Chapter 32
Since the beginning of July, Max Breslow had rented a temporary office on the block where the sets were made. It was shabbier than his previous office on Melrose, and certainly not the sort of place where he would want to bring clients, but it was clean and convenient enough until they actually started shooting. Then he would move into a proper suite of offices which would house all the production staff in one building. He reached into his pocket for the well-worn key; goodness only knows how many other producers had used it – big hits, big flops, mostly men like himself, he supposed, small-time producers shrewd enough to plan towards a modest profit, rather than to risk everything in the hope of a bonanza. But surely no other producer had been blackmailed into making a picture.
Max Breslow went outside, across the lot, and up a single flight of wooden stairs. He walked along an open balcony to a door marked ‘Number Fourteen’ in elaborate, painted script lettering. He went inside and one of the phones rang. The receptionist doubled as telephone operator in this block. She must have seen him come up.
‘Breslow.’
‘There is a message in your clip, Mr Breslow. A visitor is waiting for you downtown.’
Breslow sighed. ‘Where downtown?’
‘A pizza parlour on La Cienega between Pico and Venice Boulevards intersection. Buster’s, it’s called. It’s one of those eateries which screen old movies all day.’ She had a shrill New York accent that fascinated Breslow. He wondered whether she had at one time been an actress.
‘Who?’ said Breslow. ‘Not the press, is it, Lucy?’
‘Did you ever hear of a press reporter lunching in Buster’s? Those guys are all in the Polo Lounge. No, this was a message from someone called Kleiber. Do you want me to spell that for you?’
‘No, I don’t want you to spell it, Lucy. What time did he call?’
‘About half an hour ago. He said he’d just arrived on the airplane. That’s why he wants to meet you near the airport, I suppose.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Your wife says, will you pick up her shoes if you are back in Westlake before six? She said you’d know where, and they’ll let you have them without a ticket.’
‘Thanks, Lucy. Get my daughter a car, tell her I’ll see her for dinner at Tony Roma’s Rib Place in Beverly Hills and I’ll drive her home. Explain that I had an unexpected meeting, will you, Lucy?’
‘Sure will, Mr Breslow.’
Max Breslow never had any trouble spotting his friend. Willi Kleiber never changed very much. Apart from a little weight around the hips and some grey hair, he had changed little since the days when he had been with Max in the war. He had always favoured very close-cropped hair, and his teeth still flashed when he smiled. Even the colour of the expensive suits he wore never varied from the drab hues of wartime Feldgrau, and he liked to wear old-fashioned high boots, so like the ones the army had given him.
He was sitting at the back of the pizza parlour. It was typical of Willi to choose such a place for a meeting, a ‘Treff’ he would have called it; he had never really stopped fighting the war. Max Breslow looked round him with a shudder. The plain wooden tables and uncomfortable benches were littered with paper plates, the remains of a pizza and salad and some Coke cups. It was not the sort of place that Max Breslow would have chosen for a meeting. At the sides of the eating room there were a dozen coin-in-the-slot amusements, most of them with video screens and warlike themes. ‘U-boat-Commander’, ‘Blitzkrieg’, ‘Dive Bomber’ or ‘Panzer Clash’; from each of the machines in use there came the electronic bleeps of ricocheting bullets and the continual rat-a-tat of simulated machine-gun fire. This was the war we won, thought Max Breslow, this war that came after the war.
‘Max, it’s good to see you again.’ Willi Kleiber was sitting behind a pile of plates and had obviously enjoyed his meal. It was the nearest thing he could get to dining in a foxhole, thought Max Breslow.
‘Hello, Willi. You’re looking well.’ On a big screen in the corner there was an old scratchy silent film being shown. A fat man in a black suit and top hat sat at a table, while an obsequious waiter set a vast meal before him. Max Breslow looked away. He hated silent comedies.
‘I came straight from the airport. I don’t sleep very well on these long-distance flights.’
There was a roar of childish laughter. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, Max Breslow realized that the other side of the restaurant was crowded with small children.
