* * *
1 Waldgänger: one who walks alone (in the woods).
2 Shinbet: Sheruter Betahan, Israeli Intelligence Service.
3 Man errs till his strife is ended (Faust).
4 Nahal: a military kibbutz.
5Jewish toast for a long life. (Moses lived 120 years.)
Chapter 43
HANNA STAHL alias SAMANTHA STEEL
Monday, November 4th
Snow already, Samantha Steel thought. What kind of winter was it likely to be? Whatever kind of winter, it would be good to be back in her flat in Haifa, where from the bedroom window umbrella pines framed the intense blue water of the bay, and the whitewashed walls reflected back a glare too bright to look at, even in December.
She watched the big snowflakes hitting the grimy streets as they passed through the Reinickendorf district of Berlin. The whisky had warmed her and she was quite capable of dropping off to sleep. She pressed her face about with her hands, stretching the cheeks and pummelling her eyes. What a relief that it was all over, there had been so many traps and pitfalls. Now she felt torn, shredded, used—sexually used almost. She combed her hair through her fingers. It was soft and young; fine silky hair. She let it fall against her neck like murmurs of love. She dragged it up again, her eyes closed; it was like taking a warm shower, combing her hair through her fingers. It would be nice to have it blonde again. She felt her whole body drift into relaxation.
She would like to see Johnnie Vulkan again before she got on the plane; not for any romantic reason, he was just the sort of tough self-sufficient character that had no attraction for her at all. Vulkan was a big phoney. He wasn’t even German, in spite of the way he always called Berlin his home town. He was a Sudeten German—you could hear it in his voice when he was angry. She didn’t like him but she had to admire him. He was a professional; by any standards he was a professional. Just to see him work was a pleasure.
The Englishman was the exact opposite. There were times when she could have ‘gone for’ the Englishman, nearly did in fact. Given other circumstances, where there was no element of business involved, it all might have been different. She wished she had known him many years ago when he was at his red-brick university, this provincial boy wandering through the big city of life. She envied him his simplicity and briefly wished she had been the girl next door in Burnley, Lancs—wherever that was! He was cuddly, kind and malleable, he would make the sort of husband who wouldn’t fight about her dress allowance all the time.
Why the English used men like that in Intelligence work was something she would never understand. Amateur. That basically was why the English would never be good at doing anything: they were amateurs. Such amateurs that finally someone standing by couldn’t watch their bungling any longer, and took over. That’s what America had done in two World Wars. Perhaps it was all part of a vast British conspiracy. She giggled. She didn’t think so.
The driver offered his cigarettes. She looked round and tapped the coffin to make sure it was still there. She never trusted things she couldn’t see and touch. Thank goodness Johnnie had supervised the morphia dosage and the details, the Englishman would forget or get it wrong. He had to be led, that Englishman. She had found exactly the same thing in her relationship with him. He has to have someone around like Johnnie Vulkan; or Samantha Steel, she added to herself. He would make a good father. Vulkan could perhaps be moulded into a good escort but the English guy would have been a good father to their children. She compared her memories of the two of them as though they were fighting some sort of tournament for her favours. She snuggled deeper in the seat and pulled her coat collar up to her eyebrows to think about that—to keep it more secret.
Vulkan was the worst sort of womanizer and had some idea that women were an inferior race; he had used that word—Männerbund—too; the bond that unites men, comradeship—her mother had told her that that was a dangerous sign. Men can get away with that sort of attitude in this country where there had been nearly two million surplus women in 1945. He would have got the shock of his life in Israel, where women were really gaining a place for themselves.
She lit the cigarette. Her hands shook. It was natural, it was the after-effect of all the work and worry, but there was still the airport to deal with. If she was still in this sort of condition when they got there she would let the driver handle it; he was unimaginative enough to be calm, thank goodness. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘There’s the Siegessäule,’ said the driver and pointed to the tall monument to ancient victories that stabbed into the Tiergarten like a pin through a green butterfly. He detoured to avoid the police cars that always sat around at the base of it. ‘Not far now.’
‘Thank goodness,’ she shivered. ‘It’s damn cold in here,’ she said.
