The Night of the Generals (39 page)

"Well? Did she get what she wanted?"

"Apparently not. She looked rather at a loss when she put the 'phone down, and it's unlike my mother to be flummoxed by anything."

Prévert had suddenly assumed an air of urgency. He got up, issued a few final instructions and took his leave. "I'll leave you to yourselves now. You could put it down to my sense of delicacy if you like, but you'd be wrong."

"I wouldn't disturb you unless it was absolutely necessary," said Prévert as he entered Kahlenberge's room. "I see you're doing some more work on your lecture."

I'm making a genuine attempt to finish it," Kahlenberge said, pointing to his manuscript, "but I don't feel I ever will."

"Very perceptive of you," Prévert commented cheerfully.

Kahlenberge shuffled his papers together. "I can't remember a time when you didn't have some special request to make. Well, what is it now?"

Prévert lowered his bulk on to the sofa, carefully arranging the cushions first.

"Of course I want something," he said. "My primary concern is to entertain you as pleasantly as possible--while at the same time interesting you in the next phase of my plans. I should also like to make a couple of telephone calls at your expense. I think they'll intrigue you."

Prévert's first call was to the West Berlin Senator. "Just mention my name," he told officials who tried to be obstructive.

Within a few minutes the Senator was on the line. He sounded pleased to hear from Prévert again, and since both men were seasoned veterans of a thousand telephone battles and neither had any marked predilection for complex formalities they reached agreement in a surprisingly short space of time. Prévert merely expressed a wish for some co-operation from an experienced Berlin police officer, and the Senator said: "Leave it to me." That was all.

Shortly afterwards, Chief-Inspector Müller-Meidrich telephoned. Müller-Meidrich had learned his trade under Chief Superintendent Tantau, formerly head of the Berlin homicide department and highly thought of in professional circles. He received the following information: at about 3 p.m. two men had turned up at the reception desk in the Hotel am Kurfürstendamm and asked to speak to someone called Wyzolla. Who were these men and why had they come?

"Well soon find out," said Müller-Meidrich. "I'll call you back."

"Who's Wyzolla?" Kahlenberge asked Prévert when he had rung off.

"A young man who was sitting in a car in Dresden the other night--to be precise, in a street just round the corner from the Sterngasse."

Kahlenberge shook his bald dome of a head in exasperation. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"A murder was committed in the said Sterngasse--and I may say that murder is a pale description of what took place there."

Kahlenberge raised both hands as though he were about to protest, then let them sink again impotently. "And I always thought," he said with an effort, "that you revelled in the bizarre and mysterious. I thought that was the reason why you didn't dismiss Hartmann's story as a piece of grotesque nonsense, but I'm beginning to see now--you're in dead earnest."

"I've never been capable of dismissing violent death as a sort of diabolical joke."

Kahlenberge rose to his feet abruptly, knocking the draft of his lecture off the table as he did so. It fluttered to the floor and lay there like so much waste paper. Neither man looked at it.

"If your assumptions are correct," he said in a dull voice, "if what you suspect turns out to be based on fact, where do we go from there?"

Prévert smiled grimly. "Call a general a general, by all means, but never hesitate to call a criminal a criminal."

The telephone rang shrilly. Prévert picked up the receiver and gave his name. Muller-Meidrich was on the line again.

"We're extremely grateful for your tip, Herr Prévert. I got in touch with the hotel receptionist at once. He's pretty certain that the two men who wanted to speak to Wyzolla were detectives or agents of some kind. I immediately consulted all our departments, but none of them had detailed any men for such an assignment."

"They needn't necessarily have been members of the Berlin C. I. D.," Prévert said. "There are American, British and French agencies here in Berlin, don't forget."

"I know," replied Müller-Meidrich. "There's a wide choice. However, even hotel receptionists have flashes of inspiration occasionally, and this seems to have been a case in point. Apparently, he sent one of the hotel staff after them, not a uniformed page but a man from the accounts department. He saw them get into a car parked near the Gedächtniskirche. It had an East German number-plate."

"Even that doesn't prove anything."

