XPD (33 page)

‘And …?’

‘His name is Wilhelm Hans Kleiber. He made quite a name for himself during the war. We have references to him from the Berlin documents centre. He’s also on RFSS microfilm series T-175 in the Washington National Archives, and we found him in the Hoover Institution document collection at Stanford University. He was born in a village near Königsberg, East Prussia. Kleiber joined the army in 1938, became an Abwehr officer and then the SS took him into the RSHA as they took over all the intelligence services. He was taken into the Gehlen organization when it got going again after the war.’

‘A dedicated fellow,’ said the DG bitterly, but there was a trace of respect in the irony.

‘A cynic perhaps,’ said Stuart. ‘A mercenary.’

‘Consistently anti-Communist, isn’t he?’ said the DG. Before Stuart could answer, he asked, ‘Still alive then?’

‘Very much alive,’ said Stuart. ‘Resident in Munich, at least that seems to be where he pays his tax. He is the senior partner of a security company. They own a small fleet of armoured cars used to transport bullion and bank notes … for bank and factory payrolls.’

‘What else?’ It was impossible to guess how much the DG really knew.

‘That’s all we have officially, sir.’

The DG smiled. ‘And unofficially, Stuart? Am I to be taken into your confidence about what you’ve learnt unofficially?’ The DG was able to imbue even the friendliest words with a tone of biting sarcasm.

‘He might be a Moscow Centre operative,’ said Stuart.

‘And who has provided us with this alarming scenario?’

‘The collator, sir.’

The DG was taken aback. He had been expecting Stuart to name some junior clerk in the Identity Department, or some long-retired field agent to whom Stuart had indiscreetly mentioned his quest. ‘So the collator says he’s Moscow Centre,’ said the DG thoughtfully. He pulled his nose. ‘Not such an anti-Communist as I thought, eh Stuart?’

‘If there is some sort of war-crimes guilt hanging over Kleiber’s head, the Russians might have used it to blackmail him into working for them.’

‘You read my mind, Stuart. We’ve seen that one before, haven’t we?’

‘We have indeed, sir. Many times.’

‘It’s a tricky one,’ admitted the DG.

‘We are still “red-flagged”,’ said Stuart. ‘No computer read-outs, no police files, no foreigns.’

‘Are you complaining, Stuart?’ He said it mildly.

‘Such a decision was obviously necessary, sir. But we are being overtaken by events. Unless we have a chance to use the normal channels and procedures, there is a danger that these people will do what they plan to before we have a chance to frustrate them.’

‘You put your case most judiciously,’ said the DG, but he gave no sign that he was swayed by it.

‘Shouldn’t we tell Washington about Kleiber, sir? They could help us such a lot on the German end.’

‘How would you go about it?’

‘A request for information exchange. Give them details of the King’s Cross murders, the explosion at Wever’s farmhouse and the photo of Kleiber. Ask them if they can link any of it with Max Breslow and so on.’

‘Very well, Stuart. Assemble a telex and let me have a look at it after lunch. I don’t like the idea of Moscow Centre getting involved.’

‘No, sir.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that at all, Stuart. Think what the Kremlin could do with the Hitler Minutes if the stuff was turned over to their propaganda machine.’

‘Exactly, sir.’

Boyd Stuart’s meeting with his opposite number in the CIA’s London station was unofficial.

‘And the old man agreed?’ said the CIA man.

Stuart swallowed some gin and tonic before answering. ‘He’ll make it official this afternoon.’

‘You told him what we think about Kleiber?’

‘I said our own collator thought Kleiber was a Moscow Centre agent,’ said Stuart.

‘Suppose he checks?’

‘That’s OK. I talked with the collator. The collator will hum and haw and say maybe. You know what Leslie is like. He’s been there too long to make the mistake of giving anyone a definite opinion.’

The CIA man laughed. ‘Especially when that opinion might explode in his face and dribble all down his Eton tie.’

‘Harrow,’ said Stuart. ‘Leslie went to Harrow, and his tie is Guards Armoured Division.’

The CIA man punched Stuart playfully. ‘You’re a goddamned kidder, Boyd.’

‘It’s true,’ said Stuart. ‘I’m simply stating facts.’

