Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  In the taxi on the way back to Athens, ignoring the optimistic thumbs of the androgynous young back-packers lining the route, the terrorist tried to concentrate his mind on the problem of getting into the clinic to see Fouche-Larimand. Instead, he found himself wondering how, once inside, he was going to persuade a dying man that it was in his best interests to talk. He had to know who was behind the Charlemagne Circle, what really motivated them: was Fouche-Larimand really the Grand Jules Le Poidevin had referred to? And why had the Circle picked on the Front? And why his cell? There were other, easier targets. He had no doubt that the Frenchman knew most, perhaps all of the answers. But from what Le Poidevin had told him, and from those biographical details he had gleaned from the news magazine, he could not imagine the old fascist scaring very easily. If he didn’t want to talk, would oblivion now seem any worse than oblivion in a few weeks’ time? He might even welcome the idea. But a lot of pain could come first. He could arrange that. And even a man already dancing with death might still fear other things. Koller remembered what had happened to Siegfried, and began to feel much more confident that Fouche-Larimand would tell him what he wanted to know.

  To his great surprise when he arrived at the clinic Koller had no problem in getting to their most sought-after patient. He introduced himself to the grey-haired woman behind the reception desk as ‘Mr Martin from Paris - a friend of Mr Le Poidevin’. He pronounced Le Poidevin in the correct Guernsey fashion - ‘Le Pedvin’.

  ‘I think you’re expected,’ said the receptionist, looking him up and down.

  Fouche-Larimand was at his hammiest.

  ‘Ah, Herr Martin,’ he said when Koller was ushered into his room. ‘What kept you?’

  He was sitting up in bed wearing the same dressing-gown in which he had appeared in the pages of the news magazine. Across the bed covers, partly hidden by newspapers and magazines, lay his sword-stick.

  Koller succeeded in hiding his surprise and sat down on the bedside chair. When the nurse who had shown him in had gone he took one of the newspapers off the bed, put it across his lap, pulled the heavy revolver out of his waistband and cocked it beneath the newspaper with an ostentatious click. He ignored the stick.

  ‘Aren’t you going to lock the door?’ asked FoucheLarimand.

  Koller shook his head.

  ‘I suppose you want me to answer some questions before you kill me?’

  ‘From what I’ve read, the last bit won’t be necessary.’

  ‘Ah, doctors can be wrong, you know.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it from here.’

  The old man appeared to be entering the final stages of his decay. The dead, flavescent tissue of the burn scar now looked positively alive against the drawn, alabaster face. Under the dressing-gown the wounds from the last operation were not healing properly and the bandages had to be changed three times a day. Only the one good darting eye, flicking from Koller to the door to the sword-stick, betrayed the willing spirit.

  ‘Why did you kill Le Poidevin? It wasn’t his fault, you know. He was just a pawn, a cypher.’

  ‘I didn’t. He must have killed himself-unless you did it.’

  It was Fouche-Larimand’s turn to conceal surprise; he hadn’t been expecting a denial.

  ‘No matter, he’s dead anyway - a common fate. He told you about our little club, I suppose - the Charlemagne Circle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must admit, dear boy, it was clever stuff.’

  Koller swallowed hard. ‘I don’t understand why an old fascist like you would work for the Zionists?’

  ‘My dear boy, I am not anti-Zionist, just anti-semitic.’

  ‘Stop calling me "dear boy".’

  ‘Yes, dear boy. In any case, we aren’t working for them – we just happened to be on the same side.’

  ‘You have no connection with the Israelis?’ asked Koller, doing his best to ignore the provocation.

  ‘Of course not. Oh my dear boy! Is that what you thought? The clever Jews using their old enemies to bash the Palestinians. What a devious mind you have. I expected something a bit more plodding - it must be your mother’s side. No, we were just fighting communism and the sort of decadents and moral degenerates who allow it to spread. Something, I’m proud to say, I’ve been doing all my adult life. You, of course, are an anti-Nazi who has spent much of his time fighting Jews - a peculiar philosophy.’