"True, even that," Müller-Meidrich conceded blandly. "But Berlin is a city of boundless possibilities. That's why it's not surprising that the two men have turned up again. We arrested them a quarter of an hour ago. They're keeping mum for the moment, but something tells me that they belong east of the border. What shall we do with them?"

"Put them on ice temporarily," Prévert suggested. "We'll thaw them out when the time comes."

"And until then?"

"Let them cool their heels."

"Any other suggestions?"

"Yes, my dear Herr Müller-Meidrich. Play the innocent--telephone the Hotel am Kurfürstendamm and ask one of the guests, a man named Tanz, if he would like police protection. Tell him that two men, assumed to be from the Eastern Zone, have been trying to get at him."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else. That will do for the time being."

Frau Wilhelmine's meticulously planned reception in the Green Salon of the Hotel am Kurfürstendamm promised to be asuccès fou. The guests were greeted with American-style martinis--high-proof gin with a dash of vermouth--which coursed down their throats like liquid fire and created an agreeably relaxed atmosphere. The ever-increasing hubbub of conversation seemed to indicate that a spirit of gregarious cordiality reigned.

The von Seydlitz-Gablers' select little gathering had acquired rather larger proportions than they had originally intended. Almost everyone present knew everyone else. Innumerable encounters at similar functions, ostensibly held for political, cultural or professional reasons, had bred longstanding mutual familiarity. Names figured on certain lists, and their owners turned up because they wanted to keep them there. The only variable factor was the current celebrity: the circle round him remained almost unchanged.

Whether he was a cabinet minister, a film star, an international playboy, a sportsman or an American hotel magnate, the same figures always rotated round him.

This time the focal point of the gathering was a composite of General Tanz and General von Seydlitz-Gabler--the battle-scarred hero and the great strategist respectively. To those present, who regarded them as men who had helped to make history, they seemed to radiate an aura of spine-chilling grandeur.

Tanz stood there like a crag protruding from a blasted heath. His monolithic appearance evoked universal admiration and his steadfast silence was readily construed as profundity.

"He looks like an eagle soaring above the prairie," twittered the junior television announcer, spell-bound. "A man like a bottle of champagne," breathed the recording star, melodiously, her bosom heaving like a stormy sea.

"Is it true what they say about him?" asked the wife or girl-friend of a senior liaison officer in the Federal Government. "Did he really build a wall out of frozen bodies during the Russian campaign?" She addressed the question to her hostess with a thrill of expectant horror.

"I couldn't tell you," replied Frau Wilhelmine. Her tone was noticeably cool.

The senior liaison officer hastily nudged his over-impulsive wife or girl-friend, aware that she had just broken an important taboo. For a considerable time now, it had been bad form to dwell on the horrors of war in case it weakened the spirit of self-defence. In a loud and convincing voice, he said: "My view has always been that we need the best men on our side. No stone should be left unturned in the case of General Tanz."

Frau Wilhelmine rewarded the senior liaison officer with a grateful smile. His wife or girl-friend shot him an oblique glance, but he ignored her and raised his glass in the direction of their host.

Von Seydlitz-Gabler was busy playing Pythia to Tanz's oracle. He was never at a loss for an answer and, what was more, his answers had the spurious validity of the printed word. His publisher beamed happily. The General certainly knew how to sell himself. In his mind's eye he pictured serried rows of dust-jackets in bookshop windows and a high rating on the best-seller list.

"You ought to write your memoirs, too," he told Tanz enthusiastically.

"Some men can write," replied Tanz in measured tones, "others are destined to act. I belong to the latter category."

"Talking about action," said the managing director of the electrical engineering firm, "how would you like to join us, other things being equal?"

"I regret that I am not an expert in your field," Tanz said majestically.

The managing director, who specialized in communications systems, smiled understandingly. He was familiar with the modesty of senior army men and appreciated its material value. The priceless importance of such people consisted in their automatic knowledge of the right contacts and their unerring sense of good form.

"A man can serve his country in' a variety of ways," said the managing director.

"Quite right! The main thing is to serve it," boomed von Seydlitz-Gabler, who never neglected an opportunity to air what he considered to be one of his maxims.

