by Len Deighton
Chapter 27
Any move that attacks a hostile king is known
as check.
Tuesday, October 15th
The hammering on my door came at 6.30 P.M. Johnnie Vulkan was standing there looking angry and sad.
‘Come in,’ I said. I turned round to find him still glaring. I glared back but since my eyes were slits he didn’t detect it.
‘I’ve been to the police station,’ he said. His cashmere overcoat was slung over his shoulders and the sleeves hung limp like broken limbs.
‘Really?’ I said like a man trying to make polite conversation. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve been given the third degree,’ he said. He ran a hand through his grey hair and looked around my room for hidden policemen.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘You must have done something to irritate them.’ I began to dress.
‘Irritate them!’ he spoke loudly. ‘I work for your Government for one thing.’
‘Well, surely you didn’t tell them that,’ I yawned. ‘Are you sitting on my tie?’
‘Of course not,’ said Johnnie. ‘I didn’t tell them anything.’ He was getting angry. ‘They’ve been asking me all sorts of questions’—he looked at his huge gold wristwatch—‘for four hours.’
‘You must be gasping.’ I poured him a drink of whisky.
‘I’m not,’ he said, which was odd, because he downed the Scotch like a man dying of thirst. ‘I’m not hanging around here,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to Berlin.’
‘Just as you say,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to help.’
He gave me a spiteful look. I said, ‘Come along, Johnnie. Either tell me what it’s all about or don’t tell me at all, but you can’t expect me to believe that the police took you to the station because they didn’t like the way you parted your hair.’
Vulkan sat on the bed. I poured him another drink and my wristwatch alarm sounded. ‘I came down here to consult a man. I went to see him last night. He lives in Spain.’
I tried to look like a man who is just listening to someone else’s trouble to be polite. ‘This man,’ Johnnie went on, ‘I was in the army with him.’
‘In the concentration camp?’ I said.
‘Yes. He was the camp doctor. I’ve known him for years. The French have got their knife into him, I suppose. When he was driving me back here, they refused him entry at the frontier and hauled me out of the car.’
‘Oh,’ I said like a man to whom it is suddenly made clear. ‘You have been across into Spain and they stopped you at the border.’
‘Yes,’ said Johnnie.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t worry about it. It’s just a routine check.’
They sounded a little bell downstairs to tell us that the dinner was cooked. I finished dressing hurriedly and Vulkan drank a lot of whisky. Dinner wasn’t any too jolly because Vulkan was miserable as sin. One of the policemen had told him that Samantha had been asked to leave the country because her papers weren’t in order. ‘What papers?’ Vulkan kept asking and I really couldn’t tell him.
‘Everything has gone wrong on this job,’ said Johnnie after the coffee had arrived. He stretched his legs and studied the toes of his expensive Oxford shoes. ‘I try to keep everyone happy…’ He made a surrender motion with the palms of his hands.
‘Try to make everyone happy,’ I said, ‘and you’ll wind up a rich mediocrity; but you’ll never get anything done that is worth doing.’
Johnnie stared at me for a long time, fixing me with his eyes until I began to think he had gone off his trolley.
‘You are right,’ he said finally. He went back to studying the toes of his shoes and he said, ‘You are right’ two or three more times. I poured him coffee. He thanked me, still in this abstract mood, then he said, ‘London will be mad at me now?’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he said. He moved his arm like he was trying to throw his hand away. ‘Messing about down here on my own affairs instead of being in Berlin when you needed to know about the name on the document. Sometimes I feel I’m not cut out for this life. I should be writing music, not having a one-man war with London. London could murder me.’
‘London has no personality,’ I said. ‘Believe me, I know them very well. They’re just like one big computing machine. Put a success story in one end; money and promotion come out the other.’
‘OK,’ Johnnie interrupted. He fixed me with that glare again. ‘They want this man, Semitsa—then, by God, I’ll get him.’
‘That’s the boy,’ I said, but I don’t know how I got any kind of enthusiasm into my voice.
Chapter 28
Development for its own sake is insufficient. There
must be a keen purpose in every move.
London, Thursday, October 17th
‘It’s no good trying to blame Hallam,’ Dawlish was saying. ‘He’s given you more co-operation and information than you could reasonably ask for. Good Lord, you should have worked with the Home Office people when I was seconded to them.’
‘Let’s not talk about when coppers wore high hats,’ I said. ‘I’ve got my problems now—I don’t want to hear your chilling experiences.’
‘And bringing the San Sebastian people into this—it’s a grave error of judgement. Grenade’s people will have listened to the whole thing.’
‘Don’t worry about Grenade,’ I said. ‘I gave him that girl and said she was working from Bonn. That was quite enough to have them all busy for a couple of days.’
‘You don’t have to sit here and sort it all out,’ said Dawlish. ‘You just make a lot of trouble right across Europe and leave it for me to curtsy, kiss your hand, apologize, explain that we all make mistakes sometimes and carry the can for you.’
‘You do it so well,’ I said. I turned to go.
