LEN DEIGHTON

XPD

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd 1981

Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 1981

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2009

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design © Arnold Schwartzman 2009

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780586054475

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007347759

Version: 2017-05-23

Epigraph

‘The Second World War produced, in the end, one victor, the United States, one hero, Great Britain, one villain, Germany …’

Hitler, by N. Stone

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Introduction

Adolf Hitler laughed. He threw his head back and his mouth flashed with gold inlays. The onetime manager of Berlin’s grandest movie theatre told me that. Hitler was a movie fan and despite having his private theatre he liked to show himself amid Berlin’s nightlife. Like many despots, he liked to show the world a human side.

Research (whether for history book, cookery books or fiction) is best sought from eye-witness evidence. Historians depend too readily on documents, and my experience is that paperwork is often manipulated by both official and private sources. Talking to participants and appraising their reliability is a test of the historian’s skills. Paperwork is an essential backup for it provides a cross-reference and a context.

Long periods in Austria and Germany – both East and West – enabled me to spend time with many people who had held important positions in the Third Reich. Among them I could count a dozen or more people who had spent time with Hitler face to face. The episodes you will read concerning Hitler’s private train, and about the way the German gold reserves were hidden in the Kaiseroda Mine at Merkers are as authentic as I could make them. I was able to compare German and American eye-witness accounts with material from US archives in Washington DC. Most of what I used was declassified in response to my application. It works like this: you have someone with a high security classification seek out the material you need. That researcher goes to the top to ask for declassified status. It’s a cumbersome business but it was the only way I could obtain the official documentation about the Kaiseroda Mine, which plays a large part in the story you are about to read.

I have only used professional researchers on rare occasions. Research is the fun side of the writing business; why pay someone else to do it? For the episodes in Los Angeles research was simpler and personal. Bill Jordan, a senior figure in LAPD intelligence department, has always been a universally respected policeman. After fighting his way across the Pacific for the Marine Corps, Bill became a familiar figure to Beverly Hills night people as he patrolled that jurisdiction on his Harley Davidson motor cycle. It was Bill who regularly stopped to talk with a young girl sitting on the sidewalk staring into space or sometimes sobbing. That was Marilyn Monroe and she was not the only local resident to owe Bill a debt of gratitude for his care and consideration. In one of those ironic twists that life provides, it was Bill who was the investigating officer for the Bobby Kennedy assassination.

Bill arranged for me to go out at night with the Los Angeles police cars. It wasn’t like the movies and it wasn’t like any of the books I had read, but that time spent with the LA police left me with lasting respect and admiration for these decent young Americans who did this dangerous sort of job night after night.

Despite its shortcomings – and I am coming to those – XPD is one of my favourite books. It was also one of the most successful books I’d written up to that time. And behind the scenes it was one of the most fiercely criticized books too. Not long after publication, a member of the Churchill family wrote a letter of complaint to the publisher. And that wasn’t all: the advertising poster alone – a photo of Hitler shaking hands with Winston Churchill – was enough to have one of the most amusing and energetic members of House of Lords withdraw all copies of XPD from the hundreds of bookshops he controlled. There were cries of censorship and the order was reversed.

The furore caught me completely by surprise. I was in California and I found myself accused of planning a cunning advertising stunt from afar. I did not know whether to be flattered or insulted. I had always been a devout admirer of our wartime prime minister and I remain so. In any case it seemed a sad reflection on our times that these displays of frantic, if not to say antic, indignation were prompted by a story about Churchill attempting to negotiate peace. Could it really be defamatory to say that someone had tried to avoid the chronic misery and tens of millions of deaths of that terrible war?

In fact it was not the plot of XPD that caused the fuss. Hitler and Churchill had been subjected to many worse fates at the hands of ‘faction’ writers. The critics of XPD agreed on one point only; that my story was convincing. It was, they said angrily, written in such a way that readers would believe it. Did they want me to write a story that no one could believe?

This was the first spy story I’d written without the first-person narrative that had set Harry Palmer’s style in The IPCRESS File. In XPD I employed what I believe is called a ‘cosmic’ framework but which nowadays some writers call the ‘omniscient’ style. This is a no-holds-barred device; you can be an authorial nobody or inside everyone’s head, you can move across the world without warning, delve far into the past and even address your reader with personal advice (don’t be scared; I don’t do that). In a first-person story, your hero is on every page whether you want him there or not. Cosmic formats diminish the importance of the central character. Perhaps I did not give him enough tender loving care, for Boyd Stuart is not an endearing hero. This may not have mattered except that I became more and more concerned with the character of Charles Stein.

I grew to like Charles Stein and he wrestled the book away from me. I have always avoided creating unredeemed villains. It’s better, I feel, and more human, to show the best side of the worst characters. Some years before, I had written Declarations of War, a book of war stories in which I polished men of lesser attraction and made them shine. It is a dangerous device but now I found myself doing exactly the same thing with the character of Charles Stein. Eventually it became the Charles Stein book and, looking back on it now, it is how I think of it, and that is why I like it. Hitler and Churchill have only walk-on parts. It is better that way.

Len Deighton, 2009

Chapter 1

In May 1979, only days after Britain’s new Conservative government came to power, the yellow box that contains the daily report from MI6 to the Prime Minister was delivered to her by a deputy secretary in the Cabinet Office. He was the PM’s liaison with the intelligence services.

Although the contents of the yellow boxes are never graded into secret, top secret and so on – because all MI6 documents are in the ultra secret category – one rather hastily handwritten report was ‘flagged’. The PM noted with some surprise that it was the handwriting of Sir Sydney Ryden, the director general of MI6, and selected that document for immediate attention. Attached to the corner of it there was an advertisement, clipped from a film journal published in California the previous week.

