XPD, Page 34

  ‘You did wonders, Colonel.’

  ‘I’ve always tried to be fair,’ said Pitman. He stopped at a traffic light. ‘I was never a great financial brain, or very good at administration. You know that I was never much of a soldier …’

  ‘Come on, Colonel! You …’

  ‘No. We’re getting too old to go on deceiving ourselves. I was not much of an officer. It was you and Master Sergeant Vanelli who kept us going. Did I tell you that Vanelli died?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel, you did.’

  ‘You kept us going. You understood the men better than I ever did.’

  ‘We were all too gung-ho,’ said Stein.

  ‘I was a hot-head trying to get the Congressional Medal of Honour in my first hour of combat. Major Carson realized that, he warned me against myself.’

  ‘You nearly made it, Colonel.’

  Pitman allowed himself a faint smile. ‘Yep, I nearly did, Chuck. The trouble was, I wiped out half the company in the attempt.’

  ‘It’s time you forgot all that, Colonel. You did what seemed best at the time.’

  ‘Some fine men died that day, Corporal.’ Colonel Pitman’s eyes half closed as he relived the worst and the best moments of his life. ‘Your brother and Major Carson. Arias, who tried to get back to the machinegun. Kaplan and Klein – next-door neighbours who signed on together and stayed together right until the end. Sergeant Scott, who didn’t know how to drive that damned truck but wouldn’t get out of the driver’s seat. Sergeant Packer, who said he’d shoot the last man to go forward …’

  ‘And then trod on the S mine,’ said Stein.

  ‘Heroes,’ said Pitman.

  ‘Not heroes,’ said Stein calmly. ‘Not cowards, Colonel. Not cowards the way that the newspapers and the Limeys and the brass wanted to pretend they were. But not heroes either. It’s time to face up to that, Colonel.’

  ‘We were raw troops. Even during our combat training we didn’t have more than half a dozen men on the training staff who’d ever heard a shot fired in anger. What chance did we stand against those German veterans?’

  ‘We ran,’ said Stein softly. ‘We ran, Colonel.’

  ‘It was politics. Washington wanted Americans in action and wanted them commanded by Eisenhower. It was all part of the political plan to put Eisenhower into the job of Supreme Commander Europe in time for D-day. Without some American blood spilt the Limeys would have got Montgomery into that Supreme Commander slot.’

  ‘Ike did a good job,’ said Stein. He could not share the colonel’s bitterness. ‘With that son of a bitch Monty in command we’d still be there, waiting to start the invasion.’

  ‘Why did they wait so long before bringing Georgie Patton in to command the corps?’ said the colonel. ‘The shame of that damned week still remains with me. I remember it every day. Can you understand that, Corporal?’ It was Corporal now, and Pitman’s voice had that shrill ring to it that Stein had not heard for nearly four decades.

  ‘The top brass were right,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘I cursed them every day for years, but they were right. We would never have had the guts to go into battle again. We were write-offs …’

  ‘Retreads,’ Stein corrected him. ‘OK, so we were humiliated – tankers dumped into a redeployment depot, then relegated to the quartermaster corps – but we did what had to be done. We gave a few years of our lives, and fought the war that put the Nazis out of business.’

  ‘It was all I ever wanted,’ said Pitman softly. ‘That commission in a first-class unit with men I liked and respected. It broke my heart to see them driving those damned trucks.’

  ‘And what about after the war?’ Stein said consolingly. ‘We wouldn’t have got a few million bucks in bullion if we’d stayed with those tank destroyers.’

  ‘I had nothing to lose, that’s why,’ said Pitman, as if an explanation was being forced from him. ‘Could I have gone to lunch at the University Club and returned those stares I would have got after my friends read about Kasserine?’

  ‘I feel no guilt,’ said Stein stoically. ‘We faced the best the Krauts could throw at us, and we ran. But we slowed them up a little, Colonel, don’t ever forget that.’

  ‘Don’t fool yourself, Charles. They brushed us aside like bed bugs in a whore house.’ Pitman reached up to adjust the driving mirror.

