“Where did they teach you that draw?” he said. “In the
Marineamt
?”
For the first time he thought that the colonel was genuinely surprised. His face still revealed nothing, but there was a note of curiosity in his voice.
“I learned in Spain to carry a gun under my arm and draw it quickly,” he said. “There were quite a few occasions on which you had to shoot people before they shot you. Your own side, sometimes. It was rather a confused war in some ways.”
“I imagine so,” said Mr. Behrens. He was sitting like a Buddha in the third attitude of repose, his feet crossed, the palms of his hands pressed flat, one on each knee. “I only mentioned it because some of my colleagues had a theory that you were a German agent called Hessel.”
In the colonel’s eyes, a glint of genuine amusement appeared for a moment, like a face at a window, and ducked out of sight again.
“I gather that you were not convinced by this theory?”
“As a matter of fact, I wasn’t.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I remembered what your daughter told me. That you used to crawl up alongside a hedge running from the railway line to the private cricket ground at the big house. I went along and had a look. You couldn’t crawl up along the hedge now. It’s too overgrown. But there is a place at the top – it’s hidden by the hedge, and I scratched myself damnably getting into it – where two bars are bent apart. A boy could have got through them easily.”
“You’re very thorough,” said the colonel. “Is there anything you
haven’t
found out about me?”
“I would be interested to know exactly when you started betraying your country. And why. Did you mean to do it all along and falling in with Hessel and killing him gave you an opportunity – the wireless and the codes and the call signs—?”
“I can clearly see,” said the colonel, “that you have never been blown up. Really blown to pieces, I mean. If you had been, you’d know that it’s quite impossible to predict what sort of man will come down again. You can be turned inside out, or upside down. You can be born again. Things you didn’t know were inside you can be shaken to the top.”
“Saul becoming Paul, on the road to Damascus.”
“You
are
an intelligent man,” said the colonel. “It’s a pleasure to talk to you. The analogy had not occurred to me, but it is perfectly apt. My father was a great man for disciplining youth, for regimentation, and the New Order. Because he was my father, I rebelled against it. That’s natural enough. Because I rebelled against it, I fought for the Russians against the Germans in Spain. I saw how those young Nazis behaved. It was simply a rehearsal for them, you know. A rehearsal for the struggle they had dedicated their lives to. A knightly vigil, if you like. I saw them fight, and I saw them die. Any that were captured were usually tortured. I tortured them myself. If you torture a man and fail to break him, it becomes like a love affair. Did you know that?”
“I, too, have read the work of the Marquis de Sade,” said Mr. Behrens. “Go on.”
“When I lay in hospital in the darkness with my eyes bandaged, my hands strapped to my sides, corning slowly back to life, I had the strangest feeling. I
was
Hessel; I
was
the man I had left lying in the darkness at the bottom of the pit. I had closed his eyes and folded his hands, and now I was him. His work was my work. Where he had left it off, I would take it up. My father had been right and Hitler had been right and I had been wrong. And now I had been shown a way to repair the mistakes and follies of my former life. Does that sound mad to you?”
“Quite mad,” said Mr. Behrens, “but I find it easier to believe than the rival theory – that the accident of having a new face enabled you to fool everyone for twenty-five years. You may have had no family, but there were school friends and Army friends and neighbors. But I interrupt you. When you got out of hospital and decided to carry on Hessel’s work, I suppose you used his wireless set and his codes?”
“Until the end of the war, yes. Then I destroyed them. When I was forced to work for the Russians I began to use other methods. I’m afraid I can’t discuss them, even with you. They involve too many other people.”
In spite of the peril of his position, Mr. Behrens could not suppress a feeling of deep satisfaction. Not many of his plans had worked out so exactly. Colonel Bessendine was not a man given to confidences. A mixture of carefully devised forces was now driving him to talk. The time and the place; the fact that Mr. Behrens had established a certain intellectual supremacy over him; the fact that he must have been unable, for so many years, to speak freely to anyone; the fact that silence was no longer important, since he had made up his mind to liquidate his audience. On this last point Mr. Behrens was under no illusions. Colonel Bessendine was on his way out. France was only the first station on a line which led to eastern Germany and Moscow.
