Artillery of Lies (4 page)

“When you say they love each other …”

“Twice nightly, with matinées Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

“I want to get this straight, Charles. You're saying they enjoy sexual intercourse.”

“If they don't enjoy it, they're martyrs to suffering.” Templeton couldn't keep a tinge of envy out of his voice.

“Never mind, Charles,” Garcia said. “You were twenty-four once.
I just hope the Director doesn't get to hear about their martyrdom. He doesn't like sex between agents.”

“If he doesn't like it he needn't join in.”

“You know what I mean. Tell me … Are you absolutely convinced, in your own mind, that Eldorado is everything he claims to be?”

“He got the Iron Cross, Freddy. And pots of
Abwehr
money.”

“I wasn't thinking of the
Abwehr.
I just wondered … I mean, this Eldorado Network is such a professional job, isn't it? Maybe Luis Cabrillo was assisted by … I don't know … the Americans, or the Russians.”

They walked back in silence toward the house.

“No,” said Templeton. “Sorry, Freddy. I haven't had a proper night's sleep in four days and my brain feels like congealed suet. I can just about get it around the idea of the Eldorado Network being the creation of a mad Spanish freelance who's too young to know better but I honestly can't find room for any Yanks or Ruskies. Sorry.”

“It's possible, though.”

“Anything's possible with Cabrillo. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that he's really the bastard son of Rudolf Hess by a lady flamenco dancer. That's how he learned Morse, you see: through playing the castanets. Ravel's ‘Bolero' is really the Italian Army Order of Battle. Which reminds me …” Templeton took a couple of sheets of paper from an outside pocket. “He couldn't wait to start work. He says this is an urgent message from sub-agent Pinetree.”

They went inside and Garcia scanned the paper. “Definitely not,” he said.

Templeton had found an armchair to sprawl in. “Personally, I think it's rather good.” He allowed his eyes to close.

“Good? It's brilliant. Full marks for style, and I'm sure the
Abwehr
would love the content. What Hitler wants right now is fewer Allied convoys to Russia. Unfortunately, that may well happen.” Templeton opened his eyes. “His U-boats are sinking our ships in the Atlantic like billy-o, whatever billy-o is,” Garcia said. “Sinking them faster than we can build them. At this rate, we shall have to cut the Russian convoys whether we like it or not.”

“Ah. That's different.” Templeton made a supreme effort and stood up. “Sherry? And then I really must go to bed. Which, incidentally, is what Luis and Julie did an hour ago. Ingenious young devil, isn't he?”

“He has a knack for stumbling on the truth.”

“He's going to hate you for killing it.”

“Oh no. He's going to hate
you
for killing it. Then I'll catch him on the rebound and he'll love me. I'm his case officer, Charles; I can't afford to let him hate me. Whereas you will soon be off to Lisbon. You are emotionally expendable.”

They went in search of sherry.

“Prune juice,” Templeton said. “Remind me to tell you about prune juice.”

The MIS report on Eldorado was wrong in one important respect. Wolfgang Adler had not murdered Brigadier Christian by strangulation, as he had told Luis Cabrillo. Adler had been convinced that he had killed the Brigadier. Later, an appropriate obituary notice had appeared in the Berlin newspapers. MIS knew that a Brigadier Wagner had taken over as head of Madrid
Abwehr.
Christian's death seemed to have been confirmed on all sides, but in fact he was still alive. Adler had chosen the wrong way to kill him.

As a cause of death on the Russian Front in 1942, strangulation came well down the list. Those who died in action usually got shot or shelled. Those who died from other causes either froze or starved. Hardly anybody got throttled, whether by an enemy or by an angry friend. To do it properly you had to take your gloves off, which nobody wanted to do; and even so, it could be a lengthy business, making you a standing target for any third party with a rifle.

