The Secret Pilgrim (19 page)

“Pali at the Agriculture Ministry?”

“Pali from Debrecen. He has been visiting Romania.”

“What for? Not the toxic-weapons conference? That could be a scoop!”

“We shall see. An academic conference of some kind. His field is cybernetics. He is undistinguished.”

I watched him dip the brush into the first bottle and paint the back of the handwritten letter with it. He rinsed the brush in water and applied the second chemical. And it seemed to me he was determined to demonstrate his disdain for such menial employment. He repeated the process for every letter, sometimes varying the routine by spreading open the envelope and treating the inside of it, or by painting between the lines of the visible handwriting. In the same slow motion, he sat himself at an upright Remington and wearily tapped out in translation the texts that had emerged: anticipated mineral and power deficiencies in the new industries . . . bauxite quotas for mines in the Bakony Mountains . . . low metal content of iron ore recently extracted in the region of Miskolc . . . projected yield of maize and sugar-beet harvest in the region of somewhere else . . . rumours of five-year plan to revitalise State railway network . . . disruptive action against Party officials in Sopron . . . I could almost hear the yawns of the Third Floor analysts as they
waded through such turgid stuff. I remembered Toby's boast that Teodor was only interested in the highest quality of intelligence. If this was the highest, what in heaven's name was the lowest? Patience, I told myself. Great agents have to be humoured.

The next day I received a reply to my letter about the passport. The problem, Toby explained, was that there had been a lot of changes among the Cousins' Hungarian Section in recent years. An effort was now being made, he said—making suspicious use of the passive voice—to establish the terms of any undertakings given by the Americans or ourselves. Meanwhile I should avoid discussing the matter with Teodor, he added—as if it were I, not the Professor, who was making the running.

The matter was still in the air three weeks later when I lunched with Milton Wagner at the Cosmo. Wagner was an old hand and my American opposite number. Now he was winding up his career as the Cousins' Chief of Eastern Operations, Munich. The Cosmo was the kind of place Americans make anywhere, with crisp potato skins and garlic dip, and club sandwiches impaled on enormous plastic hairpins.

“How are you getting along with our distinguished academic friend?” he asked, in his southern drawl, after we had despatched our other business.

“Splendidly,” I replied.

“Couple of our people seem to think Teodor's been having himself a free ride these how many years,” said Wagner lazily.

This time I said nothing.

“The boys back home have been holding a retrospective of his work. Not good, Ned. Not good at all. Some of the ‘Hello, Hungary' stuff he's been pushing out on the radio. It's been said before. They've found one passage makes a perfect fit with an article published in
Der Monat
back in '48. The original writer recognised his own words soon as he heard them on the air and flipped.” He helped himself liberally to ketchup. “Could be any day now we haul him in for a full and frank exchange.”

“Probably going through a bad patch,” I said.

“Fifteen years is a long bad patch, Ned.”

“Is he aware you're checking on him?”

“In Radio Free Europe, Ned? Among Hungarians?
Gossip?
You must be joking.”

I could no longer contain my anxiety. “But why has nobody warned London? Why haven't
you
?”

“Understand we did, Ned. Understand the message fell on pretty deaf ears. Bad time for you boys. Don't we know it.”

By now the momentous force of his news had got through to me. If the Professor was cheating with his broadcasts, whom else might he not be cheating?”

“Milt, can I ask you a silly question?”

“Be my guest, Ned.”

“Has Teodor
ever
done good work for you? In all his time? Secret work? Very secret work, even?”

Wagner pondered this, determined to give the Professor the benefit of the doubt. “Can't say he has, Ned. We did consider using him as an intermediary for one of our big fish one time, but we kind of didn't like the old man's manners.”

“Can I believe that?”

“Would I ever lie to you, Ned?”

So much for the fantastic work he's doing for the Americans, I thought. So much for the years of loyal service nobody can quite recall.