  ‘You’ve already given your interview. Let’s get some facts. How did you penetrate us? What led you to Siegfried?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve read it?’ said the dying man, completely ignoring the question. ‘I hope you didn’t mind my little joke about you being queer? I hear you’re quite a ladies’ man. I thought it was quite good, quite fair. They didn’t misquote me all that much. The climate is changing, you know. People are more prepared to listen to us, heed our warnings. And the conservatives are coming back into power all over Free Europe. Not much better than the socialists, it’s true - but better, definitely better.’

  ‘This gun is fitted with a silencer,’ lied Koller, bringing it up behind the newspaper. ‘If you don’t stop this shit and answer my questions, it will give me great pleasure to shoot you through one of your knee-caps. It won’t kill you, of course, but the pain will be excruciating. If you still won’t tell, I’ll do it to the other one and then I’ll start at the wrists and the elbows.’

  ‘My dear boy, that’s much more like it, much more in character, I’m sure. I was teasing. I fully intend to tell you everything-’

  ‘And don’t call me "dear boy".’

  ‘How about Hans? I am such a sentimentalist. That’s why I go to the funerals of nonentities and get myself into trouble.’ Fouche-Larimand was enjoying himself. A trace of colour had even returned to one cheek. But a bullet in the knee was painful and he didn’t want to push his luck.

  ‘Well, of course, the Circle penetrated your little cell by getting hold of your friend Siegfried and he, er, talked.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, we might go into that, but what I want to know is how you found us? Who helped you? The DST? CIA? Israeli intelligence? German? British - who?’

  ‘My dear Hans, you must realise that we are persona non-grata with all those fine organisations. No, we had inside information. Someone who knew the inside of your head, someone who could imagine what you would do next, how you would react. I admit we have a friend, an old comrade, in the German police who gave us some general advice. Lisbon, Amsterdam, London and Paris, he said - in about that order I believe. We wasted a lot of time in Portugal and Holland.’

  ‘And this person who is supposed to know the inside of my head - this is your Grand Jules?’

  ‘Ah, Le Poidevin told you that as well, did he? You must have had a very interesting conversation. Now you want to know who he is? Well, I’ll tell you, but I think you might find it a bit of a shock. Why don’t you pour yourself a brandy - it is your drink, isn’t it? You’ll find a bottle on the table over there. Pour one for me while you’re at it.’

  Koller sat still. ‘Listen, you old fart,’ he said, ‘I think we have been watching different movies. Get on with it.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with you young people nowadays,’ sighed the Comte. ‘No sense of style.’

  The German made an angry movement beneath the newspaper, which fell to the floor to reveal the ancient revolver he was holding.

  ‘Silencer indeed,’ snorted Fouche-Larimand. ‘From which museum did you steal that blunderbuss.’

  ‘Talk,’ said Koller. The dying man told him what he wanted to know.

  When he had finished, Koller sat for a long time without saying anything. It was as if by neatly reversing an equation, the whole sum of his adult life had been cancelled out. Like a prisoner who had spent years filing through his bars only to find that he was actually outside the prison all the time. Then, still without a word, the gun held limply in his right hand, he got up to leave.

  ‘Aren’t you going to kill me?’ demanded Fouche-Lariman
d, his voice high-pitched, almost squeaky.

  Koller, moving slowly around the bed, shook his head.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear about Siegfried, your dear comrade Siegfried? God, how he screamed. Like a woman. He screamed before we’d even started on him and when - when we started pulling the nails - he screamed even more. He would have told us without that, but we did it anyway became that’s what the bastard deserved. And when he knew we were going to finish him he cried - cried like a child.’

  Koller looked at the old man. He was sitting up in bed, his hands gripping the steel bed frame either side of the mattress, chin up and quivering slightly, his good eye half-closed.

  The terrorist raised the revolver in his outstretched right hand and aimed it at his chest. Fouche-Larimand took a deep breath. Koller lowered the pistol. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Please,’ gasped the dying man, ‘a soldier’s death. I’m a Catholic, I can’t-’

  ‘I’m more of a soldier than you,’ said Koller tonelessly.

  With surprising speed Fouche-Larimand dived forward, unsheathed the sword stick and lunged at the terrorist - a picador goading the bull.

