Artillery of Lies (39 page)

“It's the truth, it really is nothing to do with me …” Now her voice was higher and tighter. “That's what I told Laszlo, I told him to leave me out of it, what he did was none of my business, I wasn't …” She couldn't go on. She couldn't look at Julie. It was all lies; when Laszlo had spoken to her of his secret mission she had been flattered. “Anyway,” she said, as if that resolved everything.

“What d'you mean, ‘anyway?'”

Stephanie sucked her thumb. Julie took off a shoe and flung it at her. The action was vaguely familiar but she suppressed the memory. “Don't hide behind your stupid thumb, Stephanie! You're not a baby, you're a full-grown woman with brains and you know the difference between right and wrong! You've seen what Laszlo did to your pal Ferenc. Was that right or wrong?” The thumb was still in the mouth. Julie flung the other shoe and hit Stephanie full in the
face. That brought the thumb out. “What's Laszlo doing? You know, don't you?”

“Yes, I know!” Stephanie wiped her nose on her sleeve. “And it doesn't matter because it's too late, it's all over, Laszlo's done it, that's the end.”

“Is that so?” Julie went over and picked up her shoes. “You mean he's killed whoever it was he got sent here to kill?” No answer. Julie poked her in the ribs with her stockinged foot. “If you really mean that, then there's no secret anymore, is there?” She kept poking. “Is there?”

Finally Stephanie squirmed away. “You don't understand! I took an oath of loyalty and I am not a
traitor.”
She hit the word so hard that her voice cracked.

“Of course you're not. Nobody ever said you were. Traitors are garbage, everyone knows that. You think I'd be wasting my time here if I thought you were a traitor?” Julie went back to the bed, thinking
That makes no sense, you're talking baloney;
but the important thing was to keep talking. “The only reason I'm here is I've got tremendous respect for you, Stephanie, and I know you want to do the right thing. I know you don't want to hurt people. Innocent people.”

“I took an oath,” she said stubbornly.

“Sure you did. You gave your word. But you didn't make any promises to Laszlo, did you? Did Laszlo take an oath of loyalty? How the hell could he? Laszlo's
Spanish,
for God's sake! Isn't he?”

Stephanie gave a weak, high-pitched grunt, and almost nodded.

“Right! Damn right! The bastard's Spanish! You think he cares about Hitler? About Germany? About
you?
Jesus Christ, Stephanie, he knew that Ferenc was your friend and look what he did to
him.
Blew half his brains out and tossed him in the Irish Sea!”

Stephanie sniffed, and wiped her nose again. She picked up bits of torn photograph and blinked at them. “Why did he do that to Ferenc?” she asked.

“Because he likes killing people. Listen, kid: you didn't take any oath of loyalty to Laszlo. The guy is not your friend. He's nobody's friend. He's scum. You'd better tell me where he's gone and why, or I'm liable to come in here tomorrow with another set of pictures just like that only worse.”

By now Stephanie couldn't make out the details of the photographs
because her eyes were blurred with tears, but she went on pretending to look.

“Just say it,” Julie urged wearily. “You want to feel lousy about yourself for the rest of your life? Just
say
it.”

“Glasgow. Laszlo went to Glasgow. He had to kill someone called Garlic. A student, a medical student from South America.” Stephanie crumpled the bits of photographs into a ball and kept squashing them as if she could reduce Ferenc's memory to nothing.

Julie took the brandy flask from her handbag and put it on the bed. She went out. Freddy Garcia was waiting. “Now we know why Canaris has been so keen to talk to Eldorado,” he said. His face was as stiff as cardboard.

“It's not possible,” she said. “How could Laszlo kill someone who doesn't exist?”

“In his usual way,” Freddy said. “Very, very clumsily, I expect. Incidentally, I thought you were quite brilliant in there.”

“I don't feel quite brilliant. I feel like I've blown all my fuses.” It was true. She looked totally spent.

