The loudspeakers were announcing the departure of the Dusseldorf flight, but Mr. Fortescue ignored them. There were things he had to tell Mr. Calder, even if the telling of them held up the plane.
When he had finished Mr. Calder said, “Do you think that the car crash was an accident?”
“I’ve no grounds yet for supposing anything else,” said Mr. Fortescue. “We sent Leopold by a roundabout route via Frankfurt and private charter. I don’t see how the opposition could possibly have anticipated this. Or how they could have made effective arrangements in time.”
“I think you’re right,” said Mr. Calder. “Unfortunate that it should have happened when it did.”
“You have a gift for understatement,” said Mr. Fortescue. “I’ve arranged for Corrie to meet you. He’ll give you the local picture. It isn’t an entirely happy one, I’m afraid.”
The loudspeaker made a third plaintive announcement of the departure of the Dusseldorf flight and Mr. Calder walked out onto the runway – a thick nondescript figure in a belted mackintosh, carrying a worn airplane flight satchel strapped to one shoulder and the lives of a number of people in his hands.
Josef Bartz reached the embassy at ten past one. It would have been quicker if he had taken some form of transport, but despite the weight of the briefcase he was carrying, he preferred to walk. He suffered his first shock when he found that the public office, the entrance to which was conveniently tucked away in a side street, was shut.
After a moment of indecision he walked round to the main door of the embassy. This was open, but guarded by a commissionaire who looked doubtfully at him.
“I have to see Captain Massey,” said Josef. He spoke fair English.
The commissionaire said reluctantly, “In here, sir,” and showed Josef into a waiting room furnished with four hard chairs, a table and a portrait of the Queen. Josef put the briefcase down along the front of the chair and sat with his legs over it. Twenty minutes passed. Outside, the snow fell softly.
The commissionaire returned, bringing with him a young man with a long, sad, horse-like face who introduced himself as Mr. Bear. Mr. Bear was, it appeared, a third secretary. He had come to Bonn almost directly from Oxford, and his recruitment to the Foreign Service was one of those things which sometimes happens, even in the best organisations.
Mr. Bear explained to Josef that Captain Massey had had an accident. Well, yes, quite a serious accident. His deputy was, unfortunately, in Greece. If Herr Bartz could come back after the holiday was over, a temporary replacement for Captain Massey would no doubt have been found, and he could deal with whatever business it was that Herr Bartz might wish to discuss.
Josef, his face suddenly pinched and white, said, “Impossible. I must see someone. It is of the highest importance. It cannot conceivably wait.”
When he had said this three times, Mr. Bear sighed, rose to his feet and said that he would have a word with the first secretary.
As he went out he said to the commissionaire, “There’s a loony in the waiting room. Better keep a careful eye on him, Forbes.”
Martin Seccombe, disturbed at his lunch, listened briefly to what his junior had to report and said, “Sounds like one of Massey’s shady friends. He can wait till Monday,” and returned to a consideration of the ginger pudding which was one of the specialities of the embassy chef.
Five minutes later Josef was out in the snow, still clutching his briefcase.
John Corrie met Mr. Calder at Dusseldorf, and during the forty mile drive Mr. Calder was happy to let Corrie do the talking. He knew of him as an agent of the modern school, better at languages than at judo, more adept with a cipher machine and a computer than a gun or a knife – but a thoroughly reliable operator.
Corrie said, “It’s not an easy setup here at the moment. I’m all right, personally. The office looks after me and backs me up. It’s people like Massey I’m sorry for. The embassy is suffering from one of its holier-than-thou fits. It’s not the ambassador’s fault. He has his hands full doing his diplomatic work. I think the root of the trouble is the first secretary and some of the junior officials. Their policy is entirely negative. Don’t stir up trouble. Don’t give any cause for provocation. Suppose there is a microphone in the ambassador’s drawing room, what does it matter? We’re so bloody discreet that anything we say can safely be relayed to Moscow or Peking. It’d be all right if the other side would play, but the East German government has got a very strong and active organisation right here in Bonn. It’s not just an information gathering outfit. It’s equipped for strong-arm stuff as well. If ever there was a showdown, one of the first objectives would be to paralyse the government machinery in Bonn. The authorities here know it. They’re not happy about it, and they’d like to take a strong line, but they don’t know where to start. I’ve been getting a lot of cooperation from them lately. Lammerman, who’s head of the security police here, has been particularly helpful. He put me on to Josef Bartz and we worked this ploy together. Damn this snow. If it gets any thicker, the roads will be blocked before morning.”
