‘No, it’s not that. You don’t understand.’ Vane shook his head. ‘Of course I’ll give you his name. But which? He’s gone by so many. To us he’s known as Wahl, Emil Wahl; that’s how he appears in this file.’ He tapped the folder before him. ‘But his real name is Gaston Lang. That’s what he was christened.’
‘Lang, you say?’ Sinclair opened his notebook. As he reached for the pen in his pocket, he saw Vane shake his head.
‘Write it down if you wish, Chief Inspector, but it’ll do you no good. Of all the names Lang might be using now, I can assure you it’s the one he’ll never go by again.’
‘He’d been working for us for many years by the time I met him-that was in the summer of 1929. But his association with our intelligence branch goes back to the war, and it’s important you know how this came about.’
Vane eyed his two listeners.
‘At that time British intelligence had an outstanding agent working for them, a Swiss called Ernst Hoffmann. He was based in Geneva and through him and his various contacts and sub-agents we were able to obtain an extraordinary amount of valuable information from inside Germany. Lang was his secretary.’
Vane frowned.
‘We knew little about him. Apparently he grew up in an orphanage. Nevertheless, in spite of what could only have been the most limited schooling, he’d managed to catch the eye of Ernst Hoffmann and by the time our people got to know him he’d mastered several languages as well as other skills which his employer must have deemed necessary for his education.’
His raised eyebrow hinted at a meaning not apparent in his words.
‘Hoffmann was an art dealer, by the way: it was a genuine business, and he used it as a cover for his other activities. He was already working for us before the war and during that period he used Lang as a courier and go-between to keep contact with his agents in Germany.
‘So he was well-placed to help us when war broke out, but in 1917 he died – quite unexpectedly, he had a heart attack while sitting in a cafe – and Lang was left to take over his work. With gratifying results, at least as far as our people were concerned. Hoffman’s death had thrown them into a panic and they were only too pleased to discover that this young man was able to carry on in his place, and just as effectively.
‘However, about a year later, in the spring of 1918, he turned up without warning in France and made his way to the British sector of the front, in the north, where he reported to our intelligence branch. He had a curious tale to tell. He said he’d been identified as a British operative by German counter-intelligence agents in Switzerland who had succeeded in falsely incriminating him with the Swiss police. He’d only narrowly escaped arrest and had managed to slip across the border clandestinely into France.’
‘Incriminating him?’ Sinclair seized on the word. ‘As a spy, do you mean?’
Vane shook his head. ‘He was being sought for murder. The victim was a young girl.’
‘Good lord!’ Bennett couldn’t contain his astonishment.
Beside him, the chief inspector’s eyes had narrowed. ‘And they believed him? These so-called intelligence officials?’
Vane shrugged. ‘It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to check the truth of his story. The world of agents, of spies, is a murky one at best. It wouldn’t have been the first time one of them had been discredited in this manner. And the war was still going on, remember. He told them more. He said there’d been an attempt made on his life engineered by these same Germans in conjunction with two Swiss detectives who were in their pay. After a struggle he’d managed to escape, leaving one of the detectives dead. Stabbed. He carries a knife.’
‘So now there were two murder charges against him.’ Sinclair could hardly trust himself to speak.
Vane saw the look on his face. ‘Try to understand how the situation must have appeared to our people. The war was being fought as fiercely as ever. No one guessed it would be over in a few months. Lang had brought a great deal of valuable information with him. He was the only person who knew the details of Hoffmann’s network in Germany. The names of his agents. At that particular moment he was of immense value to the Allied cause.’
‘So? What happened?’
‘Lang disappeared. He was never heard of again. Emil Wahl, a citizen of Belgium, appeared in his place.’
‘With all the proper credentials, I suppose?’
Again Vane shrugged. ‘I can only repeat, this was a special situation. These things wouldn’t happen if wars weren’t fought.’
‘No, Mr Vane, I must correct you.’ The chief inspector’s voice was tight with anger. ‘These things wouldn’t happen if certain people did not choose to place themselves above the law. What those men did was condone one crime and commit another. It’s a disgraceful story. Disgraceful, do you hear me?’
