XPD, Page 33

  Reassured by all that, Breslow took a bath and then ordered a small bottle of burgundy and a grilled steak from room service. He phoned his wife and told her that everything was all right. His wife was nervous about flying, and Breslow had got into the habit of phoning her after every flight, and phoning her every day he was away. It was an extravagance but it all went on to the film production account. They talked about the weather, the price of gasoline, the enormous estimate for repairing the Mercedes. Max listened dutifully. He had never told his wife much about the freeway accident, and certainly not told her that he’d pretended that it was an attempt on his life. Mrs Breslow also made passing mention of Billy Stein. He was still out of town, she said. Mary had become moody and difficult because she had not heard from him. Billy’s father said merely that his son was in Europe on business; Mary had sobbed.

  By now, Max Breslow had hoped that his daughter’s infatuation would be waning but his wife said nothing to confirm this hope. On the contrary, Mrs Breslow spoke rather warmly of the Stein boy. So even his own wife was not immune to the Stein kid’s smooth charm and good looks. Perhaps that motivated Breslow to abandon the potato salad, bread, butter and cream untouched on his tray. It influenced him too when later he chose his favourite dark blue worsted suit and knitted tie. Damn it, thought Breslow, perhaps he would go with Kleiber across to the casino at Evian. He could afford a small wager at the gambling tables, and who was to say he would not win?

  Geneva was not a town that Breslow knew well. He kept to the most obvious route, going to the centre of town and looking for the autoroute signs. The lake was beautiful at this time of evening. Tourists crowded the promenade. He stopped his car at a pedestrian crossing where three young girls waited to cross.

  One of them, in a see-through top, smiled at him. She had long hair and a round baby face with large eyes, and he was suddenly reminded of a girl he had once known in Dresden, before the war. It was strange how such memories surfaced without warning after being so long forgotten. Were those two pretty girls waiting for a ride to Lausanne … to dinner … to bed? As he pulled away again, the car spluttered. These damned rented cars were all alike – shiny and clean interiors but mechanically always second rate.

  Once on the autoroute the car’s blocked fuel line cleared and seemed to be all right again. He drove carefully, enjoying the darkening sky and the mountains which looked like the backdrop for grand opera.

  He came into the little streets of Coppet very slowly and was looking for the high gates of the house when he noticed two grey Mercedes panel trucks. Two uniformed policemen came out of the gate as he got there. One staggered under the weight of some H & K machine pistols and the second man, an officer, carried a box of smoke grenades. Two of Kleiber’s employees were handcuffed and waiting to get inside the second truck.

  Breslow decided to carry on straight past the house. The policemen looked at him with interest and paused for a moment to see which way he would go. Breslow decided it would be better to seem equally surprised. He slowed almost to a stop, turned in his seat and stared at the policemen before continuing slowly down the street.

  Without hurrying, Breslow turned up towards the main road. It was not the first time that he had come so near to disaster, he’d known many such close scrapes during the war, and learnt to restrain all temptation to run. It was a wise precaution. At the intersection with the main road, there was another police car waiting. Breslow decided to turn right and continue along the lakeside towards Lausanne. He went to Nyon before turning off to get to the autoroute and coming all the way back to Geneva again. It was only when he was back in the busy anonymity of the town centre that he was able to think properly. He decided against phoning either Dr Böttger or his contact in Geneva. Who knew to what extent Operation Siegfried had been penetrated if the Swiss were taking Willi Kleiber’s men into custody. He’d phone only Edward Parker, as Kleiber had requested.

  When Max Breslow saw the signs for Geneva airport he moved into the exit lane. He had decided to go home to California.