‘And I like the way you tell ’em,’ said the CIA man. He waved a hand and ordered more drinks from the barman. They were in the Salisbury, an old pub in St Martin’s Lane, glittering with cut-glass mirrors, shiny brass fittings and shiny brass show-biz people, getting into the swing of the midweek matinee performances which they would soon take on stage at the nearby theatres. A lady with pink hair and stage make-up blundered backwards into Stuart and spilt his drink. ‘Don’t worry about it, dear,’ she said, ‘no harm done.’

Stuart patted the whisky drops from his sleeve.

‘Even my station chief couldn’t beat that one,’ said the CIA man admiringly. ‘She blunders into you, and tells you there’s no need to apologize.’

Stuart moved backwards into a corner and took his companion with him. ‘What I need to know,’ Stuart said, ‘is whether Max Breslow is part of the Moscow Centre network. And I need to know fast.’

‘I’ve promised you the print-out,’ said the CIA man. ‘And you’ll have it as soon as it comes off the terminal. But I’ll have to retype it. I can’t risk the original going outside the building.’ There was a cheer from the other side of the bar as one of the regulars arrived, a pretty blonde girl in a white trouser suit. ‘For you alone, Boyd. That’s the deal, remember? No one you work with is to be told where this information is coming from.’

‘Was
that
the deal?’ said Stuart, as though trying to remember.

‘OK, Boyd, I apologize. We both got to live with our own people. I know you’re OK. You’re going to need the follow-throughs. I’ll be in Washington on Friday but I’ll check with you at home late Sunday night. Don’t try to reach me at the office, just in case.’

‘Kleiber’s security company,’ said Stuart. ‘Fill me in on that.’

‘You’re trying to measure him up for the killings, are you? No problem there, pal. He’s a rough ass-hole. That organization of his takes on some tough jobs: debt collection from clubs, bars and brothels where I wouldn’t go unless I was inside a Tiger tank. Credit investigation, anti-terrorist stuff and anti-mob assignments. The decapitation is something he’d be able to handle, Boyd. He’s got to be a number-one suspect as far as we’re concerned. Did I tell you that we’ve got a similar decapitation killing in Los Angeles?’

‘You told me.’

‘You think it connects up?’

Stuart looked at the CIA man, wondering how much he knew and how much he might have guessed. ‘Could be,’ he said finally. What the CIA man did not reveal to Stuart was that the preliminary scan was already done, and that it showed Kleiber was a one-time employee of the CIA.

Chapter 30

‘If any of you people want Cokes or Seven-ups, get them now,’ said the project chairman. ‘We don’t want a lot of getting up and walking around, the way it was last week. OK?’ He looked over his spectacles, which he wore well down on his nose. He was a red-faced man with a shirt pocket full of pens. He had once worked the White House assignment and liked to mention it whenever the opportunity came; now he worked for the Domestic Operations Division of the CIA. This was one of the most demanding assignments in the entire agency, handling as it did covert operations in mainland USA where it so often came into acrimonious conflict with the FBI.

There was the sudden hiss of an opened drink, and in response to a raised eyebrow a cold can was sent sliding down the polished table to a graceful catch at the far end. It was a hot day. Even through the tinted glass the landscape of Virginia shone with a fierce glare. The air-conditioning made the temperature almost chilly but the CIA men were all in short-sleeved white shirts with unbuttoned collars.

‘The deputy director (DOD) has instructed us to open a new file on this one. You’ve got the agenda on the table in front of you. The Brits finally came through with something useful. It’s a “hottie” and I think it will take us right inside the Soviet embassy for a few PNGs.’ The project chairman picked up the pink data card, tilted his head well back and looked at it carefully through his spectacles. No one spoke. ‘OK, Sam. Why don’t you give us the linkage, the way it is so far?’ He looked at the electric calendar clock: it was 10.48
A.M.
, Friday, 27 July 1979.

Sam Seymour was a small, grey-haired man with rimless spectacles and a stubble moustache. His voice was low and soft, better suited to telling the long shaggydog jokes for which he was famous than to addressing this group of men who all had pressing business waiting in the locked boxes on their desks. Seymour was the ‘file editor’; his job was to assemble the facts and figures and evaluate them for the men who made the decisions. ‘OK, guys.’ He tapped the edges of his papers on the polished conference table and waited until they were all looking at him. ‘You’ve got to remember that in the early part of this current year we did not – repeat did not – have any evidence that Yuriy Grechko was anything but an assistant military attaché assigned to the Washington embassy.’