A film producer, unlisted in any of the department’s reference books, announced that he was preparing what the advert described as ‘A major motion picture with a budget of fifteen million plus!’ It was a Second World War story about plundering German gold in the final days of the fighting. The cutting bore the rubber stamp of ‘Desk 32 Research’ and was signed by the clerk who had found it. ‘What is the final secret of the Kaiseroda mine?’ asked the advertisement. Kaiseroda had been underlined in red pencil to show the word which had alerted the Secret Intelligence Service clerk to the advert’s possible importance.

Normally the space the blue rubber-stamp mark provided for reference would have been filled with a file number but, to his considerable surprise, the research clerk had been referred to no file under the Kaiseroda reference. Instead the Kaiseroda card was marked, ‘To director general only. IMMEDIATE.’

The Prime Minister read carefully through Sir Sydney Ryden’s note, baffled more than once by the handwriting. Then she picked up the telephone and changed her day’s appointments to make a time to see him.

The elderly police constable on duty that afternoon inside the entrance lobby of 10 Downing Street recognized that the man accompanying Sir Sydney was the senior archivist from the Foreign Office documents centre. He was puzzled that he should be here at a time when the PM was so busy settling in but he soon forgot about it. During the installation of a newly elected government there are many such surprises.

The Foreign Office archivist did not attend the meeting between the PM and Sir Sydney, but remained downstairs in the waiting room in case he was required. In the event, he was not.

This was the new Prime Minister’s first official meeting with the chief of the espionage service. She found him uncommonly difficult to talk to: he was distant in manner and overpowering in appearance, a tall man with overlong hair and bushy eyebrows. At the end of the briefing she stood up to indicate that the meeting must end, but Sir Sydney seemed in no hurry to depart. ‘I’m quite certain that there is no truth in these terrible allegations, Prime Minister,’ he said.

He wondered if madam would be a more suitable form of address or perhaps ma’am, as one called the Queen. She looked at him hard and he shifted uncomfortably. Sir Sydney was not an addicted smoker, in the way that his predecessor had been, but now he found the new Prime Minister’s strictures about smoking something of a strain, and longed for a cigarette. In the old days, with Callaghan and before him Wilson, these rooms had seldom been without clouds of tobacco smoke.

‘We’ll discover that,’ said the Prime Minister curtly.

‘I’ll get one of my people out to California within twenty-four hours.’

‘You’ll not inform the Americans?’

‘It would not be wise, Prime Minister.’ He pressed a hand against his ear and flicked back errant strands of his long hair.

‘I quite agree,’ she said. She picked up the newspaper cutting again. ‘For the time being all we need is a straight, simple answer from this film producer man.’

‘That might be rather a difficult task, if my experience of Hollywood film producers is anything to go by.’

The PM looked up from the cutting to see if Sir Sydney was making a joke to which she should respond. She decided not to smile. Sir Sydney did not appear to be a man much given to jesting.

Chapter 2

The exact details of the way in which the Soviet Union’s intelligence services were alerted to the activities which had so troubled Britain’s Prime Minister is more difficult to piece together. Soviet involvement had begun many weeks earlier and certainly it was the reason behind a long two-part radio message beamed in the early evening of Easter Sunday, 15 April 1979, to the USSR embassy main building on the east side of 16th Street, Washington DC. This unexpected radio transmission required the services of the senior Russian cipher clerk who was enjoying an Easter dinner with Russian friends in a private room at the Pier 7 restaurant on Maine Avenue waterfront near the Capital Yacht Club. He was collected from there by an embassy car.

Intercepted by the National Security Agency, and decoded by its ATLAS computer at Fort George Meade, Maryland, that Sunday evening radio traffic provided the first recorded use of the code name that Moscow had given this operation – Task Pogoni. The written instructions issued in 1962 by the GRU, and later given to the KGB and armed forces, order that the choice of such code names must be such that they do not reveal either the assignment or the government’s intention or attitude, and add a supplementary warning that the code names must not be trivial or of such grandeur that they would attract ridicule should the operation go wrong. And yet, as the NSA translators pointed out in their ‘pink flimsy’ supplementary, Moscow’s choice of code word was revealing.

Literally pogoni means epaulette, but for a citizen of the USSR its implications go deeper than that. Not only can it be used to mean a senior personage or ‘top brass’; it is a symbol of the hated reactionary. ‘Smert zolotopogonnikam!’ cried the revolutionaries, ‘Death to the men who wear gold epaulettes!’ And yet the possible overtones in this choice of the KGB code name can be taken further than that; for nowadays the senior Russian military men who control one of the USSR’s rival intelligence organizations (the GRU) again wear gold epaulettes.

How Yuriy Grechko interpreted the code name assigned to this new operation is not recorded. Grechko – a senior KGB officer – was at the time the USSR’s ‘legal resident’. Using diplomatic cover, it was his job to keep himself, and Moscow, informed on all Soviet espionage activities in the USA. In seniority Grechko ranked a close second to the ambassador himself, and he was there solely to keep all the covert operations and ‘dirty tricks’ entirely separated from official diplomatic business. This made it easier for the ambassador to deny all knowledge of such activities when they were detected by the US authorities.

Grechko was shown in the diplomatic listings as a naval captain third rank, working in the capacity of assistant naval attaché. He was a short man with dry curly hair, blue shiny eyes and a large mouth. His only memorable feature was a gold front tooth which was revealed whenever he smiled. But Grechko did not smile frequently enough for this to compromise his clandestine operations. Grechko was a man who exemplified the Russians’ infinite capacity for melancholy.