  Chapter 40

  Colonel Pitman drove the car after he left Madame Mauring’s cake shop with Stein. Colonel Pitman no longer enjoyed driving, which was why he employed a chauffeur. Driving made him tense, and long journeys affected his bad back. A young man in a red Audi came weaving through the fast traffic carelessly enough to make Pitman brake sharply. He felt the bile rise to his throat, and winced with the pain of indigestion. The anxieties of the last few days had played havoc with his regulated working hours and disrupted his mealtimes. Now there was nothing he would like better than an Alka-Seltzer and a long doze in his favourite armchair. He rubbed his chest, hoping to alleviate the discomfort. He saw Stein looking at him; he smiled, but he couldn’t help wondering why he was chauffeuring his ex-corporal. He should have told Stein to drive the car. Instead, Stein had got into the passenger seat and told him to get going. It had always been like this: Stein giving the orders and Pitman being carried along by his energy and determination. It had been like that the first day he had met Stein, the day Pitman had arrived at the battalion headquarters – a bone-rattling, dusty truck ride from Casablanca. Lieutenant Pitman was straight from the USA, newly assigned to the tank destroyer units that everyone was promising would knock hell out of the Panzers of the Deutsche Afrika Korps.

  Pitman was greeted by a snappy salute from the sentry at the gate. He felt important as he carried his kit up the hill to the tent marked ‘Report here’. It was a warm day. The tent smelt of new canvas and the waxy resin used to preserve it. The sun made the light inside the tent bright yellow, and there was the loud buzzing of flies. A middle-aged master sergeant sat at a table with a field telephone and a stateside newspaper. He was reading the sports results aloud, very slowly. Private Stein – plump, red-faced and perspiring – sat on an upturned box and punctuated the sports results with sneers, jeers and snorts. Lieutenant Pitman gave them a moment or two to acknowledge his presence but when they did not do so he said, ‘Sergeant, I’m Lieutenant Pitman. I’m looking for the battalion commander.’

  Master Sergeant Vanelli looked up and nodded. He folded his stateside newspaper and laid it on the table with the sort of reverence that such rare documents were given at that time, but he did not get to his feet. Stein, without moving from his position on the upended box, looked the officer up and down from the factory-fresh steel helmet, and the pale skin unused to African sunshine, to the newly issued brown boots. ‘Take my advice, Lieutenant,’ said Stein. ‘You get your leggings and your pistol strapped on and paint your bar on the front of your helmet before you see the CO.’

  ‘Is that your advice?’ said Pitman coldly.

  ‘This is General Patton’s command: twenty-five-dollar fine for officers without their pistols; and officers without leggings pay fifteen bucks.’ Stein smiled and aimed a smack at a fly which had settled on his arm, but it flew away unharmed.

  ‘Which is the colonel’s tent?’ Pitman asked, pointedly addressing the sergeant instead of Stein.

  ‘The one with the rolled tent-sides,’ said Stein. ‘The colonel likes a draught, and don’t mind the sand.’

  ‘Is this man your mouthpiece, Sergeant?’ Pitman asked him.

  ‘I guess he is,’ said the sergeant, as though he hadn’t considered it before. ‘Charlie Stein kind of runs things for us up here.’

  Lieutenant Pitman looked at the two men, wondering whether to complain about their unsoldierly manner, but decided that it would be an unwise move for a newly assigned officer. He ducked his head to go out of the tent just as Stein called, ‘And ten bucks if you are not wearing a tie.’

  Pitman ignored him.

  ‘Cut the speed a little,’ said Stein. ‘This is no time to get a ticket for speeding.’ Pitman glanced at the fat, balding man sitting beside him. Who would have guessed that their lives and fortunes could have become so interdependent? Stein was twisted round awkwardly as he pushed his brown shoulder bag on to the rear seat. The documents he pla
ced on the floor behind him, and from time to time he reached back to touch them and reassure himself that they were still there.

  ‘Sounds like it’s all over for the bank,’ said Stein, hoping to be contradicted. But Colonel Pitman didn’t argue the matter. ‘Sounds like they want us to be skinned alive,’ Stein added despondently. ‘You don’t want to spend the next ten years arguing your way through law courts, do you?’ He pressed the lighter button in the dashboard, just to check if it worked. ‘It’s a good car this,’ said Stein approvingly, stroking the leather.

  ‘I tried to get inter-bank loans,’ said Pitman. ‘But none of the big banks are willing to cover us. Maybe they are scared of Creditanstalt. Maybe they are sore because we didn’t syndicate the deal with them.’

  ‘And maybe they’ve been warned off by that bastard who set us up. Or Friedman or Dr Böttger or one of those other people in on the swindle.’

