Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  “Oh … I just wondered who paid for the champagne, that’s all.”

  “Oster is enormously practical,” Canaris told Christian. “After I’ve done something he tells me whether or not it’s possible, the man’s invaluable, without Oster I’d be helpless.” He lifted the coffee pot and found it empty.

  “Who did pay?” Oster asked.

  “She did. Famous actress, worth millions. Besides, I was unconscious. Splendid fellow,” he said as Oster carried the coffee pot into the kitchen.

  Christian was amused by the Admiral’s chatter and impressed by his suit, which was gray flannel, double-breasted, sleekly tailored. Canaris seemed to him enviably polished and elegant, not like a sailor at all, too slim, his face too lively, his voice too rich and varied. He made Christian feel like a scruff; but a favorite scruff. “I’ve been thinking about that bottle of disinfectant,” Christian said. “It doesn’t seem quite right.”

  “You’re right, it doesn’t. And I’ll tell you something else …” Canaris ate a piece of sliced salami. “I’ve been thinking about the lavatory, and that seems all wrong.”

  “Too public,” Christian said.

  “Far too public”

  “Unless, of course, Adler didn’t plan it, he just acted spontaneously. Impetuously.”

  “That’s even worse.”

  “I agree, sir. But I think it’s what happened: Adler saw his chance and grabbed the nearest weapon. Whereas if he’d used his brains and done it properly, he’d have hit me with the marble ashtray next to the hand-basins and I wouldn’t be here now.”

  “Big ashtray?”

  “Like a soup bowl.”

  “Ah.” Canaris touched the scar on his forehead with the tip of his little finger. “I didn’t really get this from a champagne bottle, you know. I just said that to tease Oster. I fell down a companionway when I was a midshipman. So the question is …” Oster came in with a fresh pot of coffee. “What is the question, Oster?”

  “Was Adler really working for the SD, and if so why did they let him make such a hash of a simple murder, and if not who was he working for and why did they kill him, since he obviously didn’t die of a heart attack?”

  “No, no, no. That’s not the question at all.” Canaris took a cup of coffee and perched on the arm of a settee. “I mean, it might be the second, third or fourth question but it’s not the first. The first question is why did the SD—assuming Adler was working for the SD—want Christian dead? What were they hoping to achieve?”

  Christian opened his mouth to speak and then decided to eat a piece of toast instead. He had been going to say that Adler’s purpose was to discredit the Eldorado Network, which had been his, Christian’s, creation. But of course, Eldorado wouldn’t go out of operation just because its creator died. Christian felt a slight flush of shame at his own vanity, and hid behind his napkin.

  “Suppose,” Oster said, “just suppose that we’ve been misreading the SD’s motives. Perhaps they weren’t acting from rivalry or professional jealousy, you know. Just knocking us down to make them look bigger. Perhaps they’re scared of something that Eldorado is reporting.”

  Canaris rolled his eyes until they looked at the ceiling. “Well,” he said.

  Christian waited, but apparently that word was both the beginning and the end. “Doesn’t seem very likely, does it?” Christian said. “I can’t imagine Eldorado’s stuff making anyone sweat in the SD.”

  “I can,” Canaris said.

  “So can I,” Oster said. “Remember Hasselmann?”

  The name rang a faint, cracked bell in Christian’s memory. He thought hard. Arno Hasselmann. Some sort of scandal in … Where was it? Denmark? Belgium? “Hasselmann the Gauleiter?” he said.

  “Hasselmann the ex-Deputy Gauleiter. He shot himself six months ago in Rotterdam.”

  “Yes, of course. Some sort of scandal. He’d been taking bribes.”

  “Oh, they all take bribes,” Canaris said. “Bribes don’t count anymore.”

  “It was what he was doing with the money,” Oster said. “Nobody minded if he wanted to dress up in women’s silk underwear, I’m told it’s very comfortable, but he shouldn’t have collected such a harem of pretty, blond Dutch boys. It was unpatriotic. There are still plenty of good-looking blond German lads available.”

  “You know how people gossip,” Canaris said. “It even reached the Japanese embassy in Helsinki. One of our Swedish agents mentioned it in a signal. The SD were furious when they heard about that. It made them look so stupid, you see. They can’t stand looking stupid. Terribly sensitive lot, the SD. They’d have shot the agent if they could.”

