Читать книгу The Testament of Caspar Schultz - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 8

The man who leaned against the door held an Italian Biretta automatic negligently in his right hand. He was of medium build and his eyes seemed very blue in the tawny face. An amused smile twisted the corners of his mouth. “You do seem to have stirred things up, old man,” he said in impeccable English.

The train had finally come to a stop and there was shouting in the corridor outside. Chavasse listened keenly and managed to distinguish Steiner’s voice. He scrambled to his feet and the man said, “Steiner doesn’t sound very pleased. What did you do to him?”

Chavasse shrugged. “Judo throat jab. A nasty trick, but I didn’t have time to observe the niceties.” He nodded towards the automatic. “You can put that thing away. No rough stuff, I promise you.”

The man smiled and slipped the gun into his pocket. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react when I dragged you in here.” He extracted a leather and gold cigarette case from his inside pocket and flicked it open. Chavasse took one and leaned across for the proffered light.

He hadn’t been working for the Chief for five years without being able to tell a professional when he saw one. People in his line of business carried a special aura around with them, indefinable and yet sensed at once by the trained agent: One could even work out the nationality by attitude, methods employed and other trademarks; but in this case he was puzzled.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Hardt’s the name, Mr Chavasse,” the man told him. “Mark Hardt.”

Chavasse frowned. “A German name and yet you’re not a German.”

“Israeli.” Hardt grinned. “A slightly bastardized form by Winchester out of Emmanuel College.”

The picture was beginning to take shape. “Israeli Intelligence?” Chavasse asked.

Hardt shook his head. “Once upon a time, but now nothing so official. Let’s say I’m a member of an organization which by the very nature of its ends is compelled to work underground.”

“I see,” Chavasse said softly. “And what exactly are your aims at the moment?”

“The same as yours,” Hardt said calmly. “I want that manuscript, but even more than that I want Caspar Schultz.” Before Chavasse could reply, he got to his feet and moved to the door. “I think I’d better go into the corridor and see what’s going on.”

The door closed softly behind him and Chavasse sat on the edge of the bunk, a slight frown on his face, as he considered the implications of what Hardt had said. It was well known that there was at least one strong Jewish underground unit which had been working ceaselessly since the end of the war in all parts of the world, tracking down Nazi war criminals who had evaded the Allied net in 1945. He had heard that its members were fanatically devoted to their task, brave people who had dedicated their lives to bringing some of the inhuman monsters responsible for Belsen, Auschwitz and other hell-holes, to justice.

On several occasions during his career with the Bureau he had found himself competing with the agents of other Powers towards the same end, but this was different—this was very different.

The train started to move, the door opened and Hardt slipped in. He grinned. “I just saw Steiner. He’s been raging like a lion up and down the track. It was finally pointed out to him that you were probably several miles away by now and he was persuaded to come back on board. I don’t fancy your chances if he ever manages to get his hands on you.”

“I’ll try to see that he doesn’t.” Chavasse nodded towards the American uniform. “A neat touch, your disguise. After the crime, the criminal simply ceases to exist, eh?”

Hardt nodded. “It’s proved its worth on several occasions, although the spectacles can be a bit of a nuisance. I can’t see a damned thing in them.”

He locked the door, pulled a stool from beneath the bunk and sat on it, his shoulders resting comfortably against the wall. “Don’t you think it’s time we got down to business?”

Chavasse nodded. “All right, but you first. How much do you know about this affair?”

“Before I start just tell me one thing,” Hardt said. “It is Muller who is dead, isn’t it? I heard one of the other passengers say something about a shooting and then Steiner marched you along the corridor.”

Chavasse nodded. “I had a cup of coffee just before Osnabruck. Whatever was in it put me out for a good half hour. When I came round, Muller was lying in the corner, shot through the heart.”

“A neat frame on somebody’s part.”

“As a matter of fact I thought it was your handiwork,” Chavasse told him. “What exactly were you looking for in my compartment?”

“Anything I could find,” Hardt said. “I knew Muller was supposed to meet you at Osnabruck. I didn’t expect him to be carrying the manuscript, but I thought he might take you to it, even to Schultz.”

“And you intended to follow us?” Chavasse said.

“Naturally,” Hardt told him.

Chavasse lit another cigarette. “Just tell me one thing. How the hell do you know so much?”

Hardt smiled. “We first came across Muller a fortnight ago when he approached a certain German publisher and offered him Schultz’s manuscript.”

“How did you manage to find out about that?”

“This particular publisher is a man we’ve been after for three years now. We had a girl planted in his office. She tipped us off about Muller.”

“Did you actually meet him?”

Hardt shook his head. “Unfortunately the publisher got some of his Nazi friends on the job. Muller was living in Bremen at the time. He left one jump ahead of them and us.”

“And you lost track of him, I presume?”

Hardt nodded. “Until we heard about you.”

“I’d like to hear how you managed that,” Chavasse said. “It should be most interesting.”

Hardt grinned. “An organization like ours has friends everywhere. When Muller approached the firm of publishers you’re supposed to be representing, the directors had a word with Sir George Harvey, one of their biggest shareholders. He got in touch with the Foreign Secretary who put the matter in the hands of the Bureau.”