‘Another thing,’ said Dawlish, ‘that young Chillcott-Oakes came up here the other day babbling about books and thistle stamens. Couldn’t understand a word of it except that he’d got it from you.’
‘I just said that you were interested in wild flowers,’ I said. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
Dawlish began to move items off the top of his desk like he was going to climb on it and do a Gopak. It was a sign of deep emotion.
‘Do you know, even the wife likes it now? People have heard about it and they come to see it. They come to scoff. I know they do, but they stay to admire and one or two people have brought me plants. I have cornflowers—I don’t know why I didn’t think of those right from the start. I have some lovely scarlet pimpernel, corn camomile (you may know that better as mayweed)…’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Dawlish was looking into the far, far distance now as his crop paraded slowly before his eyes. ‘Sweet alyssum, galinsoga, the yellow ox-eye daisy and some quite remarkable grasses, and wild birds and butterflies.’
‘You aren’t going to encourage pests then. You aren’t going to have wire-worms and Colorado beetles,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Dawlish.
‘What about poisonous plants?’ I said. ‘What about fox-glove and monk’s-hood or deadly nightshade and wild arum or some of that great agaric fungus? Deadly as hell.’
Dawlish shook his head.
He switched his squawk box on and asked Alice for a dossier he needed, then switching the box off for a moment, he said: ‘Whatever else you conclude, right or wrong, don’t make any mistakes about Hallam. He’s a damn good chap; whatever you may feel about him personally, the HO would hardly function without him. Leave him well alone or you will be tackling me—in person.’
I nodded. Dawlish passed me a flimsy message form. ‘I would appreciate it if in future you didn’t request even routine information from field units without permission. You don’t understand…’ He waved the flimsy sheet. ‘These things cost us a fee.’
‘OK,’ I said. Dawlish had a happy knack of indicating when a meeting was at an end, even though he would often feign surprise when one made towards the door.
&n
bsp; ‘I say,’ he said. ‘All that twaddle about my writing books and meadow flowers.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Dawlish shrugged in embarrassment. ‘Good of you,’ he said and suddenly busied himself with work on his desk top.
Chapter 29
Players who relish violence, aggression and movement often depend upon the Spanish Game.
Thursday, October 17th
To Unspec. field unit via London
Immediate Destination: WOOC (P)
Source: Cato 16
Further to your query. The number plate you mention is that of Dr Ernst Mohr who is under a four-year surveillance. (Future queries should refer to him as Thrush.) Your (London) records will show a detailed account. Briefly: height 6′ 1″/Weight: 12 stone 12 lbs/Eyes: brown/Hair: almost bald. No scars or distinguishing marks. Born Leipzig 1921. Qualified as Dr (of medicine) Leipzig 1941. Entered German Army 1941. Served in base hospitals in Germany 1941-4. Served in Eastern Front 1944-45. Captured Hamburg 1945. Witness at British Army War Crimes Inquiry Hamburg 1946 (ref: 275/Crime/nn). Released to work British military hospital 1946. Released to work in German civilian hospital 1946. Under contract to Bonn Government (Intelligence, not Gehlen) 1948. Began work as representative radium therapy machinery 1948. Assigned to Northern Spain as radium therapy equipment salesman 1949. Began buying land locally (N Coast Spain) 1951. Resigned radium equipment company 1953. Began forming Spanish companies 1953. Married Spanish citizen 1953. 2 children.
Dr Ernst Mohr is now a Spanish citizen. He continues to submit reports to Bonn but we think that this is known to Madrid with whom he has probably come to an agreement. Bonn has him marked as a very low credulity.
He spent five hours with JV on date you mention and French immigration have since refused him entry. We assume this is your contact point. We have nothing of JV on record here. Trust this is of some help.
CATO 16
Chapter 30
Range in chess is measured not by distance
but by the number of squares to which a
legal move can be made.
Thursday, October 17th
I took the message sheet down to my office and read it again twice. I looked quickly through my ‘In’ tray, then the phone rang. The operator said that Hallam had phoned twice in the last half hour. Did I want to be connected? Yes.
‘Hello, Hallam here. Special Import Service.’
‘They tell me that you are after me.’
‘Go along with you,’ said Hallam, ‘I’m not after you.’ We both had a jolly good giggle about that. Then I said, ‘Well, what is it?’
‘Just to tell you that everything is ready.’
‘Every what thing is ready?’
‘Customs, immigration, car will be available for you at Southampton or Dover. We have a guest house near Exeter. He’ll go there for a week or so.’ Hallam’s voice trailed off.
‘Oh yes,’ I said.
‘That’s why we’d prefer Southampton,’ said Hallam.
‘Well, isn’t that cosy?’ I said. ‘Is he going to bring his own hot-water bottle?’
‘These things have to be attended to,’ said Hallam in his snotty voice. ‘It’s not a bit of use you being upstage about the domestic arrangements. You’d look rather silly standing on the deck of the cross-Channel packet holding the hand of a “refused entry”.’
‘Not half as silly as I’d look holding hands with…’
‘Now now,’ said Hallam sternly and rang off.