So, although Wolfgang Adler had witnessed death in many forms during his spell on the Russian Front, he had no experience of strangulation. When he had followed Brigadier Christian, chief of Madrid
Abwehr,
into the lavatories of the Lisbon embassy, smashed a large bottle of disinfectant over his head and (as he thought) strangled him with his tie, he had bungled the job. To begin with, a lot of blood streamed from Christian's head. It made Adler's fingers slippery. He tried to pick bits of broken glass off Christian's neck and shoulders, not wanting to cut himself, but his fingers were too slippery to grip the shards. He began to panic: at any moment someone might come in. He grabbed Christian's tie and tried to rip it off. That was a mistake: all he did was tighten the knot. And then his fingers were so greasy with blood that he couldn't unpick the knot. He rolled Christian on
to his face, took one end of the tie in each hand, crossed the ends at the back of Christian's neck and heaved on them and kept on heaving until all the strength had drained out of his arms through his fingers and he let go. Christian lay like a sack of wheat.

Still nobody had come in. Adler got up, washed his hands, dried them, went back to the basin and, unhurriedly, washed his face. The pool of blood around Christian's head was congealing. By this time Adler was irrationally confident that nobody would come in. He felt very sure of himself; he had done it. He combed his hair. He left.

When the door clicked shut, Christian staggered to his feet, lurched to the nearest cubicle and locked himself in. He felt faint. He had just enough strength to sit on the floor before he fell down. When he woke his head was resting against the toilet bowl and he knew he was about to be sick, so he made the most of the facilities.
Perfectly normal,
he told himself.
You get hit on the head, you throw up. Correct response.
His recent lunch smelled disgusting; he wondered why on earth he had eaten it. He flushed the toilet. The gushing waters sounded wonderfully clean and healthy, so he flushed the toilet again. He had an idea. Next time he flushed the toilet, he washed his face and neck in its rushing torrent and felt a lot better.

Christian was alive because he was strong and Adler was sloppy. If Adler had been better organized, he would have carried a knife or an ax and that would have been that. Instead he had improvised with a bottle of disinfectant which merely stunned Christian. He had come to just as Adler was fumbling and cursing at the knot of his tie. Christian kept his eyes shut. As Adler rolled him on to his face, he guessed what was coming and clutched a handful of his own shirt front and dragged it down. When Adler heaved on the ends of the tie, Christian's right arm took much of the strain. He also had unusually strong neck muscles. He had been an above-average athlete (discus, shot, wrestling) and he had kept fit; often, in the middle of a meeting, he would wander away from the table and do a quick dozen push-ups. Adler should have remembered that. When Adler started strangling, Christian's neck muscles were braced. Adler didn't notice. Christian couldn't keep up the resistance for long, and when Adler finally stood up, panting, he was semiconscious. But only semi. Adler should have rolled him over and tested his breathing or his pulse. Come to that, Adler should have used his own tie and damn the expense. But Adler was too impetuous, too sloppy, too disorganized.

After five minutes' deep breathing Christian felt strong enough to
leave the lavatories. He reached the office of the embassy doctor without meeting any
Abwehr
staff and went straight into the examination room. The doctor, who had learned to be unsurprised by anything the
Abwehr
did, followed him.

“Lock the door,” Christian said. “I'm dead. Murdered. Now I want you to get me on a plane to Berlin.”

“Sit down.” The doctor examined the pupils of his eyes and took his pulse. He had already noticed the patches of black blood matting Christian's hair. “How were you killed?”

“Knocked out and strangled. Watch out for broken glass.” He winced as the doctor searched his scalp. “What's that awful stink?”

“Disinfectant. You're soaked in it. Whoever killed you was very concerned not to contaminate the wound.”

Christian found that funny. He laughed so much that he reopened the cut. Eventually the doctor stitched it up. That evening Christian's coffin, packed with sandbags, was flown out of Lisbon. Christian was on the same plane, wearing a mask of bandages and carrying a passport that said he was Albert Meyer, fruit importer.

Next day he telephoned
Abwehr
headquarters. Admiral Canaris, its head, was not there but his second-in-command, General Oster, was. Christian got through to Oster's secretary and after some insistence, bluff, threats, and the casual use of a few high-powered code words, he got to speak to Oster himself. “Good morning,” he said. “Very sad news about Brigadier Christian.”

“Ah.” There was a signal lying on Oster's blotter. It had come from Madrid
Abwehr
and it said that Christian's body was being flown home for interment and would be held at Tempelhof airport mortuary, pending instructions. Nothing more. Oster had tried to telephone Madrid but the lines were down somewhere in France: Allied bombing or French sabotage, or maybe non-aligned mice. “Sad indeed,” he said. “You are perhaps a relative?”

