Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  It was simultaneously the best and the worst thing to say. She went over to him and punched him in the face as hard as she could. His feet were hooked inside the stool. He and it fell like a broken drawbridge.

  “Damn, damn,” she said, hiding her raging knuckles in her armpit, “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry.”

  The lights went up on the terrace. “True love,” Canaris told Oster. “It’s what makes the world go flat.”

  The beach was moonstruck. Luis had found the word in a book of English poetry long ago and saved it up for a suitable occasion. The sand was crisp as sugar; the surf was silver-plated. The moonlight was so rich and pure and tranquil that it seemed to leave a silent tingle in the air. “How many would you have hanged, then?” Luis asked mildly.

  “I would have hanged one in three, as a minimum,” Canaris said. “In Germany we hanged at least half the Allied agents we caught.”

  “And the other half?”

  “We turned them, of course. They work for us.”

  After Luis had disentangled his legs from the stool and got to his feet, Canaris had come forward and introduced himself. In a quietly courteous and considerate manner he had offered Julie the use of a bathroom, the help of a doctor, and a change of clothes. She was bewildered by this civility and she turned to Luis. Luis, gingerly testing his jaw, said: Take it. “You look like the sole survivor of a ten-alarm fire.”

  Julie began to speak but then changed her mind. “Perhaps,” she said. Oster escorted her from the room.

  “Well, now,” Canaris said, and smiled benevolently. “Are you hungry? There are sandwiches and drinks …” He indicated the terrace.

  Luis drank a fast glass of red wine and chewed a ham sandwich while Canaris admired the stars and Christian frowned and fidgeted.

  “Let us stroll on the beach, you and I,” Canaris said. Luis took two more sandwiches and followed him. Christian watched them go. He couldn’t understand why this was happening. It baffled and angered him. Cabrillo had obviously lied, and lied again: first about Garlic, then about Mrs. Conroy. Clearly he was a traitor to the Abwehr; he should be taken out and shot; they should both be shot, the woman was a menace … It hurt to think. Christian had a permanent headache nowadays. At times his brain throbbed so violently that he wanted to kill someone; then the dead man would have his headache. That made no sense, but nothing made sense anymore, did it? When everyone was crazy nobody was crazy. It couldn’t be allowed to continue. Christian scowled at the diminishing figures strolling down the beach.

  Canaris had opened the conversation by congratulating Luis on the caliber of his intelligence reports; Eldorado, he said, was well-named. Luis munched his sandwich and made some vague remarks about the contribution of teamwork. Canaris agreed. Of course, he said, there were teams and teams. Lots of teams. Some good, some less good. But all of them reporting regularly from England. Dozens and dozens and dozens of Abwehr agents. Of all the spies sent by the Abwehr to England, Canaris said, only about ten percent were caught and hanged. Now that was a great mistake. It didn’t ring true. If he (Canaris) had been running MIS, the figure would have been much higher.

  That was the point at which Luis asked him how many he would have hanged, and Canaris said one in three; as compared with Germany where they hanged half and turned half. “That’s realistic, isn’t it?” Canaris said. “After all, espionage is a precarious and hazardous trade; otherwise it wouldn’t be so well paid. The suggestion that nine out of ten Abwehr agents escape capture is absurd. Quite absurd.”

  “Some do,” Luis said.

  “And it seems they never make mistakes! They’re always taking terrible chances, hanging about secret military sites, asking peculiar questions, but they hardly ever get arrested, do they? If I were running MI5 I’d have a lot more arrests.”

  “You wouldn’t like it if your best agents spent half their time in jail.”

  “And another thing: none of our agents in Britain gets married. Not even a girlfriend or boyfriend.”

  “Think of the risk,” Luis said.

  “Think of Mrs. Conroy.” When Luis did not reply the Admiral said: “Think of life without Mrs. Conroy.”

  Dull, Luis thought, Dull duller dullest. “Just to satisfy my curiosity,” he said, “did you bring me all the way to Santander to argue about whether or not Garlic is a woman and to prove how much more of a woman Mrs. Conroy is?”

  “I don’t care about Garlic. That was a small crisis, long since overtaken by events. I brought you here because I want you to tell your masters in British Intelligence to increase the pressure. Pile on the bad news. Create more armies! More armored divisions! Discover new airfields crowded with super-bombers! Why aren’t the Allies developing monster tanks as fast as motor-cars? New fighter aircraft that make our Focke-Wulf 190 look like an old tin can? Tell them to help me strike terror into the hearts of enough German people and we can stop this stupid, pointless war now.”

  “You can?” Luis suddenly woke up. “How?”

  “The details need not concern you.”

  Luis silently concerned himself with the details. “Adolf Hitler would have to go,” he said.

  “That is self-evident.”

  “Crikey.” Freddy Garcia’s word slipped out before he knew it. “It’s a coup. You want to lead a coup.”

  “There’s still time to save the German people.”

  “Is there really?” Luis finished his second sandwich and brushed crumbs from his lips. “I rather think people in England have made up their minds about that.”

  “Everybody’s real enemy is Russia. While we in the west fight each other, Stalin wins. He wants world dominance. Churchill and Roosevelt must know that.”

  They reached the end of the beach and turned back. Luis saw his own footprints stamped blackly in the wet sand, and he trod carefully in them, fitting his feet to the marks.

  “That’s no good,” Canaris said. “You can’t delete the past.”

  Luis laughed. “How can you be so sure that the entire Eldorado Network has been turned by British Intelligence? It’s preposterous. You might as well say that it doesn’t exist, that I sit in an office in London and invent everything.”

  “My dear Cabrillo, I don’t give a damn if you sit in Stratford-on-Avon and write your reports in blank verse with a quill pen. What matters is that the OKW trusts you. They don’t trust me. For a start I’m an admiral, and this is a land war. What can I, a sailor, tell those generals and field-marshals? But if it comes with Source: Eldorado stamped on the cover, they pay attention. They stand up and salute. Eldorado is our masterspy lighting Churchill’s cigar, pushing Roosevelt’s wheelchair, answering the telephone for Eisenhower. They like that. It gives them a chance to cheat, you see. Generals hate to fight fair, Cabrillo. Hate it.”

  “I can understand that,” Luis said. “When I was a boy I used to trip my opponents on the football field. They were frightfully cross.”

  “Did you win?”

  “I got sent off and went to the cinema. Was that winning?”

  Canaris put an arm around his shoulders. “Hitler frightens the German people,” he said, “so you and I must do more than frighten them. We must utterly terrify them. Go home and tell your masters in British Intelligence.”

  “Naturally, I shall do my best,” Luis said, “but I really haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course not.” Canaris squeezed his shoulder. “It’s a mystery to me too.”

  Oster left Julie being sponged-down and patched-up by the Admiral’s doctor and his nurse, who had found a Spanish maid’s uniform for her to change into. He went back to the terrace. He was very tired; it was past 2 a.m. and it had been a hard day; but as long as Canaris was awake, so was Oster.

  He got himself an iced lager and some spicy Spanish sausage, and slumped in a wicker chair.

  Christian was at the other end of the terrace, watching the walkers on the beach. He did not seem at all tired. His shoulders were
square. His hands were behind his back, the right fist grasping the left wrist as if it were a prisoner.

  Oster had almost finished his lager when Christian walked over to him.

  “Domenik told me something that I didn’t understand, back in Berlin,” he said. “Now I think I do.”

  “Forget it,” Oster said, “before you regret it.”

  “It was on the day of your champagne party, when I collapsed on the balcony. I don’t remember exactly what Domenik said, not word for word, but it came down to one man being willing to kill another and himself, in order to save the nation. It’s patriotic sacrifice, isn’t it? That’s what Domenik was offering me, and all the more gallant and patriotic and triumphal because nobody will know, except me, and I’ll be dead.”

  “I see. You are proposing to kill our great and glorious leader, is that it?”

  “I have no choice. The man has betrayed the nation.”

  “Let’s get this absolutely straight,” Oster said. “You plan to save the nation by killing whom, exactly?”

  “That traitor on the beach. The traitor who is using Eldorado to make deals with British Intelligence. God, I’ve been extremely stupid.”

  Oster began: “What evidence—”

  “I used to think Domenik was a traitor! How unbelievably stupid … All the time, Domenik was trying to show me that the leader I must kill is here, in front of me! It’s destiny. Mine, his, yours.”

  “I see.” Oster cleared his throat. “And who is going to kill you?”

  “Oh, you are. You have no choice either.”

  Oster’s eyes flared wide, but no other part of him moved. He remained slouched on the wicker chair, the lager glass propped between the extended fingers of each hand.

  “We all have to die,” Christian said.

  “You say you got all this from Stefan Domenik?”

  “The big thing is finding something worth dying for.”

  “And you’ve found it?”

  “It was in front of my nose all the time.” Christian went to the front of the terrace, looked at the beach, and came back. “There will be a cover-up, of course. You’ll do that, won’t you? Heart attack or something. I don’t care. I’m technically dead anyway, so you won’t have any difficulty getting rid of me, will you? I take it you’ve got a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Use mine. It’s fully loaded.” Christian took the pistol from its shoulder holster and pulled out the clip of ammunition. “See?” He shoved the clip home. “Plenty left for you.”

  Oster sighed. He drank the last mouthful of lager and put the glass on the floor. “Don’t you think you’re taking Domenik too seriously?” he asked.

  Christian shook his head. “How can anyone take patriotic self-sacrifice too seriously?” he said.

  Oster stood up. “Have a drink,” he said. “Have a glass of wine, for God’s sake. Relax.” He showed Christian the bottle. “Have you tried this?”

  “Here they come now,” Christian said. He turned to face the beach. Oster took a good look at the back of Christian’s head. The scar made by Adler formed a white zigzag in the close-cropped hair.

  The Admiral and his agent came strolling up the beach, chatting easily of this and that. “I never thought I’d miss eggs as much as I do,” Luis said. “The ration is one a month. One develops a craving.”

  “With me it’s coffee,” Canaris said. “Not so much the taste as the smell. Ersatz coffee is like sawdust.”

  “That’s a very unpatriotic remark.”

  “No, it’s very good sawdust. No complaints about that.”

  “D’you get oranges? I suppose not. Neither do we.”

  “The place to go is Brussels. I don’t know how, but the Belgians can lay their hands on anything.”

  “Swiss chocolate?”

  “Crates of it.”

  They climbed the steps to the terrace. “Hello!” Canaris said. Brigadier Christian lay sprawled on the floor, face-down, as if he had just been unloaded from the back of a truck. The stink of wine soaked the air. “Be careful where you walk,” Oster said, “there’s broken glass everywhere.”

  Canaris circled the body from a distance. “He looks dead,” he said.

  “He is dead,” Oster said.

  Canaris leaned forward. There was a lot of blood mixed in with the wine. “That head of his is a nasty mess,” he said. The label from the wine bottle was on a fragment of glass attached to the scalp. “Rioja 1940,” Canaris read aloud. “A decent year.”

  “What happened?” Luis asked. Nobody else seemed interested but he was.

  “Poor Christian was opening the bottle when he had another of his blackouts. Landed on his head.” Oster shrugged. “Must have been the last straw. He’s fallen on that head quite a lot lately.”

  Luis nudged the broken-off neck of the bottle with his foot. The cork was in place, and there was no sign of a corkscrew. “Sudden death, was it?” he said. “No warning?”

  “Very little,” Oster said. “Came as a surprise to me, I can tell you.”

  Spain under Franco was in some respects like England under Cromwell. Both men were generals. Both believed in the virtues of discipline and in the discipline of virtue. Both believed that they had won a civil war because God was on their side, and Franco let it be known that the least Spain could do in appreciation of this was to live by God’s holy standards in future. That meant no sexual hanky-panky.

