The Labyrinth Makers (7 page)

'But that would mean—' she squared up to the implication '—that he meant to crash!'

'That's exactly what it means, yes.'

'You can't mean he crashed in that lake deliberately.'

'I don't mean that.
That
was a real crash–and it wasn't meant to happen. What was meant to happen was the story Tierney and Morrison actually told.'

'But my step-father wouldn't have stood for anything like that. He would have spoken up–I know he would!'

'He was just a passenger. He did as he was told, and he didn't really know what was happening. In fact it was just the same as the boxes: two vague stories, and two detailed ones–much too detailed.'

She regarded him thoughtfully. 'All right, I take your point,' she said slowly. 'But I don't see how you make it fit what's happening now.'

'Where doesn't it fit?'

'Well, if the real boxes were already in,' she paused. 'And if my father was dead … then Tierney and the other one got everything long ago. You're twenty years too late, and so are the Russians–you're just wasting your time.'

'Maybe I am–but the Russians aren't.'

Not Panin. Of all people, not Panin. That had to be an article of faith.

'So they're infallible, are they?'

'Not infallible, but not stupid. Besides, there is an alternative, you know. In fact you as good as suggested it yourself.'

She frowned at him. 'When did I?'

'You told me that Tierney and Morrison pestered your mother. The Belgian and the Russians were only interested in the plane. But those two were desperate to find your father. Even our people noticed that at the time.'

'They were his friends.'

'So they hounded his widow? No, Faith. He hid it and he didn't tell them where. And then he disappeared–and there wasn't a thing they could do about it.'

There was no point in adding that what had probably hit the surviving conspirators hardest was the growing suspicion that they had been double-crossed by Steerforth, just as the Belgian had been double-crossed.

Faith Steerforth looked past him, into the darkness outside.

'Then it's still where he put it,' she said softly, half to herself.

'It's the only explanation that makes sense of what's happening now, Faith,' said Audley. 'The Russians must have come to the same conclusion, too. And they think it can be found.'

Audley set his cup of vile coffee down on the plastic tabletop and glowered into it. Meetings with Jake Shapiro, with the exception of their standing Wednesday lunch, were always in places of Jake's choosing and always in uniformly horrible places.

And the vision of Faith Jones poking around the old house in his absence didn't appeal to him either, even though her behaviour as an unsolicited guest had been unexceptionable: she had neither messed up the bathroom nor talked at him during breakfast.

But there was no other course of action open to him. He had to meet Roskill this morning, and he had to keep the girl to hand now that he had decided to make use of her. It was no good consulting the resident Kremlinologists; he had recognised Tom Latimer's hand in the Panin file, and if Latimer was still undecided about the man then no one else would be of use. And that left only his own sources.

The kitchen swing-doors banged at the back of the narrow coffee bar as Jake barged through them. He slapped the waiter on the back, whispered in his ear, lifted a cup of coffee out of his hands and swept on past him without stopping. He slid the cup along the tabletop and eased himself along the bench opposite Audley.

'David, my not-so-long-lost friend! It's good to see you again so soon–but not on a Saturday. I thought it was always the day when you stayed home and cut those rolling lawns of yours–and for me it is the Sabbath! So you have me worried on two counts!'

Jake's humour had been degenerating for nearly twenty years from its original abysmal Cambridge level, and Audley's only defence was to sink unwillingly to that level.

'I thought you'd like to know that there's a jobbing machine shop down in Gosport which makes spare parts for all those grounded Mirage IIICs of yours, Jake.'

Jake slapped his thigh in delight.

'Just what we've been looking for! Now we shall not have to buy them from the South Africans — the way they've been getting through their spares must be baffling the French. Or if not baffling them, amusing them. But seriously old friend, what is this business of Saturday working? It's not good, you know. And besides, I have a date with my El-Al stewardess this morning, so spit it out.'

Now for the moment of truth. If Jake had heard a whisper that he'd been shifted from the Middle East he wouldn't give much, even for old times' sake. Jake was an honest horse-trader, but only when the trading prospects were reasonable.

