The Salzburg Connection

by Helen Macinnes

  “Fine, fine.” Newhart took them and laid them on his desk.

  Mathison had to laugh at himself. He had imagined himself coming into Newhart’s room, sitting back in a slight state of euphoria as he watched Jimmy open the envelope and start reading eagerly. Instead, he was watching Newhart pull a folded sheet of newspaper out of his drawer, smooth it neatly as he began talking across his desk. “As soon as you finished your call yesterday morning, I spoke with the manager of the Maritime’s Forty-third Street branch. The minute I asked about someone called Emil Burch who had an account with him, I could almost see him freeze. He gave me a very polite but completely stave-off answer. Said he would call me back with available information if any. But within half an hour I had two quiet and efficient types from the FBI sitting in front of me.” He nodded with approval as he noticed that Mathison had stopped lounging and was bolt upright in his armchair. “Yes, that’s exactly how I felt.”

  “They are interested in Emil Burch?”

  “They’ve been searching for him for the last six weeks. So have Swiss Security.”

  “The Swiss? What have they to do with Burch?”

  “Burch also banks in Zürich.”

  “And just what is our government’s interest?”

  Newhart glanced at his watch. “I’ll let them tell you about that. Yesterday they were polite, but cryptic. This morning, they paid a second call and were more informative. Enough, anyway, to scare the daylights out of me. Thank heaven they seemed friendly, though. I wouldn’t like to face them if I had a bad conscience.”

  “And they are coming back tonight?” Mathison didn’t hide his amazement.

  “To talk with you. The name of Emil Burch triggered them off.”

  “And who is he actually?” That was something Mathison had been wondering about for the last twenty-eight hours, ever since he stood in Bryant’s shop and stared down at a cheque.

  Newhart’s voice dropped instinctively. “It seems he acts as a paymaster for undercover activities against the United States.”

  Mathison’s amazement changed to incredulity. “They’re putting you on, Jimmy.”

  “You just wait and see about that. In the meantime, have a look at this article—it was published about two weeks ago.” He consulted the date heading a page torn from the New York Times. “Yes, Sunday, September 18.” He handed it over.

  Mathison recognised it. He had read the article with astonishment and a touch of vague disquiet—just the kind of combination that helped fix any news item in his memory. He looked again at the headline, URANIUM LOSSES SPUR DRIVE FOR TIGHTER U.S. CONTROL OF FISSIONABLE MATERIALS. “I can almost quote you the first paragraph,” he told Newhart. “The Atomic Energy Commission discovered that one of its industrial contractors had lost ‘more than 100 kilograms of highly enriched uranium—enough to fabricate six atomic bombs.’ Yes, I remember it. I also remember hoping pretty gloomily that someone, for Christ’s sake, was doing something about it somewhere.”

  “Someone is,” Newhart reassured him. “I know that we can expect a small loss of one or even two per cent in most manufacturing processes using enriched uranium. But this stuff was U-235—highly enriched—absolutely essential for nuclear weapons. That’s the shocker. It seems we have been hitting a new high in carelessness. We are just too damned casual about such things—it isn’t as if U-235 grew on trees or could be smelted like iron.” And Newhart was off, into one of his newest interests. (He was publishing a book next spring called The Nuclear Balance of Power.)

  Mathison lit a cigarette, listened intently as he smoked it slowly. The plants needed to produce highly enriched uranium were enormously intricate, occupied vast space, demanded fabulous investments. And, at first, success could not always be guaranteed. The process was exceedingly difficult; for instance, one part of it consisted of four thousand filtering stages. So it could be possible that any country racing to produce nuclear weapons might search for a short cut by procuring U-235 illegally.

  “We just don’t have enough safeguards at present against unlawful diversion of highly enriched uranium,” Newhart ended his account, “and that’s the reason why there have had to be investigations in the last few months. Any losses, even if caused only by bloody stupidity, need careful checking.”

  Mathison stubbed out his cigarette thoughtfully. “But what has all that got to do with Emil Burch?”

