The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland

  ‘You can tell that just from looking at the key impressions?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, with a little assistance. Yes, certainly.’

  ‘What makes it interesting?’

  ‘The Twenty-Oh-Seven is a small wall safe, but quite expensive. It is made to be secured in the wall with long tamper-proof bolts and, if one wishes, a poured concrete footing. You cannot expect to merely break it out of the wall and remove it to be opened at your leisure. And even should you succeed it would do you little good. The box is of special alloy steel and the locking mechanism itself is complex, involving both a key and a combination.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said.

  ‘Also,’ he indicated the wax impressions with a pencil point, ‘do you see those little nibs along the side of the key?’

  She leaned over. ‘No,’ she said.

  He readjusted the light.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Those tiny bumps? I see them now.’

  ‘Bumps in the wax,’ Isaac said, ‘depressions in the key.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘This part of the key, the part that goes into the lock cylinder, is called the “blade”.’ He ran an illustrative pencil point along the length of the wax impression. ‘There are usually one or two grooves that run the length of the blade, as you can see. The small depressions in the blade are called “nibs”, and are a unique feature of Rabson locks. In this model there are usually three of them, two on one side and one on the other. The edge of the blade,’ he traced along the side of the blade, ‘is called the “bit” and the notches in it are called “bites” or, for some reason, “bittens”. They are very precisely cut. In a Rabson, if they are off by some small fraction of a millimeter the key will not work. And the bites alone are not enough. The nibs must also be precisely in the right place. The key blank is a special design that can only be supplied by Rabson and is of a non-standard thickness. And they never sell the blank, only the finished key. The Two Thousand series are all protected in this fashion. If you need a duplicate you call them and tell them the serial number of the safe and give them the unique identifying word picked by you when you bought the safe. They send the new key to you by courier, and you must sign for it and show identification.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Yes,’ Isaac agreed. ‘If you have that among your possessions which you would conceal or safeguard, I would recommend the Rabson.’

  ‘Then you cannot open it? Then I gave my body for nothing?’

  He looked up at her with a bemused expression. ‘Gave your body?’

  She smiled an unreadable smile. ‘So to speak,’ she said.

  Isaac raised his eyebrows and lowered his head to look at her over his glasses, a gesture that gave him a distinct owl-like expression. After a moment he pushed the glasses up on his nose and returned his gaze to the compact. ‘Your, ah, sacrifice, whatever it may have been, was not in vain,’ he said. ‘The wax impressions look very clear, and I should be able to duplicate the key.’

  ‘Oh good,’ she said.

  ‘But you will not have it with you on your return trip this evening. It will take some time.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Well.’ He considered. ‘I have to ever so carefully make a mold from your impressions. Then I must find a suitable blank of a non-magnetic metal and do a bit of shaving and filing and punching and clipping and muttering in a foreign language under my breath. So it will be a few days before the key is ready.’

  ‘What language?’ she asked.

  ‘How’s that? Oh. Take your pick: French, German, Yiddish, Arabic, Russian, Lithuanian …’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I do not jest about epithets, they are a serious matter and must be judiciously chosen. Most people have a limited and paltry selection, and their speech is the poorer for it.’

  ‘No, I mean … Lithuanian?’

  ‘Indeed. The native tongue of some three million people. A noble language from a country with a noble history. In the fourteenth century, under Grand Duke Vytautas the Great, the territory of Lithuania encompassed much of what is now European Russia.’

  ‘Say something to me in Lithuanian.’

  Isaac considered. ‘Tewe musu kursey esi danguy. Szweskis wardas Tawo,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘I could not shock your shell-like ears and despoil your innocence with a direct translation,’ Isaac told her. ‘When will you need the key? Do you have someone who can manage the combination? Or would you wish me to do the, ah, job?’

  ‘Yourself?’ she asked, sounding a little surprised.

  ‘Why not? Am I, perhaps, too old?’

  ‘Of course not!’ she declared. ‘But too valuable perhaps. If you should get caught …’

  He shrugged. ‘It would not be the end of the world. I have a very good lawyer, and he has had little to do these past few years as I have never been arrested or even, I believe, suspected of a crime.’

  ‘Still …’

  ‘And I like to keep my hand in. One can’t go around telling others how to do something if one won’t do it himself. So say I.’

  ‘It’s in an embassy in Washington. The safe, I mean.’

  ‘I suspected as much.’

  ‘At least I believe it is.’

  ‘You don’t know where the safe is?’

  ‘Well, the key is kept on a chain around the neck of an embassy official, so I assume the safe is in the embassy. I could be mistaken, but where else it might be I couldn’t begin to guess.’

  ‘Ah! Then let us hope you won’t have to. Have you access to this embassy? As a legitimate visitor, I mean?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Then let us discuss where such a safe might be concealed and how to best go looking for it.’

  ‘Let us do that.’

  SEVEN

  The very first essential for success

  is a constant and regular employment of violence.

  – Adolf Hitler

  Major Sir Henry Cardine stared glumly around at his room. The Hotel Kaiserhof, he decided, was no longer what the Hotel Kaiserhof had once been. After six decades as Berlin’s crème de la crème hotel, home from home of passing royalty, the cream was beginning ever so slightly to sour. His room might be that of the aging maiden aunt of a minor noble, with green flocked wallpaper that was shifting gradually toward brown and furnishings that Victoria would have found a bit stuffy. The hotel staff seemed to have calcified with age into attitudes of fawning obsequiousness or sneering snobbishness, depending on the guest’s perceived social status. Next trip, Sir Henry decided, if there were a next trip, he would stay at the Adlon or the Esplanade.

  To add to his current displeasure, the Kaiserhof seemed to be infested with Nazi functionaries. Well, it was right across from the old Reichskanzlei, and Field Marshal Göring had been married here two years ago, so its popularity with the Party faithful was probably understandable. But he felt a strong distaste for the toad-faced self-important little men who infested the lobby, heil-ing Hitler every time they paused for breath. And the earnest blond youths with their slicked-back hair and their air of self-confidence, as though they had done something clever by being born, running about on errands of the utmost importance and looking at one as though one were some sort of insect as they strutted past. Need a good thrashing, Sir Henry thought. And then, as the thought broadened in his mind, Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Not again.

  Sir Henry stared absently out his fourth-floor window at the vague expanse of Wilhelmplatz below as he buttoned up his waistcoat and adjusted his cravat. It was mid-morning of a chilly overcast Tuesday in late March, and he could barely make out the massive Chancellery behind its tall gates on the far side of the Platz. All he could see through the mist were the rows of long red banners bearing the omnipresent black on white Hakenkreuze hanging every twenty feet or so from the surrounding buildings or from thirty-foot-tall flagpoles boxing the park.
The Nazi Party, Sir Henry thought, must provide employment for a legion of flag makers.

  A tall man in his mid-forties with graying hair, a pencil mustache, and the erect bearing of a career soldier, which indeed he had been until two years before, Sir Henry had returned to Berlin as a representative of Eclipse Records, whose managing director had decided that a good classical music portfolio might be obtained cheaply from Wannesfrei Grammophon or Herzo Records, both companies having Jewish owners or directors. Since the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 it was clear that being a Jew in Nazi Germany was not a long-term proposition. If Sir Henry could scoop up the contracts before the Nazis got around to scooping up the directors, this would be the bee’s knees or the cat’s whiskers, or some other expression of approval which was twenty years out of date by the time the managing director got around to using it.

  Not that Sir Henry knew anything about classical music, or the recording industry, or negotiating contracts, but he had once been stationed in Berlin and he had Eton and Oxford and the Welsh Guards behind him, and if a man with that background couldn’t do anything he put his hand to, then what was it bally well all about anyway? Or so thought the managing director, who was married to Sir Henry’s sister.

  Berlin had become a gray city. When last he was here – when was it, 1932? Six years ago? – the city had been infused with a desperate flamboyance. Let us live for today, was the motto. Yesterday was shit and tomorrow – who knows what might happen tomorrow?

  Well, tomorrow had arrived, with its swastikas and Hitler Youth corps and the Brownshirts in their hobnail jackboots roaming the streets like packs of jackals, breaking store windows, overturning pushcarts and stalls, and beating up Jews and Communists and homosexuals and anyone who got in their way. When his business here was done he would be happy to get back to London.

  Shrugging into his suit jacket and donning his light brown trench coat, he stared thoughtfully into space for a long minute before sliding his precisely furled umbrella through the straps of his briefcase, tucking the briefcase under his arm, settling his black bowler precisely on his head, leaving his room, and bypassing the lift to trot down the four flights of stairs to the lobby. The concierge gave a bow precisely calibrated to Sir Henry’s perceived importance, and murmured, Guten Morgen, Herr Major Cardine as he passed. He nodded back, nodded at the doorman, gave a shake of his head to the cabman to show he didn’t need a cab today, and crossed the street to enter the Platz.

  Sir Henry was undecided. Should he head for the U-Bahn station on the far side of the park, or should he just walk the twenty or so blocks to his meeting? The U-Bahn would get him there quickly but he was in no particular hurry, would probably stop for coffee anyway. Perhaps …

  As he passed the statue of Prince Leopold, a tall man leaning against the granite base of the statue called to him in English, ‘Major Cardine! Over here, Major Cardine!’ The voice was soft but carried a certain urgency to it.

  Sir Henry turned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Could you please step over here for the moment, if you would be so kind? I would speak with you.’

  The man was well dressed, but not like a businessman. Like an artist perhaps, with a long jacket of the sort one pictures an artist wearing and a floppy hat, not exactly a beret but wider and floppier. Not a threatening look. Sir Henry walked toward him. ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘No, Herr Major, but we have friends in common.’ The man moved over to one of the park benches and sat down. ‘Join me over here if you would, so we can speak quietly. I have something of the utmost import that I would discuss with you.’

  ‘Really?’ Sir Henry suddenly thought he had guessed the man’s game. He was going to ask him for money. ‘The utmost importance, eh?’ he asked, venturing a tight little smile.

  ‘Even so,’ the man assured him.

  As Sir Henry approached the bench, a man in a light brown trench coat suddenly appeared from around the far side of the statue and started walking hurriedly across the Platz toward the Chancellery. For a second Sir Henry was startled, fearing, he didn’t know what, some sort of trap? But the man in the trench coat showed no interest in him as he scurried past.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ the man said. ‘I will be brief.’

  Sir Henry sat on the corner of the bench and looked the man over. ‘And just who are you?’ he asked after a moment.

  The man thought this over for a long minute. ‘You may call me Felix,’ he said finally.

  ‘Felix,’ Sir Henry said, setting his briefcase on his lap and folding his hands over it. ‘And what is your story, Felix?’

  ‘Yes,’ Felix said, ‘I suppose I do have what you might call a story. And assuredly you shall hear it.’ He paused, perhaps gathering his thoughts.

  ‘You speak English well,’ Sir Henry said for lack of anything more interesting to say.

  ‘Yes,’ Felix nodded, obviously pleased at the observation. ‘I attended Cambridge for two years. That was many years ago, before the World War. I was an exchange officer, you might say. Some of your junior officers went to the University of Munich, I believe.’

  So Felix was military. Then he certainly wasn’t trying to borrow money – not from an Englishman. What, then? ‘I was in Heidelberg for almost a year,’ Sir Henry said.

  ‘Yes. So we understand.’

  ‘We?’

  Felix waved his hand. ‘No matter. We keep dossiers on all British officers. It is just good practice. You do the same about ours, I’m sure.’