  “Eldorado hasn’t reported anything remotely like that,” Christian said.

  “I know. Oster has been up all night, going through the files. Which leads us to examine Theory B.”

  “Theory B,” Oster said, “is that Adler did not bash you over the head on orders from his masters in the SD, but panicked for reasons we may never know.”

  “But if the SD didn’t know what he was up to,” Christian said, “why did they kill him?”

  “Right first time,” Canaris said. “So out of the window goes Theory B. Theory C says that Adler penetrated Madrid Abwehr on behalf of the SD but then got mixed up with yet another organization. The Czechs have an excellent network in Spain, for instance.” He meant the Czech government-in-exile. “And the Poles. Plus the Italians. Not to mention the Hungarians. But of course you know all this.”

  “Adler wasn’t the sort of man to let himself be recruited by a foreign agency,” Christian said. “I never liked him, but he was a thorough-going patriot, I’ll grant him that. Loyal to the core.”

  “Why have the Hungarians got spies in Spain?” Oster asked. “They’re supposed to be on our side.”

  Canaris blinked sadly. “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly,” he said. “Hungarians gotta steal secrets. It’s in their blood. Why didn’t you like Adler?” he asked Christian.

  “It was nothing personal, Admiral, at least not on my part. Adler became strangely jealous of Eldorado.” Christian rubbed his jaw: the two-day growth itched. “It affected his work, I had to step in and tell him not to be so stupid.” Christian suddenly wondered: Did I miss something? Adler was no fool. What could I have missed?

  “Jealous,” Canaris murmured. “How curious.”

  “Especially as Eldorado’s in England,” Oster said.

  “What I meant was,” Christian said, “jealous of his success.”

  Canaris said, “It doesn’t sound right, does it? If the SD infiltrated Adler into Madrid Abwehr, they’d want him to work hard and be trusted, not sit around brooding and sulking. Did he brood and sulk?”

  “Oh, endlessly.” A tiny idea formed at the back of Christian’s mind and rapidly grew. “Well … not endlessly. He was quite perky a week or two ago, but that was because he thought he’d found something not quite right in the Eldorado Network.”

  “Indeed?” Canaris said. “What, exactly?”

  “One of the sub-agents. Adler reckoned he was faking his intelligence.”

  “Which one?”

  “Damned if I can remember,” Christian said miserably. “There are ten or a dozen in the Network. Adler mentioned several names but only one that he could make any case against, and frankly I wasn’t paying much attention. I had more important things on my mind, and now this bang on the head hasn’t done my memory any good, so …” He shrugged, and busied himself with the last of his coffee. When he glanced up, Canaris and Oster were looking at each other.

  “It’s what I would do if I were running the SD,” Oster said.

  “What?” Christian asked.

  “Infiltrate the Eldorado Network,” Canaris told him. “What if Adler discovered that an Eldorado sub-agent is working for the SD? He tries to tell you but you send him away. Why would you do that? Adler can’t make sense of it. Then he suddenly thinks: maybe you, Christian, are on the SD payroll too! So now Adler is in real trouble, big danger, b
ecause you know that he knows. So he kills you. Or does his best.”

  “I see,” Christian said. “And who then kills Adler? The SD?”

  Canaris unexpectedly laughed. “You’re right. We end up with an SD man behind every lamppost. Absurd.” He looked at his watch. “I’m late. Look here: don’t give yourself a headache, but … try to remember that name.”

  They left. Christian lay on a couch and told his brain to project that name on to the ceiling. It projected many names, including those of pretty, adolescent girlfriends he had not thought of in twenty years; but not the name he wanted.

  It was snowing in Madrid.

  The snow clouds had hustled down from the Bay of Biscay until they hit the Guadarrama mountains and began to dump their load. Nearby Madrid, set in the high plateau of New Castile, rapidly turned white and, in the diplomatic district, the German embassy at No. 8 Calle de Fortuny, got rather more than its share.

