The Folks at Fifty-Eight (48 page)

Hammond surveyed the smugness and answered truthfully.

“Because I think you’re Beria’s mole in the State Department.”

Carpenter’s expression didn’t waver.

“And why would you think that?”

“The report you wanted me to write, on the Paslov fiasco.”

“What about it?”

“How did you know about the meeting in Frankfurt with Carlisle and Paslov?”

Carpenter shrugged.

“I don’t remember. I suppose you must have told me.”

Hammond shook his head.

“No, I didn’t. If you remember, I refused to talk about any of it. It annoyed the hell out of you. I told you I would only talk to Carlisle.”

“Well, then he must have told me.”

“No. Marcus Allum told Chambers that he and Carlisle had specifically not told anybody, for fear of causing unrest in the department. Even Daniel Chambers was nose-out-of-joint.

Carpenter shrugged again, seemingly unfazed by the inquisition. Hammond knew why.

“And how did you know about Heinrich Müeller’s defection? Carlisle didn’t know about it until Paslov told him in Frankfurt. Nobody knew. Even Marcus Allum didn’t know.”

“Who told you I did?”

“A man called Alfred Schulman.”

Carpenter’s previous smugness quickly graduated to open contempt.

“He’s just a crazy old Jew. Nobody can believe anything he says.”

“Alfred Schulman is a little bizarre, but he’s a long way from crazy. I just want to know why. Why did you sell us out: me, the girl, the old woman in Dessau, Carlisle, the cell in Magdeburg, and to Beria of all people? You were always such a fervent anti-communist.”

Davis Carpenter turned his contempt on Hammond.

“I still am, and more than you could possibly understand.” Hammond frowned. Carpenter sneered. “You think you know it all, don’t you? You know virtually nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

Contempt graduated to boastfulness as Carpenter dropped a bombshell.

“Remember that time in Rouen, when you came for me?”

“What about it?”

“I didn’t crash-land the Lysander; they didn’t force me down. I flew over there to warn them.” Hammond looked blankly back. Carpenter explained. “About D-Day. About the landings being at Normandy, not Calais. . . I flew over there to tell them.”

“You were working for the Nazis?”

Carpenter had become visibly animated. He clearly needed to share his guilt, and equally clearly believed that Hammond wouldn’t be around long enough to divulge any secrets.

He claimed to have invested heavily in Germany before the war, and said that one of his largest investments had been in the German wine and spirit industry, a partnership with Joachim Ribbentrop. When Hammond asked if he meant von Ribbentrop, he scoffed at the ennoblement of his former business partner.

“No, not von. He adopted that title, pretentious fool. Joachim Ribbentrop was no more aristocracy than you or me. He was parvenu, cash rich and class poor, but in the beginning he had the ear of Hitler and that meant money for all of us.”

Carpenter blamed the outbreak of war. He said Ribbentrop foolishly persuaded Hitler that if Germany invaded Poland, Chamberlain would sit still. But Ribbentrop reckoned without Churchill. They all reckoned without Churchill. Britain and France declared war before he had time to pull his investments. Davis Carpenter lost a fortune.

“So I risked my life, and killed so many, saving a man who didn’t need saving.”

“Oh, you did more than that, Gerald, much more. When you killed everyone in the Rouen Gestapo headquarters that night, you also killed the information I’d given them. The report was never sent. By the time they had re-staffed, found the report, passed it up the chain to Müeller, and he’d checked with Ribbentrop, it was too late: the invasion was underway. Without knowing it, you probably saved D-Day from being a disaster. Well, you saved some lives, at least. They should have given you a medal, but then people always said that about you, didn’t they?”

“And what about all those thousands of Allied lives you risked?”

“It was a rash decision, Gerald. You know all about that, surely? You don’t think about consequences, you just do what needs doing, and I never did agree with D-Day. Oh, I helped plan it, I didn’t have a lot of choice, but by opening a second front we played right into Stalin’s hands. He could never have gobbled up the territory he did without that second front.”

Carpenter puffed his chest. He seemed almost proud of his betrayal, but when Hammond asked how he came to be working for Beria, pride became anger.