Sandy Hogg was fifty. He was a detective inspector in the Glasgow murder squad. Aside from the hours, which were brutal, he enjoyed his work. He would rather people didn't murder each other, just as when he had been an ordinary policeman on the beat he would have preferred drunks not to become bellicose and try to punch him; but just as he had learned how to rap the drunks on their biceps with his truncheon, thus depriving their arms of the power to punch, so he had learned how to solve murders. Usually all it called for was common sense and persistence. Hogg had long since discovered that there is nothing clever about committing murder—anyone can do it: all you need is stupidity and selfishness—and there is certainly nothing glamorous about a corpse. Even when it hasn't been disfigured or mutilated, its functions usually persist after death, in particular the work of the bowel and the bladder. Corpses soon stink.

So Sandy Hogg was not impressed by murders or murderers. He put great faith in the statistic that most victims knew their killers. Unless there was evidence that pointed at a stranger, he made a list of all the friends and relatives and he questioned them, by the hour, by the day. He was good at this. Most people are bad
liars and dreadful actors, especially when the howl of guilt is raging silently inside their heads. Most murders got cleared up fairly quickly. For the rest, Hogg accepted that some killers were never going to be caught: Glasgow was too big and too many people were just passing through: seamen, servicemen, deserters, derelicts. It was like a bad debt to a businessman: as long as there weren't too many it didn't bother him; after all the murderer might be in Nova Scotia or North Africa by now; might even be dead, killed in action.

Nevertheless, the death of Rosa Maria Cabezas bothered him.

There had been no reason for it. Or, at best, an absurdly inadequate reason if you accepted robbery because she couldn't have had more than a few pounds in her purse, and even in wartime you didn't shoot a woman in her own home for a couple of quid and then sleep in her bed (leaving some of your hairs to be found in her pajamas), take a bath, open her letters, make free with the kitchen (fingerprints everywhere) and finally send a check to pay her gas bill, a check that was so badly forged the cat could have seen through it. Not to mention the fact that he must have used a silencer, or the old lady in the flat below with the bad leg and the good ears would have heard the gunfire.

A silencer. And he did the washing-up before he left. There were some funny folk in Glasgow but Sandy Hogg had never before met a murderer who stayed the night and did the dishes. When he was told that a fellow in MI5 was on the phone from London, asking about any recent death involving a South American medical student, he took the call.

“There was a South American lady doctor shot dead a couple of weeks since,” he said. “Name of Cabezas. Used to be a medical student here and then she qualified. Is it her you want?”

“Venezuelan?” Freddy Garcia said.

“Bolivian.”

“Ah.” Freddy flicked through his diary. Two weeks ago. That fitted. “May I ask what the motive was?”

“I wish I knew. Not rape, and robbery's unlikely. It was a very peculiar crime.” Hogg told him about it. “Does any of that ring any bells with you?”

“The silencer speaks loudly. Tell me: was the ammunition foreign?”

“It was.”

“Then I think you should be looking for a man called Laszlo Martini, although he certainly won't be using that name.” He gave
Hogg a description. “Of course he may not be in Glasgow any longer … There's something very wrong here. We know he was looking for a person from Venezuela, specifically from Venezuela. That's all he had to go on—a medical student from Venezuela. I can see how he might think the student had become a doctor but not a
Bolivian
doctor. That must be a mistake, a blunder.”

“You're telling me that this man came to Glasgow to kill a Venezuelan student.”

“Yes.”

“Then I'd better look to see if we have any, don't you think?”

“Yes. Yes, indeed. Straightaway.”

“Thank you for your help, Mr. Garcia.”

Hogg telephoned the university and was transferred to Student Registration, where he got Mrs. Ogilvy. “Would you happen to know if there is anyone studying at the university who comes from Venezuela?” he asked.

“There is not,” she said promptly.

“You're absolutely sure?”

“I checked it just the other day.”

“Now why did you do that, Mrs. Ogilvy?”

She suddenly remembered why, and stiffened with guilt; but it was too late, she was so deep in the mire that she might as well go on. “They asked me,” she said wretchedly. “What I mean is, he asked me … People are on the phone to us all the time, you know, it never stops ringing … He said the Ministry of Labor wanted—”

“Stay there,” Hogg told her. “I'm on my way round.”

