by John Creasey
It was a curious impression, and Palfrey was amused by it – amused for the first time since they had left Rotterdam.
Bruton was in high spirits.
‘You made good time,’ he said. ‘And you’ve come just in time to move again, Sap!’
‘Where to?’ asked Palfrey, quickly.
‘Dias is in Sweden,’ said Bruton. ‘He was chased out of Berlin—boy, was he chased! They wouldn’t let him stay more than one night, he went off protesting even when he climbed into the airplane. He doesn’t like Americans, English or Russians, because they all had a hand in it. No, sir, no one in Berlin has a kind word for His Excellency Señor Fernandez y Dias. It did me good, Sap, just to see his face when he left.’
Palfrey said, with great deliberation: ‘It’s done me good just to hear you talk for one minute. When did he go?’
‘This morning. There were two airplanes for Stockholm,’ added Bruton, ‘and Neil got on the second. So did Bane. It looks as if we’ll have to leave the luggage behind, and fly over.’
‘Possibly,’ said Palfrey, as they walked into the building. It was comfortably furnished and had a curious atmosphere combining that of a London club with that of a good hotel. American, Russian, French and English officers were sitting in the lounges, and there was a good display of flags of the three nations. ‘Have you looked up von Kriess?’
‘No,’ said Bruton, ‘except to make sure he’s still around. And his wife—Anna said something about the Frau, didn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ said Palfrey.
It was astonishing how his spirits had been lifted by the simple fact that Dias had not been allowed to stay in Berlin. Probably the depression because of the comparative failure of his mission had made him take the wrong view of the Marquis’s brusque warning. ‘Have we got rooms?’
‘Have we got rooms!’ said Bruton. ‘Have we got the royal suite!’ He led the way up a flight of wide stairs to the first floor, flung open a door and stood aside for them to enter. It was easy, in that luxury, to forget the scenes outside and en route. There were three rooms with communicating doors, a bathroom, and a long narrow lounge which ran the whole length of the suite; the furniture was superlatively comfortable. ‘Why the honour I don’t know—perhaps they’ve heard of you in Berlin, Sap.’
Palfrey laughed.
Yet there was something he could not properly understand.
He was not meant to understand it. Bruton’s gleaming eyes told of secret knowledge, Bruton’s insistence that they should get a bath and dress quickly was another indication. Palfrey had no desire to hurry, and twice while he was lying in the hot bath watching the curling eddies of steam, someone tapped peremptorily on the door. Bruton, undoubtedly. Palfrey stirred himself.
It was good to change into fresh clothes, but he did not like looking out of the window. Yet his spirits had soared; Dias had been given marching orders quickly. Palfrey knew now that the fear that had most affected him was that the United Nations were condoning Black Market.
Drusilla had allowed herself an afternoon gown, which would serve as a dinner-gown. It was black with white trimming, and she looked exceedingly well in it. It was good to see her out of suits, to see her taking extra care with her make-up. Palfrey kissed the nape of her neck.
‘Why so bright-eyed?’ he demanded. ‘Has Corny told you this secret?’
‘No, but he’s sure it will please,’ said Drusilla.
‘How much longer?’ called Bruton, from the door. ‘Almost ready,’ said Drusilla. She turned to Palfrey. ‘Am I all right?’
‘All right!’ he groaned. ‘Why must I share you with others?
I feel romantic tonight. Good lord!’ he said, and shook his head, marvelling. ‘The inconsistency of the human race. Meaning me. Coming, Corny!’ he called, linked arms with Drusilla and led her to the door.
Splendour lay ahead of them!