  For a while the two men sat in silence, Pitman driving with exaggerated care, while Stein stared out at the suburbs of Geneva with unseeing eyes. On that warm Saturday evening in August everyone who could afford it was spending the weekend in the countryside or along the lake. These suburban streets were silent and empty.

  ‘You heard Major Carson order me to turn back,’ said Pitman suddenly. ‘You heard him, didn’t you?’

  ‘You were absolved, Colonel. I gave evidence to the little curly-haired captain from the judge advocate’s staff who flew down from Algiers. Delaney told him the same. You remember.’

  ‘Goddamn it, Corporal,’ said Pitman in an uncharacteristic display of bad temper. ‘I’m not asking you whether you got me off the hook. Answer my question: did you hear Major Carson or didn’t you? I need to know.’ He was shouting by now.

  Stein looked out of the window. It was all a long time ago. What the hell difference did it make? In Stein’s world, trouble arrived, was dealt with and then forgotten as soon as possible. Why travel back into the past to rake over old worries, when there were so many right here and now, just screaming for attention? Stein looked at his colonel – his bald head made ridiculous by the curly hair around his ears – and then looked back at the wide, graceless streets of the city. No one had heard Carson talking with Pitman. The two officers had deliberately walked far enough away in order to avoid being overheard. Pitman knew that. Stein said, ‘Sure I heard him, Colonel. You didn’t want to pull back but he insisted.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Pitman triumphantly. ‘That’s exactly what happened. I was obeying orders.’

  Stein nodded. He had other more pressing things on his mind than the colonel’s battle with his conscience. ‘Maybe we should both scram,’ said Stein. ‘We’ll both go to Mexico or Canada. You wait there while I go to New Jersey using my Brazilian passport. I’ll take passport photos of you with me, see Petrucci and bring passport and papers for you.’

  ‘Shall I keep on the airport road?’ said Pitman. He bit his lip. Why did he always ask Stein what to do?

  Stein took his time in replying. Every damned road out of Geneva, except the north lakeside road and the autoroute alongside it, led into France. Stein wondered whether the French CRS men who policed the border crossings would have received orders to detain them. Did the French work that closely with the British? And what would they charge them with? Perhaps the French would simply confiscate the Hitler Minutes as contraband and then deport them; he had heard of such things happening to people time and time again. The Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité were a law unto themselves. ‘The autoroute,’ said Stein.

  ‘I think we are being followed,’ said Colonel Pitman eyeing the mirror. ‘The same car has been behind us ever since we left Rollins. It’s a white Mini.’

  ‘Put your foot down. It’s fast, this Jaguar, isn’t it?’

  ‘I doubt we could pull far away from him,’ said Pitman. ‘I’m not any kind of ace driver. I suppose he must have seen us.’ He flicked the right indicator and watched anxiously until the indicator of the car behind them was also flashing. ‘He’s following us,’ said Pitman. ‘There’s no doubt now.’ He felt another twinge of pain and rubbed his chest. If only he could belch as readily as Stein could.

  ‘Stop on the autoroute,’ said Stein. ‘I’ll take care of him. Then we’ll come back to the airport afterwards.’

  ‘We’ll see if we can pull away a little,’ said Pitman. He slowed for the Lausanne autoroute turn-off and swung the wheel over. There was a soft squeal of brakes and the car behind followed closely. Once on the big highway, Pitman put his foot down; all thoughts of indigestion pains vanished. H
is Jaguar was a new and powerful model with only 3000 miles on the clock. Kept in perfect mechanical order, the car responded to the open throttle and leapt forward like a racehorse. The car following them was equally new but it had been ill used by nearly one hundred drivers with little in common except a careless indifference about things borrowed. The Mini spluttered and objected as the driver brought the speedometer needle past sixty. Only with difficulty could he keep behind the Jaguar.

  The cars were touching eighty miles an hour when Colonel John Elroy Pitman the Third suffered his third, and terminal, heart attack.

  Chapter 41

  Willi Kleiber hated to be alone. After his friend Max Breslow had gone back to his hotel, Kleiber went upstairs to the little room which he used as an office and called the phone number that his new client had left with him.