  ‘Going away will not help me,’ said Pitman sadly. He stopped at the intersection from which a road led to the French border and the south side of the lake. Instead he turned the other way.

  ‘Remember Petrucci? A little Sicilian kid … a machine-gunner from one of the B-column vehicles which was knocked out ahead of us?’

  Colonel Pitman rubbed his face reflectively. He could not remember.

  ‘Delaney still sees him. He fixed me up with fake papers: Brazilian passport, driving licence, the whole works. He’d do the same for you, and we’ve got enough money here for both of us, Colonel. We’ll split it down the middle, you and me.’

  ‘It’s your savings, Charles. No, I couldn’t.’

  ‘What do I want with savings?’ said Stein. ‘How long have I got ahead of me? Ten years … Or, if I lose fifty pounds and stick with the nuts and natural yoghurt – twenty. So how much do we need? I got over two million bucks here, Colonel. Stop thinking about the dog faces from the battalion. They’re all OK, and they’d want you to say yes.’ But Pitman was lost in his own memories.

  ‘I’m not sorry,’ answered the colonel at last. ‘If I could go back to that night round the stove when we first talked about it … I’d do the same thing all over again.’

  ‘Germany? You mean 1945? The night you came back from that blonde who worked in the mayor’s office?’

  Pitman nodded. ‘Remember the rain? I thought it would never stop. I had the worst jeep in the battalion that night and I had to nurse it halfway across Germany.’

  ‘You said you were in her apartment,’ said Stein. ‘That was only three blocks from the town hall. What are you talking about, halfway across Germany?’

  Pitman continued to drive in silence as he remembered that night in the final days of the war in Europe. There was no blonde; there was just the general. He would never tell Stein the truth; he would never tell anyone.

  ‘I know it’s a big disappointment for you, Pitman,’ the general had said, ‘but it’s the way the goddamn war is.’ The one-star general had modelled his appearance and behaviour upon General Patton, his commander. He did not have a pair of pearl-handled pistols at his waist – that would have been too obviously an imitation of his mentor – but he did keep his Colt .45 strapped on tight at all times and even here, miles away from the fighting, he kept his helmet on his head and a grenade clipped to his shoulder strap.

  Outside it was raining, the sky streaked with pink and mauve, the last daylight almost gone. The endless convoys of supply trucks splashed through the mud in the dark pockmarked streets and crawled round piles of bricks and rubble, the result of a twenty-four-hour bombardment that had entombed half the German inhabitants in their cellars. ‘The war’s nearly over,’ said Pitman. ‘Ever since the Rhine you’ve been promising me a chance to fight.’

  ‘See those trucks out there?’ said the general, pointing with his cigar. ‘I’m trying to push half a million tons of material into position with quartermaster units that are nearly asleep on their feet. Some of those truck drivers have had no shut-eye for fifty-six hours, Pitman.’ Urgently, the general pushed some papers across his desk. ‘I’ve got medical officers yelling down the phone at me, I’m cannibalizing trucks so fast that I’m losing whole companies. My clerks are trying to sort “Dangerous Cargo” from “Valuable Cargo” and “Immediately Vital Cargo” from “Essential Cargo” … will you look at all this crap! Now you’re telling me I’ve got to let you go play soldiers in the front line. Well, I’m telling you no, Pitman. Have you got that?’

  ‘I’m a career officer, General. I need battle experience if I’m going to get any kind of promotion in the postwar army. We discussed it and you promised to help.’

  ‘You did all right, Pitman,’ said the general puffing on his cigar. ‘I made you a colonel and now you’ve got a battalion. That’s not bad.’

  ‘I want to fight, General. You said you’d make sure I had my chance.’

  The general looked at him and blew smoke. Quietly he said, ‘You had your chance, Colonel. You had your chance at Kasserine, long before I was lucky enough to get over here. It was a big snafu, the way I read it; your guys took a powder and the Krauts just came rolling over our support areas. It’s not the kind of lousy performance that makes me want to send you forward.’

