Spy hook: a novel (30 page)

“Yes,” I said. “They always say that.”

“It was Dodo who brought it all up again. He kept on at my mother about it. You probably know how he goes on. She listens to him. He was a Nazi; that’s why he gets on so well with Mother.”

“A Nazi?” I said.

Werner said, “He worked for Gehlen. The Abwehr recruited him at Vienna University. When the war ended, and Gehlen started working for the Americans, Dodo worked for Lange.” I looked at Werner and tried to guess where my father fitted into all this. Werner smiled nervously, wondering perhaps if he should have brought up the subject of my father. Ingrid said, “Dodo is a trouble-maker. Some people are like that, aren’t they?” She looked at me expecting a response, so I nodded.

She said, “He is a troubled, morbid creature. And he drinks too much and becomes maudlin. Full of self-pity. Hungarians have the highest suicide rate in the world: four times as many as Americans, and still climbing.” Ingrid broke off, doubtless remembering that Gloria was Hungarian too. Flushed with embarrassment she turned back to the boiler and said, “We could get it cleaned and serviced and see what happens. Even when the pump keeps working, the water doesn’t get really hot.”

“Lisl should have fitted a bigger one when she had it renewed,” I said. I reached out with both hands and slapped the boiler twice, encouragingly, as a Neapolitan platoon commander might slap the shoulders of a man ordered out on a dangerous mission. It made no difference.

For a moment I thought she’d decided to say no more, then she said, “Dodo urged my mother to sue the American army.” “That sounds like Dodo,” I said.

“Get compensation for Paul Winter’s death. It was a shooting accident.”

“It’s a bit late now, isn’t it? And I thought you said he was shot while trying to escape,” I said.

“Ingrid said that the Americans gave that as their excuse.” “Dodo told my mother the Americans would pay a lot of money. He said they wouldn’t want it all dragged up.” I grunted to express my doubts about Dodo’s theory. “My Uncle Peter was a colonel in the American army. He was shot in the same incident. Dodo says they were on a secret mission.”

I said. “What’s all this got to do with my father?”

“He was there,” said Ingrid.

“Where?” I said.

“Berchtesgaden,” said Ingrid. “The inquiry said that he was the one who shot Paul Winter.”

“I think you must have made a mistake,” I said. “Werner knew my father. He will tell you ... anyone will tell you . . .” I shrugged. “My father wasn’t a shooting soldier. He worked in intelligence.”

“He shot Paul Winter,” said Ingrid coldly and calmly. “Paul

Winter was a war criminal ... or so it was alleged. Your father was an officer on duty with the army that had conquered us. There probably was a cover-up. Such things happen when there are wars.”

I said nothing. There was nothing to say. She obviously believed what she said, but she wasn’t getting angry. She was more embarrassed than angry. I suppose she had no recollection of her father. He was no more than a name to her, and that’s how she spoke of him.

When it seemed that Ingrid didn’t want to tell me more, Werner said, “Dodo used the American Freedom of Information Act and had someone go through the US army archives. He didn’t find much except that an American colonel and a German civilian - both named Winter - died of gunshot wounds. It was night and snowing. The court of inquiry recorded it as an accident. No one was punished.”

“Are you sure my father was there? Berchtesgaden was in the American Zone. Why would my father be with the Americans?” “Captain Brian Samson,” said Ingrid. “He gave evidence to the inquiry. A sworn statement from him - and many other documents were listed - but Dodo couldn’t get transcripts.” Werner said, “That damned Dodo is a dangerous little swine.

If he’s determined to make trouble . . .”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Werner knew me well enough to appreciate how much any kind of blemish on my father’s career would hurt me. “I have no quarrel with Dodo,” I said.

“He resents you,” said Ingrid. “After your visit to him he came to see Mama. Dodo really hates you.”

“Why should he hate me?”

“She’s Hungarian, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she’s Hungarian,” I said.

