marlock and Lieven, Dominion Agency, in Lombard Street."
"Ah, yes, Dominion Agency. I remember."
"I've been living a wild life since then. Your counter-intelligence corps no doubt has a big file about me. But it's the plain truth that I only got into all that mess owing to my partner Marlock. He arranged to have me deported from England and thus tricked me out of my share in the bank. Ever since 1939 my one idea has been to get my hands on that swine."
"I understand," said Westenhoff. "You'd like to go to England."
"Yes. To settle accounts with Marlock. Can you help me to do that?"
"Sure, boy, sure," said the Americanized Berliner. But he was wrong there.
Two weeks later, on June 14, Westenhoff invited Thomas to come and see him in his villa that evening.
"I'm sorry, Thomas," said his friend, as they sat on the terrace behind the house, gazing into the dusk of the garden. "I'm really m@st awfully sorry. Have another big whisky straight before I tell you about it"
Thomas took his advice.
"That Robert E. Marlock of yours has disappeared. I alerted my friends in the counter-intelligence corps and they
got in touch with the British. Looks like a bad show, Thomas, very bad. Your little bank has gone, too. Another whisky?"
"You might just as well pass me the whole bottle right away. I'm gradually beginning to feel like Job." Thomas smiled wryly. "Job plus Johnnie Walker. When did my little bank vanish?"
"In 1942." Westenhoff drew a sheet of paper from his pocket. "The precise date was August 14. On that day Mar-lock ceased payment. Drafts were not being met. Depositors wanted to withdraw their accounts. On that day Marlock disappeared and hasn't been seen since. That was all my friends in the counter-intelligence corps could tell me. They're very anxious to make your acquaintance, bv the way."
"But I'm not anxious to make theirs."
Thomas sighed. He stared out into the blossoming garden, where the trees and bushes were losing their contours more and more and turning to smoky shadows in the deepening evening dusk. He fiddled with his glass for a long time. At last he said: "I'll stay here, then. I've earned enough money in France to keep me. But I'll work, though never again—you hear me, Kurt?—never again for a secret service. Not as long as I live!"
He was mistaken. As mistaken as Kurt Westenhoff when he assumed that Thomas Lieven would never meet his criminal ex-partner Robert E. Marlock again.
[9]
One fine day in July 1946 a gentleman wearing only a sports shirt and trousers was strolling on a lawn of the English type belonging to a comfortable villa in Griinwald, a suburb on the outskirts of Munich. The gentleman looked pale and bore a resigned expression. He was accompanied by a muscular giant in similar clothing who bore a contented expression under the spiky bush of his red hair.
"Nice little place we've bought for ourselves, Bastian, old lad, eh?" Thomas Lieven remarked.
"And all out of French army funds too," grunted the former Marseilles gangster, who had been trying himself out for some weeks as Lieven's valet.
They returned to the house. Thomas said: "Last night I worked out how much we owe the French Treasury for our turnover."
"And how much was it?"
"About thirty million francs," said Thomas quietly. Bastian's face expressed the utmost delight. "Vive la grande armee!" he exclaimed.
Thomas's new forged papers, of first-rate quality, which he had himself produced, represented him as Peter Scheuner and Bastian as Jean Lequoc.
The little town near the Austrian border, which Thomas had mentioned to Bastian, was crammed with soldiers, refugees and displaced persons. There simply wasn't enough room for all of them. All the hotels and boardinghouses were packed to the brim.
But Thomas and Bastian found two quiet rooms in a farmhouse not far from the town. They rented this accommodation under their false names, from the evening of February 20, 1947, and stayed there three months. That was a long time, during which they were both extremely busy.
To begin with they spent a few days and nights investigating the Bristol Hotel. Sometimes there was quite a lot going on there. Dancing and drinking, flirting and shady dealings, whispered conferences, business decisions and telephone calls took up the time. There were swarms of ladies of easy virtue, soldiers spending their pay, mysterious Poles, sinister Czechs, a few Hungarian aristocrats, a few Russian adherents of Vlas-sov and, naturally, also some Germans.