It was difficult to reconcile Grechko’s diplomatic listing with his appearance and life-style. His expensive handmade suits, his gold watch, pearl tie-pin, the roll of paper money in his hip pocket, the availability of sports cars and his casual working day all suggested to those men in Washington who are employed to study such details that Grechko was a KGB man, but at this date it was not realized that he was the ‘legal’ – the senior espionage administrator in the embassy.

Since Grechko’s movements were restricted, he summoned his senior secret agent to Washington. It was contrary to the normal procedures, but his radioed instructions had stressed the urgency of his task. Grechko therefore took a trip that morning to the Botanic Gardens on the other side of the Anacostia River. He took his time and made quite sure that he was not being followed when he returned downtown to keep his appointment at the prestigious Hay-Adams Hotel which commands a view across Lafayette Square to the White House.

Mr and Mrs Edward Parker met Grechko at the 16th Street entrance to the hotel where Grechko had booked a table in the name of Green. Edward Parker was a thick-set, bear-like man, with Slavic features: a squarish jaw, wavy grey hair fast becoming white, and bushy eyebrows. He towered over his Japanese wife and Grechko, whose hand he shook with smiling determination. Parker, prepared for Chicago weather, was wearing a heavy tweed overcoat, although Washington that day had temperatures in the high fifties with some sunshine.

Grechko gave Fusako Parker a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and smiled briefly. She was in her middle thirties, a beautiful woman who made the most of her flawless complexion and her doll-like oriental features. She was dressed in a button-through dress of beige-coloured wool, with a large gold brooch in the shape of a chrysanthemum pinned high at the collar. To a casual observer, the three luncheon companions looked typical of the rather conservatively dressed embassy people who crowd into Washington’s best restaurants.

Parker was an importer of components for cheap transistor radios. These were mostly manufactured and partly assembled in Taiwan, Korea and Singapore, where the labour forces were adroit enough to do the work but not yet adroit enough to demand the high wages of the USA and Europe. In this role Parker travelled freely both in the USA and abroad. It was perfect cover for the USSR ‘illegal resident’. Parker was the secret spymaster for the Russian operations in America, with the exception of certain special tasks controlled from the Washington embassy and the extensive ‘Interbloc’ network centred on the United Nations in New York City.

It was 2.20 by the time Grechko finished his cheesecake. When they ordered coffee and brandy, Mrs Parker asked leave to depart to do some shopping before returning to Chicago. Grechko and Parker agreed to this, then the two men began their business discussion.

Parker had been planted in North America for nearly twelve years. His English was more or less faultless and he had easily assumed the bluff and amiable manner of the successful American man of business. Yet Parker had been born a citizen of the USSR and had served for three years with the KGB First Main Directorate’s Scientific and Technical Section before his US assignment. Now he listened with care and attention as Grechko talked rapidly in soft Russian, telling him of the priority that had been given to Task Pogoni. Parker was empowered to assign any of his sleepers to active duty. Such freedom of decision had only five times before been given to the American resident during Parker’s tour of duty. Similar powers had now been provided to the residents in Bonn, Paris and London.

Furthermore, Grechko confided, the First Main Directorate had assigned control to ‘Section 13’. Both men knew what that meant. Although since 1969 it had been renamed the Executive Action Department, what old-timers still call Section 13 of the KGB First Main Directorate handles ‘wet business’ (mokrie dela), which is anything from blackmail through torture to murder. The section was at that time headed by the legendary Stanislav Shumuk, a man highly regarded by the Communist Party’s Administrative Organs Department, from which the KGB is actually controlled. Shumuk would reputedly go to any extreme to provide results.

Parker did not reply. Grechko sipped his black coffee. It was unnecessary to point out that failure could result in unpleasant consequences for both men. After that they resumed conversation in English. It mostly concerned the mechanical problems that Parker had experienced with his wife’s car, which was still under warranty. Parker noticed, not for the first time, that Grechko was a miserable sort of man. It contradicted the stories he had heard about him, and Parker wondered why Grechko should become so despondent only with him.

Mr and Mrs Parker flew back to Chicago on the evening flight. Yuriy Grechko kept an appointment with his girlfriend, a Russian citizen employed by the Trade Delegation. In the early hours of the following morning he was heard arguing loudly with her in a motel where they spent the night just across the state line in Virginia. Grechko had been drinking heavily.

Chapter 3

In spite of his smooth assurances to his Prime Minister, the director general of MI6 did not immediately dispatch an agent to California. The reason for this delay arose out of a conversation that the DG had with his daughter Jennifer. She had a candidate for a task on the far side of the world; her husband.

‘Boyd is being quite beastly,’ she told her father. ‘Not all our friends know we are separated and I have a horror of finding him sitting opposite me at a dinner party. I wish you’d send him to do some job on the far side of the world.’ She gave her father a hug. ‘Just until the divorce is over.’

The DG nodded. He should never have agreed to her marrying a man from his own department, especially such a rootless disrespectful young man. It would have been better to have let the love affair run its course; instead Sir Sydney had pressed them to marry with all the regrettable consequences.

‘He’s on the reassignment list, daddy,’ she coaxed.

Boyd Stuart, a thirty-eight-year-old field agent, had just completed the mandatory one year of ‘administrative duties’ that gave him a small rise in salary before returning him overseas. Such field agents, put behind an office desk in London for twelve months, seldom endear themselves to the permanent staff there. They are often hasty, simplistic and careless with the detail and the paperwork. To this list of deficiencies, Boyd Stuart had added the sin of arrogance. Twelve years as a field agent had made him impatient with the priorities displayed by the staff in London.