  In spite of Willi Kleiber’s off-hand remarks to Breslow, he was in fact extremely pleased at the prospect of working for Helmut Krebs, who was one of the richest men in West Germany. He owned the greater part of a chain of supermarkets that were to be found all over Europe. In the last few years, he had begun manufacturing and packaging many of the goods sold there. His own brands of instant coffee, yoghurt and soft drinks were as good as any of the better-known labels and always just a few Pfennigs cheaper.

  It was the Krebs family background that attracted Kleiber to the idea of having him as a client. Krebs’s brother was an ambassador, and his wife and sister were both well-known patrons of the theatre. Some member of the Krebs family was usually represented at any chic international social gathering. Such a client – who mingled in a world where widespread concern about kidnapping, murder and blackmail was on everyone’s mind – could open unlimited business opportunities to a company which traded on its capacity to reassure potential victims.

  Kleiber was not surprised therefore to find that Krebs’s confidential secretary was guarded in his response to Kleiber’s suggestion that he should see Mr Krebs at once, rather than wait until the appointment they had made for the next morning.

  ‘Mr Krebs has a dinner engagement,’ said the secretary. ‘So do I,’ said Kleiber. ‘I must leave by eight o’clock.’

  ‘Mr Krebs is having dinner in Venice,’ said the secretary coldly. ‘Venice, Italy,’ he added in case there should be any doubt. ‘He will be using his private jet.’ Nothing could have been better calculated to sharpen Kleiber’s interest.

  He told Kleiber to hold the line and it was several minutes before he returned to say, ‘Very well. Mr Krebs will see you this evening. Be at Geneva airport at six o’clock sharp. You can speak with Mr Krebs on the aircraft, which will bring you back to Geneva again at 7.30. I’ll arrange a car to take you to your appointment if you wish.’

  ‘No need,’ said Kleiber. ‘I’ll use my own car.’

  ‘I’ll ask the pilot to send someone to collect you. Wait by the bar on the departures level and one of the staff will take you through the formalities. Be sure you bring your passport. You’ll have to clear customs and immigration of course.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Kleiber, although the self-importance of the man at the other end was intolerable to him. It was always secretaries and clerks and doormen who were so rude, thought Kleiber; it was likely that Mr Krebs himself would prove to be gracious and charming.

  ‘One more thing, Mr Kleiber,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘I am responsible for Mr Krebs’s personal safety and security. You will make quite sure that you are not carrying anything that could possibly be used as a weapon. I include even small penknives, or boxes of snuff, in that category. You might be asked to submit to a body search. You are a professional, I believe? I’m sure you’ll understand the reasons for such precautions.’ His voice made it clear that he did not care at all whether Kleiber understood.

  ‘I do,’ said Kleiber. He kept his temper under a tight rein. He guessed that Krebs had been threatened by one of the lunatic left-wing student groups. Perhaps it was not going to be a divorce case. Perhaps it was going to be something more important than that.

  ‘Six o’clock sharp at the bar on the departures level, Geneva airport. The crew member will be wearing a plain uniform with peaked cap.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ said Kleiber, and tried to hang up before the secretary did, but lost the race. He smiled to himself. It would be amusing to be able to tell Max that he had been to Venice, Italy, since seeing him this afternoon. He consulted his watch. There would be enough time for a game of tennis before he showered and got ready for the meeting. He wondered which of his staff he would be able to beat soundly. Willi Kleiber only enjoyed tennis when he won a resounding victory.

  Promptly at six, Kleiber arrived at the rendezvous. He was wearing a grey, lightweight, wool-and-polyester suit, white shirt, English club tie and polished side-zip ankle boots. The uniformed man who met him nodded deferentially and escorted him through the special customs and immigration room provided for private aircraft movements. A blue Ford Escort was waiting to take them out to the far side of the airport.

  Kleiber looked at his watch and nodded in admiration at such efficiency. It was only fifteen minutes past six when he stepped into the Jet Commander. This eight-seater was one of the older types of twin-jet executive aircraft, but the sleek design and its blue and grey livery made Kleiber decide that it was one of the most beautiful aircraft he had ever seen. Inside, the leatherwork was blue, with grey carpeting to match the exterior colouring. There was that fugitive smell of real hide, metal polish, warm oil and some other indefinable aroma which distinguishes expensive sports cars from the mass-produced imitations, and there was the sound of ice cubes rattling gently in Waterford glass.