After Thomas and Bastian had observed conditions in the little town for a week they held a council of war in a snowed-up country inn. Said Thomas: "We've seen lots of girls, soldiers and displaced persons, my boy. But we've seen, above all, Nazis! Nazis from elsewhere and Nazis who were born here. I realize that now. The Amis don't seem to know it. We two, however, you and I, must never forget it. What we're after is that uranium and those plans."
"Assuming they're still here."
"There's a strong probability that they are. And I believe I've hit upon a first-class scheme to prove it."
"Well, let's hear it," said Bastian.
Thomas told him. His plan was as simple as it was ingenious. It was on February 28 that Thomas first drew it up. By April 19 he had in his possession:
28 cubes of uranium 238, each measuring 5 cm. across, weighing 2.2 kilos and without exception bearing the stamp of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin;
a specimen of the MKO secret sighting mechanism and
precise plans for the construction of the apparatus in question, developed in the Third Reich but only manufactured in a
399
few models which were never used. It had been intended for fighter aircraft and would have enabled the adversary to be hit the moment he cropped up in the crosswires without the gunner having to make the usual allowance for lead.
How did Thomas Lieven manage it?
How did the alleged Peter Scheuner manage it? That was the question asked, very reasonably, in the middle of April 1947 by French, American, British and other agents, herds of whom were dashing about in South Germany at this time and had tried, just like Thomas Lieven alias Peter Scheuner, to unearth that vanished sighting mechanism and its blueprints.
The news soon spread among the agents of the various nations and they approached him with offers to buy his treasures, beginning with the uranium cubes.
In this connection Thomas Lieven favored an Argentinian businessman and personal representative of Juan Domingo Per6n, who had been elected president of his country a year previously.
Thomas had remarked to Bastian: "That's our man. We want to get that stuff out of Europe and a long way out, somewhere where they won't make bombs with it."
The Argentinian paid $3,200 American for each cube of uranium, i.e. $89,600 in all. The cubes were flown off in the diplomatic bag to the Argentine.
Then the agents began to compete for Thomas Lieven's MKO sighting mechanism. Like the good pacifist he was, Thomas had naturally introduced certain modifications into the plans, to such an extent indeed that even technicians of genius would have racked their brains in vain over the blueprints so altered. And like the good salesman he was, Thomas had also of course made copies of the plans with a view to disposing of them not to one but to several purchasers.
He was just driving the hardest of bargains when Herr Gregor Marek turned up. Hen* Marek came from Bohemia, Thomas had often seen him at the Bristol, where he seemed to be doing quite brilliantly. He was always smartly dressed, though he was small and squat and had the broad cheekbones and slanting eyes characteristic of the Slav. He spoke with a similarly typical accent. 'Tell me, gentlemen, if you please, might I join you for a little while? I hear you've something to sell..."
; Thomas and Bastian couldn't understand him at first
But he finally made himself clear. "I've got good friends
over in Czechoslovakia whoTI pay top prices. So let's have a look, eh, at the mechanism and the prints."
After some further talk Thomas and Bastian gave Herr Marek a look at the mechanism and the plans.
The Czech's eyes popped out of his head. "Just can't believe it! Here I've been after that bit of old iron for a year and couldn't find it. Tell me, if you please, how you got hold of it?"
"Oh, it was quite simple, Herr Marek," Thomas told him. "I took the political views of the population into consideration. There are an awful lot of Nazis here. My friend and I wandered about for a few weeks, going from one Nazi to the other. We hinted that we belonged to a Werewolf group ..."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you must have gone off your heads!"
"Not at all, my dear fellow. You'll soon see how well the idea worked. We talked as Nazis to Nazis to both local people and recent arrivals. Where was that uranium, we asked. Where were the plans of those miracle weapons? Our organization needed money and we must be in a position to sell that uranium and those plans. The Nazis saw our point immediately. One passed us on to another and ... voild, monsieur!"
"Good God Almighty! And didn't you have to pay anything for the stuff?"
"Not a cent. They were pure idealists. And now, what do your friends in the East offer?"
