Riptide

by Lawton, John

  Cal told him.

  For several minutes Thesiger sat in silence, slowly finishing his sandwiches.

  Then he said, ‘You say he felt nothing?’

  ‘I think he died instantly.’

  Thesiger thought for a while.

  ‘This is tricky. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but could Walter’s death have been avoided?’

  ‘If I’d got there on time.’

  ‘No, no. I don’t mean in terms of such detail. And please don’t start blaming yourself. I mean, as simply as I can put it, did my colleagues throw Walter away?’

  ‘Squadron Leader, right now I’m not the greatest fan of your colleagues. The Special Branch treated me like a criminal. If this were the USA I could cite you the clauses in the Bill of Rights they violated. But as you don’t have a bill of rights, let’s say they treated me like shit and leave it at that. But your more secret colleagues have given me the runaround from the moment I got here. Reggie’s a decent guy, I’m sure, but he feels no obligation to share anything with me and certainly not to tell me the truth. Since I got here I’ve been expecting to see a nation locked into total war – what have I seen? Playboys who know where the Krug ’20is always to be found. Society women playing at being interim cops while they wait for the next London Season – or serving sherry and smoked salmon in East End shelters . . . old generals lost to the present in re-living old battles . . . I could go on, but we’ll take it as read. England shocks me. They talk the war, they live the war, but they don’t seem to know it’s happening. The worst things happen – the Hood going down, dammit even the sinking of the Bismarck – and still something in England is unmoved by this. Some eternal core is unchanged. The crassest, the stupidest things happen . . . but throwing away Walter wasn’t one of them. I can’t blame your people for that. I’d love to, but it was my people killed Walter. There are moments I wish they’d killed me instead.’

  Thesiger thought about this too. Where Reggie would have an answer on the tip of his tongue, Thesiger seemed to have to ruminate.

  ‘You’re right. Of course. The worst things happen. I don’t know whether the English were unmoved by the death of all those German sailors. You might say they were already numbed by the loss of the Hood. Perhaps you could say we accepted the necessity. What I saw was not celebration, it was acceptance. Personally, I was moved. You may have noticed, I’ve a German surname.’

  Cal hadn’t noticed, but if he thought about it he supposed Thesiger might be as German as Reininger or Shaeffer or von Schell – his grandmother’s maiden name.

  ‘I had second and third cousins fighting on the other side in the last war,’ Thesiger went on. ‘And doubtless their children fight me in this. But don’t underestimate us. It is, as you so rightly say, total war. Deep down the English know this. Deep down, that’s why we’ll win.’

  Cal forced down a whole triangle of surf and turf, just to be polite.

  ‘You say your nanny taught you how to make these?’

  ‘Yes – doubtless another English indulgence, another denial of reality – this fondness for nursery food.’

  ‘Walter had a thing about spotted dick.’

  ‘Ah, my dear chap – the hymns I could sing you in praise of spotted dick . . .’

  Cal let him. It was their wake for Walter Stilton.

  § 91

  Stahl was shaving. The dye in his hair would take weeks to grow out. The shaved patches at the forehead just as long. The moustache could come off now. He shaved blind, eyes closed, feeling for the bristles with his fingertips, braille-tracing. He had managed not to look in a mirror since they brought him in. Now, the moustache gone, he opened his eyes, saw a face in the mirror he could not recognise, and the presence or absence of a moustache seemed to have nothing to do with it. He did not know this man. He reminded him of someone he once knew years ago before . . . before all this nonsense began. A talented Viennese youth, a bit gawky, with blowaway, fine blond hair and bright blue eyes, who had played piano with an occasional quintet at school, made up of the school’s usual string quartet and him. Schubert. Always the Schubert. The school’s principal insisted on hearing it every year. He tried to think when he had last played the Schubert Trout Quintet in A. 1927 or ’28 perhaps – and when had he last seen any of the quartet? That required no thought, he knew that. It had been in the March of 1938 – he had seen Turli Cantor, second violin, scrubbing flagstones with a brush in the gutters of Vienna. Vienna – her greatest son Franz Schubert. Dead at thirty-one. Stahl was thirty-one.

