XPD, Page 32

  ‘This is vitally important, Stuart.’

  ‘It’s all important,’ said Stuart angrily. ‘When was the last time a field agent was briefed to take his time? All the dockets in the traffic room are red ones. Where are the stickers that say “Take your time” or “Watch out for your back – this is just something to buy promotion for some London desk man”? Where are they?’

  The DG seemed amused by Stuart’s outburst, or was his fixed grin just a nervous and angry reaction to it? ‘There are no stickers like that, Stuart. Perhaps we should ask the stationery office to let us have some.’

  ‘Perhaps we should, sir.’

  The DG stopped his pacing. For a moment he seemed about to rebuke Stuart but he swallowed his annoyance. He put both hands into his trouser pockets and rattled his change. ‘Suppose we are wrong, Stuart? Suppose Stein has got the Hitler Minutes in the house on Lake Geneva?’

  Stuart said nothing. The two men looked at each other.

  The DG continued with his gloomy scenario. ‘In that case we will have sent Kleiber and his thugs to the very spot that we don’t want them to be. They will get those damned documents, Stuart. And we will have given them every assistance. How will I explain that to the PM?’ En passant he smacked the newspaper’s account of Mrs Thatcher’s speech with the back of his hand.

  ‘I’m very busy downstairs, sir, without the added task of compiling explanations for mistakes that we’ve not yet made.’

  The DG wet his lips and stared out of the window. He knew that his son-in-law was having some sort of affair – a liaison was perhaps a better word – with the blonde secretary who worked for the deputy chief of Operations (Region Three). He had mentioned it to his daughter Jennifer but she insisted that she didn’t mind. The marriage is all over and finished with, she had said, and Sir Sydney had been pleased by her determination. Young people were different today, more’s the pity, but that would not prevent him from posting the blonde secretary away. He felt uneasy about the relationship: Boyd Stuart was ‘agent in charge’ of one of the most delicate operations they had mounted, and the girl was secretary to one of his key officials. It was bad security; he should have done something before this. He remembered that she had brought his own personal file up from the vault. That was something he did not like being handled by anyone but himself. He did not want even senior SIS staff to know that he had once been Elliot Castelbridge. ‘Don’t meet trouble halfway, you mean?’ the DG said and nodded, still looking out of the window. ‘Quite right, quite right.’ Then he turned to face Stuart.

  Stuart waited, knowing that the DG was about to say something more. The old man had this disconcerting habit of pausing before he spoke. Probably he was rehearsing the exact words he would use, to ensure that he was revealing nothing more than was absolutely necessary. ‘Don’t worry about this chap Kleiber and his house full of guns, Stuart. Our Swiss friends will take care of that.’

  Stuart waited for more information, but none was forthcoming. So that was it. The DG had given the Americans a ‘hands-off’ undertaking on Kleiber. Now he was arranging that the Swiss security people pick Kleiber up. How very convenient; the Swiss computer was not available to the Americans and the DG knew that all too well. It would be interesting to hear the DG protesting his innocent surprise when the CIA liaison man came over here with news of Kleiber’s arrest in Switzerland.

  The DG watched Stuart carefully. It was always instructive to see how long it took one of his departmental employees to work out what was happening when provided with sufficient facts. He smoothed his hair and touched in passing the hearing aid. ‘Think it’s going to rain, Stuart?’

  ‘When the wind drops.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope you’re right. Not about the rain, of course.’ He gave his deadpan grin. ‘About Stein and Pitman not having those documents in the lakeside house in Geneva.’

  Chapter 38

  Charles Stein also arrived in Geneva on that first Saturday of August. He was worried. His telegram to Colonel Pitman had said they would meet at the ‘nut house’. He wondered if Pitman might have forgotten that when the bank had been at its original premises near the cathedral – a chaos of muddle and excitement – they had always called it the ‘nut house’, and when Madame Mauring took over, filling the new shop window with almond cakes, the name seemed newly appropriate.

  ‘I need something from the safe.’ The cathedral clock chimed and Stein looked at his watch.