Bennett gestured with his hand, trying to calm his colleague. But Vane showed no disposition to take offence. Rather, his rueful shrug seemed a tacit acceptance of the verdict delivered. With a sigh, he went on.
‘At this point I should mention that although Lang had worked for us in a number of European countries, because of this wartime episode – or his version of it – he’d never been posted to Germany. However, after a dozen years the danger of exposing him again to their counter-intelligence section was felt to have diminished, and he himself raised no objection to being sent there.
‘It was decided to bring him to London first, something which had never happened before, but a sign, if you like, of the value that was placed on his services. In certain quarters, at least.’ Vane’s face was expressionless. ‘Our first meeting was at a restaurant with others present and I took the opportunity to fix a second appointment with him. This would be for the briefing he would need before setting off for Berlin. Since I didn’t want him appearing at the Foreign Office, and since I was about to go on holiday anyway, I arranged for us to meet outside London.’
‘Had he been in England long?’ Sinclair had recovered his poise. ‘I’d like to get some idea of his movements.’
‘I gathered he’d been here for several weeks and had visited different parts of the country. He’d wanted a holiday before taking up his assignment. I can’t tell you where he went, but I know he’s a birdwatcher – it’s in his file. He’s something of an expert, I believe. It’s one of the few things we know about him.’
‘Thank you.’ The chief inspector inclined his head. ‘You were saying you’d fixed a second meeting with him?’
Vane nodded. ‘I’d arranged to stay with these friends of mine outside Oxford, and since I was due to travel north myself on the seventh, I’d settled with Lang that we should meet the day before. He’d agreed to take the train up to Oxford and said he planned to spend a night or two at an hotel there before returning to London. I picked him up at the station and took him to a pub in Woodstock where I’d booked a private room for lunch, and where I gave him a detailed briefing.’
He broke off, and sat staring at the desktop in front of him. As the silence grew longer, Sinclair and Bennett exchanged glances. It was a minute or more before the other man looked up. His eyes showed the same unfocussed glaze as before.
‘I won’t pretend I wasn’t curious to know him. Up till then he’d only been a name to me. But I was aware of his reputation and I approached the prospect of our meeting with caution.’ He paused once again. ‘I don’t suppose I need tell you that the qualities required for the kind of work Lang did for us are… quite special. It’s not a profession for the squeamish. But even so, there are limits… or there ought to be.’ Vane tapped the buff folder before him. ‘Unfortunately I can’t show you this. I’d be in breach of the law. But there are things in it you would find shocking. At least I hope so. They certainly were to me. If I were asked to characterize it I would say it was not so much a record of a man without scruple, as one without moral sense. So you’ll understand when I say I had considerable misgivings at the thought of working with him. Nor did this meeting of ours offer much in the way of reassurance.’
He mused for a moment, as though in recollection.
‘It’s not easy to describe the effect he had on me. In many ways he’s quite ordinary. Soft-spoken; almost diffident in manner. And the business side of things went without a hitch. I found him quick to grasp what I was telling him, exceptionally so. Nothing needed to be said twice. But it was as though there was a barrier between us. Something real, but transparent, like a pane of glass. And he was on one side of it and I was on the other and there was no connection between us. No human bond. Thinking about it afterwards, I realized this feeling I had sprang from his glance. His eyes. They were quite dead.’
Vane reflected on what he had said. Then he shrugged.
‘It must have been later, when we were driving into Oxford, that I made some reference to my car. It was new, as you know, and I’d bought it because I thought it would be easy to maintain in Germany and less noticeable than a British-made vehicle would have been. It so happened a minor problem had developed with the gears and I must have expressed some irritation over the fact that I couldn’t now drive up to Scotland the following day, as I’d intended, but would either have to leave it in a garage in Oxford, or find some way of getting it back to London, so that the necessary repairs could be made while I was away.