“One thing puzzles me,” said the colonel, breaking into his thoughts. “During all the time we have been talking here – and I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed our conversation – I couldn’t help noticing that you have hardly moved. Your hands, for instance, have been lying cupped, one on each knee. When a fly annoyed you just now, instead of raising your hand to brush it off you shook your head violently.”
Mr. Behrens said, raising his voice a little, “If I were to lift my right hand, a very well-trained dog, who has been approaching you quietly from the rear while we were talking, would have jumped for your throat.”
The colonel smiled. “Your imagination does you credit. What happens if you lift your left hand? Does a genie appear from a bottle and carry me off?”
“If I raise my left hand,” said Mr. Behrens, “you will be shot dead.”
And so saying, he raised it.
The two men and the big dog stared down at the crumpled body. Rasselas sniffed at it, once, and turned away. It was carrion and no longer interesting.
“I’d have liked to try to pull him down alive,” said Mr. Behrens. “But with that foul weapon in his hand I dared not chance it.”
“It will solve a lot of Mr. Fortescue’s problems,” said Mr. Calder. He was unscrewing the telescopic sight from the rifle he was carrying.
“We’ll put him down beside Hessel. I’ve brought two crow-bars along with me. We ought to be able to shift the stump back into its original position. With any luck, they’ll lie there, undisturbed, for a very long time.”
Side by side in the dark earth, thought Mr. Behrens. Until the Day of Judgment, when all hearts are opened and all thoughts known.
“We’d better hurry, too,” said Mr. Calder. “It’s getting dark, and I want to get back in time for tea.”
“The young man of today,” said Mr. Behrens, “is physically stronger and fitter than his father. He can run a mile quicker—”
“A useful accomplishment,” agreed Mr. Calder.
“—he can put a weight farther, can jump higher and will probably live longer.”
“Not as long as the young lady of today,” said Mr. Calder. “
They
have a look of awful vitality.”
“Nevertheless—” said Mr. Behrens (he and Mr. Calder, being very old friends, did not so much answer as override each other; frequently they both spoke at once) “—nevertheless he is, in one important way, inferior to the older generation. He is mentally softer—”
“Morally, too.”
“The two things go together. He has the weaknesses which go with his strength. He is tolerant but he is flabby. He is intelligent but he is timid. He is made out of cast iron, not steel.”
“Stop generalising,” said Mr. Calder. “What’s worrying you?”
“The future of our Service,” said Mr. Behrens,
Mr. Calder considered the matter, at the same time softly scratching the head of his deerhound, Rasselas, who lay on the carpet beside his chair.
Mr. Behrens, who lived down in the valley, had walked up, as he did regularly on Tuesday afternoons, to take tea with Mr. Calder in his cottage on the hilltop.
“You’re not often right,” said Mr. Calder, at last.
“Thank you.”
“You could be on this occasion. I saw Fortescue yesterday.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Behrens. “He told me you had been to see him. I meant to ask you about that. What did he want?”
“There’s a woman. She has to be killed.”
Rasselas flicked his right ear at an intrusive fly; then, when this proved ineffective, growled softly and shook his head.
“Anyone I know?” said Mr. Behrens.
“I’m not sure. Her name, at the moment, is Lipper – Maria Lipper. She lives in Woking and is known there as Mrs. Lipper, although I don’t
think
she has ever been married. She has worked as a typist and filing clerk at the Air Ministry since—oh, since well before the last war.”
“And how long has she been working for them?”
“Certainly for ten years, possibly more. Security got on to her in the end by selective coding, and that, as you know, is a very slow process.”
“And not one which a jury would understand or accept.”
“Oh, certainly not,” said Mr. Calder. “Certainly not. There could be no question here of judicial process. Maria is a season ticket holder, not a commuter.”
By this Mr. Calder meant that Maria Lipper was an agent who collected, piecemeal, all information which came her way and passed it on at long intervals of months or even years. No messengers came to her. When she had sufficient to interest her master, she would take it to a collecting point and leave it. Occasional sums of money would come to her through the post.