‘There is something he could do for us in California,’ said the DG.

‘Oh, daddy. You don’t know how wonderful that would be. Not just for me,’ she added hastily. ‘But for Boyd too. You know how much he hates it in the office.’

The DG knew exactly how much Boyd Stuart hated it in the office. His son-in-law had frequently used dinner invitations to acquaint him with his preference for a reassignment overseas. The DG had done nothing about it, deciding that it would look very bad if he interceded for a close relative.

‘It’s quite urgent too,’ said the DG. ‘We’d have to get him away by the weekend at the latest.’

Jennifer kissed her father. ‘You are a darling,’ she said. ‘Boyd knows California. He did an exchange year at UCLA.’

Boyd Stuart was a handsome, dark-complexioned man whose appearance – like his excellent German and Polish and fluent Hungarian – enabled him to pass himself off as an inhabitant of anywhere in that region vaguely referred to as central Europe. Stuart had been born of a Scottish father and Polish mother in a wartime internment camp for civilians in the Rhineland. After the war, Stuart had attended schools in Germany, Scotland and Switzerland by the time he went to Cambridge. It was there that his high marks and his athletic and linguistic talents brought him under the scrutiny of the British intelligence recruiters.

‘You say there is no file, Sir Sydney?’ Stuart had not had a personal encounter with his father-in-law since that unforgettable night when he had the dreadful quarrel with Jennifer. Sir Sydney Ryden had arrived at four o’clock in the morning and taken her back to live with her parents again.

Stuart was wearing rather baggy, grey flannel trousers and a blue blazer with one brass button missing. It was not exactly what he would have chosen to wear for this encounter but there was nothing he could do now about that. He realized that the DG was similarly unenthusiastic about the casual clothes, and found himself tugging at the cotton strands remaining from his lost button.

‘That is a matter of deliberate policy,’ said the DG. ‘I cannot overemphasize how delicate this business is.’ The DG gave one of his mirthless smiles. This mannerism – mere baring of the teeth – was some atavistic warning not to tread further into sacred territory. The DG stared down into his whisky and then suddenly finished it. He was given to these abrupt movements and long periods of stillness. Ryden was well over six feet tall and preferred to wear black suits which, with his lined, pale face and luxuriant, flowing hair, made him look like a poet from some Victorian romance. He would need little more than a long black cloak to go on stage as Count Dracula, thought Stuart, and wondered if the DG deliberately contrived this forbidding appearance.

Without preamble, the DG told Stuart the story again, shortening it this time to the essential elements. ‘On 8 April 1945, elements of the 90th Division of the United States Third Army under General Patton were deep into Germany. When they got to the little town of Merkers, in western Thuringia, they seat infantry into the Kaiseroda salt mine. Those soldiers searched through some thirty miles of galleries in the mine. They found a newly installed steel door. When they broke through it they discovered gold; four-fifths of the Nazi gold reserves were stored there. So were two million or more of the rarest of rare books from the Berlin libraries, the complete Goethe collection from Weimar, and paintings and prints from all over Europe. It would take half an hour or more to read through the list of material. I’ll let you have a copy.’

Stuart nodded but didn’t speak. It was late afternoon and sunlight made patterns on the carpet, moving across the room until the bright bars slimmed to fine rods and one by one disappeared. The DG went across to the bookcases to switch on the large table lamps. On the panelled walls there were paintings of horses which had won famous races a long time ago, but now the paintings had grown so dark under the ageing varnish that the strutting horses seemed to be plodding home through a veil of fog.

‘Just how much gold was four-fifths of the German gold reserves?’ Stuart asked.

The DG sniffed and ran a finger across his ear, pushing away an errant lock of hair. ‘About three hundred million dollars’ worth of gold is one estimate. Over eight thousand bars of gold.’ The DG paused. ‘But that was just the bullion. In addition there were three thousand four hundred and thirty-six bags of gold coins, many of which were rarities – coins worth many times their weight in gold because of their value to collectors.’

Stuart looked up and, realizing that some response was expected, said, ‘Yes, amazing, sir.’ He sipped some more of the whisky. It was always the best of malts up here in the DG’s office at the top of ‘the Ziggurat’, the curious, truncated, pyramidal building that looked across the River Thames to the Palace of Westminster. The room’s panelling, paintings and antique furniture were all part of an attempt to recapture the elegance that the Secret Intelligence Service had enjoyed in the beautiful old houses in St James’s. But this building was steel and concrete, cheap and practical, with rust stains dribbling on the façade and cracks in the basement. The service itself could be similarly described.

‘The American officers reported their find through the usual channels,’ said the DG, suddenly resuming his story. ‘Patton and Eisenhower went to see it on 12 April. The army moved it all to Frankfurt. They took jeeps and trailers down the mine and brought it out. Ingenious people, the Americans, Stuart.’ He smiled and held the smile while looking Stuart full in the eyes.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It took about forty-eight hours of continuous work to load the valuables. There were thirty crates of German patent-office records – worth a king’s ransom – and two thousand boxes of prints, drawings and engravings, as well as one hundred and forty rolls of oriental carpets. You see the difficulties, Stuart?’

‘Indeed I do, sir.’ He swirled the last of his drink round his glass before swallowing it. The DG gave no sign of noticing that his glass was empty.

‘They were ordered to begin loading the lorries just two days after Eisenhower’s visit. The only way to do that was simply by listing whatever was on the original German inventory tags. It was a system that had grave shortcomings.’

‘If things were stolen, there was no way to be sure that the German inventory had been correct in the first place?’

