Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  The first customers drifted into the bar as the agents were finishing breakfast. Prison had taught Ferenc to eat quickly; he had cleared his plate twice and was now drinking Guinness and playing gin rummy with the boy when an old man with a nose like a potato and a mane of white hair sat beside them. “I’m Patrick Mooney,” he said. “Formerly harbormaster here.” They shook hands. “I expect you’ll be tourists?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s no such thing,” the boy said, busily improving his hand, “he says he’s a spy, and his name’s Frank Tickley.”

  “Ferenc Tekeli,” Ferenc said.

  “See?” the boy said.

  “You hold your peace, you little ruffian,” Mooney said. “What sort of a spy would go about telling the likes of you that he’s a spy? Have some sense, man.”

  “Is there anything for a spy to spy on here?” Ferenc asked.

  “There is, too. We had a German U-boat came into the bay just two months ago. And a big American bomber fell in a field not two miles from Ardnasodan the day after the races.”

  “And you told me nothing ever happened here,” Ferenc accused the boy. “Your glass looks seriously empty,” he said to Mooney. “What was in it?”

  “Guinness,” said Mooney.

  “Gin,” said the boy, fanning his cards on the table. “Now you owe me fivepence. So there!”

  At the other end of the bar, Laszlo was twitching with rage. “That Hungarian idiot is blind drunk!” he told Docherty and Stephanie. “He will ruin everything for all of us! Have you heard what he is saying?”

  Docherty nodded, and smiled. “This is Ireland,” he said. “Nothing is really serious in Ireland, you know. Ferenc isn’t really serious.”

  “Ferenc is turning into a disaster,” Stephanie said dourly.

  “So what? Jesus Christ, if all the disasters in Ireland were serious the entire bloody island would have sunk under the weight of its anxieties long ago. Now for God’s sake take a drink and cheer up. You both look as if you’ve wet your last pair of drawers.” Docherty walked away and left them.

  Laszlo did not cheer up. “This is not good enough,” he said. “Something will have to be done.”

  Julie had a longish list of comments, questions and proposals concerning Eldorado’s latest draft report. Luis and Freddy discussed them with her and Luis rewrote several passages. Most changes were in the interests of consistency: if Hambone had reported the disembarkation of a new American infantry division in Plymouth a week ago, it was time some other sub-agent noticed their arrival at a camp in Yorkshire or wherever. That sort of thing. After a couple of hours’ work, Freddy took the amended sheets away to be retyped. He was very pleased.

  Julie sorted out her notes, stapled them at the corner and tucked them away in a box file. Luis sat leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and watched her. When she stood he said, “Do you want me to apologize?”

  “Do you want to apologize?”

  The look on her face was something he had never seen before: remote, indifferent, almost blank. Yet the face was still wonderfully attractive. She blinked, and he tried to forget the face and organize an answer. “I was excited,” he said. “You know how it is when I’ve been writing, I sort of tend to lose control a little bit. Anyway, it was all a joke, wasn’t it?”

  “A joke,” she said, testing the word to see how it sounded.

  “Well …” Luis threw up his hands. “We’ve got to have some fun around this dump, haven’t we? Otherwise …”

  “You didn’t look too funny, standing in your socks. You looked like what you are, Luis: a typical man. You know what men want? You know what they all want from a woman? Someone to fuck, and someone to make sure they have clean clothes. Sex and socks. You don’t care a damn about me. You don’t even know who I am. As long as you get your sex and socks you’re happy.” Luis sat as stiff as a statue. Only his eyes flickered, and a flush darkened his olive cheeks.

  “What a rotten lot we are,” he said, trying to sound very casual, very English. “I wonder why you bother with us.”

  “Well, you can stop wondering,” she said. She picked up the box file and went out. Luis sat for a long time, rubbing one thumb against another until he made the skin sore, and stopped.

  Brigadier Wagner summed up by saying that this is war, and Otto Krafft before he could stop himself said, “What, another? We haven’t won the first yet.”

  “I can easily find you a role elsewhere if you find your work distasteful,” Wagner said, cleaning his fingernails with a spent match. “I’m told there are thrilling opportunities for ambitious young officers on the Russian Front.”

  “I spoke without thinking, sir,” Otto said.