The driver said nothing but they both knew it wasn’t cold in there.
She went back to thinking about the Englishman; it was a nice warm pretence to indulge in and quite academic, now that she would never see him again. He smelled good; she thought smell was important. You could tell a lot about a man by his smell and the taste of his mouth. His smell wasn’t particularly masculine. Not like Vulkan—all tobacco and untanned-leather smells, which she knew came from a bottle, ever since she had looked for aspirins that night and found his hairnet. She laughed. The Englishman smelled of something softer; more like warm yeasty bread, and sometimes he tasted of cocoa.
She remembered that night, it was the night she decided she would never understand men. Vulkan had made love to her in his usual fashion, which was like a specialist performing major surgery. She had promised to buy him some rubber gloves and he had made some wisecrack about her acting like she was anaesthetized. It was about three o’clock in the morning when she had found not only the hair-net but the parts for the half-finished string quartet. Vulkan. King Vulkan. The way he delighted in his big, secret-agent, undercover life. She ought to have told him that the secretive attitude he had about his intellectual life was a guilt syndrome centred upon his parents. Vulkan preferred to think it was ‘the mental casualties of war’. Phoney.
Why was the car stopping? She looked out at the densely packed traffic jam. It was a miserable town full of men in ankle-length overcoats and big hats. As for the clothes the women wore, they were unbelievable, she had hardly seen a well dressed woman all the time she had been here.
She wasn’t worried about the traffic jam, there was ample time, she had worked out the schedule to allow for such things. The van crept forward a little then stopped again. It was as bad as New York. She wondered whether to visit her mother at Christmas. It was a lot of expense and she had only recently been there. Mothers, however, had some special metaphysical regard for Christmas. Perhaps she should ask her mother to come to Haifa. The traffic had begun to move again, there was a cream double-decker bus slewed across the road. An accident. The road was probably slippery with the snow. At first the big flakes had melted as they hit the ground but now they were beginning to build up a white pattern. People too were wearing lace shawls of snowflakes. The driver switched the windscreen wipers on. The motor whined in a monotonous rhythm.
There was a fire engine and a lot of people in the centre of the road. It could take ages at this rate. She leaned back to relax. The taste of the whisky recurred in her throat. She recounted the programme in her mind from the moment they had backed the truck through the doors of the Wittenau garage. Haifa had told her to let the money go only if she had to. It would make them suspicious, they had said. She wished she had bargained with the Englishman now: what had he said about ‘That’s what the Roman soldiers said to Judas’? It was a typical sour English remark. She should have just taken the coffin at gunpoint. It had been in her mind to do so at one time. It was Johnnie Vulkan who had forced her hand, by not being there. He was probably watching from a window across the road. You had to admire Vulkan. He was a real professional.
It was quite dark now, dark with the claustrophobic weight of the clou
d from which dirty flakes of snow fell relentlessly. That’s better; they were edging forward again now. Great lights illuminated the foremen operating the jacks under the bus. One fireman was kneeling in a great pool of oil, so was a policeman. Now she could see what had happened. The fireman was talking to an old man whose legs were under the wheels of the bus. They were trying to take the banner he was holding away from him but the old man was gripping it tightly. The policeman waved them past. The old man wouldn’t let go. The snow covered his face. The banner said, ‘No man can serve two masters. Matthew vi. 24.’
‘This is Schöneberg,’ said the driver. Tempelhof must be just ahead.
Chapter 44
In China, Hungary, India, Korea and Poland
pawns are called ‘foot soldiers’, but in Tibet
they are called ‘children’.
Tuesday, November 5th
The green-shaded lamp in Dawlish’s office is rigged up with a complex series of cords and counterweights. From its present position its light cut the figures round his desk in half and illumined them only from the waist down. Dawlish’s disembodied hands reached into the circle of yellow light. The fingers shuffled and riffed through the thin new unwrinkled paper money like serpents’ tongues.
‘You are probably right,’ he said to me. ‘It’s counterfeit.’
‘I’m only guessing,’ I said. ‘But she gave it to me like she was playing Monopoly.’
Dawlish flipped through it and read that little paragraph that they have on German money that says how they don’t want anybody to feel free to print their own. Dawlish handed the money to Alice.
