No Entry

by Manning Coles

  “A man who has a job to do for Soviet Intelligence,” went on Walenski, drawing his black brows together, “has no business to put himself in the power of the police by petty malefactions for personal gain. He is unworthy of the cause he serves. He is a scoundrel, and in my opinion should have been sent to the salt mines.”

  “Whereas he has now disappeared? To avoid being sent to the salt mines?”

  Walenski frowned and said that trace of the man appeared temporarily to be lost. “It is reported that he said his nerves were affected by being hunted down by the police. He apparently gave a highly coloured account of his hairbreadth escapes. He said that he would find work somewhere for a time until his nerves were restored.”

  Hambledon remembered that it was Walenski who had volunteered information about Ehrlich’s crimes to General Ambromovitch. Some personal animosity?

  “Do you know this man yourself?” he asked.

  Walenski said with emphasis that he neither knew Ehrlich nor wished to. “He is very small fry,” he added contemptuously. “He would not appear at Headquarters. No, my interest in this unimportant matter is quite otherwise, and I shall now disclose it to you, Herr Kirsch, because in my opinion it affects your security and effectiveness and that of all men in your position. Not nearly enough care is taken in the selection of men in your service and I contend—have frequently contended—that until we select candidates for Intelligence with much greater care than is used at present, we shall continue to be faced with the humiliating failures we too frequently endure at present. The selection is at fault.”

  Hambledon had recognised the type by this time, he had met it all his life in every country in which he had served. Walenski was the Bore with a Grievance and one finds his twin brother in every club in Europe. They complain to the secretary, poor man, whose emotions have been most movingly expressed in the Hundred and Ninth Psalm. With perfect respect, one sometimes wonders whether the psalmist was ever a club secretary.

  “I see your point,” said Herr Kirsch, “and I will bear it in mind. About Ehrlich——”

  “He may have been taken on by some employer for a fortnight on trial,” said Walenski. “It is not necessary to register at a Labour Registration Bureau until the employment becomes permanent.”

  “Thank you,” said Kirsch acidly. “I am afraid I cannot wait for a fortnight. If your various Records cannot trace this man for me I suppose I must go and look for him myself.”

  “But——” began Walenski.

  “In my vocabulary,” said Herr Kirsch, glaring at the man over the top of his spectacles, “there is no such word as ‘but.’ ”

  He abandoned Walenski without ceremony and went to stroll in the painfully tidy garden, where he encountered General Ambromovitch.

  “I have just heard that my car is now ready for the road, General.”

  This happened to be true, shorn of the garage’s comments, which were to the effect that that car didn’t want mechanics on it, it wanted a squad of fairy queens waving wands to turn it into a new one and that if they ever saw it again they would all run away and join the Army.

  “I hope,” said the General courteously, “that this does not mean that we are to lose the pleasure of your company so soon.”

  “Most kind,” said Kirsch. “No, it seems that I have to drive to one or two places where I have introductions, to see if I can find Ehrlich. Captain Walenski’s research into Records has not been successful.”

  The General’s eyebrows went up. “Walenski—well, Herr Kirsch, he is our liaison with Records so I felt obliged to ask him. He is,” said Ambromovitch firmly, “a most conscientious officer.”

  “I am sure of it,” said Hambledon politely.

  “And, my dear Kirsch,” said the General, throwing an enormous arm round Hambledon’s neck and speaking in his ear, “I can’t stand the sight of him.”

  “Transfer him, then!”

  “He has been transferred so often,” said the General sadly. “He has performed his duties with impeccable accuracy in practically every branch of the Army.”

  “You embolden me to ask whether he has ever served in Intelligence—I trust, General, that I do not offend?”

  “Not a bit. You are no fool, are you? You don’t mean to tell me that he has been trying to teach you your business?”

  “He gave me a little advice,” said Hambledon drily.

  The General laughed loudly and smacked Hambledon between the shoulder blades.