“Tell me about the ploy,” said Mr. Calder.
“We’ve had our eyes on the PD outfit for some time. Headquarters in Warsaw, a very elaborate communications setup, senior operatives all from the Eastern Zone. But we could never crack it. Its security was too good for us. Then Lammerman managed to get at Bartz, who was actually in the dispatch section. He handled him in the usual way. Paid him money for general information and copies of messages which were no earthly use to us because we couldn’t decode them. Then he put the pressure on. Offered him a very large sum indeed for the coding-machine itself. Bartz reckoned that if we could supply him with the right keys, he could lift the machine during the jollifications which go on before closing time on Christmas Eve. But he insisted that we give him sanctuary in England. Reasonable enough, really. He’d be a dead duck in Bonn. That’s where Massey came in. He got the keys – it meant squaring the people who’d made the desk, but he did it – and when everything was set, he arranged for Leopold to come over to escort Bartz back to England. He had a private plane laid on for this evening. It may not be able to get off the ground now.”
“Where’s Bartz?” said Mr. Calder.
“Right now,” said Corrie, “he’s safe and sound in our embassy, waiting for
you
to chaperone him on his journey back to England.”
Josef came cautiously round the corner of the road in which he lived. A man was standing in the doorway opposite his apartment house, and there were two more in a parked car twenty yards along the street. Josef turned in his tracks and stole back the way he had come. That escape was blocked. The manager must have checked on the coding-machine before leaving. He could imagine the flurry of orders. Any member of the dispatch department would be automatically suspect. Those who had left the building early, in particular. When they searched his desk they would find that the office carbons of all the messages he had sent in the past twelve months were gone too. That would have clinched the matter.
The briefcase weighed a ton. It was dragging his arm out of its socket. His first impulse was to throw it into someone’s front garden. His second was that something might yet be salvaged from the mess. There were two things he had to do. He had to deposit the briefcase in safety. And he had to find somewhere to spend the night. The first, he thought, might be managed. There were private luggage lockers at all the rail and bus terminals. The second might not be so easy.
Mr. Calder said to Martin Seccombe, “You did
what
?”
“We had no instructions about him. The best we could do was to ask him to come back after the holiday, when someone would presumably have put us in the picture about him.”
“And that was the best you could do, was it?” said Mr. Calder. “What was the worst? Shoot him out of hand?”
The first secretary flushed. He did not like Mr. Calder. He disliked his appearance, and his tone. Above all he disliked his lack of respect for the acting head of Her Britannic Majesty’s Embassy.
Before he could say anything, Mr. Calder added, “I suppose you realise that what Bartz was bringing us was not only this coding-machine. It was copies of all messages which had gone to Warsaw in the last year. When we’d decoded them we should have been able to identify the whole East German network, and the police would have cleaned it up, so that it would have stayed that way for a considerable time at least.”
Martin Seccombe had got his breath back.
He said, in what he hoped was an icily diplomatic voice, “I have no connection with Intelligence matters and no desire to know any details of them.”
“Odd,” said Mr. Calder. “Most people like to know why they’ve been sacked.”
Martin Seccombe stared at him.
“When I report personally to the head of the Foreign Office, as I shall when I get back, that you and this young man” – he swiveled round for a moment to look at Bear, who shifted uncomfortably under that baleful glare – “have, by your pompous stupidity, jeopardised one of the finest Intelligence breakthroughs since the war – and probably cost the defector his life – you’ll be out of a job.”
He paused, at the door and added, “Or maybe he’ll move you to Saigon.”
“What now?” said Corrie, as they climbed back into the car.
