Artillery of Lies (5 page)

Christian nodded. He didn't care what happened to
Abwehr
Brest. Only a month ago, one of his reports from Nutmeg, an Eldorado sub-agent, got mistakenly routed by teleprinter to Brest instead of to Berlin. Brest pinched it and claimed it as their own work. The SD could have
Abwehr
Brest, as far as Christian was concerned. “I'm sure Admiral Canaris gives as good as he gets,” he said.

Oster seemed to find this simple remark very encouraging. He gave a smile of huge enjoyment that energized his face until he looked like a middle-aged baby in the middle of a damn good breast-feed. “Canaris
holds a fistful of aces,” he said. “He knows what Hitler likes. Hitler likes spies, and we've got the best. As long as the
Abwehr
can tell Hitler what's happening on the other side of the hill, the
Abwehr's
safe, believe me.”

They drove into the basement garage of
Abwehr
headquarters and took the lift to the top floor. Oster had the keys to a spacious apartment. “The kitchen's well stocked,” he said. “Stay inside. And don't shave. I like you like that. Terribly tough.” He went out and locked the door.

Christian made himself an omelet and drank a bottle of beer. He spent the afternoon on the balcony, enjoying the view and the crisp, bright weather. For dinner there was an excellent goulash and an apple tart. There was even some Spanish wine; a tangy Rioja. Had Oster arranged all this specially for him? Christian liked to think so. He went to bed, relaxed and content.

Admiral Canaris and General Oster came in as he was having breakfast.

“My dear Christian!” Canaris said. They shook hands. “Madrid sent us a signal saying you were dead.” He gave Christian the piece of paper. “You might like to have it framed. Hang it in the lavatory as a conversation piece.”

Christian tucked the signal into his dressing gown pocket. “From now on, I plan to stay out of lavatories as much as possible, sir.”

“Very wise. Oster says you got brained with a bottle.”

Christian nodded. “Disinfectant.”

“I know exactly how you feel, only in my case it was champagne.” Canaris touched a small white scar above his left eye. “The work of a jealous husband. The poor man was insane with rage, which is just as well because if he had stopped to think he would have used a steak knife on me.”

“You were in a restaurant?” Oster asked.

“The Tour d'Argent, in Paris. Why?”

“Oh … I just wondered who paid for the champagne, that's all.”

“Oster is enormously practical,” Canaris told Christian. “After I've done something he tells me whether or not it's possible, the man's invaluable, without Oster I'd be helpless.” He lifted the coffee pot and found it empty.

“Who did pay?” Oster asked.

“She did. Famous actress, worth millions. Besides, I was unconscious. Splendid fellow,” he said as Oster carried the coffee pot into the kitchen.

Christian was amused by the Admiral's chatter and impressed by his suit, which was gray flannel, double-breasted, sleekly tailored. Canaris seemed to him enviably polished and elegant, not like a sailor at all, too slim, his face too lively, his voice too rich and varied. He made Christian feel like a scruff; but a favorite scruff. “I've been thinking about that bottle of disinfectant,” Christian said. “It doesn't seem quite right.”

“You're right, it doesn't. And I'll tell you something else …” Canaris ate a piece of sliced salami. “I've been thinking about the lavatory, and that seems all wrong.”

“Too public,” Christian said.

“Far too public”

“Unless, of course, Adler didn't plan it, he just acted spontaneously. Impetuously.”

“That's even worse.”

“I agree, sir. But I think it's what happened: Adler saw his chance and grabbed the nearest weapon. Whereas if he'd used his brains and done it properly, he'd have hit me with the marble ashtray next to the hand-basins and I wouldn't be here now.”

“Big ashtray?”

“Like a soup bowl.”

“Ah.” Canaris touched the scar on his forehead with the tip of his little finger. “I didn't really get this from a champagne bottle, you know. I just said that to tease Oster. I fell down a companionway when I was a midshipman. So the question is …” Oster came in with a fresh pot of coffee. “What is the question, Oster?”

“Was Adler really working for the SD, and if so why did they let him make such a hash of a simple murder, and if not who was he working for and why did they kill him, since he obviously didn't die of a heart attack?”