I signalled Toby straight away. I wasted time drafting different texts because my anger kept getting in the way. I understood only too well now why the Americans were refusing to give the Professor his passport, and why he had turned to us for one instead. I understood his air of last things, his listlessness, his lack of urgency: he was waiting to be sacked. I repeated Wagner's information and asked whether it was known to Head Office. If not, the Cousins were in default of their sharing agreement with us. If, on
the other hand, the Cousins
had
warned us, why hadn't I been warned too?

Next morning I had Toby's slippery reply. It took a regal tone. I suspected he had got somebody to write it for him, for it was accent-free. The Cousins had given London a “non-specific warning” he explained, that the Professor might be facing “disciplinary enquiries at some future date on the subject of his broadcasts.” Head Office—by which I suspected he meant himself—had “adopted the view” that the Professor's relationship with his American employers was not of direct concern to the Circus. Head Office also “took the point”—who but Toby could have made it?—that with so much operational work to occupy him, the Professor could be excused for any “small defects” in his cover work. If another cover job had to be found for the Professor, Head Office would “take steps at the appropriate time.” One solution would be to place him with one of the tame magazines to which he was already an occasional contributor. But that was for the future. The Professor had fallen foul of his employers before, Toby reminded me, and he had ridden out the storm. This was true. A woman secretary had complained of his advances, and elements of the Hungarian community had taken exception to his anti-Semitic views.

For the rest, Toby advised me to cool down, bide my time, and—always a maxim of Toby's—act as if nothing had happened. Which was how matters stood one week and twelve hours later when the Professor telephoned me at ten at night, using the emergency wordcode and asking me in a strangled but imperious voice to come round to his house immediately, entering by way of the garden door.

My first thought was that he had killed someone, possibly his wife. I could not have been more wrong.

The Professor opened the back door, and closed it swiftly after me. The lights inside the house were dimmed. Somewhere in the gloom, a Biedermeier grandfather clock ticked like a big old bomb.
At the entrance to the living room stood Helena, her hands to her mouth, smothering a scream. Twenty minutes had passed since Teodor's call, but the scream still seemed to be on the point of coming out of her.

Two armchairs stood before a dying fire. One was empty. I took it to be the Professor's. In the other, somewhat obscured from my line of sight, sat a silky, rounded man of forty, with a cap of soft black hair, and twinkling round eyes that said we were all friends, weren't we? His winged chair was high-backed and he had fitted himself into the angle of it like an aircraft passenger prepared for landing. His rather circular shoes stopped short of the floor, and it occurred to me they were East European shoes: marbled, of an uncertain leather, with moulded, heavy-treaded soles. His hairy brown suit was like a remodelled military uniform. Before him stood a table with a pot of mauve hyacinths on it, and beside the hyacinths lay a display of objects which I recognised as the instruments of silent killing: two garottes made of wooden toggles and lengths of piano wire; a screwdriver so sharpened that it was a stiletto; a Charter Arms .38 Undercover revolver with a five-shot cylinder, together with two kinds of bullet, six soft-nosed, and six rifled, with congealed powder squashed into the grooves.

“It is cyanide,” the Professor explained, in answer to my silent perplexity. “It is an invention of the Devil. The bullet has only to graze the victim to destroy him utterly.”

I found myself wondering how the poisonous powder was supposed to survive the intense heat of a gun barrel.

“This gentleman is named Ladislaus Kaldor,” the Professor continued. “He was sent by the Hungarian secret police to kill us. He is a friend. Kindly sit down, Herr Ned.”

With ceremony, Ladislaus Kaldor rose from his chair and pumped my hand as if we had concluded a profitable deal.

“Sir!” he cried happily, in English. “Latzi. I am sorry, sir. Don't worry anything. Everybody call me Latzi. Herr Doktor. My friend. Please sit down. Yes.”

I remember how the scent of the hyacinths seemed to go so nicely with his smile. It was only slowly I began to realise I had no sense of danger. Some people convey danger all the time; others put it on when they are angry or threatened. But Latzi, when I was able to consult my instincts, conveyed only an enormous will to please. Which perhaps is all you need if you're a professional killer.

