Cause for Alarm (15 page)

He paused for a moment. “I dare say you’re wondering where all this is leading. I’ll tell you. It’s leading to a question—this question. If someone told you that by taking a certain course you could make a very, very small, but very, very positive, contribution towards putting a kink in that axis we’ve been talking about, what would you say?”

“I’d say that he had a bee in his bonnet.”

He grinned. “H’m, yes.
You
probably would say that. But supposing that he hadn’t got a bee in his bonnet, supposing he was talking good hard sense, and supposing he could prove it. What would you do then?”

I fidgeted. “I’m not very fond of these beautifully simple
parables, Zaleshoff. Vagas has a weakness for them, too. Let’s get down to cases.”

“Just what I was going to do.” He put his hand in his pocket. “You wanted the dope; here’s the first bit. It’s the card from that file in my office, card number V.18. Take a look at it.”

His hand came out with the card folded in two.

The picture of Vagas was obviously a photostat of a photograph taken some years before. There was more hair on top of the head and the sides were cropped. The skin of the face was tighter. He wore a high tubular stiff collar with a broad, flat tie. Below the photostat was pasted a square of typewritten paper.

I looked up. “Well, what’s it all about?”

Zaleshoff frowned. “Does nothing there strike you?”

I read the card again. “Well, he appears to have been agent for a British steel firm.”

“Yes, he sold guns to the Yugo-Slav government; but that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what
do
you mean?”

“He was a German officer. In nineteen-eighteen when the revolution broke out he skipped to Belgrade and later took up Yugo-Slav citizenship.
But
”—he stabbed the air with his forefinger—“in nineteen-thirty-three he returned to Germany. Note the date—nineteen-thirty-three. What happened in nineteen-thirty-three in Germany?”

“Hitler came into power.”

“Precisely. Germany went Nazi, so he returned.”

“And left again the next year. What about it?”

“Just this. Vagas went to Germany a Yugo-Slav. He returned a German. From nineteen-thirty-four to nineteen-thirty-six Vagas was the principal German secret agent in Belgrade. It was a cinch for them. Here was a patriotic but expatriated German officer with a Yugo-Slav passport and well in with the Belgrade War Ministry by virtue of his position as an armament salesman. What more could you want? The German Secret Service have always been tightwads, and I dare say the fact that he was drawing a fat commission from Cator & Bliss and didn’t want anything except the honour of serving his country was an additional attraction. Besides, an unpaid agent is always a sounder bet than a guy who may pass on unreliable information to justify his wages.”

“Yes, I see. But if he was so keen on the honour of serving the Nazis, what’s he doing here now working for the Yugo-Slav Government?”

Zaleshoff lounged back luxuriously on the divan. “There now, that’s fine!” He smiled seraphically. “We’re getting right to the heart of the matter. What, indeed?” He leaned forward. “I’ll tell you. The answer is—’nothing.’ He’s not working for the Yugo-Slav Government. He’s working for the Nazis.”

“He told me …”

“There’s a good old-fashioned word for what he told you—‘boloney.’ Listen. On October the nineteenth, nineteen-thirty-six, the Italian Foreign Minister, Ciano, met the German Foreign Minister, von Neurath, in Munich. At that meeting the Rome-Berlin axis was forged. A fortnight later Mussolini hailed the Rome-Berlin axis publicly in a speech in the Piazza del Duomo just round the corner. The crowd sang ‘Deutschland über alles’ and the Horst Wessel song at the top of their voices. The blackshirts and brownshirts
whooped it up together. Italy and Germany swore eternal friendship.” He paused impressively. “A fortnight later Vagas packed his suitcases and moved into Italy.”

He sipped at his whisky. “Have you ever watched a cat and a dog lie down on the same floor, Marlow? Maybe they’ve been brought up together, maybe they’re used to one another, maybe they’ve got the same interest in a common owner. But they’re never entirely at their ease. The cat is always watchful, the dog self-conscious. They can never quite forget that there is such a thing as a cat-and-dog fight. There’s an undercurrent of mutual suspicion between them that they can never quite forget. So it was with the Nazis and the Fascisti. They’d come to an agreement over Austria. They’d agreed on parallel action in Spain. They’d agreed to boycott Geneva. They’d agreed to present a united front to the Western powers. But Johann Luitpold Vagas was sent into Italy. The dog was keeping one eye open, just in case.”