While they had been out of the long front room it had been transformed. Gone were the easy chairs, no longer was it a place for indolent lounging. Down the centre was a long dining-table glittering with crystal, dark polished wood with snowy-white mats, silver which was so highly burnished that it reflected dazzling light. Chairs were arranged on both sides and one at either end. Even a red plush carpet was down, and by the door stood two waiters in formal dress, grave and yet excited men – nearly as excited as Bruton. In Bruton there was much of the eternal child, and now his eyes danced and he clapped his hands together. He took Drusilla’s arm and led her round the table, while Palfrey followed with a dazed look in his eyes. They made a complete tour of the table. Bowls of roses and carnations gave a glory of colour and scent. Finger-bowls stood by each plate and by one place was a small black box.
‘Well, how does it strike you?’ demanded Bruton, lighting a cigar and holding it at a jaunty angle. ‘Some reception for the Palfreys! It’s a pity there isn’t someone else more deserving, but you were the only people on the way here.’
‘Thanks,’ said Palfrey. ‘Certainly most undeserving, my half of the Palfreys.’ He looked at Drusilla’s shining eyes. ‘My turn,’ he added. ‘Well?’ After a long pause, Drusilla said: ‘I wish I had a different gown!’
‘I’ll give up!’ gasped Bruton, after a pause nearly as long. Palfrey squeezed Drusilla’s arm.
‘The right spirit,’ he said. ‘Splendour to match splendour, but you haven’t done so badly. Why all this, Corny?’ ‘You’ll see,’ said Bruton.
‘Don’t tell me that you’re going to bring Dias in to watch us gloating,’ said Palfrey, ‘and the talk of Sweden was all my eye.’
Bruton laughed. ‘Dias is out of the country, that’s certain. I can’t guarantee that all his boy friends are, but they won’t cause any trouble tonight, Sap.’
Palfrey was counting the places. ‘Eight—nine—ten—eleven—twelve,’ he said. ‘How many fair ones?’
‘That’s the one thing we fell down on,’ said Bruton; ‘Drusilla will be the only woman, but she can stand it for one evening.’
He raised his head; obviously he had been listening for someone’s approach. ‘Ah,’ he said, and sped to the door, which one of the waiters was opening.
Palfrey drew Drusilla back from the table to the side of the room. They were still holding hands. The waiters bowed. Bruton stepped into the passage and then returned, accompanied by two men, one squat, sturdy, powerful, the other taller, not so broad but powerful-looking. They were high-ranking officers of the Red Army, and were in ceremonial dress. They were smiling broadly, and were obviously enjoying their share in the joke. The eternal children; Palfrey was enjoying himself hugely.
Bruton brought them forward, like a boy showing off his favourite relatives. He was suddenly formal. ‘Mrs. Palfrey, allow me to present General Alexi Zukkor—Colonel Akim Chenov.’
There were bows, handshakes, laughter. General Zukkor was the short squat man. He had a broad face, a merry face, and he was certainly enjoying himself. Colonel Chenov was, perhaps, a little graver; he smiled more with his eyes than with his lips, but he smiled often. They made much of Drusilla, and told Palfrey that they had often heard of him and were delighted to meet him. They had a special message for him …
Years before, when Palfrey had been in Russia, he had met the Man of Steel, and from him came the special message to be remembered and to congratulate him on his more recent work, to express confidence that he would be equally successful with any further work he undertook.
Was there a deeper shade of meaning to the last part of the message, wondered Palfrey.
Bruton disappeared, and came back with a lank American, General Pitard, and a burly American, Colonel Mond, both of whom obviously knew the Russians well. The party grew more frolicsome and wine began to flow. They were talking and laughing when a little whippet of a man came in, English to the backbone, straight as a ramrod, a man who, to all app
earances, had no chance at all of fraternising successfully with the officers of the Red Army. With him was a tall, fair-haired, youngish major, a ‘typical’ Englishman.
The whippet took General Zukkor to a corner and talked earnestly, then rejoined the main party and became its life and soul when Zukkor and Chenov would allow him. These men, all six of them, were old friends, and behaved as if they had known one another all their lives. All talked English – the Russians slowly and painstakingly over some words but fluently enough most of the time.