I did not sit down. A chorus of conflicting feelings was yelling in my head, but fatigue was not among them. The empty coffee cups, I was thinking. The empty plates with cake crumbs. Who eats cake and drinks coffee when his life is being threatened? Latzi was sitting again, smiling like a conjuror. The Professor and his wife were studying my face, but from different places in the room. They've quarrelled, I thought; crisis has driven them to their separate corners. An American revolver, I thought. But not the spare cylinder that serious players customarily carried. East European shoes, and with soles that leave a perfect print on every carpet or polished floor. Cyanide bullets that would burn off their cyanide in the barrel.

“How long's he been here?” I asked the Professor.

He shrugged. I hated his shrugs. “One hour. Less.”

“More than one hour,” Helena contradicted him. Her indignant gaze was fixed upon me. Until tonight she had made a point of ignoring me, slipping past me like a ghost, smiling or scowling at the ground to show her disapproval. Suddenly she needed my support. “He rang the bell at eight-forty-five exactly. I was listening to the radio. The programme changed.”

I glanced at Latzi “You speak German?”

“
Jawohl,
Herr Doktor!”

Back to Helena. “Which programme?”

“The BBC World Service,” she said.

I went to the radio and switched it on. A reedy Oxford academic of unknown gender was bleating about Keats. Thank you, BBC. I switched it off.

“He rang the bell—who answered it?” I said

“I did,” said the Professor.

“He did,” said Helena.

“Please,” said Latzi.

“And then?”

“He was standing on the doorstep, wearing a coat,” said the Professor.

“A raincoat,” Helena corrected him.

“He asked if I was Professor Teodor, I said yes. He gave his name, he said ‘Forgive me, Professor, I have come to kill you with a garotte or cyanide bullet but I do not wish to, I am your disciple and admirer. I wish, to surrender to you and remain in the West.'”

“He spoke Hungarian?” I asked.

“Naturally.”

“So you invited him in?”

“Naturally.”

Helena did not agree. “No! First Teodor asked for
me
,” she insisted. I had not heard her correct her husband before tonight. Now she had done so twice in as many minutes. “He calls to me and says, ‘Helena, we have a guest.' I say, ‘Good.' Then he asks Latzi into the house. I take his raincoat, I hang it in the hall, I make coffee. That is how it happened exactly.”

“And cake,” I said. “You made cake?”

“The cake was made already.”

“Were you afraid?” I asked—for fear, like danger, was something else that was missing.

“I was disgusted, I was shocked,” she replied. “Now I am afraid—yes, I am very afraid. We are all afraid.”

“And you?” I said to the Professor.

He shrugged again, as if to say I was the last man on earth to whom he would confide his feelings.

“Why don't you take your wife to the study?” I said.

He was disposed to argue, then changed his mind. Strangers arm in arm, they marched from the room.

I was alone with Latzi. I stood, he sat. Munich can be a very silent city. Even in repose his face smiled at me ingratiatingly. His small eyes still twinkled, but there was nothing I could read in them. He gave me a nod of encouragement, his smile broadened. He said “Please,” and eased himself more comfortably into his chair. I made the gesture every Middle European understands. I held out my hand, palm upward, and passed my thumb across the tip of my forefinger. Still smiling, he rummaged in his inside jacket pocket and handed me his papers. They were in the name of Egon Braubach of Passau, born 1933, occupation artist. I never saw anyone who looked less like a Bavarian artist. They comprised one West German passport, one driver's licence and one social security document. None of them, it seemed to me, carried the least conviction. Neither did his shoes.

“When did you enter Germany?”

“This afternoon, Herr Doktor, this afternoon at five. Please.”

“Where from?”

“Vienna, please. Vienna,” he repeated, in a breathless rush, as if making me a gift of the entire city, and gave another wriggling motion of his rump, apparently to achieve greater subservience. “I caught the first train to Munich this morning, Herr Doktor.”

“At what time?”

“At eight o'clock, sir. The eight-o'clock train.”

“When did you enter Austria?”

“Yesterday, Herr Doktor. It was raining. Please.”