‘We figured him for KGB,’ interrupted the project chairman. As he leant back, his head almost touched the Currier and Ives lithograph of a trotting race: pneumatic-looking horses with spindly legs racing past cheering top-hatted spectators. There was other such nineteenth-century popular art on the floors below, but up here, on the executive floor of the CIA building, the lithographs were originals. ‘We figured him for KGB the day he got off the plane,’ said the project chairman. He turned his head so that he could see the clerk who would be using the tape recording to prepare the minutes of the meeting. The clerk nodded: he would make sure that it was established that Grechko had been identified as a member of the KGB. The project chairman nodded to Sam Seymour to continue.

‘Our big break came in April when Grechko lunched a man we’d never seen before. This man is named Parker, and we triple-digited him into the police computer and passed his name to the FBI Identification Department. Then in June Grechko has got a walk-on part at the USSR embassy in Mexico City. Starring that day we’ve got none other than General Shumuk – the famous, fabulous, and we were beginning to think mythical, General Stanislav Shumuk – the First Directorate’s Operational Division deputy. And if that isn’t already a protein-enriched diet, who comes to the embassy and stays approximately the same time as the other two? None other than our mysterious pal, Edward Parker of Chicago.’

‘And the Los Angeles killing?’ prompted the project chairman, who liked to have the events in strict chronological order.

‘Meanwhile, back at the ranch,’ said Sam Seymour, ‘we’ve had a guy butchered in Los Angeles, and the LA cops are asking Chicago about Parker’s car and what it was doing parked near the victim’s office at the time of the murder.’

‘Hold it, Sam,’ said Melvin Kalkhoven, a tall, thin thirty-five-year-old. He was prematurely balding, and his straw-coloured hair and pale bony face made his dark, active eyes seem unnaturally large. ‘We’ve had a guy butchered, you say. You mean this was one of our people?’ Melvin Kalkhoven was a field agent, and he took the deaths of his colleagues very personally. In such moments of stress as this, it was possible to detect his Texan accent.

‘His name was …’ Sam Seymour looked at his papers, ‘his name was Bernard Lustig. He was some kind of movie executive. Nothing to do with the “pickle factory”: we put him through the computer every which way. No agency connection whatsoever.’ He looked up. ‘No, sincerely; no connection with CIA or FBI or any other government agency.’ He nodded to the FBI representative. ‘Right, Ben?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So why was he killed?’ said Kalkhoven.

‘Well, let’s not get into that one for a moment,’ said the project chairman. ‘Sam is the file editor; he can only tell you what we know. Don’t ask him to make guesses. If you want me to make a really far-out guess, I’m going to say that Lustig might have been a KGB operative who went sour on them. But let’s keep to what happened … Sam!’

Sam Seymour continued, ‘The Brits have had a double slaying in London – just nine days ago – with all the same
modus operandi
as the Lustig killing. They’ve asked us to scan the computer for a man named Wilhelm Kleiber. Well, gentlemen, Kleiber has been on the computer for nearly three years. He came on to old Office of Strategic Services files back in 1945. He strolled up to the OSS desk of Third Army HQ and offered to show us where the Nazis had hidden foreign currency and suchlike, in exchange for a job with us. We already had the currency but we gave Kleiber an undercover job. He did OK. He went on to work for the Gehlen set-up back in the good old days, when it was the South German Industries Utilization Company …’

There was a responsive laugh. It seemed unlikely that the cover which Gehlen had used for mounting intelligence operations against Russia was ever very convincing; by today’s standard, it was nothing less than childish. ‘When Gehlen set up his cover organizations – and made money – in everything from wholesaling wine to public relations, Kleiber set up a security company for them. In 1958, Kleiber was pensioned off and allowed to buy the security company at a bargain price.’

‘Poor old US taxpayer,’ said Kalkhoven.

‘Right,’ said Sam Seymour. ‘It was that kind of deal. The security company was his “pension” from Gehlen, but the bottom line was that we picked up the tab. He was, in effect, working for us.’ He took off his spectacles. ‘But it still wasn’t good enough for Kleiber. He got into financial difficulties two or three times in the middle sixties. But he always seemed to survive.’

‘Moscow got to him?’ said Kalkhoven, who hated Seymour’s sort of double-talk. ‘Is that what you are implying?’

‘It’s what I’m trying to avoid saying,’ said Seymour, raising his hands in surrender to Kalkhoven’s critical tone. ‘It’s taken us a long time to get the message. But let’s not go jumping to conclusions until we’ve got the evidence. And let me make it clear. Kleiber was taken off the agency payroll in 1969.’