  “He advised our Inspector General of Military Intelligence in Berlin,” he gurgled. “That was the point at which he was transferred to us. So you are going to drive off into the blue and interview masked men behind haystacks, are you? Heaven knows how you mystery men work but you certainly deliver the goods. Come back, my dear Kirsch, and we will have another party before you return to your dangerous work. It was a good party the other night, wasn’t it? Come back and see me again. Good luck to you. I must go; there are six people waiting to see me.” He shook Hambledon warmly by both hands and turned away.

  “Jovial old boy,” said Hambledon to himself. “Not a bad fellow at all, for a Russian.”

  But General Ambromovitch was coming back.

  “About that man Ehrlich,” he said abruptly, “you are quite wrong, you know. The brute is rotten to the core like so many of your stinking fellow countrymen. When he has betrayed you, remember that I warned you. You can either shoot him yourself or send him back to me. I will deal with him and what is left of the beast can go to the salt mines.”

  The fat hairless face looked grimly amused, but the pale eyes were merciless. He nodded and went away to join the group who were waiting for him; Hambledon, after a moment’s dumbfounded silence, walked off to his hotel to pack Kirsch’s clothes in Kirsch’s suitcase, meditating on what had just passed.

  “I shall never understand these people. What was that proverb father used to quote? ‘Scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tartar'? How unpleasantly true.”

  He looked with distaste at Kirsch’s scruffy dressing gown but threw it over his arm and picked up his hat and the suitcase.

  “Of course, they are an oriental people, one must remember that.”

  He went out and collected his car from the garage, which seemed oddly glad to see it go, and drove out of Magdeburg, going south. It would, naturally, be quite idiotic to drive straight to Waldecke near Ilsenburg, the noticeable car would certainly be reported by dutiful police and his journey plotted from place to place. In a series of mystifying zigzags he traversed much of the province of Anhalt, stopping here and there for brief conversations with road menders and other readily available persons. He stayed one night in a village inn at a remote place called Wippra, which is miles from anywhere, and on the afternoon of the second day drove into Waldecke.

  It was, indeed, a small unimportant place such as Britz had described, but it contained all the necessary ingredients. There were the great forests sweeping down close to the village with a few cottages tucked away in the very shadow of the trees. Was it in one of those that Micklejohn was first concealed? The village was unusually compact, probably because it had grown up in a clearing and had had no room to spread; one road ran through it and on to Ilsenburg. The houses stood upon the street for the most part; there were a few more beside a lane leading to the church. There was a farmhouse or two further back, and there was a sawmill beside a stream. It was all extremely peaceful.

  Hambledon drove up the street at a footpace. One house at the end of a row was larger than its neighbours; the sausage factory perhaps? No, a faded board above the door announced the Volkspolizeiamt, the Vopo headquarters. It looked as though in happier days it might have been an inn. Tacked on to this were three small cottages forming a row of which the far end was a slightly larger double-fronted house with yet another board above the door. This one bore the name of Hans Muller and, below the name, the entrancing word Wurstfabrik; Sausage Factory.

  Hambledon stopped the car and went in. Micklejo
hn and his friends would have received by this time the message telling him to trust Ludwig Kirsch, a friend. There would be no trouble, therefore, he had only to announce himself and a pathetically grateful undergraduate of BNC, smelling strongly of sausage, would leap out from some dark corner and greet him with decently controlled enthusiasm.

  He walked in at the front door to encounter sausage factory smells and a stout imperturbable man with gold-rimmed spectacles pushed up on a shining forehead. This man sat behind a desk in a small room used as an office; a door open behind him let pass the clank of primitive machinery and the smell.

  “Good day,” said Hambledon.

  “Good day, mein Herr,” said the man behind the desk. He went through the motions of rising from his chair without actually doing so and looked enquiringly at his visitor.

  “Ludwig Kirsch,” said Hambledon and waited for some reaction, but none came. “Ludwig Kirsch,” he repeated. “Do I address the Herr Muller?”

  “Hans Muller,” said the fat man, with a bow. “Please sit down. In what way can I serve the Herr?”