“No, no, no. That's not the question at all.” Canaris took a cup of coffee and perched on the arm of a settee. “I mean, it might be the second, third or fourth question but it's not the first. The first question is why did the SD—assuming Adler was working for the SD—want Christian dead? What were they hoping to achieve?”

Christian opened his mouth to speak and then decided to eat
a piece of toast instead. He had been going to say that Adler's purpose was to discredit the Eldorado Network, which had been his, Christian's, creation. But of course, Eldorado wouldn't go out of operation just because its creator died. Christian felt a slight flush of shame at his own vanity, and hid behind his napkin.

“Suppose,” Oster said, “just suppose that we've been misreading the SD's motives. Perhaps they weren't acting from rivalry or professional jealousy, you know. Just knocking us down to make them look bigger. Perhaps they're scared of something that Eldorado is reporting.”

Canaris rolled his eyes until they looked at the ceiling. “Well,” he said.

Christian waited, but apparently that word was both the beginning and the end. “Doesn't seem very likely, does it?” Christian said. “I can't imagine Eldorado's stuff making anyone sweat in the SD.”

“I can,” Canaris said.

“So can I,” Oster said. “Remember Hasselmann?”

The name rang a faint, cracked bell in Christian's memory. He thought hard. Arno Hasselmann. Some sort of scandal in … Where was it? Denmark? Belgium? “Hasselmann the Gauleiter?” he said.

“Hasselmann the ex-Deputy Gauleiter. He shot himself six months ago in Rotterdam.”

“Yes, of course. Some sort of scandal. He'd been taking bribes.”

“Oh, they all take bribes,” Canaris said. “Bribes don't count anymore.”

“It was what he was doing with the money,” Oster said. “Nobody minded if he wanted to dress up in women's silk underwear, I'm told it's very comfortable, but he shouldn't have collected such a harem of pretty, blond Dutch boys. It was unpatriotic. There are still plenty of good-looking blond German lads available.”

“You know how people gossip,” Canaris said. “It even reached the Japanese embassy in Helsinki. One of our Swedish agents mentioned it in a signal. The SD were furious when they heard about that. It made them look so stupid, you see. They can't stand looking stupid. Terribly sensitive lot, the SD. They'd have shot the agent if they could.”

“Eldorado hasn't reported anything remotely like that,” Christian said.

“I know. Oster has been up all night, going through the files. Which leads us to examine Theory B.”

“Theory B,” Oster said, “is that Adler did not bash you over the
head on orders from his masters in the SD, but panicked for reasons we may never know.”

“But if the SD didn't know what he was up to,” Christian said, “why did they kill him?”

“Right first time,” Canaris said. “So out of the window goes Theory B. Theory C says that Adler penetrated Madrid
Abwehr
on behalf of the SD but then got mixed up with yet another organization. The Czechs have an excellent network in Spain, for instance.” He meant the Czech government-in-exile. “And the Poles. Plus the Italians. Not to mention the Hungarians. But of course you know all this.”

“Adler wasn't the sort of man to let himself be recruited by a foreign agency,” Christian said. “I never liked him, but he was a thorough-going patriot, I'll grant him that. Loyal to the core.”

“Why have the Hungarians got spies in Spain?” Oster asked. “They're supposed to be on our side.”

Canaris blinked sadly. “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly,” he said. “Hungarians gotta steal secrets. It's in their blood. Why didn't you like Adler?” he asked Christian.

“It was nothing personal, Admiral, at least not on my part. Adler became strangely jealous of Eldorado.” Christian rubbed his jaw: the two-day growth itched. “It affected his work, I had to step in and tell him not to be so stupid.” Christian suddenly wondered:
Did I miss something? Adler was no fool. What could I have missed?

“Jealous,” Canaris murmured. “How curious.”

“Especially as Eldorado's in England,” Oster said.

“What I meant was,” Christian said, “jealous of his success.”

Canaris said, “It doesn't sound right, does it? If the SD infiltrated Adler into Madrid
Abwehr,
they'd want him to work hard and be trusted, not sit around brooding and sulking. Did he brood and sulk?”