He talked about Heinrich Müeller and said the former head of the German Gestapo had betrayed him. He said when Müeller defected to the Soviets he took names with him, presumably as collateral. Carpenter’s name was at the top of the list. He said Beria called and told him all about it, when he was over at Camp King.

“Can you believe the nerve? He telephoned me at my hotel, left me with no choice.”

“And turning on all of your friends and allies didn’t concern you?”

“A minor twinge of conscience, I suppose, but nothing to trouble me unduly. You see, I was at the tribunals when they showed that film about the Holocaust and the atrocities. It turned my stomach. I hadn’t realised just how barbaric the Nazis had been. The thought of betraying people like that didn’t seem so inglorious after I saw that film. I just wish I’d known from the beginning. If I’d known, none of it would have happened.”

Hammond shook his head in disgust as he viewed Carpenter’s only sign of remorse.

“Isn’t it all a little late for regrets?”

“Perhaps. To tell you the truth, I’m glad it’s finally over, but then, I expect that’s what they all say. So who else knows about all of this, Gerald? Who are you working with?”

There it was, that same old familiar and unnecessary testament to truth.

“Why should that matter?”

“I suppose it doesn’t really. I was just interested to see if you’d worked it out by yourself.”

Hammond knew why Carpenter had asked the question, but wanted to play out the charade, and so lied and said he was working alone. Carpenter took a sip of tea, pulled a face of distaste, and called out to where Sokolov stood patiently awaiting his cue.

“Viktor. This tea is terrible. Get me another brew, would you?”

Sokolov apologized, and rounded the counter to collect Carpenter’s cup.

“I’ll make another.” He looked at Hammond. “Can I get you anything, sir?”

Hammond shook his head. Sokolov nodded and carried away the tea. He returned holding a heavy metal handle and muttering something about the place needing more light. As Sokolov attached the handle and began winding in the awning, Carpenter said nothing. He just sat quietly, watching and waiting for Vladimir Demidov to do what he did best.

But then, nothing. No crash of glass, no shattered skull, no blood and matter spraying across the café; no dead or dying Gerald Hammond sprawled across the floor.

A further thirty seconds of tension-loaded silence elapsed, and still nothing. Davis Carpenter finally tore his eyes away from the face before him, then squinted through the sunshine and up at the window opposite.

The sign in the window that had advertised ‘House For Rent – Immediate Occupancy’ was gone, and the window closed. Hammond knew that without looking, because he had taken down the sign and closed the window before he left. For a few puzzled moments, Davis Carpenter sat looking up at the window, but then understanding must have finally dawned, because he closed his eyes for a moment, before turning the stare on Hammond. When Carpenter finally spoke, it was in a voice weary with resignation.

“I should have known. You always were the best.”

Hammond signalled through the window to the row of black Cadillacs that sat waiting farther along the street. When he answered, it was without any hint of triumph or elation. He just felt sad and angry about so many lives being lost, and all for stupidity and greed.

“If it helps, he had orders to kill us both. I’m sorry, but these people are here for you.”

He had felt sorry for so many people, but Carpenter wasn’t one of them.

As Zalesie’s men poured in, Davis Carpenter slumped back in his chair.

“Zalesie?”

“Otherwise known as Josef Conrad Schmidt.”

Further realization suddenly cleared the features of despondency.

“But of course. I should have guessed who he was. When that weasel Kube turned up at Camp King, I should have guessed the others wouldn’t be far away.”

“So what did you do with Carlisle’s evidence on Manhattan?”

“The basement incinerator. I’m sorry, Gerald.”

Hammond nodded and posed one final question.

“So, why did Beria give you up? He did give you up, you know, and he did order Demidov to kill us both.”

Carpenter slotted the final piece into the puzzle.

“When I told Schulman about Heinrich Müeller, Beria was furious. He said he’d taken months to turn Müeller, and I’d let it slip in one stupid moment of panic. That was when he checked the balance sheet and found my liability outweighing any asset. I knew then he’d give me up when it suited him, but there was nothing I could do. I had nowhere left to go.”