‘Get some coffee,’ said Willi.
Max got a paper cup from the counter and the youthful assistant poured weak black coffee into it. Breslow returned to the table and sat down, carefully avoiding the shredded lettuce and spilt ketchup. Willi Kleiber reached into his back pocket and produced a silver hip flask. With a furtiveness that he clearly relished, Willi Kleiber poured a measure of brandy into Max Breslow’s coffee. It was always like this. And every time they met they went through the same ritual. It was like meeting a stranger, thought Breslow, rather than someone he had seen only a few weeks ago. Perhaps that was what they were: not friends or old comrades, simply two strangers who met often.
‘Your family are well?’ Kleiber asked.
‘Marie-Louise loves California,’ said Breslow with automatic politeness. ‘And so does my daughter Mary.’
‘And you, Max?’
‘There are things I miss, Willi, but the sunshine works wonders for my old joints. And what about your family? Still well?’
‘My father is very old, Max. He is tired and in pain.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Breslow. ‘I remember your father well. He was a fine old man.’
‘My father’s life ended in 1945, Max. The war is the only thing he ever wants to talk about. Now he is forgetting even that.’
Max Breslow could see the movie screen out of the corner of his eye. In spite of all his resolutions about old films, he shifted his position slightly to see it better. The camera position had just changed to show that the man sitting down to dinner in the top hat was on a railroad track which stretched to the horizon. Breslow said, ‘But your mother is quite well?’ It cut to a locomotive in mid-shot, undercranked to make it seem as if the train was speeding at 200 miles an hour.
‘Thank God,’ said Willi. He had his back to the screen. He always sat facing the door, Max remembered that now. They said he had been wounded in a restaurant in Athens during the war. Some passerby had thrown a grenade.
‘We have a lot to be thankful for,’ said Breslow.
Kleiber put some more brandy into both cups of coffee. It was like a ceremony. Only after these preliminaries would it be possible to have the real conversation.
‘A lot of things have happened,’ explained Kleiber. ‘I thought it was best to come myself.’
‘I’m surprised you found me at the workshops,’ said Breslow. ‘You have lost none of the old skills, Willi.’
Kleiber had been an Abwehr officer. He had made his name infiltrating a French underground network in 1942. Later the Abwehr had been taken over by the SS intelligence service and Willi’s subsequent career included many incidents of which he never spoke. ‘There has been a bad failure of security,’ said Kleiber. ‘Some youngster gained access to the big new FRÜHLING computer that Dr Böttger’s bank have installed in Hanover. He went right through all the security checks and was retrieving data from the zweiter Fall, something the experts said was impossible.’
‘Experts!’ said Breslow. ‘A couple of years in the movie business and you’d no longer listen to the experts.’
‘They say it would have been impossible from anywhere in Germany,’ said Kleiber, ‘but some bloody fool asked the programmers to insert a simplified series of “keys” for retrieval from overseas. It was to save the bank money, Max! How do you like that? Forty million Deutschemarks that damned computer cost the bank, and some idiot simplifies the security in order to save a few Pfennigs in telephone charges.’
‘What did they discover?’
‘It was a German – a clerk in the London office – who decided to try his hand at getting as far as he could into the secrets.’
‘What did he get?’
Kleiber nodded to acknowledge the repetition of the question. ‘He found his way right into Operation Siegfried.’
‘Good God, Willi!’
‘I told them not to use that code name.’
‘Operation Siegfried,’ said Breslow. ‘It was a foolish choice. The name smells of the Third Reich.’
‘They are old men,’ said Kleiber. ‘Old men become romantic. They do not readily face up to the realities we face.’
Intuitively, Max Breslow began to realize what Kleiber was about to tell him. ‘You had this boy killed?’
‘What alternative was there, Max? He had all the names and addresses. He knew the way in which all the banks and our companies were working together. He had the details of the trust fund from which we are financing the work.’
‘Sometimes a man can read such material without understanding its import.’