‘They’re being very cagey about Newbegin filling the Berlin vacancy,’ said Dawlish. ‘They say you are Americanizing the department in dress, syntax and operation.’
I said: ‘That’s their way of compensating for the orders I get from Washington.’
Dawlish nodded. He said, ‘The Yard have had a cable from the Munich police.’ He watched my face in the darkness. I said nothing. On the other side of the desk Alice was plucking an elastic band that held the money that Sam had given me. The elastic made a loud crack in the still room.
‘A girl was transhipping a coffin at Munich—travelling with it between Berlin and Haifa. There was a dead body in the coffin.’
Dawlish looked at me again, wanting me to speak. I said, ‘Coffins often contain corpses, don’t they?’
Dawlish walked across to the tiny coal fire. He prodded it with a bent bayonet, there was a sudden flicker of flame and a tiny army of red sparks marched across the side of the grate.
‘What do you think we should say?’ he said to the fireplace.
‘We?’ I said. ‘I thought the Munich police were asking the Yard. If you want to get yourself involved with girls going to Haifa with coffins, it’s up to you, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Dawlish gave the largest piece of coal an in-out and on-guard and it split into five small blazing pieces. ‘Just as long as I know,’ he said, putting down the poker and walking back to the desk. ‘It’s no use my saying one thing if your written report says something completely different.’ He nodded like he was trying to convince himself. He didn’t have to convince me.
‘Yes,’ I said. Outside there was a steady noise of starlings fidgeting about on the guttering. Through the window, dawn was revealing crippled roofs, and painting bloody reflections in the dirty glass of the window panes. The senile light above Dawlish’s desk was losing its battle against the daylight with bad grace. Dawlish walked across to a leather chair and sank into it with a sigh. He took off his glasses and produced a crisp handkerchief which he carefully patted over his face. ‘Could you find us a little cup of real coffee?’ he asked in a gentle voice—but Alice had already left to make some. Dawlish read the newspaper clipping I gave him.
FASCIST VICTIMS’ ASSETS WILL BE RELEASED BY SWISS BANKS
BERNE, OCT 21ST (R)
THE SWISS PARLIAMENT ON THURSDAY APPROVED A GOVERNMENT BILL DESIGNED TO RELEASE UNCLAIMED ASSETS OF LONG-DEAD VICTIMS OF FASCISM DEPOSITED IN THE COUNTRY’S BANKS.
THE NEW LAW SUPPORTED BY 130 DEPUTIES WITH NO OPPOSITION LIFTS A CORNER OF THE CURTAIN OF SECRECY WHICH ENSHROUDS MANY A FOREIGN FORTUNE DEPOSITED IN SWITZERLAND’S CONFIDENTIAL ACCOUNTS.
THE BANK SECRECY ACT WILL NOW BE SET ASIDE FOR A TEMPORARY PERIOD OF TEN YEARS SO THAT THE GOVERNMENT CAN TAKE OVER THE UNCLAIMED FUNDS.
UNDER THE NEW LAW, BANKS, INSURANCE COMPANIES OR ANYBODY ELSE ARE OBLIGED TO DECLARE
UNTOUCHED ASSETS BELONGING TO PEOPLE UNTRACED SINCE THE WAR AND WHO ARE RACIALLY, POLITICALLY OR RELIGIOUSLY PERSECUTED FOREIGNERS OR STATELESS PERSONS.
THE GOVERNMENT’S MOTIVES IN PUSHING THE BILL THROUGH ARE TO REMOVE ANY SUSPICION THAT SWITZERLAND WOULD BE PREPARED TO PROFIT FROM THE CASE OF EUROPEAN JEWRY IN HITLER’S EXTERMINATION CAMPS.
DISPOSAL OF THE ASSETS IS TO BE DECIDED BY FEDERAL DECREE, WITH THE STIPULATION THAT THE ORIGIN
OF THE DEAD OWNER WILL BE CONSIDERED.
JEWISH CHARITIES, OR PERHAPS THE STATE OF ISRAEL, ARE EXPECTED TO BENEFIT.
