Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  Herbie nodded and asked the man to sit down. “It’s okay, Benny.”

  “No,” the Israeli turned his head slightly. “I have another young man out there. He’s in the trees, where Louis told me to come through. His name is Peter, but he’s only watching. He’s there in case you have other visitors. I pledge he will do you no harm. This is true.”

  “I believe you.” Kruger nodded him into a chair, realizing without looking that Art had come down, trousers and a jacket thrown on hastily. “He still asleep, Art?” Herbie asked, not turning his head.

  “Sound as a baby.”

  “Good.” Then to the man who called himself Mark, “Your transport?”

  “Mile, mile and a half, down the road. We’ve driven around the area. There are no signs of any other strangers. Peter went into the local pub just before closing time. Asked pertinent questions. Nobody new. Only us, and we’re here to talk. To tell you things you might like to know. Things you should know. To make certain that Louis Passau is safe.”

  Only then did he sit down. Benny faded away, through the curtains, like a magician’s illusion. Herbie moved to one of the more comfortable armchairs, and Art came over to sit at his feet.

  “I presume you’re Mossad.” Kruger still held the pistol, and did not put the safety back on.

  “Naturally.” Again a winning smile, warm, comfortable. The smile that said all is well. I come as a friend.

  “One of the few field agents?”

  “I have that honor. We’re so lucky, Mr. Kruger. Just over a dozen field agents in the entire world. Amazing for such an intelligence service.”

  “The figures sound good, Mark, but they’re not quite truthful. You have thousands of agents, and you know it.”

  Mark gave a small inclination of the head. “But we’re lucky. The Diaspora—the Jews living …”

  “Outside Israel. Sure, Mr. Ephron. I know what the Diaspora is.”

  “We have many to call upon.”

  “And you wanted to talk to me about Maestro Passau?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. Since he went missing with you, I have been expecting the call. Again, the Diaspora. We traced you more quickly than the FBI, the CIA, or even the Giarre family. The poor man has so many enemies. Peter managed to keep up with you when you broke out of the South Seas Plantation, on Captiva Island. He was on the aircraft from Nassau. Even though we expected Louis to call for us, we wanted to keep a watching brief.”

  “You were very good. I didn’t make you.” He thought of the Range Rover, the extra aerials and spotlights, glimpsed in his mirror as he crossed Florida in the rain. Realized that he had made them.

  “Not me. I had business in Vienna. Peter did all the watching, with a little help from our brothers and sisters.”

  “So, what did you want to say about Maestro Passau?”

  “I want to tell you a story. So that you will understand. We of Mossad—all Israelis I suppose—are not the most-loved people in the world, but we’re not always difficult. We do try to be fair, to help when we can. Sometimes we even help in secret. But you know this, Mr. Kruger.”

  “I know it. The story?”

  “It began a long time ago when a little boy found out that he understood music.”

  “Go on.”

  “The boy was Jewish. He became a legend. A man of talent, wealth, great charm, passion, sophisticated tastes. Also, as with so many who are cursed with genius, he was willful. Liked to take risks—on the podium when conducting, and in his life also. He was an American citizen, a musician first always, and a man second. Quite late in life he realized that, apart from all other things, he was also a Jew. He had responsibilities to his race, to Israel, and to the religion of his fathers.”

  “When did he realize this?”

  “Oh, the fifties, I think. Maybe earlier, though he did not really make his peace until the mid to late 1960s. I don’t know exactly, but there came a point in his life when he sought us out. Yes, I mean Mossad. He searched for us and, naturally, he found us.

  “We knew of him, of course. We were proud of him. He had shown great reverence, great dignity, regarding the Holocaust. …”

  “The concert? Belsen?”

  “Yes, and there were other things also, but I don’t suppose he talks of them. Then, finally, there was the ultimate act of faith. He came to senior members of Mossad. There was a meeting. In the King David Hotel, Jerusalem. Then, a few days later, in Tel Aviv. He made a confession. He told them that, during the time of the Holocaust, he had betrayed his people. This is a truth which is very hard for a Jew to face. He wanted to make an act of reparation. He wanted forgiveness. He had given information to the Nazis. Total betrayal.