Stefan came in and drew up in surprise on the threshold. He was led forward by Bruton, still acting as host, and then saw Chenov and threw ceremony to the winds. The sight of the giant and the Colonel embracing each other ought to have been amusing but was not; obviously they were friends of a lifetime, as they could not talk quickly enough. Rarely had Palfrey seen Stefan so animated, so entirely happy.
Palfrey had forgotten completely the desolation outside.
Charles entered, missed a step, and looked round with almost fatuous surprise. He was led forward, looked dazed at first, was introduced, grabbed a whisky-and-soda, spluttered over it, and then said that he was jiggered. Bruton took him round again, and Charles seemed fascinated by the squat power of Zukkor.
Palfrey counted. Eleven were present; who would the twelfth prove to be?
Bruton, who missed nothing, hurried to the door and then stood aside. The Marquis of Brett walked, smiling, into the room.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
New Orders
They were sitting round the table, with only wines and salted nuts and fruit in front of them. The ash-trays were filled to over-flowing, the room was almost uncomfortably warm – so warm that only the whippet still had his coat buttoned, and General Pitard looked ready to take off his. They had been talking one against the other for nearly two hours, and Palfrey and Drusilla had listened most of the time, making little comment, understanding at last what had prompted this occasion. Zukkor had meant what he said, but there was something else. The dinner was over; it had been for the Palfreys and Stefan, but this conference was of a different kind. Laughter had faded, grimness replaced it.
Brett had started the ball rolling.
For a long time, he said, it had been known that vast Black Market operations were being organised and encouraged throughout Europe, supplies on an unprecedented scale were reaching the illegal markets. Not only were the towns and cities supplied by the produce from the surrounding countryside, but shiploads and parts of trainloads throughout Europe had gone to the Black Markets, and the problem had grown in extent because among all the authorities there were leakages and active sympathisers. English, American, and Russian renegades turned a blind eye to what was going on. The immensity of the problem had not at first been understood; only in recent weeks had it become clear that shiploads of goods from abroad were being loaded on to lorries and trains at the docks, and unloaded in secret places. False papers, false shipping bills, false transport authorisations, had been forged; it was on a scale so large that there were genuine fears that it could not be stopped for a long time, it was so difficult to distinguish genuine authority from false. What was worse, shortages in the legal markets were getting more marked and nearing danger-point.
There were large Black Market operations in Berlin and other German cities, Zukkor said, taking up the story, but nothing like so extensive as there were in the liberated countries, obviously because Allied control made operations difficult. But on the fringes of Germany it was nearly as bad as elsewhere, and it had became a matter for the Army of Occupation.
Pitard said that the American, William K. Bane, had been approached to finance some of the illegal shiploads; that had been the first indication of the real scale of the organisation. He had taken the story to the State Department. He had been approached first by a man called Lozana, then by Dias, and in consultation with the State Department he had agreed to show interest, so as to find the root of the trouble. With him had been the Englishman, Josh Anderson, but Anderson had at first been inclined to take his profit out of the trade. He had withdrawn only when he had discovered the full extent of it, and the evil it was causing, and he had then been smitten, said Pitard, with a mysterious illness. He was now lying in Rotterdam seriously ill. Bane was still working, as Palfrey knew, and had flown that day to Stockholm, whither Dias had gone.
Palfrey had asked, speaking for the first time: ‘Why send Dias out of the country? You had him so that he couldn’t get away.’
Zukkor, Pitard and the whippet had all begun to answer at once, then given way to Brett. Palfrey might probably guess the reason. Dias was one of the organisers, but so far it had been impossible to be sure who worked with him. Some shipping companies were involved, English and American, South American and, probably, Dutch and French, certainly Spanish. The issue was a momentous one. If the affair were handled badly it might cause bad blood among the nations. The leaders of the nations understood that private individuals were responsible, but if it became public news, then the countries from which the chief operators came would become unpopular – Brett said that he put it mildly. Distrust and suspicion would be rife. It was hoped that the names of all the people involved would be forthcoming, and that steps could be taken to put a stop to their activities at one and the same time. It was useless to close up one leakage if there were a dozen others still open. If steps were taken too quickly, it would be disastrous, for publicity could not be avoided and the trade would still go on. It was all or nothing, said Brett, and the committee which had been set up at San Francisco to investigate the workings of the Black Market in Europe believed that there was a chance of indicting every individual concerned, and of bringing the infamous business to a complete stop.
That was the gist of it.
Much more would follow, Palfrey knew.
Only Brett remained, in the early hours of the morning, with the Palfreys, Stefan, Charles and Bruton. All of them were tired out, and Brett said that it would be folly to talk further that night. He had a room opposite the suite.
They went to bed without further ado, and Palfrey and Drusilla were so tired that they said very little. They slept deeply, refreshingly, until morning.
When they woke up rain was splashing against the windows, and Berlin was covered with a drab grey pall of low cloud which kept visibility down to a few hundred yards. That, said Palfrey, was no one’s loss. They breakfasted on their own, and then met Brett and Stefan in the large room. Charles was still asleep, Bruton was up and had gone out. Bruton already knew much of what the Marquis could tell the others.
Palfrey said: ‘First and foremost, Marquis, why dampen my spirits on the telephone? You cast me lower than I’ve been for many a long day.’
‘I was afraid that I would,’ said Brett, ‘but over the telephone it was difficult.’
‘We had a private line, surely,’ objected Palfrey.
Brett said: ‘Sap, we can’t be sure of anyone. There may be leakages in our Embassies, there may be leakages in London. By leakages I mean informers ready to sell to Dias and his men information about the steps which we are taking against them. When you telephoned, Bane had disclosed himself to Dias, so there was no danger in confirming what he was doing, but I had to make it seem clear that you were not to work in the same business. The radium hunt was a godsend.’
‘Hum, yes,’ said Palfrey. ‘You knew plenty about this before we left London, didn’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said Brett, ‘and wanted you to work on it. But I knew you would, in fact, soon be doing so, for we knew that Dias was the man we were after in the first instance. By coming to you Dias proved that he thought your talk of radium was a blind, he was afraid that we had put you and the men of Z.5 after him. It was much better, at that stage, that he shouldn’t know, and better that you should find out what you were after as you went along.’
‘Need
you have kept it from us?’ asked Drusilla.
Brett looked at her with a quizzical smile.
‘’Silla, my dear, you’ve been wonderfully good and you’ve never prevented Sap from starting off on these ventures, but you had persuaded him to settle down in London. If I had first approached you about Black Market you would probably have blamed me for unsettling Sap. I knew that he was unsettled, but was determined not to aggravate that. When van Doorn came the floodgates burst open. I had to decide whether, at that stage, it would serve any useful purpose if I told you more. I didn’t think it would. There was no danger of your taking your work too lightly, and there was a chance of getting the opinion of men who had no prior knowledge and who would report on the situation as it really was. Isn’t that reasonable?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Drusilla.
‘Yet you had a warning,’ said Brett, still smiling. ‘Approval from Moscow, Paris and Washington was one thing: letting de Morency, Erikson and Bruton, as well as Stefan, come with you was a different matter.’
‘And you disappeared, to avoid importunate questions,’ said Palfrey with an air of reproof. ‘It’s hard. We would have been much better armed had we known all about it.’
‘I don’t agree with you,’ said Brett. ‘You might have struck an entirely different line. As it was, the two lines converged, and directly you were in contact with Bane I knew that you would probably force him to explain what he’s doing. Isn’t that right?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Palfrey, in his turn. ‘All forgiven. Except—’ He toyed with his hair, and looked at the Marquis.
‘Doesn’t Dias know anything about the radium?’
‘I shall be surprised if he doesn’t,’ said the Marquis. ‘I shall be equally surprised, if, before you’ve finished, you don’t find that the Black Market problem and the missing radium problem are closely connected.’