Legacy of a Spy (7 page)

“Coincidences are rare, Rüdi,” said Slater smoothly, “but they do happen.”

“Yes, sir.”
Rüdi wiped his forehead. The handkerchief came away moist. “What is your room number, sir?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Thank you,” Rüdi said, and he left.

Slater turned back to the bar and ordered another brandy. “I plugged in something, all right,” he thought. “The trouble is
,
I don’t have the faintest idea what it was!” He shook his head.

“Excuse me.”

Slater turned to the voice.

“Please forgive me, but aren’t you an American?” The man who had addressed him was terribly British and abnormally thin. Slater thought the man was built like a pencil.

“That’s what it says on my passport.” Slater looked bored.

“Oh, really, that’s awfully good.” The pencil laughed. Slater winced at the sound. The man actually giggled. His clothes were very expensive. There wasn’t a wrinkle anywhere. They reminded Slater of a freshly pressed suit that was still on a wire hanger. Nothing seemed to fill them out.

“You Americans are really the limit! May I buy you a drink? I rarely have the opportunity to chat with an American.”

“You mean you want to practice your English,” said Slater dryly.

The pencil looked blank for a moment and then started to giggle again. Slater began to feel the contagion of the man’s laughter. “Practice my English! If you keep on at this rate, you won’t have to buy another drink all night. My name is Hormsby, Phillip Hormsby. What’s yours?”

“Scotch and soda,” said Slater. This was a bit wearing. If he was going to keep it up, he would need a Scotch. Besides, he thought, I’ve got to hear him laugh again.

“Scotch and soda?”
Hormsby looked puzzled.

“You want one also,” said Slater. “Make it two then.”

Hormsby had finally connected, and his inane giggle made everyone at the bar look at them. That giggle was too much for Slater. He couldn’t hold himself in any longer, and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he rocked with laughter. Their duet began to take its toll of the bystanders, and, eventually, the whole place was in an uproar.

“I think,” yelled Slater over the laughter, “that we are a lethal combination. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go to bed so I can survive until tomorrow. Good night, Mr. Hormsby.” And Slater fled.

SLATER HAD several things to attend to before changing his clothes and starting his investigation of Kitzbühel’s night life. He had already decided to go as himself.

He wrote a letter to Paris requesting information on Heinz Mahler, Erich Nadler of the Eggerwirt, Rüdi Petsch, Anton Reisch, the desk clerk, Baron von Burgdorf, Fräu Waldecker, Ilse Wieland, Fritz Stadler, one of the men who had been watching Webber, and Phillip Hormsby. The last name was added almost as an after-thought, but so many important things stemmed from simple coincidences in his business that Slater no longer overlooked any possibility. When he had finished his cover letter and signed it, “as ever Ben,” and written Heinz Mahler’s name and pension as the return address, he put down his pen and frowned.

Slater realized he didn’t have an adequate support set up; but the more people he rang in on this problem, the more people there would be who might compromise him. The big trouble with the mail was that it was too slow. By the time he got what he needed, it might be too late. Moreover, there wasn’t enough room in an average letter for him either to ask or receive enough information. He sealed the letter in an envelope with another return address and a fictitious name and put it in his sport jacket. He got into his own clothes and carefully packed up all traces of Carmichael in his aluminum suitcase. The suitcase had a false bottom that probably would not fool anyone in his profession but getting into the bag in the first place should take quite a while. He had had an additional combination lock of his own design installed on the suitcase some years ago by a locksmith in New York. The man had been a real craftsman and had installed three tiny dials edgewise and almost flush with the cover. These he had concealed with a well-known brass trademark, which looked to the casual observer as though it had been riveted onto the suitcase. The conventional snap lock had been left in place; and any intruder would have a difficult problem with that one, as it had a pin-tumbler lock and was consequently difficult to pick. Slater had selected an aluminum suitcase because of its fire resistance. He closed up the suitcase, turned the key in the conventional lock and then moved the dials and screwed on the trade-mark plate.

He went downstairs past the desk with his room key in his pocket. He had very nearly turned in the key. If Anton had taken it without connecting the face with the room number, he would still have had a hell of a time getting back into his room. In spite of all the years of
dual,
and sometimes triple existences, it was still so easy to forget. Slater began to sweat at the thought of what he had almost done. “You’re Slater, you idiot,” he said to himself. “That’s Carmichael’s key you were about to give away.”