  “But those who ordered Mossad, at that time, understood him. They had also known pain and deception: necessary treachery. They saw the pressures he had been under. They gave him no penance. They did not want any sacrificial acts. Yet they did say he might be of use to them at some future time. After all, he was a figure of tremendous international importance. I think, sometimes, even he does not realize the joy and wonder he has brought to people. He is a man with what the Americans would call little self-esteem. Has he told you any of this?”

  “Some, but certainly nothing about seeking out his people—your people.”

  “No. No, he would not tell that. I am here to put records straight. To take a burden from him. Maybe even to free him from what he probably imagines is a yoke he must bear, even to death.

  “A few weeks after the confession in Tel Aviv, he got hold of our people again. He had been given various telephone numbers to use if he came across anything that might interest us.”

  “Like the telephone number he dialed this afternoon?”

  Ephron’s eyes twinkled. “Exactly. That was his emergency number. He was to call us if he was in trouble, danger, or if he just wished to be removed from a particular situation.”

  Big Herbie was very still, as though listening with his entire body. Art Railton, at his feet, did not move a muscle. “I understand,” Herbie said.

  “As I say, he got in touch again. Very quickly. Said he had not told everything. He still had matters on his conscience. He was very afraid.

  “I have only been his case officer for the past ten years, so my knowledge of that time comes only from the files. He told my people that he was concerned. Worried. So a trained agent went to New York. They sat down and talked. I think you know what he told us.”

  “That he had been recruited by a senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency?”

  Ephron gave a little nod. “Indeed. He was right to be frightened. He thought that, somehow, they were lying to him. He thought he was being used as a channel, a line, between deep penetration agents within the CIA, and the KGB at Moscow Center. He did not fully understand what was happening. He did not know the words, the jargon. His language is music. International language. Music knows no barriers, unless it is repressed, like the music of Mendelssohn and Mahler during the years of the Nazis.”

  “And your people discovered he was being used?”

  “We put a trained team into New York; had someone move very close to him, yes. It only took a couple of months for our people to discover the truth.”

  “That four officers of the CIA had made a pact with the Devil? Providing the KGB with highly classified intelligence, taking small amounts of intelligence in return—chicken feed, with the occasional out-of-date gold nugget?”

  Ephron nodded again. “Any professional intelligence officer could have figured it out very quickly. The beauty of it was that nobody could possibly suspect a man of Mr. Passau’s talent, or with his obsession with music, and his blatant apolitical position. No counterespionage team would give him a second look. Yet, these men, who were among the most trusted in the United States intelligence community, had linked themselves neatly to KGB in Moscow Center. They carried out their treachery at arm’s length. Louis Passau was the channel, the conduit, through which huge amounts of classified
information flowed into the Kremlin, and a waste product flowed back in the other direction.

  “It was almost foolproof. Passau was made to think he was serving his country, by passing to the Soviets what was explained to him as disinformation. He was also led to believe that he was receiving good, high-octane, intelligence in return. He was a hero, they told him. One day the President would pin a medal on him for what he was doing. But Maestro Passau is no fool. He suspected, and my people told him exactly how he was being manipulated.”

  “I bet that made him happy.”

  “Delirious, Mr. Kruger. He was outraged. He wanted to blow the whistle on these people—you know the names?”

  “Marty Foreman, Mike Alfoot, Tony de Paul and Urquart Bains? All of them top people in the Soviet Office, CIA, Langley, Virginia. Right?”

  “Correct. If Maestro Passau had been given his head, all four of them would have been standing trial within a month. Scandal in Washington, and that would have been a great weight for the American people to bear. There were enough problems at that time, so we persuaded him to take his dish of revenge cold, and over a long period.” Later, Art Railton said he detected a slightly sheepish look pass between Ephron and Kruger.