'Nikolai Panin, Jake. What can you tell me about Nikolai Panin?'

The grin faded from Jake's face–too quickly for a genuine grin. He brushed his moustache thoughtfully.

'Panin's not a Middle Eastern man.'

'No, he isn't. I'm just doing a little job for a friend, and I need to catch up on him.'

Jake raised his eyebrows.

'Little job? Don't let them snow you, old friend. Panin's a hot number these days–are you in trouble?'

As ever, Jake was quick to sense changes in the wind. Much too quick.

'My only trouble is I'm too good by half. Don't worry about me. Just tell me about Panin.'

Jake pursed his lips, and then nodded.

'You might be the right man for Panin at that! You're both secretive sods.'

'Both?'

The Israeli gave a short laugh. 'Don't tell me you don't know, David. If you asked me to I could pretty soon number off the Central Committee, left, right and centre. The ones that matter, anyway. But not Comrade Panin–nobody knows who pulls
his
strings. And if we did we'd know quite a lot more about some other people!'

He drank his coffee thirstily.

'You know about Tashkent?' he continued. 'That's what really put him on the map in a big way. Up to that time he'd always been an internal man, as far as I know.'

'What does he really do?'

'What does he do? Bugger me, David, if I really knew exactly who does what in that goddamned Byzantine set-up do you think I'd be sweating out my time on this little island, trying to screw tanks out of you?'

'Is he KGB?'

'That's another million dollar question. If you ask me they're all KGB, right down to the children and the nursemaids. Particularly the nursemaids. But your Panin, I just don't know. He's a fixer, a smoother-out.'

'Tell me something he's fixed.'

'Well, since you ask me, I think he had a hand–or maybe I should say a foot — in kicking out Kruschev. But I couldn't prove it. Then again, he's always kept well in with the military. Very proud of his war record, too. He was a fighter, not a commissar. Joined up with the 62nd Army on the Volga, came through Stalingrad, slogged it all the way to Berlin. Came out as a staff major with the 8th Guards–one of Khalturin's little lambs. I wouldn't have liked to have been a German squaddie in a house they'd decided to take.'

'For a gullible lad sent straight from the kibbutz to buy our tanks, Jake, you're quite well posted on him.'

Shapiro grinned. 'I do my homework, unlike some who are more celebrated for it. Besides, I've met the famous Panin.'

'You've met him? Where?'

'Embassy party at Delhi, just after Tashkent–I was doing a little research on whose tanks had lasted longer in the Rann of Kutch. And there he was–and he talked to me in excellent English, too.'

'What was he like?'

'Like? He's got the face of a rather sad clown–nose broken in the war and set badly. Or maybe not set at all. But he knew me, because he immediately started to talk about the Masada dig, which I'd just visited. He was too bloody clued-up by half. And I didn't know him from Adam. So I went straight off and tried to find out about him, and came straight up against a brick wall, more or less.

'In fact I've been studying him off and on ever since–as I've no doubt lots of western layabouts have been. And with precious little success, because you've now got the sum total of my studies. In return for which I expect to get the sum total of yours in due course, my dear David.'

Nothing was more certain than that Jake would render a bill of some sort.

'And that really is the sum total?'

'I might be able to come up with a few more names. But it wouldn't signify, because he covers too much territory. That's the trouble — you can't pin him down. In any case, David, you'd best tell me more exactly what it is you want.'

Basically the Israelis knew no more than the British: they both knew simply what was common knowledge. But Audley had expected that. What they did have, however, was by far the best record of events in Berlin in 1945; it was a mere byproduct of their long hunt for the missing Nazi butchers, but it was rumoured to be astonishingly complete. That, though he didn't know it, was going to be Jake's special contribution.

'Well,' began Audley judiciously, 'there are several periods of Panin's career I'd like to fill in, but I think you'll only be able to help me with the early one, which is really the least important. I may not even need it, but if you could pass the word to one or two of your Berlin old-timers, they might know something.'