  ‘Here’s the key, Mr Stein. You’ll find everything in good order. There’s not much petty cash, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I don’t want to touch anything of yours, Madame Mauring,’ Stein told her. ‘I want that packet I left here.’

  ‘It’s all as you left it, Mr Stein. You help yourself.’

  The safe was an absurdity – a single key operating a set of four spring bolts. It would impress no one, except perhaps some proud owner. On the other hand, who would be looking for anything very valuable in the safe of a small tea room? And there was more to it than that. Stein leaned to direct the green-shaded desk light into the safe’s shallow interior. Using both hands he inserted the stubby index fingers of both hands into small recesses. It was awkward and Stein breathed heavily with the exertion of it, until with a soft metallic click the whole back wall of the safe’s interior hinged forward, to reveal the dials of a far more modern safe.

  Stein had committed the combination to memory and now he quickly twirled the dials, before opening the inside door. From it he got an envelope. It was no larger than a medium-sized book, perhaps a centimetre thick. Stein opened it to check the contents. These were Hoffmann-La-Roche bearer shares. Each sheet had a nominal value of 3.3 Swiss francs, and an actual value of about £25,000. The contents of this packet were worth some two and a quarter million dollars to anyone who pushed them across a bank counter anywhere in the world. Then, reverently, he took from the safe another package even more valuable: the Hitler Minutes. It was not impressive looking: a cheap office folder, as thick as a packet of cigarettes.

  Stein had brought with him the small brown canvas bag which he usually carried on trips. Now he emptied it on the table to make room inside it for the packet of bearer bonds. The outer pocket contained a toothbrush, shaving tackle, Bufferin tablets, nail clippers and an unopened plastic box containing one tablet of Roger & Gallet soap. Charles Stein was most particular about soap and he had used this particular brand – sandalwood perfumed – for over twenty years. In the bag’s larger pocket there were shirts, underwear, socks and handkerchiefs. He felt inside the plastic wrapping of the shirts to be sure that the identity papers he had got from Delaney were still there. He looked again at the Brazilian passport. Stein’s photo was not a recent one but it would do.

  ‘The colonel has arrived,’ said Madame Mauring looking round the door. ‘More coffee and cake?’ She seemed to sense that something terrible was about to happen.

  ‘Yes, please, Madame Mauring.’

  ‘The colonel said coffee doesn’t agree with him.’

  ‘Maybe today he won’t care,’ said Stein.

  She smiled and opened the door so that Colonel Pitman could enter the room. ‘I say, today maybe you’ll have coffee,’ said Stein, speaking slightly more loudly so that Pitman would hear.

  ‘Yes, please, Madame Mauring.’ He waited until she had gone. ‘So this is where you hid the Hitler Minutes.’

  ‘They’re right here,’ he said. ‘You want to see?’

  Colonel Pitman nodded. Stein indicated the package on the table and then Madame Mauring brought the coffee tray. She pushed the Hitler Minutes aside to make room for the cups and saucers. Pitman picked them up. The cardboard folder had been blue originally but now the colour had faded to almost light grey. A long time had passed since some clerk of the US Army’s Government Affairs Group, G-5 Section, had hurriedly typed the inventory tag: ‘Merkers H-6750. Typewritten documents, German language, approx. 300 pages’. American metal seals, and earlier German wax ones, were still in place
but the tapes and strings had been cut. The initials of the archive specialist from the MFA&A were still faintly legible on the box-shaped, rubber-stamp mark. Pitman riffled the corners of the documents, like a card sharp preparing for a good evening.

  Madame Mauring fussed with the coffee things, looked at the two men, and then left without speaking. ‘She’s all right,’ said Stein in reply to Pitman’s unasked question. ‘She’s always been grateful to us for letting her have the lease.’

  ‘What shall we do, Charles?’ Sometimes it was Corporal, but now it was Charles.

  ‘Get out of this store, then get out of this town, then get out of this country.’

  ‘I would hate leaving my house,’ the colonel said. It was easy for Stein, he was comparatively young and fit and still had everything he would need to settle down in some new environment and start a new life. But Colonel Pitman did not want to leave this place. He liked to be near the doctor he trusted, with the servants he liked and in a house he had grown to love. ‘Must I go too, Charles?’