  For the first time since Ephron’s arrival, Big Herbie smiled. “You cooked the books,” he said. “Cunning bastards, you cooked the books.”

  “In a way, yes. As I’ve said, we’d already put a team in, so that team set about training others. Specialists, people with time on their hands, ordinary Jewish men and women. We required only one full-time intelligence officer on the spot. The matter was totally contained, and there was always a link between him and our Tel Aviv headquarters.”

  “Spell out the logistics to me, Mr. Ephron. It sounds right up my street.”

  “It was really very simple, and you must understand that sometimes it didn’t work, because things had to be done so quickly.”

  Herbie’s big head bobbed. “Just tell me.” He sounded like a man who was having trouble controlling his temper.

  “One of the people we came to speak of as the ‘Horsemen’—the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you understand—would drop off a package to Maestro Passau. Our team would move in, take the package, and look at what the Horsemen were giving away. Then, our people would doctor it. Sometimes this was a very sophisticated operation; on other occasions, when time was short, we could only substitute minor alterations. By the eighties though, with new and instant technology, we became very adept. That was when I took over control. I can give you chapter and verse on it. Rolls of film were completely changed. Documents were doctored in a matter of hours. We bought an apartment in the same building. …”

  “On Lexington Avenue?”

  “As you say. After that, all through the last decade no nuggets went to Moscow Center. Only tiny truths.” He gave a deep laugh. “Mostly we gave them what they wanted to hear. The kind of hearts and minds intelligence which Passau could have passed on—maybe even stuff straight out of the White House. What the country’s leaders and politicians were really thinking, doing, saying in private. Minute things …”

  “And you became heavy with secrets. America’s secrets.” There was no mistaking the accusation in Kruger’s voice.

  Ephron made a very Jewish movement of hands and head. “In the long run it helped all of us. Would I come to you with this information now, if we felt in any way embarrassed by it?” The charming, disarming, smile.

  “Such chutzpah.” Herbie’s face split into the widest of smiles. “You want me to congratulate you? Only Mossad could come forward and tell us, now, when it is almost over, that they cut through a treacherous operation between Moscow Center moles at Langley and intelligence-gatherers in Dzerzhinsky Square. You slid the million-dollar bills from the wallets, kept them and substituted forgeries. Such chutzpah,” he repeated. “Such elegance also. You want me to pat you on the head? Give you a stick of candy?”

  “No, we merely want you to understand. Mossad blocked the flow of highly secret information spilling out to the old Soviet Union, and we substituted garbage. …”

  “You were both the recipients and the donors.”

  “Something like that. But this is the foolish nature of all intelligence operations, Mr. Kruger. You know that. It’s proven time and again. A secret war is a war between people trapped in a maze of trick mirrors. Everyone sees distortions. We contained the loss of many great secrets from the West to the East.”

  Kruger began to chuckle. “The old bastard.” He punched Art almost playfully on the arm. “I hope we have the tapes running. I’d hate to try and explain this at Warminster without some backup material.”

  “The tapes are running, Herb. It’s okay.” Art hardly moved.

  “And I will give you a complete and honest statement,” Ephron continued. “I have been cleared to talk with your interrogation teams.”

  Kruger batted a big hand in front of his face. “The march of secret folly, eh, Mark Ephron?”

  “Precisely. Simplicity is part of the elegance, I think.”

  “What Mark says is true, Maestro Kruger.” Passau’s voice, shaky, almost quavering, came from above them. He stood at the top of the stairs. Shaved, dressed, but looking older than Kruger had ever seen him.

  Art went up to him, two stairs at a time, leaping, and then putting an arm around the old man, helping him down to the room.

  Passau embraced Mark Ephron. “Shalom, my friend.” There was the quiver of emotion in his voice and body. Ephron put his arms around the old man. The gesture was one of great affection. It was like a lovers’ meeting.

  When they had Passau seated, Big Herbie leaned forward, towards him. “Why didn’t you tell me all this, Lou?”

  Passau gave him an almost truculent look. “You didn’t ask, Herb. It was your job to find out. You did the interrogating. It’s an art. I gave you clues.”