“It is a thousand pities,” added Mr. Calder, “that they did not get on to her a little sooner – before Operation Prometheus Unbound came off the drawing board.”
“Do you think she knows about
that
?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Mr. Calder. “I wasn’t directly concerned. Buchanan was in charge. But it was her section that did the Prometheus typing, and when he found out that she had asked for an urgent contact, I think – I really think – he was justified in getting worried.”
“What is he going to do about it?”
“The contact has been short-circuited. I am taking his place. Two days from now Mrs. Lipper is driving down to Portsmouth for a short holiday. She plans to leave Woking very early – she likes clear roads to drive on – and she will be crossing Salisbury Plain at six o’clock. Outside Upavon she turns off the main road. The meeting place is a barn at the top of the track. She has stipulated for a payment of five hundred pounds in one-pound notes. Incidentally, she has never before been paid more than fifty.”
“You must be right,” said Mr. Behrens, “I imagine that I am to cover you here. Fortunately my aunt is taking the waters at Harrogate.”
“If you would.”
“The same arrangements as usual.”
“The key will be on the ledge over the woodshed door.”
“You’d better warn Rasselas to expect me. Last time he got it into his head that I was a burglar.”
The great hound looked up at the mention of his name and grinned, showing his long white incisors.
“You needn’t worry about Rasselas,” said Mr. Calder. “I’ll take him with me. He enjoys an expedition. All the same, it is a sad commentary on the younger generation that a man of my age has to be sent out on a trip like this.”
“Exactly what I was saying. Where did you put the backgammon board?”
Mr. Calder left his cottage at dusk on the following evening. He drove off in the direction of Gravesend, crossed the river by the Dartford underpass and made a circle round London, recrossing the Thames at Reading. He drove his inconspicuous car easily and efficiently. Rasselas lay across the back seat, between a sleeping bag and a portmanteau. He was used to road travel, and slept most of the way.
At midnight the car rolled down the broad High Street of Marlborough and out onto the Pewsey Road. A soft golden moon made a mockery of its headlights.
A mile from Upavon, Mr. Calder pulled up at the side of the road and studied the 1/25,000 range map with which he had been supplied. The track leading to the barn was clearly shown, but he had marked a different and round-about way by which the rendezvous could be approached. This involved taking the next road to the right, following it for a quarter of a mile, then finding a field track – it was no more than a dotted line even on his large-scale map – which would take him up a small re-entrant. The track appeared to stop just short of the circular contour which marked the top of the down. Across it, as Mr. Calder had seen when he examined the map, ran, in straggling gothic lettering, the words slay down.
The entrance to the track had been shut off by a gate and was indistinguishable from the entrance to a field. The gate was padlocked, too, but Mr. Calder dealt with this by lifting it off its hinges. It was a heavy gate, but he shifted it with little apparent effort. There were surprising reserves of strength in his barrel-shaped body, thick arms, and plump hands.
After a month of fine weather, the track, though rutted, was rock-hard. Mr. Calder ran up it until the banks on either side had levelled out and he guessed that he was approaching the top of the rise. There he backed his car into a thicket. For the last part of the journey he had been travelling without lights.
Now he switched off the engine, opened the car door and sat listening.
At first the silence seemed complete. Then, as the singing of the engine died in his ears, the sounds of the night reasserted themselves. A nightjar screamed; an owl hooted. The creatures of the dark, momentarily frozen by the arrival among them of this great palpitating steel-and-glass animal, started to move again. A mile away across the valley, where farms stood and people lived, a dog barked.
Mr. Calder took his sleeping bag out of the back of the car and unrolled it. He took off his coat and shoes, loosened his tie and wriggled down into the bag. Rasselas lay down too, his nose a few inches from Mr. Calder’s head.
In five minutes the man was asleep. When he woke he knew what had roused him. Rasselas had growled, very softly; a little rumbling, grumbling noise which meant that something had disturbed him. It was not the growl of imminent danger. It was a tentative alert.