Jake's face hardened. Different nations had different raw places, tender spots, where no leeway was ever allowed. For the Indians and Pakistanis it was Kashmir. For Frenchmen it was 1940. For Jake, and for may other Israelis, it was still the missing Nazis of 1945. He should have remembered that.

'I give you my word, Jake, that as far as I know this has nothing to do with war criminals. Absolutely nothing. And you know how I feel about that.'

The Israeli relaxed. In as far as he trusted any Anglo-Saxon he trusted Audley. Which was not far, perhaps, but far enough.

He nodded. 'Okay, David. I'll drop a word to Joe Bamm–you can always get him at our Berlin place. He's forgotten more about the old days than most other people ever know. In return, if you turn up any little thing about one of
them
, don't you sit on it.'

He looked at his watch. 'Is that all, then? Because if it is my Delilah awaits me.' He paused, unsmiling again. 'But just you watch it, David, my old friend. You're not dealing with simple Jewish farm boys and stupid Arab peasants any more. You're dealing with real chess players now. If I were you I'd wear belt and braces. They haven't changed one bit, the Russians, whatever your starry-eyed liberals say.'

Audley had one more self-appointed contact to establish before going to the office, but there was no time unfortunately to make it a face to face one. The hated telephone had to be used this time.

'Dr Freisler? Theodore–David Audley here.'

Theodore Freisler was outwardly the archetypal German of the twentieth century world wars, hard-faced and bullet-headed. But within the Teutonic disguise lived an old nineteenth century liberal, whose spiritual home was on the barricades of 1848. His books on German political history were highly regarded in the new Germany, though even in translation Audley found them unreadable. The mind which produced them, however, was at once gentle and formidable: Theodore was a wholly civilised man, the living answer to Jake's unshakeable suspicion of everything German.

'Theodore–I'm glad to have caught you. I'm always expecting to find you've gone back to Germany.'

Theodore had quite unaccountably settled in Britain, in an uncomfortable flat near the British Museum, during a historical conference in 1956. And although he was always revisiting Germany and talking of returning to the Rhineland he had showed no sign of actually doing so. Audley had wondered idly whether he was producing some terrible successor to
Das Kapital
, to set the next age of the world by the ears.

'One day, David, one day. But until that day I shall make my personal war reparation by letting your chancellor have most of my royalties. That is justice, eh?'

'You'll have to work a lot harder to shift our balance of payments, Theodore. But you may be able to help me just now.'

Their friendship had started years before when Theodore, no Nazi-lover, had volunteered the information which had set the Israeli propaganda on the German experts in Egypt in its proper perspective. Since then he had been Audley's private ear in West Germany on Arab-Israeli policies.

'I am at your service, Dr Audley.' The formality marked the transition from banter to business.

'Theodore, I've got a riddle for you: what is it that was of great value to the Russians in 1945, was attractive enough for a private individual to steal, and is still of interest to the Russians today?'

There was a short silence at the other end of the line.

'Is this a riddle with an answer?'

'If it is I haven't got it.'

'Do you have any clues?'

'It came out of Berlin in the summer of '45, possibly in seven wooden boxes, each about the size of that coffee table of yours, Theodore. Roughly, anyway.'

'You don't want much, do you? In 1945 there were a great many things of value to be had in Berlin, and the Russians took most of them. But of value
now
—'

'You can't think of anything?'

'Give me time, Dr Audley, give me time! But it is time that makes a nonsense of your riddle. There was much plunder to be had then, but that would not interest them now. Not even Bormann's bones would interest them now! That is perhaps the one thing that you can say for them: their sense of material values is not so warped as ours in the West.'

'But you're interested?'

'Interested in your riddle? Yes, of course. It is the lapse of time which makes it interesting. But can you give the date of the theft more precisely?'

'Not the theft, Theodore. But it left Berlin end of August, beginning of September.'

Theodore grunted. 'I will ask my friends, then. But it is a long time ago, and I cannot promise success. Also, some riddles do not have answers. And if there is an answer, is it a dangerous one? I don't wish to embarrass my friends.'