  “You said you would tell me everything. Your last confession, you said.”

  Passau gave a weak grin. “Even last confessions often leave something to be desired.”

  Kruger remembered what he had said to Pucky Curtiss a few weeks ago. Remembered that he had told her the old Maestro would hold back at the end. Not give him everything. All agents do it. For the insurance. He looked at Ephron. “Didn’t you … ? Didn’t your organization look at the question of morality here?”

  Ephron gave a smooth, humorless laugh. “What is morality in our business, Mr. Kruger? Our battle knows no morality. Comes with the territory, as the Americans would say.”

  Big Herbie shrugged, then nodded. Smiled. Nodded, then smiled again. “Let’s have breakfast,” he said. “Turn the tapes off, Art. Turn them off forever. It’s over. We Cold Warriors should go out to pasture or stud: that would be even better. It’s time for a new generation to deal with the idiocies of secrets. Anyway, the world’s too dangerous a place for me now. You can’t uninvent the nuclear deterrent, and it isn’t a deterrent anymore. Any little dictator, any country with enough money, can buy nuclear from old stock. This is the way the world ends, and fools talk of a new age. A new age of peace. Boom!”

  They brought Ephron’s other man, Peter, into the house. Relaxed, made breakfast. Benny helped in the kitchen while Herbie went off to telephone Warminster. “You got a big surprise coming,” he told Young Worboys. “Better send a lot of high-class muscle.” He gave Ephron’s name, and suggested they should seek out his bona fides.

  Over the meal he pondered the imponderable, then put it into words. “What of Foreman and his gang?” he asked Ephron, but it was Peter, the other Mossad man, who replied. “They’ll be defecating bricks I should think, but the last we heard, the man Alfoot was still in place at Langley. Also Tony de Paul is there.”

  “And Marty Foreman?”

  “He’s gone to earth. Also Urquart Bains is missing.”

  “You think they can find him—Passau? Whatever, if I know Marty, he’ll want him dead and gone.” Herbie’s head bobbed in the direction of the M
aestro.

  “They can find your place at Warminster. They must know it well enough.”

  “But not here.” Herbie sounded uncertain. “Marty doesn’t know this place.”

  “Then you’re probably safe enough.” Ephron appeared unconcerned. “If I was running this, I’d certainly lay on heavy security at Warminster.”

  The telephone rang, and Herbie went off to talk with Young Worboys again. The Israelis were being cooperative, the Deputy Chief said. Ephron had been given clearance to talk with his British opposite numbers, as had the other officer—Peter Brack.

  Herbie asked about security at Warminster, and demanded a very close guard for the journey back.

  When he returned to the breakfast table, Passau was becoming restless. “I need air, Herb. I haven’t been for a good walk in a hundred years.”

  Benny went out and made a sweep around the garden, poking in trees, taking a slow walk around the block. It was all clear. Nobody had turned up on their doorstep. With Ephron on one side and Herbie on the other, Passau strolled through the garden. Benny and Art moved around them, eyes everywhere. For half an hour, they walked and talked under a weak sun, a stiff breeze blowing dark clouds above them.

  When they returned to the house, Passau seemed to have regained his old vitality. His cheeks were flushed and he talked with his old mixture of foul language and innuendo.

  The telephone rang again. The small convoy was only twenty minutes away. They had to be ready. Young Worboys wanted everyone in and out in seconds. Ephron asked if his colleague could get their car. “I don’t mind having some of your heavies with us, to make sure we don’t run away,” he said.

  They let Peter Brack go off for the car. Already, Benny had removed all weapons that had been carried by the two Israelis.

  While Art and Benny were tidying up, and the man from Mossad was washing the fatigue from his face, Herbie sat down with Passau.

  “Why did you tell me about Stanza, Herb?” Old Passau seemed on the brink of weeping again.

  “You wanted all the facts, Lou. You held out on me. Did you really believe she was your daughter? Did you not have any second thoughts?”