  § 92

  When Cal got back to the hospital Stahl was dressed. Someone had brought him his suit, cleaned and pressed. He sat, jacketless, in a starched white shirt upon the window-sill looking out at the Thames, his image all but bleached out to Cal’s eyes by the searing glare of June light through the open window.

  Stahl said, ‘I can read it in your face. You are not happy.’

  ‘I thought it would be crucial,’ Cal said. ‘I thought this was vital – everything they’ve been chasing these last few weeks.’

  ‘And?’ said Stahl.

  ‘And they’re in huddles. They’re cutting me out again. They’re not jumping for joy, they’re not even openly analysing what you said. They’re . . . goddammit, they’re playing cloak and dagger.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Calvin.’

  ‘I’m not. I know what my eyes tell me.’

  ‘I meant – what else could you expect? They’re English, secrecy is their nature. And if it were not, it is, is it not, our trade? To expect anything else from them is stupid.’

  ‘You’ve just handed them a gem – Jeez, that’s understatement. You’ve given them information that could save thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands of lives.’

  Stahl seemed so calm, so unruffled by all this. ‘No it won’t,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Stahl shrugged.

  ‘Is there such a thing as a secret? Ruthven-Greene may have feigned surprise at what I knew about him, but he knows just as much about me. I have told the English what they already knew. I doubt it was more than that. The detail, yes, the fine print of battle formation, yes . . . the fundamental truth, no . . . I think you have a saying in English, “the world and his wife”? . . . Let us update it for our time, the world and his ragtag army of camp-following, light-fingered, cut-purse, throat-slitting whores know that Russia is going to be invaded. What, then, have I given the English?’

  ‘The time, the place, the battle order. Enough for the Red Army to prepare.’

  ‘And you think that will save a single life? You think you and I can save a single life? Could you save Walter Stilton?’

  ‘No . . . but . . .’

  ‘No buts – you were not there to save Walter. Calvin, believe me, I have been there and I still could not save a life.’

  Cal waited. He did not know what to say to this. He hoped Stahl would go on.

  ‘It was three years ago – and I tell you not because it is the only time I have seen life slip through my fingers – but because it was the most vivid, the closest. After the Anschluss I went into Austria with Hitler. I was favoured. A fellow Austrian, he wanted me to feel the thrill of the joining together of the two Germanys. It was a privilege. Heydrich told me so himself,the Führer had asked for me personally. I was in a good position. I was alone with him half a dozen times. I could have shot him like a mad dog on any one of a dozen occasions. I did not. It was not my role. My role was to learn all I could and feed it back to you or someone like you. A few days later – March 19th to be precise, I cannot forget the date – I decided to walk in the old neighbourhood. The SS had Jews on their hands and knees scrubbing the pavements. At first I looked in the crowd to see if I knew any of those onlookers, the passively guilty. I did not. Then one of the Jews looked up. He knew me at once and I him. A schoolfriend from the twenties. At first I thought the moment would pass like a secret between us, but then he rose up cried “Wolf ”. Took a step towar
ds me. And an SS trooper shot him dead. Then the man holstered his gun, turned the body over with the toe of his boot and saluted me. I returned the salute and walked away. I have never been able to walk away from Turli Cantor since. His “Wolf ” meant “save me”. I didn’t have the chance, and if I had I would no more have done it than I would have shot Hitler. Now, Calvin, do you understand what I’m saying? Could I save Turli Cantor? Could we either of us save Walter Stilton? Do you really think you will spare the life of a single Russian soldier?’

  Cal felt swamped, buried alive in the torrent Stahl had unleashed upon him.