“Very close. If you meet me beside the coffin in an hour perhaps we can discuss it.”

Christian was waiting at the airport mortuary when Oster arrived. Oster took his hat off. “Might we be alone for a few minutes?” he asked the attendant. The man left them to their grief. “I hope you won't be offended,” Oster said, “if I ask to see your papers.”

“I can do better.” Christian unwound the bandages and gave his unshaven cheeks a vigorous massage. “Sorry about the stubble, sir,”
he said. “Sorry about the secrecy, too. I'm afraid I didn't completely trust your telephone.”

Oster knew Christian; indeed he had recommended his promotion to brigadier. “I'm glad you're not in this box,” he said. “I thought I recognized your voice. Now what's going on?”

“It's all rather squalid,” Christian said. “But in a nutshell, I believe that my
Abwehr
section has been infiltrated by the SD.”

The SD was the intelligence and espionage arm of the SS, the Nazi security service, which Heinrich Himmler controlled. In theory the SS and the SD were responsible only for the internal security of the Third Reich; that was why Himmler also had charge of the Gestapo. Military intelligence was a totally separate area. That was the
Abwehr's
responsibility. It was the
Abwehr's
job to run spies in foreign countries and to collect military intelligence for the German armed forces. But Himmler was the most ruthlessly ambitious of Hitler's ministers. He could never be satisfied with what he had. He wanted the
Abwehr
too. The rivalry between his SD and Admiral Canaris's
Abwehr
was an open secret. It was a small war within the big war.

Oster took a little stroll around the coffin and ended up where he began. “I've always assumed the SD are constantly trying to penetrate us,” he said. “God knows they hate our guts.”

“Hate is one thing. Attempted murder is another,” Christian said. “The man the SD put into my section was on the verge of destroying my top agent in Britain, Eldorado. When he realized I knew what he was doing, he tried to kill me. In fact, he thinks he succeeded.”

“This wouldn't be Adler, would it?” Oster asked.

“Yes.” Christian, forgetting his stitches, scratched his head and winced. “How did you know, sir?”

“Why didn't you have him arrested?”

“I thought of it. Then I thought: No, far better to see what he does next. Give the SD plenty of rope and maybe they'll hang themselves, and Adler too.”

“Mmm.” Oster, who was an inch or two shorter, stood on tiptoe to see the injury. “Nasty … Well, Adler's beyond hanging, I'm afraid. Just after you phoned I had another signal from Madrid. Young Adler suffered a heart attack yesterday and passed away.”

“Heart attack?” Christian said. “At thirty-one?”

“He was rash and impetuous. Perhaps he couldn't wait. What's in this box?”

“Sandbags. Good Spanish earth, soaked in good Spanish blood from the Civil War, I shouldn't be surprised.”

“I'll have those. They'll do my roses a power of good.”

Christian went to
Abwehr
headquarters in Oster's car, with the curtains closed. On the way they talked about how best to fight off the SD.

“You know, sir,” Christian said, “when I think of the sheer volume of intelligence we've been getting out of the Eldorado Network, and the shining quality, then I'm appalled the SD should try to destroy it. I mean, that's nothing short of treachery.”

“Himmler doesn't think so. Himmler thinks our existence is a kind of treachery.”

“What on earth does the man want?” Christian asked. Occasionally a whiff of disinfectant crossed his nostrils, and the phrase “Death in Madrid” passed through his mind like the name of some absurd new perfume. “The Party can't run
every
thing.”

“Who says? It does in Russia.”

“Very badly, by all reports. Anyway, military intelligence is no job for a bunch of Party hacks. It needs imagination, flair, quick wits.”

“I wish I could say they were stupid,” Oster said. “That's the trouble with the SD: they're not at all stupid, they're bloody clever and they catch a lot of spies, real spies. The SD's got so many people inside the Resistance movements, they make them look like Swiss cheese. I've got some hard types working for me, but …” Oster sniffed. “Madrid isn't the only
Abwehr
station the SD has broken into,” he said. “Brussels, Brest, Oslo, Paris, Hamburg. We kick them out, but it never stops.”