  “Apparently—” Newhart began, and stopped as a buzzer sounded at his elbow. “They’re here.” He consulted his watch again. “And right on the button.” He rose and went to meet the two men who had entered the room.

  One was about forty, of middle height, and thin. His face was pale and tired, as if he hadn’t had much sleep recently. He was introduced as Frank O’Donnell. The other was John Lamberti, closer to thirty, fairly tall, broad-shouldered, a healthy specimen with dark good looks. They were both neatly and quietly dressed, with manners to match. They gave Mathison a polite but definite look as they shook hands, refused a drink, and seated themselves where they could see his face.

  O’Donnell wasted no time. “I understand you made a copy of the Burch cheque that was sent to Salzburg, Mr. Mathison.”

  “I photographed a photograph, to be exact.”

  “More than once?” O’Donnell sounded hopeful, but he looked prepared for disappointment.

  “Four times to make sure,” Mathison answered with a grin.

  “You have those photographs with you?”

  “In that matchbox.” Mathison pointed to the desk.

  Newhart laughed. “Bill, you slay me. You do enter into the spirit of things.”

  “I’m glad I did. My hotel room was searched and my Minox emptied of a substitute roll of film I had left in it.”

  Newhart said, as O’Donnell’s eyebrows lifted, “You never told me that when you telephoned.”

  “It happened later. A lot of things happened later. You’ll have to read my report after all, Jimmy.” Mathison watched Newhart’s face with some amusement as he picked up the envelope.

  O’Donnell spoke quickly. “Apart from the cheque, is there anything else about Emil Burch in your report?”

  “No.”

  “Would you mind if we got your film developed right away?”

  “He’s the boss,” Mathison said, nodding to Newhart. “It’s his lawsuit.”

  “You’re not serious, Bill.” Newhart was aghast, forgetting his worries about unlawful diversion of fissionable material and returning to the more everyday problems of settlements and costs.

  “Let’s say we are lucky that Mrs. Bryant isn’t the kind of woman who sues.”

  “Mr. Newhart,” O’Donnell asked patiently, “may we develop those films? The process will take only fifteen minutes or less, even to enlarge them. We’ll have prints made tomorrow, but I’d like to have the film developed immediately.”

  “Couldn’t be developed by better experts,” Newhart said.

  Mathison nodded his agreement, only worrying now that he might have used too much light (or too little) or moved, when he was taking the pictures. If they didn’t come out well, he’d have no one to blame except himself.

  Lamberti was already over at the desk, lifting the matchbox, opening it carefully. He relaxed when he saw the tissue wrapped around the film. “Did you get that clear sample of Eric Yates’s signature, Mr. Newhart?”

  Newhart produced a letter from his drawer, and, along with the matchbox, it went into Lamberti’s pocket. “I’ll phone you the minute we get them scanned,” he told O’Donnell, and headed for the door.

  “Mr. Lamberti,” Mathison called after him, “would it be possible to have an extra batch of all the prints? Bryant’s file on Yates was stolen yesterday evening. I promised Mrs. Bryant I’d send copies of the photographs to her as a replacement.” Lamberti looked interested, but he nodded and left without asking any questions. O’Donnell’s eyebrows had gone up a further fraction of an inch.

  “Stolen?” Newhart asked. “What the hell has been
happening, Bill?”

  “Read the report,” Mathison said inexorably. “It took me almost four hours slaving over a typewriter last night, ruined my dinner, spoiled my sleep. You don’t want me to go all through that again, do you?”

  Newhart drew out the three double-spaced pages from their envelope.

  “Nothing there about Burch or missing U-235,” Mathison told O’Donnell, who was allowing some amusement to show in his quiet grey eyes. “Just how important is this Emil Burch? Where does he tie in?”

  O’Donnell looked as if he wished those questions hadn’t arisen. He glanced towards the report—Newhart was now reading it with obvious concern—and seemed to measure a reasonable quid pro quo. “Anything we discuss here, you understand,” he said to Mathison, “is completely confidential.”

  “Of course. So is that report, by the way. There may be nothing about Burch in it, but there’s a good deal about Yates.”

  “That sounds interesting,” O’Donnell said politely. If he was eager to read the report, he was managing to disguise it fairly well.

  “There must be some close connection between Burch and Yates—”

  “We don’t know that yet. First we’ll have to study the Burch signature on the cheque that Yates sent to Bryant. And then we have to compare with Yates’s own signature.”

  “Didn’t you have Burch’s signature for his First Maritime account to compare with one of Yates’s letters in the Newhart and Morris files?”

  O’Donnell nodded. “Burch’s writing is upright and very exact. Yates’s signature slopes forward and ends in a scrawl. We compared them yesterday and could find no link between them.”

  “What difference do you expect in the cheque I photographed?”

  “We never expect. We just hope. A faked signature sometimes varies. It depends on whether the writer is using the correct pen for his forgery, or whether he is rushed, or paying less attention.”

  “You don’t sound too optimistic.”

  “I’m not pessimistic either. A faked signature is a tricky business. Even Burch—or Yates—could make a split second’s mistake.”

  All very interesting, thought Mathison, but it’s getting me nowhere. He tried again. “I’d really like to hear anything you can tell me about Burch. After all, I do represent Newhart and Morris. Anything detrimental concerning Yates is going to involve them in a great deal of unpleasantness. Now let’s stop being a couple of lawyers,” he said and won an answering smile. “I did hear in Salzburg that Yates is a British agent. Is Burch employed by the British, too?”

  That really jolted O’Donnell. “A British agent?” He looked quickly at Newhart, who was in the middle of the report and seemed in no mood to rush his reading of it. “That’s something new,” he admitted wryly. “Emil Burch is certainly engaged in espionage, but I don’t think he is in the employ of the British.” He studied Mathison quite openly for a few seconds. “I suppose you are going back to Zürich?”

  “That’s possible.”

  “It might be very useful if you did.”

  To whom? wondered Mathison. “It might also be dangerous if I didn’t know something about Burch.” What exact business, for instance, did Yates have with Richard Bryant in Salzburg? Anything to do with Yates’s possible connection with Burch’s activities in the United States? “And I’m not talking just about myself. I could endanger your investigations if I am not properly briefed. You agree?”

  Again there was a hint of friendly amusement in O’Donnell’s eyes. “You press hard, Mr. Mathison.”

  “We may not have much time to waste.”

  O’Donnell obviously agreed with that. “All right,” he said. He considered briefly. Then his voice became crisp, matter-of-fact, to suit his words. “We have been investigating a problem dealing with the security of the United States. As often happens in that kind of general probe, we came upon something unexpected. A man, quite above suspicion, was seemingly nervous about the repeated visits our agents paid to the plant where he held a sensitive post. Either he assumed they must know more about him than they actually did or his conscience started to bother him. Anyway, he approached us. Eventually, he made a full statement, admitted he had been recruited quite recently to supply information about the date of certain deliveries at his plant. He had only agreed to supply it because it appeared harmless enough. And he needed the money. His first payment, however, had alarmed him; it seemed more than his information justified. He hadn’t yet spent the money, and he turned it over to us. One thousand dollars in fifty new bills. We tracked their serial numbers to the bank that had received them—the First Maritime at Forty-third. A teller remembered one client who always requested used twenty-dollar bills. ‘New bills stick together,’ he said. But three weeks ago, old twenties were scarce, so he had to take a thousand dollars in new bills. He was annoyed. The cheque was drawn on the account of an Emil Burch.”

  “It could be a case of industrial espionage,” Mathison tried.