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Would I have been the better man if I had dropped the pretence and stepped in to save the life of Turli Cantor? If I had been for once the man I thought I was, not the man I pretended to be? Are we any of us who we think we are? Or do we become who we pretend to be? Pretence is the dangerous game.’

  ‘Jeezus . . . I . . .’

  Cal turned to look into the room. The light from the window was too bright. He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose where they pinched. He pulled his feelings together and looked to Stahl again.

  ‘Wolf?’

  Stahl had vanished. Cal rushed to the window. Stahl was falling without a murmur, eyes wide, looking back at Cal, arms outspread like Christ crucified, falling to earth.

  § 93

  They – whoever they were – Cal was no longer sure whether he was at the beck and call of his own people or the British – they kept him waiting. He passed the time scanning the Herald, The Times and the Manchester Guardian. How did the British manage to keep things so secret? A man jumps to his death from a window smack dab in the middle of London – and no-one records the fact, no newspaper so much as hints at it. Whatever else it was – class-bound, dank, obsessive – Britain was, above all, a secret society – Stahl had been right about that – and that, he thought, had little to do with the war. That was simply the way they were.

  He placed a bet with himself that when someone finally shoved the door open it would be Ruthven-Greene, with a bullshitting yarn to spin him. It wasn’t. It was Gelbroaster.

  ‘Son,’ he said simply. ‘Mind if I pull up a chair?’

  They were both on foreign territory.

  ‘Be their guest,’ said Cal.

  The general smiled at this. Lowered himself into the only other chair in the room with an old man’s sigh, rested his hands a moment on his knees, then sat back. Rolled an unlit cigar between his fingers. Thought better of it. Stuck it back in his top pocket.

  ‘You’ve done a man’s job, my boy. They found pages and pages of notes in Stahl’s room – he’d filled a legal pad. The British are well pleased.’

  ‘You know, sir,’ said Cal, ‘I can hear the “but” coming.’

  ‘But . . . there are one or two chiggers in the shoo-fly pie.’

  It was a Stilton moment without Walter. Cal had always half felt that Walter made up some of his English turns of phrase. He was damn sure Gelbroaster had just made up an American one.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The information you unearthed about the Soviet Union is . . . prickly.’

  ‘Prickly?’

  ‘Spiky as a saguaro in the Arizona desert. How we, how they, use it is going to be a delicate matter. Kind of thing you only pull out with tweezers.’

  Gelbroaster was labouring the point. Cal already had the message.

  ‘You mean they’re not going to tell the Russians.’

  Gelbroaster looked faintly surprised at this.

  ‘Perceptive of you. But yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The decision’s been taken. What you and Reggie found out will be kept a secret. Wasn’t my decision, you understand. But I’m going to go along with it.’

  ‘Who’s decision was it?’

  ‘Churchill’s.’

  ‘Are we bound by what the British do? The Germans have three million men poised to rip all hell out of Russia – and we’re not going to tell them?’

  ‘If it were up to me I would, but we’re in the army, we take orders. Churchill has spoken to the President. He’s the commander-in-chief, and his orders are we don’t tell ’em. I’ve never questioned a presidential order. I don’t intend to start now.’

  ‘And I don’t mean to question your orders either, sir. But they’re going to massacre the Russians and those they don’t massacre they’ll turn into slaves.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. But Churchill wants Russia in the war on his side. He wants no loophole that would let Stalin pull off one more deal with Hitler. It may sound heartless, but this way the Russian entry into the war is guaranteed.’

  Cal got out of his seat. Ready to leave.

  ‘Heartless? It’s murder!’

  Gelbroaster waved him back down.

  ‘Sit down and hold your fire, son. There’s more to come.’

  Cal stood.

  ‘Such as? I don’t see what more they can do. Walter Stilton died getting us that information. Stahl died for it, in his own mad way. I damn near got killed myself. And they’re just going to throw it away?’

  ‘Sit down.’

  Cal sat.