The DG nodded. ‘Can you imagine the chaos that Germany was in by that stage of the war?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Quite so, Stuart. You can not imagine it. God knows what difficulties the Germans had moving all their valuables in those days of collapse. But I assure you that the temptation for individual Germans to risk all in order to put some items in their pockets could never have been higher. Perhaps only the Germans could have moved such material intact in those circumstances. As a nation they have a self-discipline that one can only admire.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘As soon as the Americans captured the mine, its contents went by road to Frankfurt, and were stored in the Reichsbank building. A special team from the State Department were given commissions overnight, put into uniform and flown from Washington to Frankfurt. They sifted that material to find sensitive papers or secret diplomatic exchanges that would be valuable to the US government, or embarrassing to them if made public. After that it was all turned over to the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency.’

‘And was there such secret material?’

‘Let me get you another drink, Stuart. You like this malt, don’t you? With water this time?’

‘Straight please, sir.’

The DG gave another of his ferocious grins.

‘Of course there was secret material. The exchanges between the German ambassador in London and his masters in Berlin during the 1930s would have caused a few red faces here in Whitehall, to say nothing of red faces in the Palace of Westminster. Enough indiscretions there to have put a few of our politicians behind bars in 1940 … members of Parliament telling German embassy people what a splendid fellow Adolf Hitler was.’

The DG poured drinks for them both. He used fresh cut-glass tumblers. ‘Something wrong with that door, Stuart?’

‘No, it’s beautiful,’ said Stuart, admiring the antique panelling. ‘And the octagonal oak table must be early seventeenth century.’

The DG groaned silently. It was not the sort of remark expected of the right sort of chap. Ryden had been brought up to believe that a gentleman did not make specific references to another man’s possessions. He had always suspected that Boyd Stuart might be ‘artistic’ – a word the DG used to describe a wide variety of individuals that he blackballed at his club and shunned socially. ‘No ice? No soda? Nothing at all in it?’ asked the DG again, but he marred the solicitude by descending into his seat as he said it.

Stuart shook his head and raised the heavy tumbler to his lips.

‘No,’ agreed the DG. ‘With a fine Scots name such as Boyd Stuart a man must not be seen watering a Highland malt.’

‘Not in front of a Sassenach,’ said Stuart.

‘What’s that? Oh yes, I see,’ said the DG raising a hand to his hair. Stuart realized that his father-in-law wore his hair long to hide the hearing aid. It was a surprising vanity in such a composed figure; Stuart noted it with interest. ‘Oxford, Stuart?’

Stuart looked at him for a moment before answering. A man who could commit to memory all the details of the Kaiseroda mine discoveries was not likely to forget where his son-in-law went to university. ‘Cambridge, sir. Trinity. I read mathematics.’

The DG closed his eyes. It was quite alarming the sort of people the department had recruited. They would be taking sociologists next. He was reminded of a joke he had heard at his club at lunch. A civil service candidate made an official complaint: he had missed promotion because at the civil service selection board he had admitted to being a socialist. The commissioner had apologized profoundly – or so the story went – he had thought the candidate had admitted to being a sociologist.

Boyd Stuart sipped his whisky. He did not strongly dislike his father-in-law – he was a decent enough old buffer in his way. If Ryden idolized his daughter so much that he could not see her faults, that was a very human failing.

‘Was it Jennifer’s idea?’ Stuart asked him. ‘Sending me to California, was that her idea?’

‘We wanted someone who knew something about the film trade,’ said Sir Sydney. ‘You came to mind immediately …’

‘You mean, had it been banking, backgammon or the Brigade of Guards,’ said Stuart, ‘I might have been trampled in the rush.’

The DG smiled to acknowledge the joke. ‘I remembered that you studied at the UCLA.’

‘But it was Jennifer’s idea?’

The DG hesitated rather than tell a deliberate untruth. ‘Jennifer feels it would be better … in the circumstances.’

Stuart smiled. He could recognize the machinations of his wife.

‘Little thought you’d find yourself in this business when you were at Trinity, eh Stuart?’ said the DG, determined to change the subject.

‘To tell you the absolute truth, sir, I was hoping to be a tennis professional.’

The DG almost spluttered. He had a terrible feeling that this operation was going to be his Waterloo. He would hate to retire with a notable failure on his hands. His wife had set her mind on his getting a peerage. She had even been exploring some titles; Lord and Lady Rockhampton was her current favourite. It was the town in Australia in which her father had been born. Sir Sydney had promised to find out if this title was already taken by someone. He rather hoped it was.

‘Yes, a fascinating game, tennis,’ said the DG. My God. And this was the man who would have to be told about the ‘Hitler Minutes’, the most dangerous secret of the war. This was the fellow who would be guarding Winston Churchill’s reputation.

‘The convoy of lorries left Merkers to drive to Frankfurt on 15 April 1945,’ said the DG, continuing his story. ‘We think three, or even four, lorries disappeared en route to Frankfurt. None of the valuables and the secret documents on them were ever recovered. The US army never officially admitted the loss of the lorries but unofficially they said three.’

‘And you think that this film company in California now have possession of the documents?’

The DG went to the window, looking at the cactus plants that were lined up to get the maximum benefit from the light. He picked one pot up to examine it closely. ‘I can assure you quite categorically, Stuart, that we are talking about forgeries. We are talking about mythology.’ He sat down, still holding the plant pot and touching the soil carefully.

‘It’s something that would embarrass the government?’

The DG sniffed. He wondered how long it would take to get his message across. ‘Yes, Stuart, it is.’ He put the cactus on the coffee table and picked up his drink.