“We’ll call on Lammerman,” said Mr. Calder, “and see if he’s got any ideas.”
Colonel Lammerman, who was tall and thin and affected an eyeglass, said, “We originally got on to Josef Bartz through Mulbach. You know him, I expect.”
“I’ve heard of him, of course,” said Mr. Calder. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him.”
Franz Mulbach, who had been one of the prime movers in the German anti-Hitler movement, had saved his own life by luck and judgment after the July plot, and was now a senior member of the Bundeshaus. His name was respected in British Intelligence circles.
“If he has gone to anyone for help, he will have gone to Franz,” said the colonel.
“Is there any reason why he shouldn’t simply have booked in at a hotel?” Calder said. “Under another name, of course.”
“On any other night of the year, perhaps. Not on Christmas Eve,” the colonel replied. “The hotels will all be full. Families come in from the country to finish their shopping and look at the lights. The restaurants and beer cellars stay open until all hours. He might get a room in one of the not-very-reputable hotels in the red-light district, north of the river, but that would have its own perils.
“If he doesn’t go to a hotel, what do you suppose he will do?” Corrie broke in.
“Walk the streets. Keep out of sight,” Calder said.
“If he does that,” said Colonel Lammerman, “he will be lucky to stay alive. Our Eastern friends are very strong among the taxi drivers and news vendors. They buy their allegiance, of course.”
He turned to his second-in-command, a stocky Prussian of half his height and twice his girth, and said, “You will alert all forces – civil police, military police and our own special patrols – to the possibilities of the situation. Our patrols should be doubled, and the necessary extra arms issued.”
“I’ve got a feeling,” said Corrie, “that this might be a lively night. I see that it’s stopped snowing.”
At six o’clock Ernst Dorfinger, who specialised in daylight hotel robbery, stepped cautiously out of one of the little streets leading to the mainline station and started to cross the square diagonally toward the station entrance. He had had an excellent afternoon and the bulging briefcase grasped in his right hand contained an assortment of transistors, cameras and personal jewellery.
When he was three-quarters of the way across the square, a parked car flicked its spotlight full on to him. Ernst hesitated, turned and ran. The car started up. It caught him before he could reach the shelter of the back streets. Three men jumped out. One hit Ernst in the stomach. As he doubled up, the others caught him and hauled him into the car. The briefcase was thrown in on top of him. The car reversed and roared back across the square.
So quickly was it done that the policeman standing on the far pavement could hardly believe it had happened. As the car came toward him he jumped into the roadway and drew his revolver.
The car struck him squarely with its offside mudguard and bumper, skidded on the frozen snow, recovered and raced off down the Kaiser Allee toward the river.
Franz Mulbach lived in an old house on the Furstenberg Allee. He received Corrie and Mr. Calder in the first-floor living room overlooking the river. Mr. Calder noticed that although the house was old the fittings were not. The original fireplace, which must have been big enough for the traditional Yule log, had been filled in and a monstrous imitation electric log fire twinkled in front of it. There was concealed lighting in the old plaster cornices and an outsize television set filled one corner of the room.
Franz Mulbach himself was an outsize man – huge shoulders topping a barrel chest which rested shamelessly on a Falstaff of a stomach. Dressed in traditional white shirt, lederhosen and shoulder harness, he looked like an enormously inflated schoolboy.
He welcomed Corrie as a friend, pressed glasses of schnapps into their hands and said to Mr. Calder, “I know an old friend of yours. Mr. Behrens. We were together at one time during the war. A remarkable man.”
“He should be here before midnight, unless all flights are grounded,”
“So? A gathering of the eagles. Is there trouble expected?”
“We are in trouble,” said Mr. Calder, and told him about it.
When he had finished, there was a short silence. Then Mulbach said, “Poor Josef. I have known him for nearly fifty years. We were at school together.”
It seemed such an inadequate comment that Mr. Calder looked up in surprise. There was a hint of embarrassment in Mulbach’s voice. But there was more than that. There was a note of reserve, and something else, almost the last thing he had expected to find in this stout, phlegmatic man: the tones of fear.