As Carpenter climbed to his feet, Hammond turned away and stared out of the window. He was thinking of the promise he had given to the old woman in Dessau. He wouldn’t actually pull the trigger, but he hoped that his part in Carpenter’s downfall would suffice. Carpenter leaned over and placed a hand on his arm.

“One last request: even I’m allowed that, aren’t I? Look after Clara for me, would you, Gerald? Don’t let them get to her. She never knew enough to damage anyone.”

The apparent show of gallantry took Hammond by surprise.

“An act of decency, from you?”

“Decency has nothing to do with it. I just hate the thought of her lying alongside me in my grave, nagging at me for eternity. Thinking about the peace and solitude of it all, is the only compensation I have left to me.”

The gallows humour failed to elicit a smile. Hammond merely nodded.

“Do you want me to give her a message, or explain anything?”

Carpenter shook his head.

“There’s no need. She knows. We both knew this was how it would end. It was only a question of when.”

“Can I offer you a lift?”

“Mr Zalesie. It’s a long way from Connecticut, and you’re up early.”

“I thought I would take the time to rue an old and untrustworthy colleague’s passing, and offer my thanks to the arrival of a new and hopefully more honourable one.”

They stood in silence as the Cadillac melded into the distant traffic. Each man harboured his own thoughts and memories of the man who had been Davis Alan Carpenter. It was Zalesie who finally broke the shared moment of remembrance and regret.

“You two went back a long way?”

“A few years; not that long, I suppose. For all of that, I honestly thought I knew him.”

“We are none of as we appear, Mr Hammond.”

“No, Herr Schmidt. We none of us are.”

The German allowed the briefest of smiles to lighten the moment.

“I see you finally removed the blindfold.”

“It was becoming uncomfortable. So, tell me. Who are the Children of Etzel? You?”

There was no hesitation in the answer.

“No, Mr Hammond, just a foolish tale we sometimes told our children.”

“So these people; they don’t exist?”

“They did, in the mind of a megalomaniac long ago, but it died with the Reich.”

“I wish I could be sure of that.”

“Would you like me to give you my word?”

“What, as a proud Lithuanian descendent or as a gentleman?”

“Touché, Mr Hammond.”

They eyed each other briefly and warily. Hammond posed the critical question.

“So, the blindfold’s off. Does that mean I’m in that danger you spoke of?”

“Not from me.”

“And so you’ve caught your spy in the State Department. Now what?”

Conrad Zalesie sniffed contemptuously.

“Now we wait for human nature and the fourth estate to take their individual courses. Tragic tale, can’t say too much for security reasons. Betrayed his country, security services closing in, couldn’t live with it, death before dishonour. Poor man, a hero gone wrong. Damn Soviets, we just can’t trust them.”

As Hammond watched the Machiavellian brain seemingly conjuring newspaper reports from thin air, he held no doubts. The press would print whatever Conrad Zalesie and the rest of the inner circle at number fifty-eight wanted them to print.

Zalesie went on. He said most importantly the papers would warn of the lurking danger that America now faced, and roundly damn an expansionist Soviet Union. Their storylines would tell of how easily an otherwise honourable man had become enmeshed and corrupted, but the underlying theme would be of an American nation no longer able to trust her former ally from the wrong side of the great political divide.

The German looked hugely pleased with himself as he finished his predictions. He said it was the perfect opportunity to get more of the right messages to the American people.

Hammond recalled his conversation with Marcus Allum in the New York hotel. That evening he had thought Allum cynical and undemocratic, but now he knew. Allum had been so right about so much, and he had been so wrong about everything. He studied the self-satisfied look on Zalesie’s face, and posed a question he already knew the answer to.

“And the official position will only serve to confirm the lies?”

“But of course.”

The German gleefully reeled off the anticipated statements: Thank God we got to him before he gave too much away. Thank God we have an army of dedicated men and women keeping America safe for decent Americans.

Hammond recalled another conversation. It had taken place in a sleazy Washington bar, not an upmarket New York hotel, but it had held the same familiar theme of harsh reality shattering naïveté. As with Allum before him, everything Morton Simmonds said that evening had been true. Hammond knew that now.