  ‘Not that I know of.’ Sir Henry felt unaccountably annoyed. He rose. ‘I must go on. I have an engagement at the present time. If you wish to speak with me, I am staying at the …’

  ‘Yes. The Kaiserhof. Yes. Which is why I awaited you here instead of elsewhere.’ The man patted the seat. ‘Please, sit. I promise to be reasonably brief.’

  Sir Henry considered just walking away, but his curiosity overcame his ire. How did this man know his name, and who were ‘we’? Presumably the German army. But if so, what was their interest in him? And why the secrecy?

  ‘Did you know,’ Felix interrupted his thoughts, ‘that you’re being followed?’

  ‘Followed?’

  ‘Yes. By the Gestapo.’

  Sir Henry resisted the urge to look around. His overly logical mind clicked off objections. ‘How could you know that?’ he asked. ‘And why haven’t I seen them? And if they are following me, what’s the point of all this foofaddle?’ He paused and then added, ‘And why on earth would they be following me? Surely they have better things to do; arresting Communists, beating up Jews, and suchlike.’

  Felix smiled, evidently taking no offense at this description of his country’s secret police. ‘We like keeping track of foreigners in this New Germany,’ he said. ‘And besides, you’re a special case, are you not?’

  ‘What in the world,’ asked Sir Henry, ‘would make me a special case?’

  ‘Well, you are Military Intelligence, nicht wahr?’

  ‘I’m what?’

  ‘Oh, come off it. After almost twenty years in the British army you suddenly and unaccountably retire and take a job beneath your social station, and one that just happens to take you to Berlin? I mean …’

  ‘I see,’ Sir Henry said. ‘So you think—’

  Felix shrugged. ‘It was not a difficult conclusion.’

  ‘But in this case utterly mistaken, I assure you,’ Sir Henry said. ‘Perhaps the social standing of a career army major is not as high in Britain as it might be over here,’ he added with a wry smile. ‘I am what you see. My mufti is genuine, I assure you.’

  ‘Ah,’ Felix said thoughtfully. ‘But of course you would say that in any case.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it will not matter.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We have at most half an hour, I think. I must not be seen talking with you, it would not be healthy.’

  ‘Healthy for whom?’ Sir Henry asked.

  ‘For me certainly. Perhaps also for you.’

  Sir Henry ventured a cautious look around. ‘But … If the
Gestapo are indeed watching …’

  ‘They are, at the moment, distracted,’ Felix told him. ‘When you left the hotel and started across the park their man in the hotel alerted your watchers and they were waiting for you on the far side of the Platz by the Chancellory. They are in a green Opel Olympia.’

  ‘But when I don’t show up …’

  ‘Ah, but you have already showed up, and they are at this moment following you. As you are on foot, they have one man half a block behind you and a second driving the car perhaps a block behind him. I know this because it is procedure.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Of course you are puzzled. How, you ask, can you be walking down Wilhelmstrasse and at the same time be here speaking with me? The explanation is simple. There are at the moment two Major Cardines. One of them is here speaking with me, while the other is walking at a leisurely pace down the Strasse. When he reaches the Café Karpinski he will seat himself and order a kaffe mit schlag, with or without a pastry, and purchase a copy of the Berliner Tageblatt.’

  ‘Really?’ Sir Henry asked, and then it came to him. ‘That man – the one who left as you spoke with me …’

  ‘Indeed,’ Felix agreed. ‘Brown covert coat, black bowler hat, regimental tie, carrying a briefcase much like yours with an umbrella tightly furled and thrust between its straps. Your doppelgänger for certain. Although I believe his ears are larger than yours. Also the tie is of the wrong regiment, but the Gestapo will most assuredly not be aware of this.’

  ‘You were prepared for this? To meet me like this?’

  ‘It was not difficult. The most problem was the bowler – they are not so popular here.’

  ‘You watched me, to learn my movements?’

  ‘No, we are not the Gestapo. We merely sat in the hotel lobby to see how you dressed and, perhaps, managed to read an official report on how you spent your day.’