THE HEIRS TO THOSE DECLARED MISSING, BELIEVED DEAD, WILL HAVE FIVE YEARS TO CLAIM THE DEPOSITS, BUT SWISS AUTHORITIES BELIEVE THAT MOST OF THEM ARE PROBABLY DEAD TOO, AND THERE WILL BE FEW APPLICATIONS.
NOBODY KNOWS HOW MUCH IS INVOLVED, ALTHOUGH THE SWISS BANKING ASSOCIATION HAS STATED THAT IT MAY AMOUNT TO LESS THAN ONE MILLION FRANCS.
Dawlish read the newspaper cutting for the fourth time.
‘Money,’ he said, ‘Vulkan was just after money.’
‘It’s highly thought of,’ I said.
‘Money isn’t everything,’ said Dawlish seriously.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but it buys everything.’
Dawlish said, ‘I don’t really understand.’
‘There’s nothing to understand,’ I said. ‘It’s perfectly simple. In a concentration camp there is a very wealthy man named Broum. Broum’s family left him about a quarter of a million pounds in securities in a Swiss bank. Anyone who can prove he is Broum can collect a quarter of a million pounds. It’s not hard to understand; Vulkan wanted those papers to prove that he was Broum. All the other things were incidental. Vulkan made Gehlen’s people ask us for the papers to make it appear more genuine.’
‘What did the girl want?’ said Dawlish.
‘Semitsa,’ I said, ‘for the Israeli scientific programme. She was an Israeli agent.’
‘Um,’ said Dawlish. ‘Vulkan wanted to give Semitsa to the Israeli Government. In exchange for this they would endorse his claim to the Broum fortune. The Swiss banks are very sensitive to the Israeli Government. It was a brilliant touch, that.’
‘Nearly,’ I said to Dawlish, ‘very nearly.’
The system upon which we ran the department was that I took responsibility for all financial problems, although what might be called ‘accounts’ were seen by Alice and I merely initialled them. It was my special knowledge of finance which had brought me into WOOC(P) and compelled them to put up with me. Dawlish ran through a foolscap sheet of notes that he had prepared. It was comfortable sitting back in Dawlish’s battered armchair in front of the fire, which every now and then exploded a little firework of sparks.
Dawlish’s voice summed up the circumstances of each problem neatly and cogently. There was little for me to say except yes or no, unless Dawlish required an explanation or amplification of my decision. He seldom did.
Suddenly he said, ‘Are you asleep, old boy?’
‘Just closed my eyes,’ I explained. ‘I concentrate better.’
Dawlish said, ‘You look about all in, now one comes to look at you.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I feel like hell.’
‘It’s the business with Vulkan, isn’t it, old lad?’
I didn’t answer and Dawlish said, ‘Of course it is—you’ve been fighting his battles here and down the road for the last eighteen months. It’s a nasty business.’ Dawlish stared into the fire for some time. ‘Ar
e you worried,’ he finally asked, ‘about the written report?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s tricky.’
‘Um,’ said Dawlish, ‘it’s tricky all right.’ He closed the file on his knee. ‘Well, leave this for now—go home and get some sleep.’
‘I think I will,’ I said. I suddenly felt absolutely done in.
Dawlish said, ‘I think I might be able to get you that interest-free loan if you still want it. Was it eight hundred pounds?’
I said, ‘Can we make it a thousand?’
‘I daresay we might,’ said Dawlish, ‘and if you leave that gun here I’ll get one of the messengers to return it to the War Office.’ I gave him the Browning FN pistol and three 13-round magazines. Dawlish put them into a large manilla envelope and wrote ‘gun’ on the flap.
Chapter 45
The End-game: this often centres around the
queening of a pawn. Here a sudden threat
can arrive on home ground.
Tuesday, November 5th
I got to my flat at 10 A.M. The milkman was just delivering next door and I bought two pints of Jersey and a half-pound of butter from him.
‘You’ve got the same trouble I’ve got,’ the milkman said.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
He slapped his belly with a noise that made his horse flinch. ‘You like the cream and butter.’ Then he gave a loud hoot. The horse walked slowly towards the next house. ‘Don’t wear your old clothes tonight,’ he said.