Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  He walked for a mile and took shelter in a derelict bandstand in an empty municipal park. The food looked splendid but he had no tin-opener, and today was early-closing day so he couldn’t even steal one. The sardine tins had little keys attached to open them. He ate six tins of sardines and half a jar of plum jam. The rain got worse. That night he slept on the bandstand, very badly.

  The third summons from Admiral Canaris worried the Director more than anything that he had faced since he took on the Double-Cross job. It worried him because the three signals had arrived in quick succession, each phrased more curtly than the last. Far from fobbing off the Admiral, Eldorado’s delays and excuses had increased the pressure. There was no precedent for any of this, and now there was no way of dodging the third demand. The Director sought advice from senior colleagues in the intelligence field. They had none to give.

  “Do what you think best, old chap,” one said.

  The Director grunted. “And how do I decide that?” he asked.

  “You treat the case on its merits. Just stop searching for subtleties. There aren’t any.”

  The Director repeated this to Freddy. “The man’s absolutely right, of course,” he said. “If Eldorado sends a third refusal the Abwehr will smell a rat and then the whole network may go down the pan. If Eldorado meets Canaris in Spain it may well be the last we ever see of him. The Gestapo will take him apart, the network will be blown and what’s more they’ll suspect every other double-agent too.”

  “Never mind the Gestapo, sir,” Freddy said. “The Abwehr has its own interrogators. Not as messy but just as effective.”

  “So whether he stays or goes, it’s potentially disastrous.”

  “It’s virtually certain to be highly damaging if he stays, sir. If he goes, and fails … End of story. That, of course, is not inevitable. He might go and return. We don’t know.”

  The Director took out a coin and flipped it several times. “Damn thing always comes down heads,” he said. “I can’t decide this, Freddy. I can’t order him to go. I’m not even going to suggest it. You tell him the facts and say that whatever he decides is fine by us. It’s his neck. He’s the one to risk it. Or not.”

  Freddy found Luis in his flat, moodily deleting all the adjectives and adverbs from a report by Wallpaper. “Feel like a drink?” Freddy said.

  “Just had one.”

  Freddy sat down. “Admiral Canaris is extremely keen to meet you at a town called Santander in northern Spain as soon as possible,” he said. “Now here are the facts of the situation.” He went through the facts, neither exaggerating nor minimizing. “It’s your decision, Luis. Do you want to think it over?”

  “No. I want to go.” He screwed up the report he had been cutting and threw it away.

  “Right. I’ll go and organize the flight.”

  When he left, Luis telephoned Julie. “I just wanted to hear your voice,” he said.

  “I see.” He did not reply, so she said: “Well, here it is. Sounds the same as ever.”

  “I wish we could meet,” he said. “We haven’t met for a week. It’s crazy, not meeting.”

  “What’s new about that?” she asked. “Everything we’ve ever done has been crazy. Listen, you just had to ask, Luis. I mean, are you asking now?”

  “We can’t meet now,” he said. “I’m going to Spain tonight. I’m going to meet Canaris.”

  “In that case you’re a complete bloody fool,” she told him.

  “All in a day’s work,” he said lightly. They listened to each other’s breathing for a while. “Goodbye,” he said, and hung up fast. He began packing.

  As soon as Christian saw the plate of cold meats he remembered Domenik’s joke about what was a hundred yards long and lived on cabbage. He wished he could cleanse his mind of such thoughts. Nobody at headquarters mentioned Domenik anymore. It would be pointless and clumsy to mention him now, in Admiral Canaris’s house, where Christian had been invited for supper. But he couldn’t stop himself looking at the plate of rare beef and stuffed pork, and thinking: I bet nobody stood in line for that little lot.

  “I hope you don’t mind plain fare,” Canaris said. His family had gone to the country to escape the bombing, so he and Christian were alone. “It’s good honest sauerkraut and potato salad, and I got hold of some wheat beer from the south. Do help yourself.”