‘Are we going to try to prevent this company from making a film about the Kaiseroda mine and its treasures?’ Stuart asked.

‘I don’t give a tinker’s curse about the film,’ said the DG. He patted his hair nervously. ‘But I want to know what documentation he has access to.’ He drank some of his whisky and glanced at the skeleton clock on the mantelpiece. He had another meeting after this and he was running short of time.

‘I’m not sure I know exactly what I’m looking for,’ Stuart said.

The DG stood up. It was Stuart’s cue to depart. In the half-light, his lined face underlit by the table lamp, and his huge, dark-suited figure silhouetted against the dying sun, Ryden looked satanic. ‘You’ll know it when you see it. We’ll keep in contact with you through our controllers in California. Good luck, my boy.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Stuart rose too.

‘You’ve seen Operations? Got all the procedures settled? You understand about the money – it’s being wired to the First Los Angeles Bank in Century City.’ The DG smiled. ‘Jennifer tells me you are giving her lunch tomorrow.’

‘There are some things she wants from the flat,’ explained Stuart.

‘Get to California as soon as possible, Stuart.’

‘There are just a few personal matters to settle,’ said Stuart. ‘Cancel my holiday arrangements and stop the milk.’

The DG looked at the clock again. ‘We have people in the department who will attend to the details, Stuart. We can’t have operations delayed because of a few bottles of milk.’

Chapter 4

‘We have people in the department who will attend to the details, Stuart,’ said Boyd Stuart in a comical imitation of the DG’s voice.

Kitty King, Boyd Stuart’s current girlfriend, giggled and held him closer. ‘So what did you say, darling?’

‘Not this gorgeous little detail they won’t, I told him. Some things must remain sacred.’ He patted her bottom.

‘You fool! What did you really say?’

‘I opened my mouth and poured his whisky into it. By the time I’d finished it, he’d disappeared through the floor, like the demon king in the pantomime.’ He kissed her again. ‘I’m going to Los Angeles.’

She wriggled loose from his grasp. ‘I know all about that,’ she said. ‘Who do you think typed your orders this afternoon?’ She was the secretary to the deputy chief of Operations (Region Three).

‘Will you be faithful to me while I’m away?’ said Stuart, only half in fun.

‘I’ll wash my hair every night, and go early to bed with Keats and hot cocoa.’

It was an unlikely promise. Kitty was a young busty blonde who attracted men, young and old, as surely as picnics bring wasps. She looked up, saw the look on Stuart’s face and gave him a kiss on the end of his nose. ‘I’m a child of the sexual revolution, Boyd darling. You must have read about it in Playboy?’

‘I never read Playboy; I just look at the pictures. Let’s go to bed.’

‘I’ve made you that roasted eggplant dip you like.’ Kitty King was a staunch vegetarian; worse, she was an evangelistic one. Amazing, someone at the office had remarked after seeing her in a bikini, to think that it’s all fruit and nuts. ‘You like that, don’t you.’

‘Let’s go to bed,’ said Stuart.

‘I must turn off the oven first, or my chickpea casserole will dry up completely.’

She backed away from him slowly. In spite of the disparity in their ages, she found him disconcertingly attractive. Until now her experiences with men had been entirely under her control but Boyd Stuart, in spite of all his anxious remarks, kept her in her place. She was surprised and annoyed to discover that she rather liked the new sort of relationship.

She looked at him and he smiled. He was a handsome man: the wide, lined face and the mouth that turned down at one side could suddenly be transformed by a devastating smile, and his laugh was infectious.

‘Your chickpea casserole!’ said Boyd Stuart. ‘We don’t want that to dry up, darling.’ He laughed a loud, booming laugh and she could not resist joining in. He put out his hand to her. She noticed that the back of it was covered with small scars and the thumb joint was twisted. She had asked him about it once but he had made some joke in reply. There was always a barrier; these men who had worked in the field were all the same in this respect. There was no way in which to get to know them completely. There was always a ‘no entry’ sign. Always some part of their brain was on guard and awake. And Kitty King was enough of a woman to want her man to be completely hers.

Boyd Stuart pushed open the door of the bedroom. It was the best room in the apartment in many ways: large and light, like so many of these rambling Victorian houses near the river on the unfashionable side of Victoria Station. That was why he had a writing desk in a window space of his bedroom, a corner which Kitty King liked to refer to grandiosely as ‘the study’.

‘Kitty!’ he called.

She came into the bedroom, leaned back against the door and smiled as the latch clicked.

‘Kitty. The lock of my desk is broken.’ He opened the inlaid walnut front of the antique bureau. The lock had been torn away from the wood and there were deep scratches in the polished surface. ‘You didn’t break into it, did you, Kitty?’

‘Of course not, Boyd. I’m not interested in your old love letters.’

‘It’s not funny, Kitty. I have classified material in here.’ Already he was sifting through the drawers and pigeonholes. He found the airline ticket, his passport, the letter to the bank, a couple of contact addresses and an old photo of a man named Bernard Lustig cut from a film trade magazine. There was also a newspaper cutting that he had been given by the department.

An all-expenses-paid trip to the movie capital of the world and the luxury of the exclusive Beverly Hills Hotel.

Veterans of the US Third Army and attached units who were concerned with the movement of material from the Kaiseroda salt mine, Merkers, Thuringia, Germany, in the final days of the Second World War are urgently sought by B. Lustig Productions Inc. The corporation is preparing a major motion picture about this historical episode. Veterans should send full details, care of this newspaper, to Box 2188. Photos and documents will be treated with utmost care and returned to the sender by registered post.

Kitty King watched him search through the items.