Santander survived the Civil War more or less intact. Not important enough to be a serious port, like Bilbao, and not unlucky enough to be at a crossroads, like Guernica, it missed the worst excitement, the blood and the bombs, for which the city fathers were deeply grateful. Then, in 1941, the place had the sort of fire the
Luftwaffe
would have been proud of starting. Half of Santander was still gutted and blackened when Admiral Canaris and his staff landed in a Heinkel of the Spanish air force at the airfield across the bay. The fire was one reason that they moved into a villa a couple of miles outside town.

It was backed by cool pinewoods and faced a beach that emerged newly scrubbed by the Atlantic twice a day. This was done for the
benefit of the Admiral, who went riding on the beach and enjoyed the luxury of a clean track.

On their second day at Santander, Oster and Christian walked down the sand as Canaris came cantering home. They met at the water's edge. Oster handed him a piece of paper. “Just been decoded, sir,” he said. (Canaris had brought an
Abwehr
radio team with him.)

It was a list of names—fourteen names. Canaris read them at a glance. “It had to be,” he said. “I suppose it's too much to hope that they've been shot out of hand?”

“Oh, they won't be shot for a long time yet, sir, you can be sure of that. The SD will squeeze them until the pips squeak.”

“In that case there will be more names.” Canaris nudged the horse into a walk and they strolled beside him. “I should have seen it coming,” he said. “I should have kept a closer eye on Domenik. Him and his damn filing cabinets. No doubt Himmler is thoroughly pleased with himself.”

“It's certainly a good time to be a long way from Berlin,” Oster said. “Shame about Domenik's friends, but after all they are
his
friends. I mean, what Domenik got up to in his spare time is none of our business, is it?”

Canaris laughed, and shook the reins. He took off at a gallop through the shallow water. The sun made tiny rainbows in the splashes.

“He seems to be treating it very calmly,” Christian said.

“Oh, well.” Oster skipped sideways to dodge the last lunge of a dying wave. “It's out of our hands.”

“But the Fuehrer's bound to hear about it.”

“I wonder. Himmler has ambitions too, you know. He may not like the Admiral, but if a vacancy occurs at the top, Himmler would sooner have Canaris inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.” Oster saw Christian suppress his distaste. “Old Red Indian saying,” he explained. “I got it from Domenik, so it must be true.”

All across London, air-raid sirens uncoiled their wretched noise and let it climb to a flat howl. “Not today, Hitler,” the Director muttered, “I'm too busy.” He was at his desk, reading a handwritten memo that Freddy Garcia had just given him. “This is dreadful,” he said. “I don't suppose we can stop him?”

“Too late, sir. From Lisbon onwards, we don't know how he's traveling or where he's staying.” Freddy hesitated. “I suppose we might just conceivably grab him at Santander—”

“No, no. The place must be crawling with
Abwehr
by now.”

Gloomy pause. The sirens lost interest and sank, gently moaning, back into their shells.

“If we can't stop him, let's face the consequences,” the Director said, “which are that Canaris asks a lot of ugly questions and Eldorado hasn't got any beautiful answers. Bang goes the network. Bang goes Eldorado. Literally bang, very likely.”

“That's the worst that can happen, sir. It needn't come to that if we can just get word to Eldorado about Garlic and what this blundering idiot Martini has done to him. Then maybe Eldorado can still talk his way out of it.”

“Get word, you say. How? Use somebody from the Madrid office?”

“Afraid not, sir. Wouldn't work.”

“He wouldn't trust them?”

“Not if he didn't know them. He's very suspicious.”

“So who does he trust? Templeton? You?”

“Templeton's in Cairo, and we know that the
Abwehr
knows my face from long ago. If I show myself in a little spot like Santander …”

“Yes, I see. So that's that, is it? Those he trusts we can't send, and those we can send he won't trust. We're snookered, or stymied, or whatever the word is. I never played tennis.”

“Of course, there is someone we could send,” Garcia said.

The Director got up and wandered over to the window. The glass was crisscrossed with anti-blast tape, and he picked at a loose end like a bored child. “What you are about to suggest smacks of all the second-feature movies I've sat through while I was waiting for the big picture. Hero ends up in deadly danger, and who should help him out of it but his trusty girlfriend.”