Willi Kleiber studied the bottom of his coffee cup and then, without replying, went across to the machine at the counter and took the coffee pot off the hot plate. He poured more for himself as he planned his reply. ‘It’s easy to be critical afterwards, Max. But that boy had already placed a long-distance call from London to the Stein house here in Los Angeles. He couldn’t get a person to person, so finally he left a brief message on Stein’s answering machine.’
‘I know all about that,’ said Breslow. ‘I used the musical tone to intercept the stored calls. I know all about that.’
‘Do you?’ said Kleiber with mock surprise. ‘You were behaving as if you had forgotten it.’ Kleiber turned round so that he could see the movie. There was too much light in the room, and the images on the screen were muddy and blurred. A locomotive roared through the picture, scooping up the man in the top hat, but in the subsequent close-up he was still eating. The camera shot widened to show that he was seated astride the cow-catcher, the table and table cloth still in position and his elaborate meal undisturbed.
‘You said the killing of the Britisher from Washington would be the end of it,’ said Breslow. ‘You tried to kill the Englishman Stuart, and wiped out the wrong man. It was a bad business, Willi. And killing Stuart would have solved nothing. I hope you realize that.’
‘It’s easy to be clever afterwards,’ said Kleiber. ‘Don’t tell me you are losing your nerve, Max. I knew that the others would squeal like stuck pigs the moment the business started, but I depended upon you for support.’
‘Then our old comrade Franz Wever. Why did he have to be killed?’
‘Our old comrade Franz,’ said Kleiber bitterly, ‘only wanted to discover what we were doing. Had he found out, he would have reported everything to the British intelligence. He was their man. Franz Wever would have betrayed us.’
Breslow said nothing. Franz Wever had always been envious of him and had gladly admitted it. Franz was permanently posted to the communications job while Breslow had seen front-line service at the war. Perhaps it was this frustration that had caused Franz Wever to jump into the Danube so promptly that cold evening at Linz, where they had spent their leave together. The drowning child would never have survived the current. For a moment he had thought both Wever and the child would be swept away. They had spent a miserable evening in the local police station, waiting for Franz’s uniform to dry. Only months later did Franz receive the letter from the boy’s father: ‘Carry this photo to remind you of the life you saved; may my son grow up to be worthy of your gallant act,’ and there was a snapshot of the child standing in front of a ghastly painted backdrop of mountain landscape. Franz had carried it everywhere.
Kleiber pursed his lips to indicate that he disapproved of Breslow’s silence. What had happened to his friend, he wondered. Was this something to do with living in California? ‘People are going to get hurt, Max.’ He tapped the table silently with a fingertip. ‘Stein will have to be disposed of, you realize that, don’t you? He knows too much to remain alive. Anyone who reads the material will have to be dealt with in the same way. It is regrettable … I don’t enjoy it … but it is a fact.’
‘Where is Stein now?’
‘Are my people here in Los Angeles not keeping you informed?’
‘The last I heard he sent his son Billy to London.’
‘Yes. Billy Stein went to London. The English secret service sent their man along to see him. There wasn’t time to put a microphone in the room so we don’t know what was said. Personally, I think they found the bodies before the police did. I think they found them even before young Stein did. They are cunning, Max, we have to be most cautious.’
‘Bodies? There was more than one?’
‘An Englishman, a friend. We think he was the one who told him how to get into the computer memory. It was better to get rid of both. He was sure to have told his English friend how well he’d succeeded.’
‘How did you discover the leak?’
‘It was the only stroke of luck we have so far had on this business. A very close friend of mine in the BND got it over lunch from the director general of the British secret service. The inquiry came to me soon after you took the message off Stein’s answering machine. It was clever of you to do that, Max.’
‘There was nothing clever about it,’ said Breslow. ‘I have the same model of answering machine. Stein got it for me wholesale. I was able to get a whistle with the same musical tone as Stein’s machine.’
‘Well done,’ said Kleiber.
Breslow did not reply. He did not have Kleiber’s long experience of intelligence work; the business with the answering machine had left him feeling defiled and ashamed.