  It was still a pathetic attempt. Koller turned sideways and the blade nicked the flesh on his right hip. He brought the gun up and used the barrel to knock the sword-stick out of the old man’s feeble grip so that it fell the other side of the bed. Again he aimed the pistol at the Frenchman’s chest and again Fouche-Larimand tensed himself for death.

  They remained frozen in this tableau for a few seconds before Koller returned the pistol to the waistband of his trousers.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Be an old soldier. Just fade away.’

  ‘Swine,’ shuddered the old man, ‘fucking swine.’

  But when Koller got to the door Fouche-Larimand spoke to him again. ‘Hans,’ he said quietly, ‘Siegfried didn’t die like that. He was very brave.’

  ‘I know,’ said the terrorist.

  Koller was getting drunk. He had toured half a dozen bars in the narrow streets around Constitution Square until he found one dark enough and without the endless, lilting bouzouki stomp on its music system to mock his terrible despair. He drank brandy, staring straight ahead of him at a firing squad of bottles, in a way that quickly drove the barman back to his newspaper and made him surface only when some telepathy established between them signalled a refill.

  He felt dirty, used. It was, he realised, an exquisite act of revenge. Truly, the triumph of the will. He drank to exorcize the djinn Fouche-Larimand had raised, but the monster’s triumphant, maniacal drumming would not leave his head. Old songs from an old revolution, subliminally learned as a child, came back with the remorseless tramp of phantom regiments and a man with a limp used his cane on a boy because he had yawned at a saga of tribal valour.

  In the end, he abandoned alcohol, and by early evening was pacing the smart streets of Kolanaki, occasionally pausing to study his reflection in the windows of boutiques where chic Athenians with hennaed hair pretended they were in Paris. He didn’t see them. He saw only the defeat tattooed on his drink slackened face. ‘I have lost,’ he said aloud. ‘I have lost.’

  He returned to his room at the Grande Bretagne and lay on the bed, the hip wound from the sword-stick bleeding and beginning to stain his clothes, his mind still racing from what he had learned. He forced himself to get up, pick up the bedside telephone and place a call to ‘Rebecca’ in Cyprus. When it came through he condensed what he had heard to a few short, unemotional sentences as if he was talking about somebody else.

  As usual she did not sound the least bit surprised or even interested. He asked for instructions and she said she would call back. Yet the brief contact calmed him and after a while he began to doze, dreaming first of childhood and then of ‘Rebecca’, whom he had never met. His hand rested on the gun under his pillow. Shane.

  The telephone bell brought him reluctantly into that false dawn that is the price of a drunken siesta. In his dream Rebecca had been warm and comforting, but he couldn’t remember her face and that made him feel uneasy. The voice on the telephone belonged to the real Rebecca: cold, impersonal, code-name Rebecca - an enigma. She took just thirty seconds to deliver his orders. He was to go to Cyprus as soon as possible. When he put the receiver down he said to himself, ‘No, she is ugly and you will play the stiff-necked Kraut and call her Fraulein. Comrade Fraulein.’

  He booked himself onto the next morning’s flight to Larnaca, the Greek Cypriot airport. Before he packed he examined again the old revolver the Armenian in the safe-house had given him. Normally he never risked passing through airport security checks with a gun - not even in his hold luggage. Nor did he regard Cyprus as a high-risk area. After all, he was going to be among friends. Now he was reluctant to part with the clumsy weapon until he had another one at hand. Fouche-Larimand’s revelations had changed the rules. He stripped the weapon down as far as it would go, removing the cylinder and barrel, unscrewing the butt-plates. He had a very shallow false bottom in his suitcase which accommodated everything except the cylinder with its bullets - it had been designed to take a flat automatic. He shrugged and thrust it inside a wiled pair of socks which he placed in the bottom of the case.

  At the airport he bought a copy of the English-language Athens News. There was a story on the front page about FoucheLarimand, the former OAS man wanted for questioning about a murder in Paris. He was dead. He had impaled himself on his sword-stick. The terrorist wondered if it had been painful enough.