“And Dodo’s a close friend of her family,” said Ingrid with that decisive finality with which women pronounce upon such relationships. “To him you are a meddlesome foreign intruder . . .” She didn’t finish. There was no need to. I nodded. Ingrid was right and I knew the rest of it. It was easy to see myself as a middle-aged lecher taking advantage of this innocent young girl. It would be more than enough to trigger an unstable personality like Dodo. If it was the other way round, if that dreadful Dodo was living with the young daughter of one of my old friends I would be angry too. Angry beyond measure. “Yes,” I said.

“There is always electricity,” said Ingrid.

“Is there?” I said.

“To heat the water,” said Ingrid. “We could even have small electric heaters in each bathroom. Then water from the boiler would just be used by the kitchen.”

I was angry at the injustice of it. I looked at the boiler and kicked it at the place where the water went into the pump. Nothing happened so I kicked it again, harder. It gave a whirring sound. Ingrid and Werner looked at me with new respect. For a moment or two we watched to see if it would keep going, and Werner touched it to be sure it was getting hot again. It got hotter. “What about a drink?” said Werner.

“I thought you’d never ask,” I said.

“And then Ingrid will cook the Hoppel-Poppel. She has everything ready. She cooks it in goose dripping.” “If you want to wash or anything, your top-floor bathroom will have plenty of hot water. It gets it straight from the tank.”

“Thanks Ingrid.”,

“Your room is just the same as it was. Werner wanted to have it repapered and refurnished as a surprise for you but I said it would be better to ask you first. I said you might Re it just the way it is.” She looked at me and her face said how sorry she was to have been the conveyor of unpleasant news to Werner’s friend.

“I like it the way it is,” I admitted.

“It was nice of you to bring the curtain material. Werner said you wouldn’t mind.”

“In goose dripping, eh? I said. “Ingrid, you’re some woman” Werner smiled. He was sniffing a lot lately.

Having returned to London with the malicious drunken defamations of Dodo still ringing in my mind, I left a message for Cindy Prettyman or Matthews as, despite the Prettyman pension, she was determined to be known. She called back almost immediately. I expected her to be annoyed that I’d not contacted her earlier, but she had no recriminations. She was sweet and elated. Friday evening would be just fine for her. A hotel in Bayswater? Any way you want to play it, Cindy. Before I rang off, I heard the pips going. So she’d gone out of the office and called from a pay phone. Pay phone? And a hotel in Bayswater? Oh well, Cindy had always been a bit weird. I had to talk to her. Dodo’s various bombshells, whether true or entirely nonsense, made it all the more urgent. And delicate little assignments like nosing into the tight little empire of Schneider, von Schild and Weber was best done via the big anonymous facilities of the Foreign Office, rather than the parochial ones of my Department, where all concerned would know, or guess, that the request had come from me. I’d come out of it with a lot of explaining to do if any of Dodo’s exotic allegations proved true.

“I hate the idea of you confiding in that woman,” said Gloria when I got home that night. “She’s so . . .” Gloria paused to think of the word, cold-blooded.”

“Is she?”

“When are you seeing her?”

“Friday evening, from the office.”

“Can I come?” said Gloria.

“Of course.”

“I’d be intruding.”

“No, do come along. She won’t be expecting dinner. A drink, she said.” I watched Gloria carefully. In all our years together, my wife - Fiona - had never revealed a trace of jealousy or suspicion, but Gloria scrutinized every female acquaintance as a possible paramour. She especially examined the motives of unattached females, and those from my past. In all these respects Cindy loomed large.

“If you’re sure,” said Gloria.

“You might have to close your ears,” I warned. I meant of course that there would be things said that I might later officially deny, that Cindy might later deny and that, if Gloria was going to be there, she’d have to be prepared to deny too. Deny on oath.

I think Gloria understood. “I’ll make a trip to the Ladies, that will give her a chance to say anything confidential.” In the event Gloria decided not to come after all. I suppose she just wanted to see whether I’d say no, and how I would do it. I knew these little “tests” she gave me were all part of her insecurity. Sometimes I wondered whether her plan to go to university was a test, designed to push me into a proposal of marriage.