“Don’t the Italians know he’s really a German agent?”

“They certainly do not. How should they know? He wouldn’t be the first German officer to take service with another country. I only found out by accident. After all, the guy has got a Yugo-Slav passport, and that beautiful fiction about his being a Yugo-Slav agent has been handled very cleverly. No, if they ever arrest Vagas, it’ll be for espionage on behalf of Yugo-Slavia. And that suits the German Foreign Ministry. It would be embarrassing for all concerned if an important German spy were to be caught on Italian soil.”

“But what does Vagas do?”

Zaleshoff emitted an exasperated sigh. “What does he do? Listen, Marlow, if an Englishman came to you to-morrow and swore black and blue that Spartacus were going bankrupt next month, what would you do? You might believe or disbelieve him, but you’d write to a friend in England and ask him to check up on the situation for you. That’s Vagas’ job—checking up. If the Italians tell their Nazi boy friends
that they’re building
two
hundred and fifty new-type bombing planes this year, Uncle Vagas gets busy and checks up to make sure that it isn’t
five
hundred and fifty. Dictators who can’t even trust their own subordinates out of their sight aren’t likely to trust each other very far. And, the way things are going at the moment, that mutual distrust is deepening. It’s the one weak spot in the Rome-Berlin axis, and it’s because of that weak spot that I’m sitting here talking to you.”

“I was wondering why it was,” I murmured.

“Then now you know.” He projected his jaw at me aggressively. “The point is that things are not what they were between Italy and Germany. Austria is gone. The Reichswehr is on the Brenner Pass. Mussolini is scared of that fact, and because he’s scared he’s dangerous—to Germany. The Nazis are on their guard. Vagas is working overtime.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

The girl looked up from her sewing. “My brother’s very fond of the sound of his own voice.”

“So fond,” snarled Zaleshoff, “that I’m going to tell him a little story.” He turned to me again. “When I was at school in Chicago, Marlow, there were two big boys named Joe and Ted who used to bully us little kids. It went on for months. We got pretty sick of it. We tried ambushing them and they beat up a whole lot of us. Then one day we had an idea. There was one kid who used to follow Joe about like a shadow. His name was Augustus, if you can imagine that. We used to call him ‘Augie.’ He was a snivelling little rat, this Augie. He’d been bullied by Joe, and to protect himself he’d taken to cleaning Joe’s boots and running errands for him. Joe let him. Then Augie took to working off his private hates by getting Joe to beat up the other kids for him. Joe was only too ready to oblige. Augie became a kind of protégé of Joe’s. Wherever Joe and Ted went he used to tag along behind. It used to make us mad until we got our idea.
One day two of us waited for Augie near the city dump at the end of the street. We said we’d got something funny to tell him. We said that we heard Ted say that Joe was nothing but a yellow rat who wouldn’t dare to let out a squeak if he, Ted, challenged him. Then we beat up Augie a little and waited for results. We didn’t have to wait long. Augie ran straightaway to spill the beans to Joe. After school that day Joe and Ted got together. Naturally, Ted denied that he’d said anything about Joe. Joe said that Ted must be too yellow to repeat it to his face. Then they began. Joe finished up in hospital with three stitches in his scalp where Ted had hit him with a brick. Ted had a beating from Joe’s father. What do you think of that?” he concluded triumphantly, and stared hard at me.

I was wilfully dense. “Very nice. But what’s the moral?”

He looked slightly crestfallen. “Don’t you see?” He drew a deep breath. “I’ll put it plainer. Supposing Vagas obtained information concerning Italy’s activities that surprised him very much, information that she wouldn’t like the Nazis to have. Vagas would tell the Nazis and then, you see …”

“Yes, I see. It would put that kink that you were talking about in the Rome-Berlin axis. But there’s just one thing you seem to forget. The Nazis are not as simple as Joe. They’d find out in five minutes that it was just ballyhoo.”