  11. Desdemona’s Island

  Koller, a brand new Pentax camera slung over his right shoulder, was waiting in line at the green sign-posted ‘Nothing to Declare’ section in the Customs Hall at Larnaca airport. There was a queue, because almost all the Greek Cypriots coming home for the Orthodox Easter had decided that they preferred to enter through this gate - with the result that most people were being challenged.

  He watched them go through the belongings of a granny in black, one of a coven who looked as if they had all been hatched from the same bow-legged mould. She had three battered suitcases and a huge polythene bag stuffed with clothes loaded on to one of the self-service luggage carts. They went through each case, pulling out bottles of fat Greek olives and paper-wrapped smelly cheeses, running their fingers through her folded underwear as if they suspected she might be running heroin. Behind the German another of her ilk, perhaps to demonstrate her general disapproval of mankind, was busy ramming her luggage chariot into the small of his back. The terrorist turned and scowled at her, but she pretended not to notice.

  Koller was trying to gauge his chances of rushing out through the narrow door beyond the Customs men if the revolver’s cylinder was discovered in his socks. He concluded they were bad.

  Opposite the door, in the departure lounge, stood a young policeman cradling a Kalashnikov.

  ‘Tourist?’ asked the Customs man when his turn came. His eyes were on Koller’s camera - as he hoped they would be.

  ‘Yes. Just for a few days. I bought this camera in the duty-free shop at Athens. Do I have to pay duty on it here?’ The German sounded slightly nervous, anxious to please.

  ‘Not if you take it with you when you go,’ said the Customs man. He was smiling and good-natured. It was the damn women you had to watch with perfume for their granddaughters. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Anything else to declare?’

  ‘Only cigarettes and a bottle of cognac.’

  He chalked a mark on to the German’s case. ‘Have a nice stay in Cyprus.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  It had been agreed that he would be met. He felt in the shoulder-bag he carried as hand luggage for the copy of the Athens News, folded it in half and placed it in his left jacket pocket so that most of the cover showed. He put his case down and stood like this at the main entrance to the small, prefabricated terminal building, politely fending off gentle and dignified soliciting for hire-cars and taxis.

  ‘Excuse me, but were you on the Athens or the London
flight?’ The voice was much softer than it sounded on the telephone.

  ‘Rebecca?’

  ‘Benjamin?’

  She was thought Koller, with all a blond man’s superficial longing for olive-skinned women, quite extraordinarily beautiful. About thirty, he guessed, a little over five feet with hardly an ounce of spare flesh, her black hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, and wearing a tightly cut cream-coloured safari jacket over faded blue jeans. She led him to her car, an old red MGB with the hood down although, by eastern Mediterranean standards, it was not a particularly warm day. ‘I saw you were getting the sharp end of the Lolibs,’ she said as she fiddled with the ignition, and put on dark glasses.

  ‘Lolibs?’

  ‘Little-old-ladies-in-black. That’s what the English here call them. The British still have military bases here.’ She spoke good American English, not very different from his own.

  ‘Yes,’ he grinned. ‘Very fierce. Commando-trained. One of them was trying to run me over with her chariot.’ ‘I know. I was watching.’

  After that the slip-stream around the open top made conversation difficult. They sped along the mainly flat roads towards Nicosia in silence, passing below the ridge where a red Turkish flag fluttering cheekily from an Orthodox church marked the Moslems’ southernmost penetration of the divided island.

  The woman drove well, although a little too fast, nervously biting her bottom lip as she accelerated out of bends. The island was wearing its spring greenery, the land not yet baked to the biscuit colour of its high-summer metamorphosis from Southern European to Middle Eastern. ‘A nice place for a holiday,’ thought Koller, who had never been here before. He had been thinking a lot about resting lately. Suddenly he was very tired. A killer tired of killing. The flesh under the stickingplaster on the hip wound began to itch and he absent-mindedly scratched it. He looked at the woman, but under her dark glasses she appeared to keep her eyes glued resolutely to the road as if she wanted to discourage the slightest intimacy. He wondered what she made of his story and whether she would discuss it with him. He badly wanted to talk it over with someone before the meeting with their boss.