Chavasse frowned. “What do you know about the Bureau?”

“I know it’s a special organization formed to handle the dirtier and more complicated jobs,” Hardt said. “The sort of things M.I.5 and the Secret Service don’t want to touch.”

“But how did you know I was travelling on this train to meet Muller?” Chavasse said.

“Remember that the arrangement with Muller, by which he was supposed to contact you at Osnabruck, was made through the managing director of the publishing firm. He was naturally supposed to keep the details to himself.”

“Presumably he didn’t?”

Hardt nodded. “I suppose it was too good a tale to keep from his fellow directors and he told them everything over dinner that same evening. Luckily one of them happens to be sympathetic to our work and thought we might be interested. He got in touch with our man in London who passed the information over to me at once. As I was in Hamburg, it was rather short notice, but I managed to get on a mid-morning flight to Rotterdam and joined the train there.”

“That still doesn’t explain how the people who killed Muller knew we were supposed to meet on this train,” Chavasse said. “I can’t see how there could possibly have been another leak from the London end. I don’t think it’s very probable that there’s also a Nazi sympathizer on the board of directors of the firm I’m supposed to be representing.”

Hardt shook his head. “As a matter of fact I’ve got a theory about that. Muller was living in Bremen with a woman called Lilli Pahl. She was pulled out of the Elbe this morning, apparently a suicide case.”

“And you think she was murdered?”

Hardt nodded. “She disappeared from Bremen when Muller did so they’ve probably been living together. My theory is that the other side knew where he was all along, that they were leaving him alone hoping he’d lead them to Caspar Schultz. I think Muller gave them the slip and left Hamburg for Osnabruck last night. That left them with only one person who probably knew where he had gone and why—Lilli Pahl.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Chavasse said. “It sounds reasonable enough. But it still doesn’t explain why they shot him.”

Hardt shrugged. “Muller could have been carrying the manuscript, but I don’t think that’s very likely. I should imagine the shooting was an accident. Muller probably jumped the person who was waiting for him in your compartment and was killed in the struggle.”

Chavasse frowned, considering everything Hardt had told him. After a while he said, “There’s still one thing which puzzles me. Muller is dead and that means I’ve come to a full-stop as regards finding Schultz. I can’t be of any possible use to you, so what made you go to the trouble of saving my skin?”

“You could say I’m sentimental,” Hardt told him. “I have a soft spot for people who are Israeli sympathizers and I happen to know that you are.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Do you recall a man named Joel ben David?” Hardt asked. “He was an Israeli intelligence agent in Cairo in 1956. You saved his life and enabled him to return to Israel with information which was of great service to our army during the Sinai campaign.”

“I remember,” Chavasse said. “But I wish you’d forget about it. It could get me into hot water in certain quarters. I wasn’t supposed to be quite so violently partisan at the time.”

“But we Jews do not forget our friends,” Hardt said quietly.

Chavasse was suddenly uncomfortable and he went on hurriedly. “Why are you so keen to get hold of Schultz? He isn’t another Eichmann, you know. There’s bound to be an outcry for an international trial. Even the Russians would want a hand in it.”

Hardt shook his head. “I don’t think so. In any case, we aren’t too happy about the idea of leaving him in Germany for trial for this reason. There’s a statute of limitations in force under German law. Cases of manslaughter must be tried within fifteen years of the crime—murder, within twenty years.”

Chavasse frowned. “You mean Schultz might not even come to trial?”

Hardt shrugged. “Who knows? Anything might happen.” He got to his feet and paced restlessly across the compartment. “We are not butchers, Chavasse. We don’t intend to lead Schultz to the sacrificial stone with the whole of Jewry shouting Hosanna. We want to try him, for the same reason we have tried Eichmann. So that his monstrous crimes might be revealed to the world. So that people will not forget how men treat their brothers.”

His eyes sparkled with fire and his whole body trembled. He was held in the grip of a fervour that seemed almost religious, something which possessed his heart and soul so that all other things were of no importance to him.

“A dedicated man,” Chavasse said softly. “I thought they’d gone out of fashion.”

Hardt paused, one hand raised in the air and stared at him and then he laughed and colour flooded his face. “I’m sorry, at times I get carried away. But there are worse things for a man to do than something he believes in.”

“How did you come to get mixed up in this sort of thing?” Chavasse asked.

Hardt sat down on the bunk. “My people were German Jews. Luckily my father had the foresight in 1933 to see what was coming. He moved to England with my mother and me, and he prospered. I was never particularly religious—I don’t think I am now. It was a wild, adolescent impulse which made me leave Cambridge in 1947 and journey to Palestine by way of an illegal immigrants’ boat from Marseilles. I joined Haganah and fought in the first Arab war.”

“And that turned you into a Zionist?”

Hardt smiled and shook his head. “It turned me into an Israeli—there’s a difference, you know. I saw young men dying for a belief, I saw girls who should have been in school, sitting behind machine-guns. Until that time my life hadn’t meant a great deal. After that it had a sense of purpose.”