He tapped my knee triumphantly. “But, my good friend, if it wasn’t just ballyhoo, if it were true …”

“True!”

He grinned. “The cat and the dog!”

“Well, what is this precious information?” I did not really believe that he had any.

“Do you remember that, some time ago, Mussolini made one of his blood-and-thunder speeches on the subject of Italian defence. I know he’s always making them about something, but this one was a little more specific than usual. It was a speech aimed at making you British shiver in your shoes.
He referred in particular to the power of the Italian air force, and made a special point of six secret Italian aerodromes that had been built for war use. Naturally, the German General Staff was interested. Shortly afterwards, the German and the Italian Staffs had conversations and drew up fresh plans for common action in the event of French support for Czechoslovakia. Those secret aerodromes were mentioned. The Italian General Staff was obliging. It gave the Germans full particulars. The aerodromes were near the French and Swiss frontiers. The Germans went away satisfied.
But
”—he wagged his finger slowly—“the fact of the matter is that at least three of those secret aerodromes are in the Trentino near what used to be the Austrian frontier, and the Germans don’t know it!”

“Very interesting.”

“Now,” he went on persuasively, “the question is how to get that information to Vagas in such a way as to leave no doubt about its being accepted as true. That’s where …”

“I know,” I interjected; “that’s where I come in.”

“Exactly and …”

“There’s nothing doing, Zaleshoff.”

“But just …”

“Absolutely nothing doing,” I repeated firmly. “I’m …”

“Yes, yes,” he put in testily; “you’re an engineer and you’re here on business, and you’re not going to get yourself into the sort of spot Ferning got into. I know. But wait a minute.” He became eager. “There’s no question of you’re getting into a spot. The only thing is to avoid any actual meeting with Vagas. As long as the Ovra don’t see that you’re in touch with him you’re all right. You can telephone him and arrange to communicate through the poste restante with assumed names. He won’t mind that. It’ll please him. If he thinks you’re scared but dead set on the money, he’ll also think that you’ll be easier to deal with when it comes to putting the screw on. As for Spartacus, you needn’t give
Vagas the real dope, you can cook up anything. He won’t bother to check it. Then if he
should
turn nasty over anything and write to Pelcher, you’ll be quite O.K. All you have to do is to send Vagas three letters. The first’ll be a cooked Spartacus report on the past month’s activities. He’ll want that. When he’s got it he’ll increase his demands. Right. Your next report in a month’s time will contain some additional dope, among it an item about the delivery of three special hydraulic lifts for aircraft. The third report will give news of consignments of ammunition bound for the same places. Just enough for him to be able to piece the story together for himself. For doing just that, Marlow, you get six thousand lire from Vagas
and
”—he looked me in the eyes—“another six thousand from me.”

I looked from one to the other. The girl, her head bent over the hem of the blouse she was making, was apparently unaware that we were there; but I saw that the needle had stopped moving and that her fingers were poised delicately like those of a woman in a Dutch painting. Zaleshoff had suddenly busied himself with the lighting of a cigarette.

I cleared my throat loudly. “I think, Zaleshoff,” I said evenly, “that the time has come for you to explain just what personal interest you have in this business. Where do you come in? In other words, what’s your game?”

He looked with well-simulated surprise. “My game? I have no game.” An expression of disarming sincerity, of rugged candour, appeared suddenly on his face. “Put me down, Marlow, as a simple American with a little more money than I need”—he repeated this—“more money than I need. That’s the plain truth of it, I guess. I’m a simple American who hates war. But I want to do something more than hate.” His voice vibrated with evangelical feeling. “I want to help make the peace we all want in a more practical way than just by talking. The world is in a bad way, Marlow. What it needs is good management. I’m a business man, Marlow, a pretty successful
one, though I say it myself. This little old world wants running on business lines. I’m a doer, Marlow, not a thinker. Thinking’s not going to get us any place. We need the co-operation of practical men. That’s why I’m appealing to you, Marlow. You’re a practical man. We men of goodwill have just got to get together, roll up our sleeves and get something done, eh?” He beamed at me, a benevolent Babbitt with a parcel of real-estate to unload.