There was an advantage in keeping your room key. No one could be certain that you were out. Slater went into the street. The night was cold and dry. The slush had frozen into ridges along the narrow sidewalks. He inhaled deeply and could feel the air’s icy fingers probing deep into his chest. He breathed in heavily several times. He turned to go toward the cafés he had seen advertised in the hotel when he noticed the menu behind a lighted glass on the outside wall. Tomorrow’s menu already, he thought. Such efficiency! However, Slater liked the European idea of posting the menu outside a restaurant or a hotel. You knew not only what they served, before you went in, but the prices. Slater started down the sidewalk and suddenly turned back. Rüdi had asked for his room number, not his name. Whatever the exchange between Wyman and Rüdi had meant, the number of the room was obviously vital. Slater had to let the desk clerk know somehow that Carmichael was not in his room. He reentered the lobby and went to the desk. Anton was not there. I’m getting some luck, he thought, in spite of all my blunders.

“I was looking for Mr. Carmichael,” said Slater to the clerk on duty.

The clerk was a young man. He hadn’t had time, as yet, to acquire Anton’s tired look. He turned to the register and then looked at the rack.

“Room twenty-three,” he said. “His key is not in the rack, sir. He must be in his room. I will ring him for you.” The clerk picked up the house phone, but got no results. “I’m very sorry, sir,” he said, shaking his head. “He must have gone out and forgotten to leave his key. A lot of people forget. Can I take a message?”

“No,” said Slater slowly. “I’ll probably run into him at one of the cafés. He told me to meet him at the Café des Engels, if I didn’t find him in. Thank you.”

“Quite all right, sir.”

Slater went out into the street again. He had picked out the Café des Engels from a poster on the wall. The Café des Engels it shall be, he thought, and headed in the direction of the Hintersstrasse. He liked these small Alpine villages with their narrow, complicated, cobblestoned streets. The sidewalks, except on the main street, were too narrow to walk on and everyone walked in the street. The side of the town behind the Winterhof had no sidewalks. Slater passed several couples and groups of six and eight people. Almost none of the men wore overcoats, and everyone was obviously having such a good time that Slater felt quite alone. The languages, mixed so by the number of nationalities, sounded to Slater like a potpourri of unintelligible gaiety.

The Café des Engels was packed. Slater felt he could have blown smoke rings from the inhaled atmosphere. The lighting was dim, and the couples on the dance floor seemed to be standing still. The music was supplied by a three-piece orchestra. He could hear the zither above the piano and the drums.
The ubiquitous zither.
Ever since the movie
The Third Man,
the European café owners must have decided that tourists from across the Atlantic expected to hear a zither, so a zither was what they heard—all over Europe.

Slater managed to squeeze himself into a place near the bar and order a cognac. He leaned his back against the stool and turned to examine the crowd. It was difficult to see in the smoke-blued gloom, but there was no mistaking the copper-red hair. Slater was immediately aware of a feeling of excitement within him. His pulse quickened.

What’s the matter with you, Slater, he muttered to himself. She’s just a woman. Odd, she had told Wyman she was going to bed.

Slater watched her talking with some man. His back was toward Slater, so he couldn’t tell what the man looked like; but he had Wyman’s build. He turned, and for a moment Slater caught a glimpse of the man’s face. It wasn’t Wyman. The man was definitely European, somewhere in his late forties, Slater thought.

Slater left the
bar,
still carrying his glass, and started through the crowd toward Ilse. He noticed that she didn’t seem to be getting along too well with her partner. He appeared to be one of those creeping conversationalists. He kept moving toward her as he talked, and she, in turn, kept backing up. She backed into Slater just as he was circling two people to get to her. His glass tipped and spilled cognac on her shoulder.

“Excuse me!” said Slater. “I was trying to get to you, but you zigged when I zagged.”

Ilse turned and looked up at Slater. “Oh,” she said, “it’s you. I wondered where you were. It’s too crowded here after all. Let’s go somewhere else, Liebchen.”

“All right,” said Slater. “It really is terribly crowded.” He turned to have a better look at the man she was either trying to get away from or, for some reason, didn’t want him to meet. “I don’t believe,” said Slater smiling, “that I have had the honor.”

“Oh, excuse me, Liebchen.” Ilse’s eyes glinted at Slater’s like these of an angry cat. “Herr Slater, I would like you to meet—Herr Krüpl.”

Slater nodded and shook hands. Herr Krüpl had an indentation the size of a golf ball in the left side of his forehead. The result, thought Slater, of a very bad head wound. It gave his face a decidedly lopsided look, and his left eye didn’t appear to have any eyelashes and looked abnormally large. Herr Krüpl muttered the formalities and left. Slater looked after him thinking that there was a face in a million—a face that no one could ever forget. He turned back to Ilse.

“Sorry to spill my drink on you,” he said, “Do you want me to take you someplace? I don’t think it’s necessary now,” Slater added. “Herr—whatever his name was—won’t bother you any more.”

“Thank you, Herr Slater,” she said, “for coming to my rescue. He is a terrible man.”

“He’s no oil painting,” Slater shook his head, “I’ll say that.”

Ilse laughed. “It’s not his looks that I don’t like. It’s the way he acts.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen him here and there a few times. He’s always so crude. The way he looks at me makes me feel like some animal.”

“Well,” said Slater, “I guess I’d better leave you to your own plans.” He started to leave.

“Wait!” Ilse put her hand on his arm. Slater turned and looked at her. “You have the habit of always running away,” she said. “I don’t understand. Don’t you like me, Herr Slater?”

Ilse was frowning and looking anxiously at Slater. He wasn’t sure what to say. Surely she must know her feminine power. She had to know. Power like hers couldn’t possibly be a secret.

“Fräulein Wieland,” his tone was unintentionally stern, “since I’m not made of stone, of course I like you.”

“Well,” she started, but his eyes stopped her and she was momentarily confused. “You don’t have to look so angry about it.”

She tried to go on and say something else, but he just kept staring at her.

“Look,” she said finally, “I can hardly breathe in here, it’s so close and crowded. Please, take me outside anyway—and then we can decide where to go.”

Ilse took Slater’s hand and pulled him to the checkroom and got her coat.

“Do you have a coat?” she asked. Slater shook his head.

“Well,” she said, “let’s go.”

“Now,” she said, when they were outside breathing in the sweet clean air, “
if
you want to run away from me again, you may.”

Run away, Slater thought. That was it. For ten years he’d been running away. Ilse might be an agent. She was keeping bad company. Every instinct that it had taken years of hard work to develop told him to leave this woman alone.

“I don’t want to run away.” Slater heard himself as he said it. It didn’t take long for the accompanying smile to be really his. “I like you very much, Ilse Wieland.”

Ilse took his hand.

“You should smile more often, William Slater. It becomes you.”

She slipped her arm through Slater’s, and they walked through the quiet streets to the outskirts of the village. Here, the darkness of the night descended to the snow, unimpeded by any lights. Ilse was only a shadow beside him. He should have felt more relaxed, now that he could no longer see her face; but even her shadow was vibrant.

“Aren’t you cold without an overcoat?” she asked. Her voice seemed awfully close.

“No,” he said. “The air is so dry that it doesn’t seem very cold. What about you, Ilse? Are you warm enough?”

“Oh, yes. I could walk like this forever. Please, tell me about yourself.”

Slater was immediately on guard. He’d been waiting for the question.

“I’d rather hear about you,” he said.

“There isn’t much to say about me.” He could feel her shrug. “I have a small dress shop in Munich. My father was a professor of philosophy at the University before the war. Both he and my mother were killed in an air raid. My brother was a Nazi SS officer and was killed on the Russian front. After the war I had a difficult time because I was suspected of having been a member of the Nazi party.”

“Were you?” Bill asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Slater was pleased, not to discover that she had been a Nazi, but that she at least admitted it. If he were to believe all the Germans he had met, there wasn’t a Nazi among them. They all denied any previous affiliation.

“Are you a Nazi still?”

“No. It was pretty exciting in the beginning. To be told that you were of the generation and race that would inherit the
earth, that
your only crime would be to deny your heritage and your country, to be encouraged to develop your body in all the wonderful sports, to walk beside your men to victory all over the world.”

Slater was interested. He had never heard what National Socialism had appealed to in the German youth expressed by one of them.

“I watched Germany grow,” she continued. “I mean before the invasions. I saw my country become prosperous and expand the highways. I listened to the young soldiers singing as they marched in the streets.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Many things,” she said. “My father was against Hitler from the beginning. He tried to explain the inconsistencies, lies and inhumanity of Nazi philosophy, but he did it on such an intellectual plane I didn’t really understand him at first. He and my brother had terrible arguments. And then I went with my brother to several parties. He deliberately tried to pair me off with his superior officer. The man was a beast. He made me feel that I was there only to satisfy his lusts. That, he said, was the function of all German women. He struck me; and when I tried to strike back, my brother slapped my face. And there were others.” Ilse paused and then said quietly, “The final blow was the death of my parents.”

“I think,” said Slater, “we’d better turn back now.”

“Yes,” she said. “You must be cold.”

They turned around and looked down at the twinkling lights of Kitzbühel. They had been going gradually uphill and had not realized it. “On the outside, looking in,” said Ilse. “That’s the way it has been for me most of my life. It’s not so bad when you’re with someone.” She hugged Slater’s arm.

“I’ve been feeling that way for some years,” he said.

Slater looked down at the village. It was a place where people belonged—no matter how temporarily. They were together, laughing, arguing, loving, hating perhaps, but they were on the inside. He and Ilse were on the outside.

“Why haven’t you married?” said Bill, “or do you detest all men because of your brother’s friends?”

“I don’t detest men,” Ilse laughed. “I want to get married, but as you Americans say, I guess I have just not found the right one.”