  The bulbs in the desk lights flickered and went yellow and dim as the army engineers nursed the wrecked German power utilities. In the gloom the general’s cigar glowed very bright before he added, ‘Do you know, I still have to take a ribbing from some of these crummy Brits? “Remember Kasserine?” some Limey major says to me the other day. “They put us into the line when you Yanks folded.” He says it like it was a joke, of course. That’s the way the Brits always let you have the poison. It’s a joke … so I have to laugh with that bastard. But I don’t like it, Pitman, and when I hear about Kasserine I don’t like you.’

  Pitman said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  ‘Now you get back to your battalion HQ and keep your trucks moving. I’m due at army for a conference in two hours’ time, and by then I’m going to have every last lousy truck in this man’s army loaded and rolling.’

  Colonel Pitman got back to his battalion HQ at midnight. The heavy rain found its way through the canvas roof and ill-fitting side-flaps of his jeep, so that his short overcoat was soaking wet as he leant over the pot-bellied stove and warmed himself. ‘Am I supposed to be the commanding officer of this lousy battalion?’ he complained rhetorically to his orderly room corporal. ‘So why do I get the worst jeep in the battalion?’

  ‘You have trouble, Colonel?’ Stein asked.

  ‘That’s one of the jeeps from that detached company we took over,’ said Pitman. ‘All those vehicles are unreliable. Make sure you don’t give me one of those again. Got it?’

  ‘You been with the general, sir?’

  ‘I’ve been in bed with that blonde chick we saw this morning in the mayor’s office. Why do you think I asked you for a bottle of scotch?’

  ‘For the general maybe,’ said Stein. He was pouring boiling water on to coffee grounds and the aroma emerged suddenly. ‘You took a bottle for the general last week when you went to see him. I thought maybe you were trying to get detached for a spell with those armoured division guys we fixed up with extra gas and rations.’

  ‘Do you read all my private correspondence, Corporal Stein?’

  ‘I sure do, Colonel. I figure that’s what you need me for. You want some of this coffee?’

  ‘Yes, I do … with sugar and cream.’

  Stein put the steaming coffee before his colonel. It was in an antique porcelain cup discovered in the wreckage. Colonel Pitman sniffed at the coffee and drank some.

  Stein watched him with close interest. ‘So you weren’t with the general tonight?’

  ‘I was laying that little blonde number in a top back room in one of those apartment houses near the delousing centre.’

  ‘It’s not like you, Colonel,’ said Stein with polite interest.

  ‘Well, from now on it’s going to be like me,’ said Colonel Pitm
an. ‘From now on I’m going to keep the army in perspective, and I’m going to start counting off the days, like you do, Corporal.’

  ‘You’re not going to stay in the army, Colonel?’

  ‘You show me a way to get out of the army tonight, Corporal, and I’d take it.’

  ‘I might be able to do something like that,’ said Stein. ‘And I might be able to show you how to take enough dough to retire with.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Stein?’

  ‘Not Uncle Sam’s money, Colonel; Nazi gold stashed not far from here. Looks like we are going to get the job of hauling it to Frankfurt.’

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘Millions and millions of bucks, Colonel. This lousy war is just about over. I was sitting here on my own tonight, and I was thinking about Aram and the old days back in North Africa … and I began to wonder about something. Could I just run over this idea with you, Colonel? In strictest confidence …’

  Colonel Pitman sat down on a packing case near the stove. His coat was steaming as the heat penetrated his damp uniform. ‘You sure could, Corporal. I’ve never been in a better mood to listen to any proposition that comes my way.’

  ‘The boys always trusted you, Colonel,’ said Stein.

  Pitman’s memories faded as he reminded himself that this was 1979 and half a lifetime had passed since the day they made that fateful decision. ‘No one ever wanted to vote you out of office.’

  ‘I’m proud of that,’ admitted Pitman. ‘1952 was the toughest year … three of the boys died in as many months.’

  ‘Tricky Richards, Corporal Arbenz who had the car accident and Moose Menzies. Yes, I remember,’ said Stein. ‘Yeah, that was a real bad year.’

  ‘I paid out the families without having any proper authority from the syndicate,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘It was complicated. We were deeply committed to fixed-interest investments.’