“Oh, endlessly.” A tiny idea formed at the back of Christian's mind and rapidly grew. “Well … not endlessly. He was quite perky a week or two ago, but that was because he thought he'd found something not quite right in the Eldorado Network.”

“Indeed?” Canaris said. “What, exactly?”

“One of the sub-agents. Adler reckoned he was faking his intelligence.”

“Which one?”

“Damned if I can remember,” Christian said miserably. “There are ten or a dozen in the Network. Adler mentioned several names but
only one that he could make any case against, and frankly I wasn't paying much attention. I had more important things on my mind, and now this bang on the head hasn't done my memory any good, so …” He shrugged, and busied himself with the last of his coffee. When he glanced up, Canaris and Oster were looking at each other.

“It's what I would do if I were running the SD,” Oster said.

“What?” Christian asked.

“Infiltrate the Eldorado Network,” Canaris told him. “What if Adler discovered that an Eldorado sub-agent is working for the SD? He tries to tell you but you send him away. Why would you do that? Adler can't make sense of it. Then he suddenly thinks: maybe
you,
Christian, are on the SD payroll too! So now Adler is in real trouble, big danger, because
you
know that
he
knows. So he kills you. Or does his best.”

“I see,” Christian said. “And who then kills Adler? The SD?”

Canaris unexpectedly laughed. “You're right. We end up with an SD man behind every lamppost. Absurd.” He looked at his watch. “I'm late. Look here: don't give yourself a headache, but … try to remember that name.”

They left. Christian lay on a couch and told his brain to project that name on to the ceiling. It projected many names, including those of pretty, adolescent girlfriends he had not thought of in twenty years; but not the name he wanted.

It was snowing in Madrid.

The snow clouds had hustled down from the Bay of Biscay until they hit the Guadarrama mountains and began to dump their load. Nearby Madrid, set in the high plateau of New Castile, rapidly turned white and, in the diplomatic district, the German embassy at No. 8 Calle de Fortuny, got rather more than its share.

Brigadier Wagner stood on the balcony of the third-floor office he had taken over when
Abwehr
HQ in Berlin sent him to succeed Brigadier Christian. Wagner let the snow blow through the door and speckle the carpet. Flakes settled on his cheeks, his brow, his eyelids; he opened his mouth and tasted the snow on his tongue. Good stuff, crisp and clean. The skiing in the mountains would be excellent tomorrow. He was fit, he'd exercised regularly, and he had a new pair of skis, given to him on his last trip to Berlin by a cousin, a
major who ran a unit that tested equipment for mountain troops. Wagner flexed his knees and swayed. Snowflakes pelted his face. In his imagination he was skiing like the wind.

Behind him, voices mumbled and somebody coughed.
Bloody Eldorado,
Wagner thought.
The only thing that stands between me and a week in the mountains is bloody Eldorado.
He went inside and closed the window. “Anything new come in?” he asked.

“Nothing, sir, I'm afraid,” said Otto Krafft.

“Damn. What the hell's happened to him?” Wagner took the chair at the head of the table. “He's never done this before, has he?” He waved at the others to sit. “I've got better things to do than hang around waiting for Eldorado to deliver.”

“Yes, sir?” Dr. Hartmann said.

The others looked at him. Hartmann was small and wore rimless spectacles and he had never been known to laugh. If he smiled it was a thoughtful smile, as if someone had misplaced a decimal point and thus made a tiny, unintentional joke. He was the section's technical expert, very good on things like radar and torque and low-temperature lubricants, but it was not like him to ask slightly provocative questions of the new boss.

“What d'you mean, ‘yes sir?'” Wagner said gently.

“What do I mean?” Hartmann nudged the papers in front of him, squaring them off. “My apologies. I assumed you were about to tell us what better things there are to be done.”

“Well, you've all been here longer than I have. What d'you suggest?”

“I suggest, sir,” said Otto Krafft, “that we sit tight for another forty-eight hours. I mean, there's no need to panic yet.”

“I wouldn't dream of it,” Wagner said. “But when the need arrives I hope we shall all panic together, as one man. Teamwork counts, in panic as in all things, don't you agree?” They grinned dutifully and were glad when he ended the meeting and went skiing. Too snide by half.