Meanwhile, that Friday evening, I went to meet Cindy alone.

It was just as well. Cindy was not in the best of moods. She was rather distracted, and it would not have improved her humour to see Gloria tagging along behind me. Cindy regarded her as a very junior civil servant who had come trespassing on the old friendship we’d once had.

“Your blonde interlude” is how Cindy referred to Gloria. It summed up what she thought of the relationship: its participants , its incongruity, its frivolity and its impermanence. I let it go. She smiled in a fashion that both gave emphasis to what she’d said, and noted my passive acceptance of the judgment she’d passed. Cindy was an attractive woman, sexy in the way that health and energy so often are. But I’d never envied Jim. Cindy was too devious and manipulative and I was not good at handling her.

She was in a room on the second floor, sitting on the bed smoking a cigarette. Beside her there was a tray with a teapot and milk and cup - just one cup - and a big Martini ashtray with lots of lipstick-marked cigarette butts. Cindy’s attempt to give up smoking seemed to have been abandoned. She asked me if I wanted a drink. I should have said no but I said I’d have a Scotch and I gave her the box with the photos of the tomb inscriptions and the deciphering attempts, or rather I tried to give it to her. She waved it away with a world-weary flick of splayed fingers. “I don’t want it.”

“Gloria said. “I’ve changed my mind. Keep it.”

“There’s nothing there that will shed any light on Jim or his work,” I told her. “I’ll stake my life on that.” She shrugged and touched her hair.

We wasted a lot of time getting the hotel staff to supply drinks, and while we waited we passed the time talking about nothing in particular. It was not my idea of an enjoyable evening out. Cindy had chosen the venue; The Grand & International, a seedy old hotel standing on the northern edge of Kensington Gardens, and hiding behind the Chinese restaurants of Queensway.

She’d coped with getting the room, paying in advance and arranging to occupy it without luggage and entertain a male visitor for an hour or so. I looked at her in her smart green and black plaid jacket and matching skirt. A boxy imitation fur coat was thrown across the bed. She wasn’t tall and graceful in the way that Gloria was but she had a shapely figure and the way she was lounging across the pillows did everything to emphasize it.

I wondered what they made of her downstairs at the desk. Or had reception clerks in this part of the town stopped wondering about their clients?

It was probably one of their best rooms, but it was a squalid place by any standards. A flyblown mirror surmounted a cracked blue china sink. The bed was big with a quilted headboard and grey sheets. Cindy said it was suitably anonymous but I think she was confusing anonymity with discomfort - many people did. But if “The G and I”, an amalgamation of two Victorian monoliths, was somewhere that Cindy was in no danger of seeing anyone she knew, the same could not be said for me.

I’d been in this place many times. I’d brought a lovely old Sauer automatic pistol to the bar there back in 1974. I’d sold it to a man named Max, who died saving my life during the last “illegal” border crossing I ever made. It was a good little gun: its blueing had worn but it had been little used. At the time its double action was better than anything else manufactured, but I suspect that Max selected it because during the war it had been the favoured side-arm of high-ranking German officers. Max was as anti-Nazi as anyone I knew, but he had a healthy respect for their choice of weapons.

There was hardly a day went by when I didn’t think of Max. Like Dodo, he had been one of “Koby’s Prussians”, an American Prussian in this case, for Max was one of those curious men who drift from place to place and from job to job. And somehow the towns they go to are all troublespots, and the jobs they find are always violent and dangerous jobs, and usually illegal too. But Max was different to all the others, an ex New York police detective who fretted and worried and looked after everyone he worked with, especially me, the youngest member of his team.

Max had the most amazing memory for poetry, and his quotes ranged from Goethe to Gilbert & Sullivan librettos. I could usually keep up with his Goethe: “Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen bliffin? but his Gilbert was what I always remembered him for:

“When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety.” and of course, sung with verve and derision, for Max was not an uncritical admirer of his British allies: