Spy Who Read Latin: And Other Stories (3 page)

The meeting which had brought Rand to the divided city of Berlin was one of the strangest in his career as head of Concealed Communications. He’d hardly believed the first messages when they’d been decoded, and even now as he crossed into East Berlin in an unmarked sedan, he knew he might be heading into a well-baited trap.

It was April in the city, and the misty rains of springtime sent a shiver down his spine. He left the car not far past the checkpoint and went the rest of the way on foot, as instructed.

Finally he reached the corner and stopped to light one of his American cigarettes, wondering vaguely if the sudden pale circle of sun meant that the rain was nearly ended. Berlin had always seemed damper than London to Rand, though he knew it was not the case. Perhaps it was only the mood of the place, with its great gray wall splitting the face of the city’s daily existence.

“Mr. Rand, please?” a young boy asked at his elbow. “Follow me, sir.”

Rand followed without a word as the tassel-haired youth led him into a shabby structure halfway down the next block. It was a store of sorts, selling tobacco and magazines, in a dank building that still bore visible scars of a war a generation past. The boy motioned to a back room and departed.

Rand stepped carefully through the doorway, trying to still the throbbing of his heart. There was only one man in the room, seated at a low table facing him. “Ah! And you would be Mr. Rand!”

“Taz?” Rand seated himself and studied the face of the man who had asked to meet him here. It was a face that British Intelligence would once have paid a fortune to see, the face of a Russian named Taz who headed up the Moscow equivalent of London’s Department of Concealed Communications.

It was a thin face, with a pointed jaw and deep blue eyes, and Rand judged the man to be about his own age—in his early forties, perhaps a bit older. He had thin smooth fingers to match the face, and graying hair that swept back from his forehead. When he spoke, his English was accented but quite intelligible.

“I had never thought we would some day meet, Mr. Rand.”

“Nor I. You’ve given me many sleepless nights.”

“I have tried,” Taz admitted with a slight smile. “We have great admiration for the Double-C Man.”

“I had trouble getting here,” he told the Russian, because it was true. “They were certain your message was a trap of some sort.”

“And yet you came?” Taz asked, his blue eyes flashing in the room’s dim light. Rand could imagine the man bent over a cryptogram, studying frequency tables or captured code books.

“I came. I told them I could be killed or kidnaped on the streets of London, if that was what you wanted.”

Taz nodded. “You are a wise man—the man I expected you to be. I too had difficulties. There are many in the Kremlin who oppose this meeting.”

“And just what is the reason for it?” Rand asked.

“Our interests lie along parallel lines.”

“In what way?”

“You know of Father Howard, the English missionary priest who was killed last week in Tirana?”

Rand knew. “He was returning to England after twenty years in China. They took him off the plane and murdered him.”

Taz nodded slightly. “Albania is a close ally of China. Someone in Peking ordered his murder after he’d left the country.”

Rand decided he could admit to a little knowledge. “The word is he was carrying an important document.”

The blue eyes flashed again. “He was carrying a report he had prepared on the inner workings of China’s Communist Party hierarchy. It is said to outline the current power struggle and to give an indication of which leaders will probably emerge triumphant. It also contains a great deal on the future course of Sino-Soviet relations, as well as some information of a highly personal nature concerning certain key Chinese leaders.”

Rand ground out his cigarette. “You know a great deal. That report would have made interesting reading.”

“It still could,” Taz said. He picked up a pencil and tapped it nervously against the table. “They removed Father Howard’s luggage from the plane, but they did not find the report. You see, he had a traveling companion aboard that jet—a former news correspondent named Kane Mander.”

Rand nodded. “And Mander landed in Paris with the report intact. We’ve heard rumors that a man of that name has been offering it for sale.”

“Exactly.” Taz cleared his throat. “You would be willing to act with us against the common Chinese enemy?”

“That would be a matter for London to decide.”

“There is no need for a policy decision,” Taz insisted. “We would be willing to share the contents of the report with your government.”

“Why do you need me?” Rand asked. “Why can’t you just contact Mander and buy it from him?”

“The report was dictated to Father Howard by a highly placed government official shortly before his execution on charges of deviation from party policy. The priest wrote it all down—in Latin.”

Rand thought about that for a moment. “Interesting, but I still don’t see why you need me.”

“The report is for sale in Paris, before the week’s end. My government is more than willing to purchase it, but my assignment is to make certain we get the true report and not twenty or thirty pages of Latin prayers.” He sighed a little. “And that is the problem. Latin is not taught in Russian schools. There is no one in my department who can read it.”

“You must have doctors and lawyers in the government who understand the language.”

The Russian shook his head. “Fewer than you’d think, and no one I could trust.” He smiled lightly. “These days it would be difficult to find a priest who could read it. Father Howard’s skill with the language was somewhat remarkable.”

“So you want me to furnish an agent who can read Latin?”

“Exactly.”

“You’d trust the British before your own people?”

“I would trust you, since it would be to your government’s advantage to have a copy of the report.” He paused and began tapping the pencil again. “The question is, do you have an agent
you
could trust?”

“I think so,” Rand said. He was remembering a young man named Harry Truce. “Yes.”

“Could you have him in Paris the day after tomorrow? Saturday?”

“Yes,” Rand said. At this point he had nothing to lose and possibly a great deal to gain.

Taz smiled and held out his hand. “Then we are partners?”

“Of a sort,” Rand agreed. “For the present.”

He found to his surprise that he liked the man, and he wondered if he could trust him as well.

Harry Truce had been educated at the best universities to enter the diplomatic corps. It was an occupation his father and grandfather had followed before him, and it was an honorable one. He’d been born of an English father and an Irish mother, brought up partly in London and partly in an unlikely area of Ireland called Macgillycuddy’s Reeks.

Rand never learned at what juncture in Truce’s career the diplomatic service had become subordinated to intelligence work, but he did know that young Truce had shown special skills on a number of recent assignments. He was handsome, unmarried, still in his late twenties, with a vigor that Rand secretly admired. And best of all, he could read Latin.

“It would be a privilege to work with Concealed Communications,” he told Rand the following morning back in London.

Rand smiled and offered one of his American cigarettes. “Glad to have you aboard, as they say. We need you to fly to Paris and read some Latin. Can you do it?”

“Is that all?”

Rand stared hard at the curl of smoke from his own cigarette. “We’ll be working with the Russians,” he said quietly. “It may work out and it may not. In any event, we have to be on our toes every minute.” He ran quickly over the information Taz had given him in Berlin.

“You believe what he told you?” Harry Truce asked. “About not having anybody in Russia who could read Latin?”

“Not entirely. But I’ll play along with him, just to see what he’s up to.” Rand stood up. “Let’s go, Harry. We leave for Paris tonight.”

Paris was a sea of glittering April lights as their plane came in for a landing. It was the sort of warm spring night that brought out the lovers along the Champs Elysées, the sort that made Rand forget the dampness of London and Berlin. They had a room at a medium-priced tourist hotel just across the Seine from the Palais de Justice, and it was still a little before ten when they reached it.

Rand phoned the telephone number that Taz had given him, and heard an unfamiliar male voice say, “Kane Mander is staying at number 17, Rue de Varenne. He is expecting you at noon tomorrow.”

“What about the money?” Rand asked. “He’s not likely to give up anything for free.”

“You will be contacted tonight,” the voice said, and hung up. Rand sighed and reached for a cigarette.

“What do you think?” Harry Truce asked.

“I don’t know,” Rand admitted. He began to pace the floor, trying to complete in his mind a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. He was trusting a Russian, doing a job for him, when every instinct cried out against such trust. Surely Taz would have got the report first and then worried about reading it. Surely the translating of it was a minor problem at best. And Father Howard’s companion would have no reason for substituting a fake report. “Harry—”

“What?”

“Take a ride over to 17 Rue de Varenne. It’s not far from here. See if there’s a Kane Mander staying there.”

“Right.”

“But be careful. Don’t make contact with him directly. I’ll be waiting for you here, down in the bar.”