  ‘I think you should, Colonel.’

  ‘What about your son Billy?’ said Pitman. He fidgeted with the papers as he looked at them. It was damnable when a man needed a good cigar and a large brandy and could not have them.

  ‘I told that shmendrick the British sent to see me in LA,’ said Stein. ‘Them holding Billy don’t cut any ice with me. If I give them these papers, we’ve got nothing to bargain with. I told them I’ll get lawyers and fight for Billy through the State Department. That’s the only language these government bastards understand. I told him that if they didn’t release Billy, I’d give xeroxes of all this junk to Stern magazine and the Washington Post, making it a condition that they campaign for Billy’s release.’

  ‘My God, but you’re a hard man,’ said Pitman.

  ‘It’s logical,’ said Stein.

  Pitman nodded. It was logical, but how many men would be able to make such a decision about their son? Perhaps that’s what leadership was. Perhaps leadership was asking people to do things the hard way, simply because that was the way you were prepared to act yourself. Pitman chided himself that he had never been prepared to do anything the hard way.

  ‘There was a man tailing me,’ said Stein, ‘the Brits I guess. How do you like that; the sons of bitches had a man tailing me. He was on the plane too.’

  ‘Did he follow you here?’ said Pitman nervously.

  ‘Nah! I changed planes in Paris. I got rid of him at the airport. You stay in the toilet long enough, the guy following you will eventually come in, to check up. Some tough kid I used to know in New York City told me that. I waited for him, and beat him senseless.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘I slugged him. I put him inside the toilet and set the latch to show it was in use. The cleaners will find him.’

  Pitman shuddered. ‘I’ll drive you to the airport, Chuck.’ Then Pitman said, ‘How do you know he was someone the British sent?’

  ‘Who else would have sent him?’

  Pitman nodded. ‘I’ll drive you to the airport, Charles. Then I’ll take the car across the border into France. There is a hotel on Lake Annecy where I go sometimes. I could stay there for a few days until it’s blown over.’

  ‘It’s not going to blow over, Colonel. We’re fighting City Hall, don’t you see that? The Brits and the Krauts both want the Hitler Minutes. If we don’t let them have them, they’ll blow us away. But if we do let them have them, they’ll also blow us away.’

  ‘I’m too old to run, Charles,’ said the colonel. ‘Too old and too exhausted. When you get to my age, nothing matters any more; the whole damned world becomes boring, like a movie you sat through too many times.’

  ‘Where’s your car?’ said Stein. ‘We’ve got to get going.’

  Chapter 39

  By the time Kleiber had shown his friend the house, the guns and equipment Breslow was hungry. The men had not eaten lunch. Breslow sniffed the air hoping that a meal was being prepared for them but there was no sign of it. Kleiber seemed to be able to miss meals without noticing but Max Breslow liked good food served punctually, as it was at home. He decided that he must go and eat, preferably without his friend Kleiber.

  Breslow respected Willi Kleiber. He had been a tough, honest soldier who could hold his drink, go days on end without sleep and who was never heard to complain. And yet Breslow’s respect for Kleiber fell far short of admiration. Kleiber’s avowed enjoyment of army life had in peacetime been replaced by his pleasure in hunting and camping trips, always in the hardest and bleakest of environments. Kleiber liked shaving in cold water by the light of a gas lamp at four o’clock in the morning inside some icy-cold tent in some god-forsaken part of the world, with the prospect of wading for hours in a cold swamp to shoot a few wretched ducks. Such strenuous pursuit of discomfort seemed childish to Breslow, and he made sure that he did not join such expeditions.

  For all these reasons, Breslow was determined not to accept the spartan accommodation that Kleiber had prepared at the house on the lake shore. Breslow had been taken to inspect the bleak little carpeted room at the top of the house. The folding bed covered with two thin blankets and a threadbare cushion to be used as a pillow was not to Breslow’s taste, neither was the chilly bathroom which was one flight of stairs and a long draughty corridor away.

  Kleiber was disappointed when Breslow told him that he had already booked a suite at a luxurious downtown hotel. He had keenly looked forward to an evening of cigar smoke and schnapps, as they swapped stories about life at the Führerhauptquartier or discussed intimate details about Kleiber’s latest mistress. He had even put a bottle on ice and bought a box of hand-rolled Havanas from the duty-free shop at the airport.

  Max Breslow relented a little. ‘I’ll have a bath and some dinner and come back for a drink,’ he finally offered his friend.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Kleiber, his disappointment changing suddenly to manifest pleasure. ‘I’ll drink you under the table, Max. Be warned.’

  Breslow managed a brave smile, although he dreaded the prospect of such an evening. ‘I mustn’t be too late to bed,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Kleiber, patting his friend on the back. ‘A Saturday evening in August with the whole town waiting for us – how can you talk of going to bed early? We’ll probably end up in that new striptease club I was telling you about, or we could go across the border to Evian and try our luck at the casino. Or, if it’s girls you are in the mood for …’

  It was difficult to counter Kleiber’s persuasive ebullience. ‘I don’t know how you do it, Willi. I really do not.’

  Kleiber straightened himself to his full height and smiled to show his pleasure. It was easy to compliment him, thought Max Breslow – one had only to imply that he was a libertine or a rogue to earn his eternal approval.

  ‘Meet me here at 8.30,’ suggested Kleiber. ‘It will give you time for your preening, and give me time to win a new client. If the new job is what I think it is, Max, the evening is on me.’

  ‘Something good?’

  ‘When a man calls long distance every thirty minutes and says he needs to speak to me concerning a matter of great importance, it usually turns out that his wife is jumping into bed with his chauffeur.’

  ‘Does it, Willi?’

  ‘Or that his mistress is jumping into bed with his chauffeur,’ said Kleiber. ‘The more they make it sound like it’s a matter of international diplomacy, the more certain I become that it’s a little domestic drama.’

  ‘I didn’t know your company took on such domestic dramas nowadays.’

  Willi smiled again. ‘My staff are very highly paid. They don’t mind if they are guarding the President or recording the whispers of an insatiable wife, and why should they mind? I tell these clients that using my organization will cost them ten times what a small company specializing in divorce would charge. They don’t care, Max. They want to pay more. The elemental fury of vengeance motivates these people; they wan
t to hurt, they want to humble, they want to assault the one who has caused them pain. Lacking the physique or the skills or the temperament to do it directly, they use the only weapon they have – money! They pay, Max, because they want to pay.’ He smacked a fist into an open hand to illustrate the similarity between the act of violence and of payment. ‘Yes, I’ll take on a domestic drama.’

  Max Breslow smiled, but the smile was a fixed one. He remembered the terrible arguments between his parents that had woken him as a child. Unable to hear the words, he had understood the hatred in the cadences of their voices. Those duets had climaxed in a harmonic hysteria and the bang of the front door, as one or the other of his parents stormed out of the house.

  ‘I’ll give this fellow thirty minutes,’ said Willi Kleiber. ‘He’s a wealthy man, he’s come all the way from Dortmund to see me. It will save me seeing him tomorrow morning.’

  ‘If it develops into something important,’ said Max Breslow, ‘phone me at the hotel and let me know.’ He tried to hide from his voice any suggestion that he would infinitely prefer an evening on his own.

  ‘Thirty minutes is all he gets,’ said Kleiber. ‘I’ll see you here at 8.30 tonight, and that’s a promise.’

  Max Breslow took his leave. He sighed. With a person such as Willi Kleiber one had to be grateful for even a couple of hours off duty. Once back in the hotel, he made phone calls to California. It was Saturday morning in Los Angeles and his production manager was just beginning a day’s work.

  The Chancellery set was completed and they were about to take it from the workshops and store it ready to erect in the studio. The Kaiseroda mine-entrance set was being built, the plasterers would begin work on Tuesday morning and it would be ready for Friday. The location manager was excited by an office building near the Music Center. He said it would be suitable for the scene in which General Patton tells Eisenhower about the discovery of the treasures in the mine. Breslow listened to all the details of the production and found little to criticize or change.