  “The methods used were too intricate for that.” O’Donnell hesitated. He was thinking of the information that had been attached to the inside of a magazine and passed at the busy counter of a New York drugstore to a contact known as “Tony”. The payment, in turn, had been left at a “drop”—in this case, the space under a loose rock near a certain bridge in the park of the informant’s home town. (All the man had to do that evening, when the park was fairly deserted, was to walk his dog.) “Tony” had arranged both assignations, using cryptic phone calls and excessive care in establishing contact. (He hadn’t turned up for the first drugstore rendezvous; probably stayed in the background to watch the informant’s behaviour. That night, he had telephoned, arranging the same place and time for a meeting one week later.) He had set another meeting after the first was at last completed safely, but by that time the informant had confessed and two special agents were also there as interested observers. “Tony” was now being watched, all his contacts noted. It would take time before his network was fully discovered, but “Tony” himself had been traced. (That would have distressed him considerably. When he had left the Communist party eight years ago under orders to go underground, he had made the usual moves: all open contacts ended; records destroyed; a change of address from the West Coast to the Eastern seaboard, with a new name and new occupation. Two years ago, he had gone even deeper underground—and away from his old comrades completely—in a shift farther to the left. Again there was a change of name, address, place of occupation. He had concealed his moves well enough; to most people nowadays he seemed more bourgeois than his new set of unsuspecting bourgeois friends.)

  O’Donnell shook his head over the deviousness of the political animal’s mind. “I think,” he said quietly, “we can rule out any case of industrial espionage.”

  But Mathison hadn’t finished the problem of Burch. “He had a bank account in Zürich, too. Right? Which is his main place of business?”

  “Zürich. How did you know he banked there?”

  Mathison nodded in the direction of Newhart, who was now rereading the last page.

  O’Donnell was almost amused. “You have one of those retentive memories, have you?” I’d do well to remember that, he told himself.

  “I can be equally good at forgetting,” Mathison said pointedly. “So what about Burch? How does he make his money?”

  “He is a dealer in fine books, manuscripts, ancient maps. He has his main office in Zürich, and opened up a branch office in New York two years ago. That was when he set up his New York account with the First Maritime.”

  “It must be an incorporated business.” That made the opening of any foreigner’s account in an American bank a fairly simple process. “All he needed was a recommendation from his Swiss bank that he was solvent and a good risk.”

  “He is certainly that. Money keeps coming steadily from Switzerland, enough to cover even the large withdrawals here. No complaints from New York at all.”

  “Couldn’t Swiss Security give you any help?”r />
  “They did what they could. All they could tell us was that Emil Burch’s account in his Zürich bank is also in excellent condition. It gets its money steadily, too—from a numbered account.”

  “Ouch!” Swiss numbered accounts never had any information divulged about them. A matter of Swiss law. “So you’ll never know who owns that numbered account or what is behind it.”

  “All we do know is that Burch’s Zürich bank account is being used as a channel to other accounts abroad.”

  “It seems to me that Swiss Security might become interested in Mr. Burch himself.”

  “Give them time. He is an elusive man. Travels a great deal, leaves the running of his Zürich business to its manager.”

  “Searching for fine books, manuscripts?”

  “And ancient maps.”

  This time, they both shook their heads. Mathison had several more questions, but there wasn’t any use in asking them. He had been given more than a fair share of answers as it was. He looked at the tired, haggard face sitting opposite him. There was one big question remaining, though. He risked it. “Why are you so sure that Burch isn’t a British agent?”

  “Because the British don’t need what Burch is looking for.”

  “Meaning highly enriched uranium?”

  “Now who brought that up?” O’Donnell asked blandly.

  The British had their own supply of U-235, thought Mathison. So had the Russians, although they weren’t telling anything to anyone. The French were now producing the necessary minimum after at least one disastrously expensive mistake. Mathison sat very still. He glanced over at Newhart. ...any country racing to produce nuclear weapons might search for a short cut...illegally...unlawful diversion... “You worry me,” he said softly.

  Newhart looked up, gathering the three sheets of paper together. “You worry me,” he said grimly, as he handed the report to O’Donnell.

  O’Donnell was a quick reader. He seemed only to glance down the first page. On the second, he went back over the last paragraph, the one that dealt in detail with the constant surveillance of Mathison after his first visit to Bryant’s shop. The third page—with emphasis on Finstersee and the parallel of Lake Toplitz given by Anna Bryant in talking of her husband’s death near Unterwald—tightened his lips. “I’d like to study this. Have you another copy?”