It was just after midnight when Harry Truce returned. Rand had passed the time lingering over two weak drinks served by an indifferent bartender in the dimly lit lounge, and he was just about to go upstairs to bed when Harry walked through the swinging doors. His left arm was around the waist of a smartly dressed young lady with shoulder-length blonde hair. He was smiling like a college boy on a big date.

The girl’s name was Naomi Smith, and she liked to laugh a lot. Rand waited till she went off to the Ladies’ Room before fixing Harry with an icy stare. “Where’d you pick her up?”

“I checked out that address. There’s a Kane Mander staying on the top floor. But he seemed to be out.”

“And the girl?”

Harry Truce smiled slightly. “I didn’t think you’d mind. She got there just ahead of me, and she was asking questions about Mander.”

Rand grunted. It might mean anything. “Did you ask her about it?”

“I was working up to it.”

Naomi Smith came back then, threading her way between tables and sitting down with a bit of a laugh. “Hi! Back again!”

Rand offered a cigarette. “You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Does it show?”

“Just a little. Do you work in Paris?”

“Here and in London. I’m the European representative of Cage Publications in New York. We have a biweekly news magazine and a chain of newspapers through the midwest. I’m about all they can afford in the way of a foreign correspondent. But Paris is still a great place to work—memories of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, all that.”

“It was a long time ago, Miss Smith. There was a war in between.”

“Call me Naomi—everyone does. There are so many Smiths, but not many Naomis outside of the Bible.” She paused to light another cigarette. “I know there was a war, and now there are all sorts of interesting people around. Did you know that Hemingway covered the liberation of Paris in 1944? I think his generation is still here in spirit.”

Rand sipped his drink. There was no point in fencing any longer. “Would one of those interesting people be Kane Mander?”

She looked blank, as if she’d never head the name. “I really don’t know.”

“You were looking for his apartment.”

The big eyes widened further. “Well, I
know
that, but I haven’t been able to meet him yet.” Another little laugh, as she brushed a vagrant strand of hair from her eyes. “But that’s business and I never talk business this late at night.”

A sleepy bellboy appeared with a message for Rand. There was a phone call for him in the lobby. He excused himself and went to answer it. It was no real surprise to hear the voice of Taz on the other end.

“You have been out of your room, Mr. Rand.”

“Doing a little sightseeing.”

“At night? In the bar with Mr. Truce and a young lady?”

Rand smiled slightly. “You don’t miss much.”

“We have the money for you. For tomorrow.”

“Where is it?”

“There is a white envelope near your left hand at this moment. In it is a quantity of Swiss banknotes, enough to meet Mander’s asking price. Close the deal at noon and return to your hotel room with the report. I will get in touch with you there.”

“All right,” Rand said. He hung up and pocketed the white envelope without opening it. He knew one of Taz’s men must be close at hand, watching.

One more quick drink and they were seeing Naomi Smith into a taxi. But Harry was in no mood for sleep when they returned to the room. “She’s quite a girl, isn’t she? Think she could be a Chinese agent?”

Rand shook his head. “Her eyes don’t slant.”

“No, really! Why else would she be looking for Mander?”

“She’s heard about the report and wants to buy it for her magazine.”

Rand was busy counting the Swiss banknotes. They came to almost £35,000—about $100,000. It was a great deal of money for Taz to entrust to him.

Saturday was sunny, and warmer than the previous day. When they reached the address on the Rue de Varenne, the place seemed quiet and respectable, with only a few children playing a sidewalk game in front. The time was exactly noon when they walked through the doorway of Kane Mander’s apartment.

He was a strange-looking man, with a completely bald head and tiny eyes barely visible beneath layers of fat. His English was poor, and he suggested at the outset that they converse in French. “Whom do you represent?” he asked.

Rand patted the thick envelope of banknotes. “A combine of interested buyers.”

“I will not sell to the Russians. The Communists were responsible for Father Howard’s death.”

“We’re sorry about Father Howard,” Rand told the bald man. “It must have been hard on you.”