  Hambledon sat down, drew the chair closer to the desk and leaned across it to speak in a confidential tone.

  “I believe that you have working for you a young man named Ehrlich, Gustav Ehrlich.”

  Muller’s face became completely blank; not gradually in some process of thought but instantaneously, like a camera shutter.

  “Excuse me a moment,” he said, and half rose from his chair to shut the door behind him, that leading to the workshop. The lock did not catch at the first attempt. Muller rattled the handle to free it and slammed the door shut this time. “The noise,” he explained and, indeed, it was immediately decreased. “I am, in any case, a little deaf. The Herr was asking for one Gustav——?”

  “Ehrlich,” said Hambledon, and spelt it.

  Muller shook his head slowly from side to side and his glasses slid down on to his nose.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I do not think I have ever employed a man of that name. Certainly I have no Ehrlich working for me now.”

  Hambledon hesitated. Perhaps a mistake had arisen somewhere along Britz’s tortuous lines of communication, or perhaps this man was not in the secret. The name of Ludwig Kirsch had fallen quite flat. Yet that instantaneously blank look was certainly hiding something, though the something need not necessarily be an English undergraduate. It might equally well be black market pork or illicit sausage skins.

  “The name is not a local one,” said Muller, “and I employ all local labour. Is the Herr quite convinced that he has come to the right place?”

  “I was told Waldecke, near Ilsenburg.”

  Muller heaved up his fat shoulders.

  “In this wooded country there are so many places named Wald—something,” said Muller reasonably, for Wald means a wood. “There is Wald Lobenklee, there is Oberwald, Unterwald, Waldboden, Waldklippe, Waldberg. I cannot but think that the Herr has been misdirected. Also, most places make their own sausages and my name is probably the commonest in Germany.”

  All quite true. Hambledon began to think that the locale of the story must have been shifted, perhaps quite inadvertently, from a place name strange to the speaker to one he had heard before—a very frequent mistake.

  “Do you know if there is a man in this place called Otto Neumann?”

  “Another common name, Neumann,” smiled Muller, “nearly as common as mine. Not an Otto, no. There is a Widow Neumann, who is a little simple, poor thing. She has a small grandson called—what is it—Willi. Wilhelm, no doubt. His father was killed in an accident and his mother is also dead. He is I suppose about eight years of age. They are our only Neumanns, mein Herr.”

  There seemed no more that could usefully be said and Hambledon rose to his feet.

  “Thank you very much for your courtesy, I must apologise for taking up so much of your time.”

  Muller stood up and came round the desk to shake hands, the eternal Teutonic handshaking. “Not at all, it has been a pleasure to meet the Herr, we see so few strangers in these lonely villages. I only wish I could have helped the Herr in his enquiries.”

  Hambledon knew what a wide network is comprised in undercover movements; the secret grapevine telegraph runs for miles in all directions. If this were not the right village it was probably somewhere in this area. Micklejohn would not have travelled far—if he left a word it might be passed on to him.

  “If I may,” he said, “I will leave my name and present address with you. If you should happen to hear of this young man, perhaps you would be so good as to let him know that I was asking for him.”

  He wrote “Ludwig Kirsch” on a piece of paper together with the name of his hotel in Magdeburg. “I shall be there for a few days longer.”

  Muller said that he was honoured with the Herr’s confidence and would institute enquiries, for what that was worth, and they parted like old friends. Hambledon went out and sat in his car to think things over.

  Curse Britz. This was obviously the wrong village since the name of Kirsch aroused no response at the sausage factory, and now he had no idea where to go. Thoroughly discouraging.

  He looked at the Volkspolizeiamt and considered going there to ask for Gustav Ehrlich, since their records probably covered a larger area than this village. He hesitated for fear lest, if anything of this should ever leak out, reprisals might be taken against those who had sheltered Micklejohn. Besides, if he were seen going into Vopo headquarters it would damn him finally in the eyes of the underground movement and neither of his messages would be believed. Confound Britz and Micklejohn, too, for a pair of infernal incompetent blasted nuisances. To think he had successfully pulled off the Kirsch impersonation only to go home empty-handed.

  He lit a cigarette, started the car, and drove slowly out of the village, thinking deeply as he went. Five miles away he stopped the car and got out his map, for he had had an idea. Muller had mentioned several other villages with names which began with Wald; since Hambledon was in the district with a car, it would be worth while going to look at them. One only had to look for a Wurstfabrik Muller. Wald Lobenklee was easy to find, it was not far off, just north of the Brocken, but it seemed to be a stretch of country, not a village. Oberwald and his brother Unterwald, where were they? Waldboden, surely. No? How very odd. Waldklippe, Woodcliff, the sort of name one would expect to find in this country of woods and cliffs, but one would be disappointed. There were a dozen names ending in klippe but not one beginning with Wald. Waldberg struck a familiar note, but not here, it was far away in—in Württemberg, of course. Not far from the Swiss border. There might well be another Waldberg, since Germans are regrettably given to duplicating their place names, but it did not appear on this map.

  Hambledon drew a long breath and relaxed comfortably in his seat. Muller had invented all those delightful place names; Muller had lied. That instantaneous blank shutter across his face was no matter of illicit pork, it was a reaction to the name of Ehrlich. Gustav Ehrlich, not Ludwig Kirsch. The name of Kirsch had apparently rung no bell, but that of Ehrlich had set off all the alarms at once.

  The evening was closing in rapidly as it does in those narrow wooded valleys; the sun may still be shining on the Soviet-occupied hotel on the top of the Brocken, but under the trees by the streams in the glens there will be a dim green twilight. Work ceases in the woods and the workers go home to supper.

  Hambledon turned the car and drove back until, a couple of miles from Waldecke, he found a cart track leading into the woods. The car bumped and rolled in the ruts as far as a clearing where it was possible to turn. It would be wise to leave it facing outwards, ready for a sudden departure. He was wearing his own crepe-soled shoes; he took a pocket torch and his Luger automatic and started to walk back to Waldecke.

  20: Micklejohn

  Hambledon did not hurry; he wanted to reach the village after dark. The sky clouded over and the night came on swiftly. He took what he thought would be a short cut and lost his way
, in the event he did not arrive in Waldecke until it was so dark that one could scarcely see across the street, and in the small houses lights were going out one by one. The inn was still open and there were customers inside with steins in their hands. The Vopos in their headquarters were still astir, and at the corner by the turning to the church there was an oil lamp in an iron cage doing little but casting shadows. Hambledon retired into a deep doorway opposite to the Sausage Factory Muller, and waited.

  There was no light in the house of Muller, though presumably he lived over the workshops; seen by daylight, there had been curtains at the upper windows and, in one, the back of a looking glass. Fancy living out one’s days in a perpetual atmosphere of damp sausage. Now it would seem that either the Herr Muller had gone to bed or was out visiting his friends.

  Down the street, by the way Hambledon had come, there were voices saying good night and a remark which was probably a jest, for laughter followed. The inn closing down for the night? Presumably, for a door closed audibly in the quiet night and there were footsteps, heavy footsteps of tired labourers, not the measured tread of trained men; not, for example, Vopos. Most of the steps went the other way but two men came up the road and past Hambledon’s doorway. With eyes accustomed to darkness he could see them reasonably well, elderly men bent with labour; as they passed there drifted to his nose a mingled smell of beer, tobacco, and farmyard. Particularly farmyard. Their footsteps died away and complete silence settled upon the street, only broken by the church clock chiming half-past ten on a cracked bell. Early risers go early to bed.

  Hambledon thought that he would give Muller until eleven to come back, if he were out; if he did not appear it would be time enough to rouse him up. The village would be in its first sleep and not easily disturbed. He looked up and down the street. Even the Vopos had gone to bed.

  A quarter of an hour later there came to his ears the click of a key being turned in a lock, the rattle of a loose door handle. Across the street the door of the sausage factory office opened cautiously and the light of an electric torch appeared.