"I'll have to pop across there and see how the land lies." The agent disappeared for three days. He returned in the best of tempers. "I'm to give you their very best respects. Come and have lunch with me today. I hear you're fond of cooking. I've got everything at my place. Then we can have a nice quiet business chat."
Bastian and Thomas called at about eleven a.m. on May 6, 1947, at the apartment of the representative of the People's Democracy. It was luxuriously furnished. Thomas inquired in astonishment: "Are your Czech friends so generous?"
Marek grinned. "Please, please! You haven't seen anything yet! Come this way." He led his visitors into a big room next to the kitchen. He showed them hundreds of picture books from the Thousand-Year Reich, stacked yards high. The Fiihrer and the Children, The Nationalist Party Congress at Nuremberg, The Roads the Fiihrer Built, Victory in the West, Victory in the East and so on were some of the titles.
Thomas picked up one of the volumes and leafed through
it. Nothing but full page photographs of parades, Nazi bosses, generals and, again and again, the Fiihrer.
"I've only got just a few of 'em up here," said the Czech. "My whole cellar's packed with the stuff. To say nothing of SS daggers, medals, death's-head rings—take your pick! It's amazing how fast it all sells. The Amis go perfectly mad about that sort of rubbish. They take it home with them as souvenirs!"
They went into the kitchen. Even here the profits of the sale of souvenirs were evident in the rows of canned provisions and bottles of whisky. "I've bought a fine eel, Hen* Scheuner," said their host. "Can you do us eel in sage? It's my favorite dish."
"Let's get to it," said Thomas. He began to clean the eel and cut it into portions. As he did so Marek told him: "My principals would very much like to talk to one of you two personally. That can be easily arranged. You would be met at the frontier. You wouldn't bring the plans, naturally. Meanwhile I would stay here with whichever one of you remains behind."
Thomas and Bastian went into the garden and discussed the proposal briefly. Bastian said: "I'll go. You don't let Marek out of your sight. If there's any funny business, you hand him over to the Americans. Let's hope the boys over there speak French."
Marek, when questioned on this last point, replied: "Sure! They're regular chatterboxes. Fluent, gentlemen, fluent!"
On May 9, Bastian Fabre left his friend Thomas Lieven for Czechoslovakia. He had arranged to be back by May 15. But by that date and even later he had not returned.
Herr Marek showed more signs of uneasiness than Thomas. "Something's happened over there ... I've never known anything like this before ... my principals are always most punctilious ..."
"Marek, if anything's happened to my friend, tnen God help you!"
On May 22, one of Marek's compatriots called on him, handed him a letter and immediately departed in a great hurry. Marek grew paler and paler as he read the letter.
Thomas watched him steadily. "What's wrong?" he demanded, out of patience.
Herrr Marek, in his excitement, could only ejaculate: "Oh God, Oh God!"
"What's the matter, man? Talk, will you?"
"Your friend's been arrested by the Russians!"
"By the Russians?"
"They found out that we Czechs wanted to buy that sighting mechanism. They forbade us to do so and locked your friend up. They say they want the thing themselves. Oh God, Oh God!"
"Where did they lock my friend up?"
"In Zwickau. Your friend must have crossed into the Soviet zone of occupation."
"Herr Marek," said Thomas. "Pack your bag."
"You mean... you want to go to Zwickau?"
"Obviously," said Thomas.
[3]
A map lay before him on the moss. Thomas was once more checking his position from the map. A flowery meadow stretched before him, beginning at the edge of the wood. Through the middle of the meadow a cheerful little brook babbled.
At that brook one Germany ended and another began. This situation was indicated on the map by hatching of a brown tint: Let us hope, thought Thomas, that the color was chosen in order to remind one of the people who were to blame for splitting Germany into two.
Midday on May 27 was the agreed time. The group of three trees on the other side of the brook marked the agreed place. There ought to be a Red Army soldier standing there ready to escort Thomas. But there was no such person in sight.