  Thus the desk clerk at the Wellington was never in doubt when Luis Cabrillo turned up at three in the morning in the company of a slightly damaged chambermaid who had no luggage. He gave Luis his key and he gave Julie the key to a different room, on a different floor, in a different wing.

  They had not talked in the car that had brought them from the villa: too risky, with the driver listening. Now Julie spun the room-key on her finger and laughed. It was a laughable situation, to come all this way and be separated by hotel propriety. “See you at breakfast,” she said.

  In fact by the time Luis got down for breakfast she was in Santander, shopping for clothes. He was on his third coffee when she came through the hotel dining room in a lime-green outfit with a lemon-yellow blouse and a cherry-red beret.

  “You look like a fruit salad,” he said. “I think I preferred you as a maid.”

  “Your bags are in the taxi, I’ve paid the bills, and there’s an express to Madrid in half an hour.” Her lip was still swollen and it gave her a slight lisp. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Jesus!” he said. “You American women can be so bossy.”

  “Life is too short to horse around, Luis. Mañana never comes.”

  When they got into the taxi she said: “This is Antonio Gomez. He’s a secret policeman, aren’t you, Tony?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Friend of yours?” Luis asked.

  “Very old friend. Aren’t we very old friends, Tony?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “That’s all he ever says,” she explained. “He never says anything else.”

  “What else is there to say?” Luis asked.

  “Nevertheless,” she suggested. “Insofaras. Notwithstanding. You like those words, Tony?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I see what you mean,” Luis said. “He doesn’t sparkle.”

  The rest of the journey was silent; and it wasn’t until they were on the train, in the restaurant car, each with a drink and a view of the passing wheatfields, that she said: “By the way … Garlic’s dead.”

  “Yes, I know. It doesn’t matter. They don’t care.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s all right, then.” She fingered her lip. “So I bust a gut to find you, I got captured, I bust several other guts to escape, and it was all for nothing. Is that right?”

  “Um …” The train was making two pieces of cutlery rattle. Luis separated them. “Well … Yes, I suppose it is.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Terrific. Next time I’ll stay home and do something really useful, like clean the typewriter.”
>
  “Ah, but you were brilliant last night. Canaris said he thought you were sensational. Fabulous.”

  “Did he really?” she asked. Luis nodded. “You’re lying,” she said.

  “Of course I’m lying. Lying is what I do best.” He took her right hand, very cautiously, and examined the bruises. “Who told you about Garlic?”

  “Stephanie Schmidt.” Julie gave him the story.

  “Glasgow,” Luis said. “Glasgow … They really sent somebody all the way to Glasgow. And he actually shot this poor South American lady doctor dead? Because he thought she was Garlic?”

  “Don’t blame yourself. She wasn’t even from Venezuela.” Julie linked little fingers with him. “Sounds like a Noel Coward song, doesn’t it? ‘She wasn’t even from Venezuela …’ Don’t squeeze, please. It hurts.”

  “Tell me all about last night,” Luis said. “And I’ll tell you all about poor old Christian.”

  Laszlo Martini became so desperate that he took work. He was deeply ashamed. It had never happened before, and now only the acid nag of hunger drove him to it. He got a job in a fish and chip shop, preparing the potatoes. First he knocked off the worst of the mud, then he filled a machine which he hand-cranked until it had tumbled and scraped the potatoes more or less white. Then he picked out the biggest eyes with the point of a knife. Then, one by one, he fed the potatoes into the chipping machine, which he worked by pulling down a lever time and time and time again until his right arm twitched and flexed long after the last potato had dropped in strips into the bucket. Then it was time to start again, knocking off the mud.

  The pay was insulting but he could eat all the fish and chips he wanted, and the owners let him sleep on a pile of potato sacks at the back of the shop. He told them he was a seaman who had missed his boat and was waiting for it to return. They didn’t care. As long as he chipped half a ton of spuds a day nothing else mattered. His beard was quite thick by now, so he was confident that no policeman would recognize him from the descriptions given by the people he had robbed.