  Brigadier Wagner stood on the balcony of the third-floor office he had taken over when Abwehr HQ in Berlin sent him to succeed Brigadier Christian. Wagner let the snow blow through the door and speckle the carpet. Flakes settled on his cheeks, his brow, his eyelids; he opened his mouth and tasted the snow on his tongue. Good stuff, crisp and clean. The skiing in the mountains would be excellent tomorrow. He was fit, he’d exercised regularly, and he had a new pair of skis, given to him on his last trip to Berlin by a cousin, a major who ran a unit that tested equipment for mountain troops. Wagner flexed his knees and swayed. Snowflakes pelted his face. In his imagination he was skiing like the wind.

  Behind him, voices mumbled and somebody coughed. Bloody Eldorado, Wagner thought. The only thing that stands between me and a week in the mountains is bloody Eldorado. He went inside and closed the window. “Anything new come in?” he asked.

  “Nothing, sir, I’m afraid,” said Otto Krafft.

  “Damn. What the hell’s happened to him?” Wagner took the chair at the head of the table. “He’s never done this before, has he?” He waved at the others to sit. “I’ve got better things to do than hang around waiting for Eldorado to deliver.”

  “Yes, sir?” Dr. Hartmann said.

  The others looked at him. Hartmann was small and wore rimless spectacles and he had never been known to laugh. If he smiled it was a thoughtful smile, as if someone had misplaced a decimal point and thus made a tiny, unintentional joke. He was the section’s technical expert, very good on things like radar and torque and low-temperature lubricants, but it was not like him to ask slightly provocative questions of the new boss.

  “What d’you mean, ‘yes sir?’” Wagner said gently.

  “What do I mean?” Hartmann nudged the papers in front of him, squaring them off. “My apologies. I assumed you were about to tell us what better things there are to be done.”

  “Well, you’ve all been here longer than I have. What d’you suggest?”

  “I suggest, sir,” said Otto Krafft, “that we sit tight for another forty-eight hours. I mean, there’s no need to panic yet.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Wagner said. “But when the need arrives I hope we shall all panic together, as one man. Teamwork counts, in panic as in all things, don’t you agree?” They grinned dutifully and were glad when he ended the meeting and went skiing. Too snide by half.

  “Eldorado has been silent for the best part of a week,” Freddy Garcia said. “Madrid Abwehr must be very worried. It’s essential we send them something meaty, damn quick.”

  “I’m flying out to Lisbon tonight,” Templeton said. “I’ll take it.”

  “Good,” Luis grunted. “You can write it too. What are these?”

  “English pork sausages,” Julie said.

  Luis cut one open and sniffed it. “A holy miracle!” he announced. “The pork has turned to bread!”

  “Have some bacon,” Templeton suggested. “I think you’ll find it attractively pork-flavored.”

  Luis took quite a lot of bacon and plenty of scrambled egg and began eating. “Scrumptious!” he said. “Yippee. Or is it yummee?” He looked at Garcia.

  “Yummee for grub, yippee for general high spirits.”

  “And yarooh?”

  “Yarooh indicates pain or dismay.”

  “No, no,” Templeton said. “Surely it’s cripes for dismay.”

  “Blimey!” Luis said. “Or do I mean crikey?”

  “He’s been reading The Adventures of Billy Bunter at Greyfriars School,” Julie said. “They all talk in code. That’s what appeals to him.”

  “A classic of English literature,” Templeton said. “It’s stiff with over-eating, beatings and hero-worship. I’m surprised it’s not a bestseller in Germany.”

  “Pass the butter,” Luis said.

  There was a fairly brittle silence while he buttered some toast. Templeton picked up crumbs with his fingertip and examined them for dangerous political tendencies. Garcia watched him, ready to offer a second opinion if asked. Luis munched.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea,” Julie said, “coming to England.” They all looked. “I mean, if he’s going to be permanently bloody temperamental about his work, I might just go home to the States.”

  She got up from the table and walked to the window. A little sunshine was leaking in, cautiously, as if this might be the wrong room. It touched her long black hair and found shades of the deepest red in it. Her hands were plunged in the patch pockets of her skirt and when she turned her face to the sky, she looked twenty-four going on sixteen. Luis, secretly watching her, remembered the first impression she had made on him, long ago in Madrid. With people milling around her, she had seemed to him totally calm and in control, like a leopard among some gazelle. She still did. He envied that strength.