  They ate. Christian was on his guard. Canaris must have a reason for this. They talked easily of unimportant, non-military matters: dogs and horses (the Admiral had some dachshunds and an Arab mare of which he was very fond), gardening, cooking—they shared a taste for wild boar—and books. Christian remarked that he was surprised the Admiral found time to read for pleasure, what with the great scope and scale of his responsibilities. Couldn’t go wrong with a line like that.

  “I read for distraction, especially when the English bombers make sleep impossible. Unfortunately the distraction sometimes returns to haunt me.” Canaris picked up a book. “I thought I would be safe with this life of an English king of five hundred years ago.”

  “Henry the Fifth?” Christian said. “Shakespeare rather approved, didn’t he? Agincourt. Henry made the French look silly, as I recall.”

  “Yes. What Shakespeare doesn’t say is that Henry spent the rest of his life trying to conquer France and succeeded only in destroying what he conquered. He did it so thoroughly that its value was worthless and he made himself bankrupt.” Canaris opened the book to a portrait. “No wonder he looked old before his time.”

  Christian chewed his sauerkraut. Canaris poured some more wheat beer.

  “If Henry wanted to conquer the country,” Christian said cautiously, “why did he destroy it?”

  “Well … I suspect that such was not his original intention. I rather think that Henry said to himself, ‘There’s France, big country, rich country, I can get the costs of my campaign out of the French people themselves. Let the French pay for their own defeat.’ That’s what Henry hoped.”

  “But it didn’t work.”

  “Not according to the records. The French resisted, even after they were supposedly conquered, so the English applied the fifteenth-century equivalent of a scorched-earth policy, to teach them a lesson. Famine, slaughter, general devastation of the countryside. But of course that meant there was nothing left to pay for the military occupation!” Canaris forked a bit of pork stuffing. “And the more Henry conquered, the poorer he became, because armies are so expensive.” He ate the pork stuffing.

  “What happened in the end?” Christian asked.

  “Oh, Henry died young,” Canaris said. “And not a moment too soon.”

  He went off to make coffee, and when he came back he turned on the radio. “D’you mind?” he said. “I’ve no ear for music but I do enjoy this band.” It was the Glenn Miller Orchestra, broadcasting on the BBC. Christian was briefly shocked, but he soon settled back and listened. If the Gestapo arrested him they’d have to take the head of the Abwehr too.

  Christian did not stay long. As he was leaving, Canaris said, “You’ve read Mein Kampf, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Neither have I. It’s largely unreadable, rather like the Bible, but some people find it reassuring to have a copy lying about the place. Take this as a memento of a pleasant and instructive evening.”

  It was a large presentation copy, bound in white leather with a single red swastika on the spine. Christian was touched by such generosity. He opened the book at the fly-leaf and saw the bold, angular autograph, Adolf Hitler, all peaks and points, and he just managed to suppress a gasp. It was like being given a piece of the true Cross to keep. “I don’t know how to thank you, sir,” he said.

  “Get Eldorado to Spain. That’ll be enough.”

  Back in his apartment, Christian examined his gift. The paper was crisp, the type was noble, and a broad silk ribbon marked somebody’s place. He opened the book at that page. A passage had been marked. Christian read:

  State authority as an end i
n itself cannot exist, since in that case every tyranny on this earth would be sacred and unassailable. If a racial entity is being led toward its doom by means of governmental power, then the rebellion of every single member of such a Volk is not only a right, but a duty.

  Christian read it and re-read it. His brain felt fogged, probably the result of too much wheat beer. What on earth had the Fuehrer been thinking of when he wrote that? The words blurred. Christian’s head nodded. The book slid from his fingers and thudded to the floor. He got up and went to bed.

  There were no trees in Buccleuch Avenue and that annoyed Laszlo. If it was an avenue it should have trees; that was what avenue meant. It was only a small thing but Laszlo was easily annoyed nowadays. A treeless avenue irritated him and a broken shoelace angered him and people in the street who gave him funny looks drove him into a rage. He lived on the streets and got a lot of glances when he talked to himself, so he sometimes boiled over and shouted terrible threats. He was thinner than ever and he had long since given up shaving. Or washing. Water just let the cold in. Grime was better. Grime had become part of Laszlo’s armor against a hostile world.