‘Whatever it was I said, Lang offered to deal with the matter. He said he planned to spend a day or two in the Oxford area, but would willingly drive the car to London for me after that. The worst of it is I so very nearly refused his offer, and for no other reason than that I’d taken such a strong dislike to him. But my reaction seemed out of all proportion, so in the end I let him have it. If only I’d followed my instincts!’
Visibly upset, he stared out of the window where lights could be seen burning in other windows across the courtyard.
‘What happened? Did he pick her up on the road?’ He spoke without looking round.
‘Yes, in Henley. She was running an errand for her mother. The shops were only a mile away.’
With a sigh, Vane turned to face them once more. He seemed paler than before. ‘The car was delivered to my garage in London, as promised. By the time I returned from Scotland, Lang was already in Germany establishing himself. I took up my own posting in Berlin in October. It was more than two years before I saw him again.’
‘Despite the fact you were there all that time?’ Sinclair was incredulous.
‘Yes, but that was by arrangement, you see. It wasn’t intended we should meet. Lang’s assignment was in the area of political intelligence and his orders were to recruit and control agents, to run them, as it were, and to forward their reports to me. Naturally it was important he should have no contact with our embassy in Berlin. My own position was nominally that of a senior attache with responsibilities in the economic field and I made sure our paths didn’t cross. He reported to me in writing.’
‘Did his duties take him to Munich, by any chance?’ Sinclair asked the question.
‘Most certainly.’ Vane hesitated. He bit his lip. ‘Look, there’s no reason I shouldn’t tell you what Lang was doing for us in Germany, provided you remain discreet about it. His specific brief was to cultivate contacts in the Nazi party. It’s something we’ve been slow to get on to. Like others, we’ve tended to dismiss them as rabble. Now it looks as though they may form part of the next government. Or, God forbid, end up running it.
‘Lang was sent to Berlin with the assumed character of a representative of an Austrian textile firm. His job was to insinuate himself into party circles with the aim of identifying individuals who might prove useful to us. It’s a delicate business, one he’d shown himself to be highly skilled at. He had an eye for picking out the kind of people who could either be bought or persuaded to cooperate by other means, not all of them savoury, and which I’ll leave to your imagination.’ Vane grimaced. ‘Suffice to say he was quite ruthless, something we’d taken note of in the past.
‘We’d so arranged it that the firm he was supposed to represent had business ties in Munich and this provided him with an excuse to go there and hang about the beer halls, so as to make his face known.’ He noticed the glance that passed between his visitors. ‘Why? Is that significant?’
‘To us, yes.’ Sinclair nodded. ‘Two of the murders I’ve spoken of took place in the Munich region.’
Vane absorbed the information with a frown. He made no comment. ‘Well, so much for our plans. Now I’ll tell you what occurred. For the first year or so everything ran like clockwork. Lang went about his work with his usual efficiency. In due course he joined the party and having identified various figures whose acquaintance might yield dividends later began to cultivate them. He lent money to several. All was proceeding according to plan. But then, midway through the second year, his work began to fall off. The change was gradual, but quite marked. His reports became irregular – something unheard of, he was methodical to a fault – and when they reached me showed signs of diminishing activity on his part. I remonstrated with him in writing several times, without effect, and was beginning to think a face-to-face meeting between us might be necessary when I received a message from him asking for just that. He wanted to see me urgently.’
Vane made a gesture of weariness. ‘There was little I could do but agree, and so we met at a small hotel in the country, outside Berlin, where he told me he wanted to cut short his assignment and leave Germany. He gave as his reason his growing suspicion that he’d been identified once more as a British agent. He insisted he was in danger and said he could no longer carry on with his work.’
‘When was this?’ Sinclair broke in. ‘Can you be precise?’
‘Early in June of this year. Does that tell you anything?’
‘Yes, the last in the chain of murders occurred in April. The Bavarian authorities got a lead from it and with the Berlin police mounted a campaign to identify the killer. They used the newspapers among other means. Lang must have been aware of that.’ Sinclair paused, curious. ‘What did you make of his behaviour?’ he asked.