  “Is it OK if I take a walk?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course it’s OK,” Garcia said. “Stay inside the estate, won’t you? There’s miles and miles of walks. You might find some chestnuts. We could roast them after dinner.”

  Luis cleared his throat. “The British must be in a pitiful condition if they have to scavenge for nuts.” He switched his glance from Garcia to Templeton and back.

  “Nice touch,” Templeton said.

  “I like it!” Garcia said. “Let’s use it. Let’s use it today! Where d’you want to work? The library? Good. Splendid. Let’s go.”

  Brigadier Wagner came back to Madrid after some very satisfactory skiing. He was tanned, clear-eyed, five pounds lighter and thoroughly at peace with himself. Now, as he rode up in the lift to his office on the seventh floor, he was looking forward to having his staff on the carpet and, when they admitted failure, pulling the carpet from beneath their feet for the pleasure of watching them bounce on their backsides. Then Richard Fischer met him and spoiled everything.

  “Eldorado has delivered,” Fischer said. “He’s had flu. That’s why we didn’t hear from him. It’s a big report, one of his biggest. Nearly all his network is involved—Seagull, Knickers, Pinetree, Nutmeg, the lot. We’re still working on it.”

  Fischer was a lanky, sandy-haired ex-journalist who had suffered under many editors; he was ready to smile if Wagner did; until then he kept his serious, professional face.

  Wagner took off his coat. “My office,” he said. “The whole team.” Already he had forgotten his disappointment.

  The gang trooped in and sat down: Fischer, followed by Otto Krafft, a trim, pleasant-looking, youngish man who was so blond that his eyebrows seemed almost silver; Franz Werth, pudgy in plus-fours and a cardigan; and Dr. Hartmann, the jacket of his dark blue suit thoroughly buttoned from top to bottom. All carried files and bundles of paper and large yellow legal notepads.

  “So,” Wagner said. “What’s new?”

  “The Yanks are restless,” Richard Fischer began.

  “That’s not new,” Wagner scoffed. “All Americans are congenitally restless. They can’t sit still for five minutes.”

  “Ah.” It was a tight, clipped sound: a note of punctuation. Fischer closed
his file. He put his pen away. He sat back and looked at Otto Krafft.

  “The French are suspicious,” Otto said. He waited three seconds, until Wagner’s mouth opened, and then added: “But there’s nothing new about that either.”

  “As for the Canadians,” Franz Werth said, “the Canadians are far from happy.” He cleared his throat. “As usual,” he said.

  “The Russians,” Dr. Hartmann announced. “What can one say about the Russians that has not been said before?” He made a weak, middle-aged gesture of despair. “Greedy and grasping, grasping and greedy.”

  Brigadier Wagner smiled. He had a good smile but it did nothing to these men. They sat and looked. None moved. There was nothing challenging or even questioning in their attitudes. They simply occupied their places and waited.

  “So this is what the great Eldorado report amounts to,” Wagner said, still smiling. He had been down a similar alley years before when he had been an amateur actor and the entire cast had taken a severe dislike to the director. At rehearsals, everyone did everything slightly wrong. The director raged, sulked and finally quit. Wagner learned then that even in a dictatorship you must lead by consent. He had forgotten this and they had now reminded him. “Tell me, Richard,” he said, “exactly how are the Yanks betraying their restlessness?”

  “Oh …” Fischer flicked through a few pages. “It’s probably not … I expect Pinetree just … I mean, this sort of thing’s happened before often enough, hasn’t it, Franz?”

  “Pinetree is like Nutmeg,” Franz Werth said. “He sings beautifully but on one note only.”

  “Same with Hambone,” Otto Krafft remarked. “Hambone’s on a par with Nutmeg, really.”

  “Seagull too,” Dr. Hartmann said.

  “Oh well …” Fischer studied the ceiling. “We all know about Seagull, don’t we?”

  “I sometimes wonder,” Dr. Hartmann said, “if Seagull hasn’t got more in common with Pinetree than Nutmeg.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” Krafft said. “I know just what you mean.”

  Werth raised a finger. “In a sense,” he suggested, “would it not be true to say that Seagull is to Pinetree as Nutmeg is to … Haystack?”