‘Nothing seems to have been taken,’ said Stuart. ‘Did you leave the door open when you went down to the dustbin?’

‘There was no one on the stairs,’ she said.

‘Waiting upstairs,’ said Stuart. ‘The same kid who did the burglaries in the other flats, I’ll bet.’

‘Are you going to phone the department?’

‘Nothing’s missing. And the front door has no signs of forced entry.’

‘The papers for your trip were there, weren’t they?’

He nodded.

‘Then you must have known about going last Sunday – when you put the tickets and things in there.’ There was a note of resentment in her voice.

‘I still wasn’t sure until I saw the DG late this afternoon.’

‘I wish you’d discussed it with me, Boyd.’ He looked up sharply. This was a new side of Kitty King. She had always described their relationship as no more than a temporary ‘shack-up’. She was a career woman, she had always maintained, with a good degree in political science from the London School of Economics, and the aim of becoming a Permanent Secretary, the top of the Administrative Class grades.

Stuart said, ‘If I phone the night duty officer, they’ll be all over us. You know what a fuss they’ll make. We’ll be up all night writing reports.’

‘You know best, sweetheart.’

‘A kid probably, looking for cash. When he found only this sort of thing he got out quickly, before you came back upstairs again.’

‘Does your wife still have her key to this place?’ Kitty asked.

‘She wouldn’t break open my desk.’

‘That’s not what I asked you.’

‘It was just some kid looking for cash. Nothing is missing. Stop worrying about it.’

‘She’d like to get you back, Boyd. You realize that, don’t you?’

Boyd put his arms round her tightly and kissed her for a long time.

Chapter 5

The Steins – father and son – lived in a large house in Hollywood. Cresta Ridge Drive provides a sudden and welcome relief from the exhaust fumes and noise of Franklin Avenue. It is one of a tangle of steep winding roads that lead into the Hollywood hills and end at Griffith Park and Lake Hollywood. Its elevation gives the house a view across the city, and on smoggy days when the pale tide of pollution engulfs the city, the sky here remains blue.

By Californian standards these houses are old, discreetly sited behind mature horse-chestnut trees now grown up to the roofs. In the thirties some of them, their gardens blazing with hibiscus and bougainvillea as they were this day, had been owned by film stars. Even today long-lost but strangely familiar faces can be glimpsed at the check-out of the Safeway or self-serving gasoline at Wilbur’s. But most of Stein’s neighbours were corporate lawyers, ambitious dentists and refugees from the nearby aerospace communities.

On this afternoon a rainstorm deluged the city. It was as if nature was having one last fling before the summer.

Outside the Steins’ house there was a white Imperial Le Baron two-door hardtop, one of the biggest cars in the Chrysler range. The paintwork shone in the hard, unnatural light that comes with a storm, and the heavy rain glazed the paintwork and the dark tinted windows. Sitting – head well down – in the back seat was a man. He appeared to be asleep but he was not even dozing.

The car’s owner – Miles MacIver – was inside the Stein home. Stein senior was not at home, and now his son Billy was regretting the courtesy he had shown in inviting MacIver into the house.

MacIver was a well-preserved man in his late fifties. His white hair emphasized the blue eyes with which he fixed Billy as he talked. He smiled lazily and used his large hands to emphasize his words as he strode restlessly about the lounge. Sometimes he stroked his white moustache, or ran a finger along an eyebrow. They were the gestures of a man to whom appearance was important: an actor, a womanizer or a salesman. MacIver possessed attributes of all three.

It was a large room, comfortably furnished with good quality furniture and expensive carpets. MacIver’s restless prowling was proprietorial. He went to the Bechstein grand piano, its top crowded with framed photographs. From the photos of friends and relatives, MacIver selected a picture of Charles Stein, the man he had come to visit, taken at the training battalion at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, sometime in the early 1940s. Stein was dressed in the uncomfortable, ill-fitting coveralls which, like the improvised vehicle behind him, were a part of America’s hurried preparations for war. Stein leaned close to one side of the frame, his arm seemingly raised as if to embrace it.

‘Your dad cut your Uncle Aram out of this picture, did he?’

‘I guess so,’ said Billy Stein.

MacIver put the photo back on the piano and went to look out of the window. Billy had not looked up from where he was reading Air Progress on the sofa. MacIver studied the view from the window with the same dispassionate interest with which he had examined the photo. It was a glimpse of his own reflection that made him smooth the floral-patterned silk tie and rebutton his tartan jacket.

‘Too bad about you and Natalie,’ he said without turning from the window. His voice was low and carefully modulated – the voice of a man self-conscious about the impression he made.

The warm air from the Pacific Ocean was heavy, saturated with water vapour. It built up towering storm clouds, dragging them up to the mountains, where they condensed, dumping solid sheets of tropical rain across the Los Angeles basin. Close to the house, a tall palm tree bent under a cruel gust of wind that tried to snap it in two. Suddenly released, the palm straightened with a force that made the fronds dance and whip the air loudly enough to make MacIver flinch and move from the window.

‘It lasted three months,’ said Billy. He guessed his father had discussed the failure of his marriage and was annoyed.

‘Three months is par for the course these days, Billy,’ said MacIver. He turned round, fixed him with his wide-open eyes and smiled. In spite of himself, Billy smiled too. He was twenty-four years old, slim, with lots of dark wavy hair and a deep tan that continued all the way to where a gold medallion dangled inside his unbuttoned shirt. Billy wore thin, wire-rimmed, yellow spectacles that he had bought during his skiing holiday in Aspen and had been wearing ever since. Now he took them off.