  Only Wagner and Fischer had gone to Brest to see the agents off. They flew back to Madrid immediately afterward and Wagner

  called an 8 a.m. meeting in his office to discuss the startling news of Garlic’s treachery. It hit the other controllers very hard. Dr. Hartmann, who more than anyone had monitored Garlic’s reports and had drafted notes of thanks and encouragement, was almost in tears. “Pride, honor, trust, loyalty,” he whispered, “are they worth nothing anymore?”

  Otto Krafft feared that Garlic’s defection might have a contagious effect on the whole network. “How can we be sure that Garlic hasn’t gone around recruiting Knickers and Wallpaper and Nutmeg for the SD?” he asked.

  “Not Nutmeg,” Franz Werth said confidently. “Nutmeg commanded the Poona Horse in the 2nd Indian Cavalry Division. He wouldn’t trust a Venezuelan student from Glasgow, not for an instant. Nutmeg’s a man of honor.”

  “Besides,” Richard Fischer said, “none of the sub-agents knows each other. Only Eldorado knows them.”

  “So how did the SD manage to find Garlic?” Otto asked.

  “The most likely explanation,” Brigadier Wagner said, “is that Garlic has been supplying intelligence to some other agency; he’s been freelancing or moonlighting or whatever you care to call it, and the SD stumbled across him and realized they had a link with Eldorado and therefore a back door through which they could chuck a bomb into the Abwehr.” Wagner eased his backside, which was bruised from being bounced about on a steel seat throughout a very turbulent flight, and made his remark about this being war, which prompted Otto’s rash reply.

  “Getting rid of Garlic is only half the problem,” said Richard Fischer. “Garlic’s as good as dead. The big question is: how do we stop it happening again? How do we protect the network from the SD?”

  “Which means the SS, which means Himmler, which means also the Gestapo,” Dr. Hartmann said. His distress had gone, evaporated by the heat of his anger. If he had taken his glasses off, his eyes would have blazed; but without his glasses the world was a blur, and he couldn’t bring himself to blaze into a blur. “I am only saying what we are all thinking,” he added briskly.

  That produced a thoughtful silence. The SD held dossiers on every German of the slightest interest to Himmler, which certainly included all Abwehr personnel. Nobody in his right mind wanted an adverse note on his dossier. On the other hand, this Garlic business could put a blight on promotion prospects. It was tricky.

  “Any suggestions?” Brigadier Wagner asked.

  Everyone waited for everyone else. Finally, Franz Werth said, “I honestly don’t think this is our pigeon. I think it should be settled at the highest level.”

  “Canaris and Himmler aren’t on speaking terms,” Fischer said. “Canaris thinks Himmler’s a thug, and Himmler thinks Canaris is a damp handshake.”

  “One thing we can do,” Wagner said. “We can minimize the damage and maximize the gain. The SD want to sabotage Eldorado; fine, we’ll make damn sure that Eldorado is twice as useful as before.”

  “Himmler gives us shit and we use it as fertilizer,” Werth said.

  For the first time, Wagner smiled. Everyone smiled. “Start shoveling,” he said.

  Breakfast lasted so long that they missed the first train.

  This should hav
e been the 10:05 but the train from Dublin due at 9:35 was half an hour late so—as Old Mick explained to Laszlo—it left at 10:27 prompt after the driver had had his breakfast. The driver was a decent Christian man and who would deny him the right to a bacon sandwich and a pint of tea? It was a long way to drive a big heavy train from Dublin, and even further to drive it back, the way the weather was looking.

  The weather looked fine and bright, with small white clouds blowing across a scrubbed-blue sky like an archbishop’s laundry out to dry; but Laszlo let that pass. He had stumped out of the bar, silently furious at Ferenc (happily buying drinks for his many new friends) and Docherty (deep in conversation with a namesake who was sure they shared some cousins in Cork) and even Stephanie (half-asleep in a corner) and marched to the station. “When is the next train to Dublin?” he asked Old Mick.

  “Oh … midday, you know. One o’clock at the outside, God willing. That’s Dublin time, of course. Some people here still set their watches by Galway time, which is forty minutes late according to Dublin, although we like to think that Dublin’s forty minutes fast. Either way, you’ve time enough for a drink.”