  He disliked 22A. It was a boxey little brick-built bungalow squeezed into a scrap of land between 22 and 23. He stared at it and wondered. Long ago, someone had planted an evergreen shrub in the tiny lawn without thinking how big it would become. Now it blocked a window and half the front door and made the house look as if it was trying to hide. Laszlo scratched his crotch and tried to make out the type of lock on the front door. A dog trotting down the middle of the road picked up a strange, exotic scent and made a detour to sniff Laszlo’s legs. He hit the animal with his suitcase and sent it away, howling. Net curtains on the opposite side twitched. Laszlo scowled and moved on.

  He still had a couple of tins of food left. If nothing new turned up by the time he’d eaten them, he might come back. “Nosey old bitch!” he shouted at the net curtains. People thought they could push him around. People were dumb, and he had a gun that could make them dumber still. Permanently dumb.

  “It’s a tremendous honor, of course,” Christian said. “The autograph alone must be worth thousands.”

  Oster examined Hitler’s signature, and handed the book back. “No doubt about it,” he said.

  “One passage puzzled me somewhat at first.” Christian showed him the lines that had been marked. “But then I saw what the Fuehrer was driving at. He meant Russia, didn’t he? Stalin did his best to lead his people to their doom all through the twenties and thirties, and if the Russians had rebelled when we gave them the chance, in 1941, they could have overthrown the tyrant.”

  “That must be it,” Oster said.

  “Just think: they could have been our allies. Like Romania and Bulgaria.”

  “Bloody Slavs,” Oster said. “Let you down every time.”

  He reported this conversation to Admiral Canaris. “I rather suspect that crack on the skull he got in Madrid has scrambled his brains, sir,” he said.

  “Have you read the doctor’s report?” Canaris put on his spectacles, glanced at the final paragraph, and took them off. “Not a rosy outlook. Probable brain damage, various delayed effects, impairment of certain cognitive faculties, blah-blah-blah … Next time he lands on his head he might never get up again.”

  Oster examined his right thumbnail as if it carried a message for all mankind. “If Christian can’t get his brain in gear, sir,” he said, “do we really want to take him to Spain?”

  “Have you ever seen Eldorado?” Canaris asked. Oster shook his head. “Neither have I,” Canaris said, “and when I meet him I want to be absolutely sure I’m talking to the right man. Christian knows him. Christian created him. Christian can identify him. That’s all he has to do. Find him and bring him to me.”

  “Of course. And Eldorado will trust Christian, too,” Oster said. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  This time it wasn’t a Sunderland flying-boat. Luis had to arrive in Lisbon like a respectable Spanish businessman, so MIS booked him on to the scheduled BOAC service.

  Right up to the moment when the car came to collect him at Knightsbridge, he worked hard on draft Eldorado reports and the outlines of ideas. After that, a kind of fatalism settled on him. He had never flown in an airliner before. The firm courtesy of the staff was soothing. There was no need to think or speak or make any decision. It was like being a child again. He was welcomed, identified, weighed, approved, smiled upon and led into the warm womb of the aircraft. He was seated, strapped in, given a sweet to suck. They took off. Eventually the engines created a slowly surging pulse which made him think of a large animal, untroubled, at rest. While this impression was still forming, he fell asleep.

  Lisbon hadn’t changed, it was still the most relaxed and comfortable capital of any iron-fisted dictatorship. He took a room in an expensive hotel at the top of the Avenida da Liberdade, so that he could look down over the city, walk about it in his imagination and save his feet. He ate grilled sardines and bananas, just to catch up on what he had been missing in wartime England. Then he told the hotel to book him a seat on the best de luxe express to Madrid next day, and he got a good night’s sleep.

  Madrid too looked just the same. Funny how the world had managed perfectly well without him. He took a small suite in a luxury hotel, bought a couple of silk shirts, went to the cinema. Next day he slept late, had a long hot bath, and chose some books to read on the train to Santander. He was eating lunch on this train when the future finally caught up with him and he suddenly faced the fact that he was about to meet Admiral Canaris, and he didn’t know why, or what to say.