"How are you feeling?" he asked Tanz.

"First-rate." Tanz produced the word like a slot-machine ejecting a packet of cigarettes. The skin of his face looked taut and shiny.

"A really nice crowd, eh?"

"A nice crowd--really."

At that moment the recording star gave a sudden screech. Someone had poured champagne down her cleavage. The offender was trying to apologize, but the recording star hooted like a siren and smote her bare wet bosom dramatically. Frau Wilhelmine bore down on the group like a life-boat.

"Every cake has to have a little icing," said von Seydlitz-Gabler with laborious gaiety.

Tanz had gone deathly pale. His hands were clenched and his cheek-muscles rigid. He looked as if he were grinding his teeth in agony.

"Disgusting," he said in a choked and almost inaudible voice. Then he pulled himself together with an effort. His lips twitched in a semblance of a smile. Kahlenberge was standing in front of him, and Kahlenberge was saying, indicating his companion: "May I introduce Herr Prévert?"

In the narrow ante-room leading into the Green Salon sat Wyzolla, who had installed himself, legs apart, in a chair near the door and was waiting. What he was waiting for, he didn't know. He was merely carrying out his General's orders and acting as a body-guard.

With him in the narrow ante-room was Hartmann, also waiting. He stood leaning motionless against the wall for some time, observing Wyzolla with interest. Prévert had drawn his attention to Tanz's orderly and offered a few suggestions on how to handle him. The longer Hartmann watched Wyzolla, the more he succumbed to the strange sensation that he was looking at himself as he had been twelve years before.

"Does he still insist on having his shoes polished with three brushes and two dusters?"

Wyzolla sat up alertly. "Who?"

"Has he got used to glass ash-trays, or do they still have to be china?"

"What's that got to do with you?" Wyzolla asked suspiciously.

"In my day he always wore night-shirts. They had to be white, not coloured. He couldn't stand anything fancy. All the creases had to be ironed out beforehand, and there had to be a clean linen handkerchief in the right-hand breast-pocket--a small white one."

"Man alive!" said Wyzolla, impressed. "How do you know all that?"

"I had your job once," Hartmann told him. "It doesn't seem so long ago, really, when I come to think of it."

Wyzolla asked for information and Hartmann supplied it, soothing the alert young N. C. O's. misgivings with an abundance of detail. Wyzolla began to thaw, and before long a highly animated conversation was in progress.

"He used to sit in the back seat and lower a whole bottle of brandy inside two hours," Hartmann said. "But he didn't show it. He just held himself straighter and spoke clearer. He could drink like a fish."

"He still can," Wyzolla declared with a touch of pride. "Except that he hardly ever drinks brandy these days. Brandy's in short supply with us, you know, but there's plenty of vodka. The General keeps cases of the stuff in his quarters."

Hartmann took secret pleasure in the fact that Wyzolla was already addressing him with the familiar "du." It showed that he had gained his confidence, which was exactly what Prévert had instructed him to do.

"You're on a cushy number," he told Wyzolla. "Your cars are shoddy old tin cans--you can't be expected to put much of a shine on them. Back in Paris I was driving a Bentley. Every grain of dust showed up. I had a whole collection of stuff in the boot--linen cloths, woollen cloths, leathers, sponges, brushes and so on."

"So have I!" Wyzolla assured him vehemently. He seemed to regard Hartmann's aspersions on his range of cleaning materials as an affront to his honour. "Three sets--one in use and two in reserve."

"What about women?" asked Hartmann.

"Women?" Wyzolla shook his head in disapproval. "The General doesn't go for anything like that."

"That's what I always thought," Hartmann said confidentially. "He never seemed to notice them--and there were some real smashers in Paris, I can tell you."

"We don't do too badly in Dresden," said Wyzolla.

"He did pick one up once, though, in Paris."

"Well, he's only a man--out of the ordinary, but a man like anyone else. I've been driving him for two years now, and as far as I know he's only been on the job once in all that time."

"When was that?"

"A couple of days ago. I drove him to some bar or other and he picked up a tart there. I took both of them back to her flat."