  Laszlo gave him an English one-pound note. “Please inform me immediately the train arrives. Immediately.”

  “I’ll do better than that,” Old Mick said, “I’ll come with you now. I fancy a small glass meself.”

  Laszlo forced himself to be calm. The morning papers had come down with the train, and as they walked his companion cheerfully reviewed the news. What about the Reds, eh? You wouldn’t want to meet a Russian soldier down a dark alley, now would you? And did you see Hamburg got itself bombed again? The wonder is there’s one brick left standing on another … Your man Hitler must be wondering whether he really wanted Poland in the first place … For one terrible moment Laszlo thought that Old Mick knew everything, and his guts squirmed like a bag of eels; but then the Irishman said something about your man Churchill and your man Roosevelt and Laszlo realized that it was just a figure of speech. He was so relieved that he laughed. This emerged as a strange, nasal sound. He had not laughed spontaneously for months, and he was not very good at it.

  Then they reached the bar and he felt that he might never laugh again. Ferenc Tekeli was missing.

  “How the hell would I know where he is?” Docherty said.

  Laszlo woke Stephanie. She complained bitterly, and when he shook her she hit him in the face. For a little girl she had a solid punch, and it gave those in the bar something to talk about for the next ten minutes. Laszlo went back to Docherty. “How could you let him just wander off?” he complained. “He’s drunk, he’s liable to say anything.”

  “You’re right.” Docherty sipped his Guinness and watched the mark on Laszlo’s face turn a deeper, angrier red. “Tell you what: if he’s not back by lunchtime we’ll send for the Garda. That’s the Irish police.”

  Laszlo turned away in disgust.

  “The Garda will throw a dragnet over the entire town, so they will,” Docherty said. “They’ll have Ferenc back here in time for tea, you watch. Where have you been, yourself?”

  “To the station. The bloody train has left. We should have been on it. If we had hurried …”

  Old Mick, drinking nearby, heard him and said, “If you want my advice, never run after a train or a woman or an economic panacea, because another one will come along in a little while, and that’s God’s honest truth, so it is.”

  Laszlo went outside and stood in the sunshine. Sheer desperation fuddled his brain: he couldn’t decide between staying and going. If he stayed he might drift down to disaster with the rest; if he traveled alone, without Docherty’s guidance, he might never reach England. The mission was collapsing almost before it had begun, and all because of the drunken irresponsible idiocy of Ferenc Tekeli, who now arrived outside the hotel with Patrick Mooney. “We are going around the town!” Ferenc shouted. “To see the sights! Do you want to come?”

  Laszlo hesitated. If he went with Ferenc, at least he would know where Ferenc was. On the other hand Docherty and Stephanie might get hopelessly drunk. But if he stayed with them, Ferenc might disappear altogether. He couldn’t win. He climbed on to the cart. “We must be quick,” he warned sourly.

  “This animal is the fastest beast west of Dublin,” Patrick Mooney said, “so it is.” The cart set off at a great rate.

  Nevertheless, they missed the midday train, which surprised everyone by leaving at twelve-thirty, a good twenty minutes ahead of time.

  Laszlo was pale with fury. “If I am not in England by tomorrow—” he began.

  “Oh, shut up, you miserable pygmy,” Ferenc said. Ferenc had put away a lot of drink since breakfast and now his natural goodwill was beginning to sour into belligerence. They all trailed back to the pub and ate lunch. Laszlo refused to shut up. He nagged and nagged. This time he was successful. He got them to the station in time to catch the next Dublin train, which left at midafternoon.

  Everyone slept on the train, except Laszlo. The words “miserable pygmy” kept repeating themselves in his brain, in time with the chant of the track, and there was a slow rage burning like indigestion inside him. Also he was suffering from real indigestion. He should never have had pickled eggs for lunch.

  Only Domenik whistled as he walked about Abwehr headquarters. Usually he whistled the catchier bits of Gershwin or Jerome Kern, which was unwise. Sometimes it was one of the Hit Parade numbers from America: “Shoo-shoo, Baby” or “Johnny’s Got a Zero”; and that was really asking for trouble. Even listening to such music on the BBC was a crime in Germany.