Dear, dear, thought Thomas Lieven, how very careless of them! First I send my friend Bastian to Zwickau to confer with the Czechs about the handing over to them of certain plans—falsified of course—of a miraculous sighting mechanism. Then the Soviet authorities run him in. Obviously I have to get him out. Obviously, therefore, I lie here at midday on May 27, all ready to do so, with the falsified plans in my brief case. Here I lie waiting for the Red Army man who is to get me out of one Germany into the other. But the fellow just isn't there. I wonder if anything in this life ever does run smooth, without undue irritation?
Thomas Lieven lay there at the edge of the wood until 12:28 p.m. Just as his stomach rumbled for the first time a Soviet soldier appeared on the other side of the brook. He was carrying a tommy-gun at the ready. When he reached the
three trees he stood still and looked about him. Ah, there he is, thought Thomas. He stood up and walked out into the meadow. The Red Army man, who was quite young, stared at him in amazement.
"Hello!" Thomas called out in a friendly tone, waving his hand as he marched on as far as the brook. There he stopped, took off his shoes and socks, rolled his trousers above the knee and waded through the ice-cold water to the other bank. He was about halfway across when he heard a hoarse shout and looked up in surprise.
"Stoi!" yelled the young Red Army man, adding a number of other words in Russian. Thomas, having no idea what he meant, nodded affably and waded on till he reached the other bank. The young soldier came to meet him. Then Thomas realized with a sudden shock that this could not be the man who was to escort him. He must be quite a different soldier, who had no knowledge of the meeting that had been arranged.
The Red Army man shouted at him in a guttural voice.
"My dear young friend, please listen to me," Thomas began. Then he found the barrel of the tommy-gun against his ribs. He dropped his shoes, socks and brief case and put up his hands. This is really disgusting, he thought Now I've got the Red Army after me too.
Remembering the excellent judo training he had received in France all those years ago Thomas immediately resorted to the so-called double-butterfly hold. Less than a second later the Red Army man wh
irled shrieking through the air and dropped into the brook, tommy-gun and all. Thomas picked up his shoes, socks and brief case and turned to make a dash into the Soviet zone.
Then a trampling and rumbling shook the ground. Thomas looked up in a fright. From the woods on the Soviet side of the meadow at least fifty people, men/ women and children, came racing toward the brook as if they had* gone crazy. They splashed through the water and went charging on into the American zone.
Thomas stared after them in amazement. He had actually helped all those people to escape into the West! They had all been lying in wait here in the East, just as he had in the West He burst into a wild fit of laughter. Then he saw the Russian scrambling to his feet in the water, gasping for breath and rushing after him. He heard the young soldier yelling behind him. Then shots rang out Bullets whistled past him. He noted
mechanically that Soviet tommy-guns fired even after a ducking.
Up the road came a Russian jeep, with a captain sitting next to the driver. The officer jumped up, seized the windshield in both hands and yelled frantically in Russian at the frantically firing Red Army soldier on the rising ground ahead of the jeep. The shooting ceased. The jeep braked beside Thomas Lieven.
"Gospodin Scheuner," said the Captain in guttural German. "Sorry for the delay. Tires no good, went kaput. But you're welcome, gospodin, most welcome!"
[4]
The Palace Cafe at Zwickau looked as shabby as everything else in the little town of 120,000 inhabitants. Six hours after Thomas had shown quite a considerable number of refugees the way into freedom he sat in a corner of the aforesaid establishment and drank substitute lemonade.
He had nothing else to do on that May 27. The captain who had met him at the frontier had driven him to the Russian military headquarters in Zwickau. The commandant, a certain Colonel Melanin, had apologized through an interpreter for being obliged to keep him watiing until nine o'clock next morning for an appointment.
So Thomas had first gone to a dull hotel and then turned in to the Palace. Everone seemed very gloomy, both the men in their ancient double-breasted suits and tattered shirts and the woman without cosmetics, wearing woolen stockings and bark shoes, their hair hanging in wisps. Good Lord, thought Thomas. And where I've just come from the wheels seem to be going around quite nicely again. People are profiteering, toiling, grabbing what they can. But you poor devils look as though you were the only ones who had lost the war!
The Monte Cristo Cover-Up Page 43