  ‘It’s this. With Stahl dead, your mission in Zurich is over. So we’re flying you back to Washington.’

  ‘You mean they’re flying me out of here because I know too much?’

  ‘Churchill insisted on it. He wants nothing to get out. Believe me, son, there’s no disgrace. There’s even a promotion. You’ll go home a major and there’ll be a good job for you at the War Department.’

  Gelbroaster paused.

  ‘And?’

  ‘This is the hard bit. You know who I mean by Fritz Kuhn?’

  ‘Sure, everybody’s heard of him. He led the German-American Bund. He got nailed for embezzlement about two years ago.’

  ‘His successor in the Bund was a guy named Wilhelm Kunze. Kunze fled to Mexico earlier this year and the Bund has kind of fallen apart. It’s no real threat to anyone any more. But – and this is a huge but – there’s no denying that a fifth column back home was a dangerous thing for a while. Mostly assholes who liked fancy uniforms and parading up and down doing idiotic salutes. Get ’em in every town, particularly when there’s nothing worth hunting and nothing much else to do. What mattered was who they’d got in power. Nobody much cared if a potato farmer from Idaho dressed up like a Nazi at the weekend – what mattered was who mattered. If you catch my drift. Feds have been trying to crack the Bund for a while. Pick up the messy trail Kuhn and Kunze left. Well, they finally got their hands on the Bund’s files. A lot of it’s coded, in a crude kind of way – fake names, that sort of thing, box numbers rather than real addresses, nothing a high school kid couldn’t crack overnight. Mostly it is potato farmers in Idaho – but it also seems fairly certain that they’ve identified Frank Reininger as a member.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Cal said softly. Then, ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘How long? Long enough to get me here and flush him out for you?’

  Gelbroaster drew a deep breath, his pace and his manner altering not one jot.

  ‘I know this has been a hard time for you. You’ve lost something very precious to you. I don’t doubt that after two years there was some sort of bond between you and Stahl, and it seems from all I’ve heard that you and the English cop were good friends, but the biggest loss is the loss of innocence. I think that’s what you’ve been through. The loss of innocence. But son, the biggest loss of innocence has got to be a refusal ever to believe in coincidence again. I didn’t get you here to flush out Frank. If I’d known or even suspected Frank was working for the Germans I’d’ve busted him myself. Believe me, you did a great job in catching up with him, but neither I nor Deke Shaeffer had any idea that it was Frank you were after.’

  Cal felt almost chastened – but not quite.

  ‘But I’m still being sent home?’

  ‘’Fraid so, and there’s more. We’re fairly certain that your
father had links with the Bund too.’

  Cal whispered ‘What?’, his voice buried somewhere in the back of his throat.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t mince words, dammit. Son, he was a paid-up member, he donated funds, he fed them information. Now that’s about as plain as I can tell it.’

  Cal found it hard to be outraged, but disbelief came readily.

  ‘My father supports America First, plenty of people do, patriotic people do – and even then he does it low key – he’s never spoken on their platform as far as I know. He writes speeches for Lindbergh. He gives the idiot the facts and the arguments he needs to address an audience and be taken seriously. General, that’s one hell of a way from joining the Bund.’

  ‘And he thinks there’s a conspiracy between Churchill and Roosevelt to bring America into this war by any reasonable pretext.’

  ‘By any reasonable pretext.’ The phrasing was too close, too accurate. It had stuck in Cal’s mind too.

  ‘You’ve been intercepting my mail?’

  ‘’Fraid so. Necessity. But there you are.’

  ‘Sir, that’s just my father being cranky. He sees conspiracies everywhere. Given his opposition to the war, he’s bound to see one between the Prime Minister and the President.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Gelbroaster. ‘And he’s absolutely right. There is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I doubtthey callita conspiracy.Personally . . .ifthe capfits wear it . . . in effect . . . what your father perceives is exactly what is happening. Right now we’re looking out for that reasonable pretext.’