  Christian heard “Deep in the Heart of Texas” coming along the corridor and got up and shut the door. None of Domenik’s jokes ever struck him as funny and in any case the war was not a joke. Domenik tapped on his door and came in. Before Christian could speak, Domenik said, “Want to read your obituary?”

  It was a blurred photocopy of a two-page typed document with an old picture of himself stuck in a box on page one. Christian skimmed through it. “God in heaven,” he muttered. “Somebody doesn’t like me, does he? Where did you get this?”

  “A friend in the SD. I give him chocolate from Brussels, he gives me the odd plum from their files. Is any of it true?”

  “About half.” Christian read through it again. This time he felt sick. “They’re trying to make me out to be some kind of traitor.”

  “Not trying, old sport: succeeding. Well, allegedly succeeding. You do seem to have met rather a lot of British agents.”

  “Of course I have. That’s how the Abwehr works: by recruiting English-speaking people to go and spy in England. A lot of them turn out to be enemy agents sent to spy on us. If we catch them we shoot them. But you’ve got to meet them before you can catch them, haven’t you?”

  “Absolutely. Oh, absolutely.” Domenik smiled cheerfully. “Keep it, if you like. Hang it over the fireplace.” He went out. Christian struck a match and burned the pages in an ashtray, while “Deep in the Heart of Texas” slowly faded and died. When he thought of the SS and of what they could do, panic fluttered in his chest like a trapped bird. “The Fuehrer would never permit it,” he said aloud. “The Fuehrer needs us; the Fuehrer needs me.” Christ Almighty, he thought, now I’ve started talking to myself. What the hell is going on?

  Quick results in war are very rare. Warfare itself is a lumbering, cumbersome business: the airplane that flies so fast has taken years to design and build; the warlord who wants to strike hard, here and now, for sudden victory, finds to his chagrin that by the time he has gathered his striking force the war has moved on, and the chance of victory with it.

  So the experience of the Double-Cross System over two days in the early summer of 1943 was unusual.

  On the first day the latest dispatch from the Eldorado Network was flown as usual in the Spanish diplomatic bag (or so the Abwehr believed) and forwarded by express mail from Lisbon to Madrid. It arrived at about noon. By chance, this was the day on which Brigadier Wagner and Richard F
ischer had hurried back from Brest with the bad news about Garlic, so the controllers seized on the report with even more interest than usual. They were pleased to find that although it was thick, there was very little in it attributed to Garlic. What’s more, all the rest was stuffed with goodies.

  Each controller took a section and scanned it quickly.

  “How d’you get diphtheria?” Otto Krafft asked. Nobody knew. “The Hampshire Regiment’s got it,” he said. “Quarantined on Dartmoor. Bad rations, perhaps?”

  “That could mean the U-boat war’s been worth it after all,” Fischer said. “Berlin will like that … I wonder what all this intensive low-flying training is in aid of?”

  “Obvious,” Franz Werth said. “It’s in aid of a lot of intensive low-level strafing, in due course. Who’s doing it?”

  “Yet another American fighter wing. The 293rd.”

  “Christ Almighty!” Otto said, flipping pages. “Look at all these troop movements! And two new American infantry divisions, and one Canadian, and—”

  “Haystack’s having an affair,” Richard announced. They all looked up. “Wife of a building contractor. She never sees him because he’s always building army camps, dozens of them, Haystack says, all over southeast England.”

  “Just a hop, step and a jump from Calais,” Franz said. “Well, well, well.” He waved a page. “Remember the highly secret Low-Level-Opening Parachute that Luftwaffe Intelligence were so snotty about? Eldorado’s found two—no, three independent confirmations. It’s beginning to form a pattern, isn’t it? After the low-level strafing come the low-level paratroops. What d’you think, Doctor?”

  “Possibly.” Dr. Hartmann was staring into space. He took off his glasses and frowned so hard that his poor overworked eyes almost disappeared. “Possibly …” Now he was mumbling. “I wonder … Of course doubling the power won’t double the bombload but they probably don’t care about that …”

  Richard went and looked over his shoulder. “An eight-engined bomber,” he said. “Pinetree reports that Boeing are planning a production line for an eight-engined bomber.”