  For a moment he felt sick. He put down his fork and looked out of the window. A small and barefoot boy was driving a flock of sheep across a hillside. Neither of them was in any great hurry. Lucky bastard, Luis thought.

  The day after Luis left London, Julie made another prison-visit. “If you don’t water that plant it’s going to die,” she said.

  “Who cares?” Stephanie was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room, shoulders slumped. “I don’t care. Let it die. Everything dies sooner or later.”

  “Not true. Some things live forever.” Julie took the plant to the wash-basin and dribbled water into it. “Truth, decency, courage, justice, that sort of stuff.” She put the plant back. “What about beauty?” she asked. No answer. “And what about love?” Good question, she said to herself. What about your own love? How does it compare with a potted geranium?

  “I don’t need love. I couldn’t do anything with it if I had it,” Stephanie said. “Why would anybody waste their love on me? Look at me. What do you see? An ugly, stupid little woman. If I died right now, like that …” she clicked her fingers, “… the world would not miss me.” She chewed a thumbnail as if it needed disciplining, and then hid her hands in her armpits. “And I would not miss the world either.”

  “Someone might miss you,” Julie said. She had planned to save this for later, when they had rebuilt their friendship, but Stephanie was a different person today: older and harder. “Ferenc liked you. Didn’t he?”

  Stephanie unwrapped her hands and chewed on her other thumbnail. Julie sat on the bed and waited. When the nail had taken its ration of gnawing, Stephanie said: “Is that why you are here? To tell me about Ferenc?”

  “Would you like to see him again?”

  For the first time, a tiny flicker of happiness showed itself in Stephanie’s eyes. Julie looked away. She thought: This is a really bloody shitty thing you’re doing, you know, so it had better damn well work. She took some glossy ten-by-six prints from an envelope and gave them to Stephanie. “He got washed up on the edge of the Irish Sea.” She went back and sat on the bed. After a minute she said: “There’s a close-up of the back of his head. He was shot, you can tell. Laszlo did it, didn’t he?”

  Stephanie sighed, and shrugged. “Probably.”

  “Never mind probably. You know damn well he did it. Laszlo killed Ferenc, Stephanie. Now he’
s going to kill somebody else, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care.” Stephanie tore up the prints, not angrily but casually, getting rid of some old paperwork that no longer mattered. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “Oh, horseshit! That’s not true. Some poor bastard is going to get what Ferenc got, and you know who, and you sit there with your toes crossed and tell me it’s got nothing to do with you?” Julie heard her voice become a rasp. She saw Stephanie flinch, and she let the rasp get harsher. “You think I’m dumb, for Christ’s sake? Lie to yourself all you like, Stephanie. Just don’t lie to me.”

  “It’s the truth, it really is nothing to do with me …” Now her voice was higher and tighter. “That’s what I told Laszlo, I told him to leave me out of it, what he did was none of my business, I wasn’t …” She couldn’t go on. She couldn’t look at Julie. It was all lies; when Laszlo had spoken to her of his secret mission she had been flattered. “Anyway,” she said, as if that resolved everything.

  “What d’you mean, ‘anyway?’”

  Stephanie sucked her thumb. Julie took off a shoe and flung it at her. The action was vaguely familiar but she suppressed the memory. “Don’t hide behind your stupid thumb, Stephanie! You’re not a baby, you’re a full-grown woman with brains and you know the difference between right and wrong! You’ve seen what Laszlo did to your pal Ferenc. Was that right or wrong?” The thumb was still in the mouth. Julie flung the other shoe and hit Stephanie full in the face. That brought the thumb out. “What’s Laszlo doing? You know, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know!” Stephanie wiped her nose on her sleeve. “And it doesn’t matter because it’s too late, it’s all over, Laszlo’s done it, that’s the end.”

  “Is that so?” Julie went over and picked up her shoes. “You mean he’s killed whoever it was he got sent here to kill?” No answer. Julie poked her in the ribs with her stockinged foot. “If you really mean that, then there’s no secret anymore, is there?” She kept poking. “Is there?”