Chavasse sighed and offered him a cigarette. “You know, in some ways I think I envy you.”

Hardt looked surprised. “But surely you believe in what you are doing? In your work, your country, its political aims?”

“Do I?” Chavasse shook his head. “I’m not so sure. There are men like me working for every Great Power in the world. I’ve got more in common with my opposite number in Smersh than I have with any normal citizen of my own country. If I’m told to do a thing, I get it done. I don’t ask questions. Men like me live by one code only—the job must come before anything else.” He laughed harshly. “If I’d been born a few years earlier and a German, I’d probably have worked for the Gestapo.”

“Then why did you help Joel ben David in Cairo?” Hardt said. “It hardly fits into the pattern you describe.”

Chavasse shrugged and said carelessly, “That’s my one weakness, I get to like people and sometimes it makes me act unwisely.” Before Hardt could reply he went on, “By the way, I searched Muller before Steiner arrived on the scene. There were some letters in his inside pocket from this Lilli Pahl you mentioned. The address was a hotel in Gluckstrasse, Hamburg.”

Hardt frowned. “That’s strange. I should have thought he’d have used another name. Did you find anything else?”

“An old photo,” Chavasse said. “Must have been taken during the war. He was wearing Luftwaffe uniform and standing with his arm around a young girl.”

Hardt looked up sharply. “Are you sure about that—that it was a Luftwaffe uniform he was wearing?”

Chavasse nodded. “Quite sure. Why do you ask?”

Hardt shrugged. “It probably isn’t important. I understood he was in the army, that’s all. My information must have been incorrect.” After a moment of silence he went on, “This hotel in Gluckstrasse might be worth investigating.”

Chavasse shook his head. “Too dangerous. Don’t forget Steiner knows about the place. I should imagine he’ll have it checked.”

“But not straightaway,” Hardt said. “If I go there as soon as we reach Hamburg, I should be well ahead of the police. After all, there’s no particular urgency from their point of view.”

Chavasse nodded. “I think you’ve got something there.”

“Then there remains only one thing to decide,” Hardt said, “and that is what you are going to do.”

“I know what I’d like to do,” Chavasse said. “Have five minutes alone with Schmidt—the sleeping-car attendant who served me that coffee. I’d like to know who he’s working for.”

“I think you’d better leave me to handle that for the moment,” Hardt said. “I can get his address and we’ll visit him later. It wouldn’t do for you to hang about the Hauptbahnhof too long when we reach Hamburg.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

Hardt seemed to be thinking hard. After a while he appeared to come to a decision. “Before I say anything more I want to know if you are prepared to work with me on this thing.”

Chavasse immediately saw the difficulty and stated it. “What happens if we find the manuscript? Who gets it?”

Hardt shrugged. “Simple—we can easily make a copy.”

“And Schultz? We can’t copy him.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Chavasse shook his head. “I don’t think my Chief would see things your way.”

Hardt smiled coolly. “The choice is yours. Without my help you’ll get nowhere. You see I have an ace up my sleeve. Something which will probably prove to be the key to the whole affair.”

“Then what do you need me for?” Chavasse said.

Hardt shrugged. “I told you before, I’m sentimental.” He grinned. “Okay, I’ll be honest. Things are moving faster than I thought they would and at the moment I haven’t got another man in Hamburg. I could use you.”

The advantages to be obtained from working with Hardt were obvious and Chavasse came to a quick decision. He held out his hand. “All right. I’m your man. We’ll discuss the division of the spoils if and when we get that far.”

“Good man!” Hardt said, and there was real pleasure in his voice. “Listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. Muller had a sister. Now we know it, but I don’t think the other side do. He always thought she was killed in the incendiary raids during July 1943. They only got together again recently. She’s working as a showgirl at a club on the Reeperbahn called the Taj Mahal. Calls herself Katie Holdt. I’ve had an agent working there for the past week. She’s been trying to get friendly with the girl hoping she might lead us to Muller.”

Chavasse raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Is your agent a German girl?”

Hardt shook his head. “Israeli—born of German parents. Her name is Anna Hartmann.” He pulled a large silver ring from the middle finger of his left hand. “Show her this and tell her who you are. She knows all about you. Ask her to take you back to her flat after the last show. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

Chavasse slipped the ring on to a finger. “That seems to settle everything. What time do we get into Hamburg?”

Hardt glanced at his watch. “About two hours. Why?”

Chavasse grinned. “Because I’ve been missing a hell of a lot of sleep lately and if it’s all right with you, I’m going to make use of this top bunk.”

A smile appeared on Hardt’s face and he got to his feet and pushed the mounting ladder into position. “You know, I like your attitude. We’re going to get on famously.”

“I think we can say that’s mutual,” Chavasse said.

He hung his jacket behind the door and then climbed the ladder and lay full length on the top bunk, allowing every muscle to relax in turn. It was an old trick and one that could only be used when he felt easy in his mind about things.

Because of that special extra sense that was a product of his training and experience, he knew that for the moment at any rate, the affair was moving very nicely. Very nicely indeed. He turned his face into the pillow and went to sleep at once as peacefully as a child.