Perhaps Kleiber realized this. He said, ‘It was of immense help to us. Knowing what the message was meant I could get on the plane to London immediately. I didn’t have to wait to hear what this fellow Paul Bock wanted to tell Stein – we knew already.’ He smiled and patted Breslow’s arm in a congratulatory manner. Breslow flinched. He could never get used to such physical contacts. Masculine embraces might be de rigueur for restaurateurs, footballers and film stars, but not for old comrades.
‘Don’t underestimate Stein,’ Breslow warned him. ‘He may look like a slob, but under that gross and unattractive exterior there is a man of great physical strength and considerable intellectual resource.’
Kleiber waved his hand as if to waft away these praises of Stein. ‘By this time, Stein should be on his knees, begging for money.’
‘Well, he isn’t,’ said Breslow. He lifted the paper cup and drained the last dregs. The coffee was thin and tepid but the taste of the good German brandy was welcome. ‘He’s being very evasive.’
‘It was a good plan,’ said Kleiber. ‘We calculated that the failure of the bank would make them part with the documents within a few days. You’d think they’d want to get some money as soon as they could. You’d think their bank would be the first priority …’ Kleiber rubbed his face wearily. ‘Do you think Stein believed that story about the British trying to kill you on the freeway?’
‘I improvised it at short notice, Willi, and I was rather shaken by the accident … But, yes. I believe he did. My Mercedes was very badly damaged. It was only too easy to persuade him that it was deliberately done.’
‘It was lucky. It put Stein off the scent, and probably made him think the British were trying to kill you.’
‘Yes, I told him so.’
‘You did well, Max. When did you last see him?’
‘Charles Stein? The day before yesterday. Why?’
‘The truth is …’ began Kleiber. He yawned. It was a sign of anxiety as much as of loss of sleep. ‘The truth is that we’ve gone a little wrong in London. We’ve lost contact with the younger Stein.’
‘I’m certain he hasn’t returned here to Los Angeles.’
‘How can you be certain?’
‘Because he would be with my daughter Mary.?
??
‘Your daughter … Mary and the Stein boy?’
‘Better him,’ said Breslow, ‘than the Mexican gas station attendant who chased her everywhere last year. Finally I sent her to Europe for a month.’
‘The Stein boy has vanished,’ said Kleiber. ‘I had one of my very best men in charge of the London end. I can’t understand it; Stein left the hotel, paid his bill and took his baggage. And my people saw nothing of it.’
‘You think the British intelligence service is holding him?’
‘Yes, I do. I think they waited for Stein to go to the house, arrested him and are now interrogating him.’
‘What a mess,’ said Max Breslow. If anything happened to Billy Stein, his father might hold him responsible. Max Breslow was not of a nervous disposition, as his war record proved, but he knew that the wrath of Charles Stein would be terrible to behold. What if Stein took revenge upon Breslow’s daughter? He suppressed this terrifying idea. ‘What now?’
Kleiber stretched his arms and looked very smug. ‘We have had an amazing stroke of luck, Max.’ This, Breslow suspected, was the moment that Kleiber had been looking forward to. He was right. Kleiber said, ‘As I have just told you, we have a contact with the very top level of the British intelligence service – MI6 they call it – a good friend of mine is the liaison between London and our own BND in Bonn. They lunch together and talk of horticulture …’ Kleiber smiled at Max Breslow’s puzzled expression. ‘It is their mutual passion: cactus plants. This passion has proved a most wonderful advantage for us, Max.’
‘And yet you don’t know if the British are holding Stein?’
Kleiber did not miss the note of sarcasm in his friend’s question. He smiled. ‘I think we can safely assume that they have Billy Stein in custody, and that they have interrogated him very successfully.’ There was something in Kleiber’s face that told Breslow that this was his most important item of news. ‘What is our greatest problem, Max? Surely it is finding the whereabouts of the Hitler Minutes. Well, now we do know where they are. The British have discovered that the Hitler Minutes and all the rest of the documents are in the house of Colonel Pitman in Switzerland. We even know what sort of strong room protects them.’