I spoke the remainder of the sentence into the dead phone as Jean came in. She said, ‘Hallam?’ and put two cups of coffee on my desk.
‘Right on the button,’ I said.
‘You mustn’t let him get you down,’ she said.
‘He’s so irritating,’ I said.
‘You think he doesn’t know that?’ said Jean. ‘He’s just like you; he takes a perverse delight in irritating people.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘It’s obvious,’ said Jean.
‘Do you know I never realized that? I’ll have to revise my attitude to the chintzy old bastard.’ I passed her the message from Cato 16 and began to drink my Nescafé-flavoured hot water. Jean read the message carefully.
‘It’s interesting,’ she said.
‘In what way?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But it must be interesting because you asked for it. It’s meaningless to me.’
‘I don’t want to destroy your pathetic faith,’ I said, ‘but it’s meaningless to me too.’
‘What did you expect?’ Jean said.
‘I don’t know quite. I suppose I hoped it would exactly fit the description that Gehlen gave me for the Broum documents, or that Vulkan would come into the résumé somewhere.’
‘Perhaps he does,’ said Jean, ‘if you examine it closely enough. This Eastern front section. He and Vulkan were probably stationed in the same concentration camp unit, just as Vulkan says.’
‘I suppose he might,’ I said grudgingly. ‘It’s just that I was hoping for some big dramatic development.’
‘But you are always telling me not to hope for some big dramatic development,’ said Jean.
‘You don’t do as I do. Do as I tell you.’
Jean pulled a face at me and read the message through again. ‘Do you want me to check his records through for any mention of Vulkan?’ I hesitated. ‘Things are very quiet just now,’ Jean said. ‘I’m having my hair done twice a week.’
‘If you will find Mohr’s file equally therapeutic, go ahead,’ I said. ‘I’ll be happy to give an authorization for the records clerk.’
‘See how your plant has grown,’ said Jean. ‘All that part there is new leaf.’
I took Jean to lunch at the Trattoria Terrazza where we had lunched the first day we met. We sat in the swish downstairs room and drank Campari sodas and I threw my waistline to the wind and had a vast portion of lasagne and followed it with chicken Kiev. Franco the proprietor brought us grappa with the coffee and we sat and talked about Soho and about Billy Big and Harry the Hanger Man and what the cross-eyed man from the fish shop shouted at the traffic warden. I leaned back and surveyed the empty wine bottles and the full ashtrays and wondered how I could get a job as a Michelin Guide inspector.
‘You wouldn’t like it,’ Franco said.
‘Wouldn’t he?’ said Jean. ‘You don’t know him.’
I just sat there smiling and fighting down the belches. There is not much point in going back to the office at 4.30 P.M. so I took Jean to see a film that the Sundays said was a poetical experience. All I got out of it was cramp.
Jean was being motherly. She had bought a bag of groceries in Soho and we went back to her flat in Gloucester Road after the pictures and cooked them.
Jean’s flat is as draughty as a lettuce basket. We went into the kitchen and sat there with the oven full on and the oven door open, beating eggs and boiling artichokes while Jean read the directions from a cooking article in the Observer. I had just begun to warm up a little when the phone went. Jean answered but it was for me.
‘Been trying to get you since four o’clock this afternoon,’ the Charlotte Street switchboard said petulantly.
‘I was in the toilet,’ I said.
‘It’s the DST1 Bordeaux office. You don’t have a scrambler there, I suppose, sir?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This is Miss Tonnesson’s private number.’
‘Then when I reconnect with your Bordeaux party I shall have to scramble here and put it through to you in clear.’
‘OK,’ I said, but apparently I wasn’t being appreciative enough.
‘It’s against orders really, sir. You should come to the nearest phone with a scrambler: that’s the instructions. It’s only because I’ve spoken with the Fremantle exchange supervisor and had him handle the call personally that I can risk it.’
‘Well, it’s certainly very kind of you to do that for me. I’ll certainly be most discreet in my conversation.
’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, sir. I’m only doing my job.’
I said nothing and there was a series of noises as Charlotte Street hooked itself into the official Government cross-Channel phone cable. Suddenly there was a din of unscrambled noise before Charlotte Street switched the scrambler into the circuit, then Grenade’s voice said ‘…lucky to do it. However you’ll just have to rely on Albert’s memory. You hear me OK?’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’
‘If he enters France again we will arrest him,’ said Grenade.
‘The hell you will,’ I said. ‘On what charge?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Grenade. ‘Until we spoke together, your friend was just a name buried deep in our files. Just someone we were interested in; but if he comes back again we will charge him with terrorism and murder and I daresay we will be able to find a few war crimes if we dig around carefully.’
‘Can you be a little more explicit?’ I asked.
‘I’m sending you the usual written sheet,’ said Grenade.
‘But who did he murder?’ I asked, ‘and when?’
‘End of 1942, he murdered a member of the Vichy Government,’ said Grenade.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because he was in the FTP,’2 said Grenade. ‘It was a political assassination.’