  ‘Would you take a seat at the very front, Mr Kleiber,’ said the man who had escorted him through the immigration and formalities. ‘Mr Krebs is already aboard. He’ll come forward to join you in a few minutes.’

  Kleiber touched the leatherwork with sensuous appreciation. The aircraft had been designed to provide the passengers with a clear view; the leading edges of the wings were to the rear of the rearmost windows. From here he would have a fine view of the landscape.

  ‘Champagne cocktail, sir?’ A steward appeared with some glasses on a silver tray. Kleiber nodded, and a large cut-glass goblet was placed on his armrest, together with a linen napkin and a platter of thin water biscuits. Kleiber twisted in his seat to look for Mr Krebs but the rear of the passenger cabin was curtained off. ‘Please fasten your seat belt, sir. We’re about to take off.’

  Kleiber nodded and settled back into his seat again. This was the life he wanted. He closed his eyes; for a moment this was his private jet and beside him there was some big-breasted girl accompanying him on a weekend of hot sun, cool ocean and crisply laundered bedding. Without opening his eyes he sipped more of his champagne cocktail.

  The motors of the aircraft rose in pitch to an earsplitting scream and then, brakes released, the jet ran forward and on to the perimeter track. Kleiber sat back and drank his champagne. He could see the pilot talking into his microphone to clear the take-off with flying control. At the end of the runway, the plane rocked on its wheel brakes for a moment. Then, with engines at full revolutions, it started down the runway, gathering speed until it hurled itself into the air.

  Kleiber looked round. The cabin attendant, and the man who had greeted him by name, were strapped into their seats two rows behind him. There was no one else in sight. He rested his head back on the seat and looked out of the window. The landscape tilted away more and more as the jet pulled its nose back into a steep climb, to gain altitude for the flight over the Alps.

  The sun painted the peaks bright yellow as the sheer-sided valleys sank into limpid pools of blue shadow. There was nothing comforting about such beauty, thought Kleiber; it was daunting. For countless years the slowly moving glaciers had chiselled at the mountains; now only the very hardest crystalline substructure remained. It was just one more example of the way that nature favoured the strongest – or the
most adaptable. The cocktail contained too much brandy and not enough bitters for his taste, but no matter. He looked at the spectacle below them. A direct route to Venice would take them right over the highest peaks of the Alps. He spotted the Matterhorn, its gaunt, angular shape like some hungry beggar among its plump, snowy brethren.

  Kleiber passed a hand over his eyes and felt a feverish sweat upon his forehead. Even the champagne glass pressed there did not cool his brain. He felt giddy and tried to hold his drink more tightly, but in spite of his grip the glass fell from his twitching fingers and smashed against the metal bulkhead. He saw the bubbling champagne splash across the toes of his boots and felt the nausea and the curious sensation of endlessly falling that he had known before only after reckless drinking. He pushed a hand over his mouth as he felt the vomit; he could not undo the buckle. His tie seemed to be choking him and he felt the sweat dripping down his face. He reached forward to … he reached forward … and then there was only falling and blackness, and eventually only blackness.

  ‘He’s gone, Melvin. Where in hell did you get those Mickey Finns?’

  ‘New York. A bartender on Third Avenue. Used to be a singles joint but lately it’s turned really rough.’

  ‘Remind me not to go there.’

  ‘They wouldn’t let you in, Todd. You got to be eighteen.’ Kalkhoven’s assistant grinned. The pilot was looking round. Melvin Kalkhoven gave him a thumbs up and the pilot began talking to the ground, asking for a change of route to Frankfurt am Main.

  Todd Wynn began to pick up the broken pieces of glass from the smashed champagne goblet. Kalkhoven went back to get the US Army blankets and the stretcher. By the time they got to Frankfurt, the unconscious Wilhelm Kleiber would have to be ready for transfer to a US Air Force medical transport aircraft. The documentation was all ready. Kleiber had become Captain Martin Moore, an infantry officer stationed in Berlin, now suffering from an unidentified virus disease and being returned to a specialist hospital in the USA for tests.