‘Dad told you, did he?’ He threw the anti-glare spectacles on to the coffee table.

‘Come on, Billy. I was here two years ago when you were building the new staircase to make a separate apartment for the two of you.’

‘I remember,’ said Billy, mollified by this explanation. ‘Natalie was not ready for marriage. She was into the feminist movement in a big way.’

‘Well, your dad’s a man’s man, Billy. We both know that.’ MacIver took out his cigarettes and lit one.

‘It was nothing to do with dad,’ Billy said. ‘She met this damned poet on a TV talk show she was on. They took off to live in British Columbia … She liked dad.’

MacIver smiled the same lazy smile and nodded. He did not believe that. ‘We both know your dad, Billy. He’s a wonderful guy. They broke the mould when they made Charlie Stein. When we were in the army he ran that damned battalion. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Corporal Stein ran that battalion. And I’ll tell you this …’ he gestured with his large hands so that the fraternity ring shone in the dull light, ‘I heard the colonel say the same thing at one of the battalion reunions. Charlie Stein ran the battalion. Everyone knew it. But he’s not always easy to get along with. Right, Billy?’

‘You were an officer, were you?’

‘Captain. Just for the last weeks of my service. But I finally made captain. Captain MacIver; I had it painted on the door of my office. The goddamned sergeant from the paint shop came over and wanted to argue about it. But I told him that I’d waited too goddamned long for that promotion to pass up the right to have it on my office door. I made the signwriter put it on there, just for that final month of my army service.’ He gestured again, using the cigarette so that it left smoke patterns in the still air.

Billy Stein nodded and pushed his magazine aside to give his full attention to the visitor. ‘Is it true you pitched for Babe Ruth?’

‘Your dad tell you, did he?’ MacIver smiled.

‘That was when you were at Harvard, was it, Mr MacIver?’ There was something in Billy Stein’s voice that warned the visitor against answering. He hesitated. The only sound was the rain; it hammered on the windows and rushed along the gutterings and gurgled in the rainpipes. Billy stared at him but MacIver was giving all his attention to his cigarette.

Billy waited a long time, then he said, ‘You were never at Harvard, Mr MacIver; I checked it. And I checked your credit rating too. You don’t own any house in Palm Springs, nor that apartment you talked about. You’re a phoney, Mr MacIver.’ Billy Stein’s voice was quiet and matter of fact, as if they were discussing some person who was not present. ‘Even that car outside is not yours – the payments are made in the name of your ex-wife.’

‘The money comes from me,’ snapped MacIver, relieved to find at least one accusation that he could refute. Then he recovered himself and reassumed the easy, relaxed smile. ‘Seems like you out-guessed me there, Billy.’ Effortlessly he retrenched and tried to salvage some measure of advantage from the confrontation. The only sign of his unease was the way in which he was now twisting the end of his moustache instead of stroking it.

‘I guessed you were a phoney,’ said Billy Stein. There was no satisfaction in his voice. ‘I didn’t run any check on your credit rating; I just guessed you were a phoney.’ He was angry with himself for not mentioning the money that MacIver had had from his father. He had come across his father’s cheque book in the bureau and found the list of six entries on the memo pages at the back. More than six thousand dollars had been paid to MacIver between 10 December 1978 and 4 April 1979, and every cheque was made out to cash payment. It was that that had encouraged Billy’s suspicion.

‘I ran into a tough period last autumn; suppliers needed fast repayment and I couldn’t meet the deadlines.’

‘The diamonds that you bought here in town and sent to your contact man in Seoul?’ said Billy scornfully. ‘Was it five thousand per cent on every dollar?’

‘You’ve got a good memory, Billy.’ He smoothed his tie. ‘You’d be a tough guy to do business with. I wish I had a partner like you. I listen to these hard-luck stories from guys who owe me money and I melt.’

‘I bet,’ said Billy. Fierce gusts pounded the windows and made the rain in the gutters slop over and stream down the glass. There was a crackle of static like brittle paper being crushed, and a faint flicker of lightning lit the room. The sound silenced the two men.

Billy Stein stared at MacIver. There was no malevolence in his eyes, no violence nor desire for argument. But there was no compassion there either. His private income and affluent life-style had made Billy Stein intolerant of the compromises to which less fortunate men were forced. The exaggerations of the old, the half-truths of the poor and the misdemeanours of the desperate found no mitigation in Billy Stein’s judgement. And so now Miles knew no way to counter the young man’s calm judicial gaze.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Billy … the money I owe your father. I’m going to pay every penny of it back to him. And I mean within the next six weeks or so. That’s what I wanted to see him about.’

‘What happens in six weeks?’

Miles MacIver had always been a careful man, keeping a careful separation between the vague confident announcements of present or future prosperity – which were invariably a part of his demeanour – and the more stringent financial and commercial realities. But, faced with Billy Stein’s calm, patronizing inquiry, MacIver was persuaded to tell him the truth. It was a decision that was to change the lives of many people, and end the lives of several.

‘I’ll tell you what happens in six weeks, Billy,’ said MacIver, hitching his trousers at the knees and seating himself on the armchair facing the young man. ‘I get the money for the movie rights of my war memoirs. That’s what happens in six weeks.’ He smiled and reached across to the big china ashtray marked Café de la Paix – Billy’s father had brought it back from Paris in 1945. He dragged the ashtray close to his hand and flicked into it a long section of ash.

‘Movie rights?’ said Billy Stein, and MacIver was gratified to have provoked him at last into a reaction. ‘Your war memoirs?’

‘Twenty-five thousand dollars,’ said MacIver. He flicked his cigarette again, even though there was no ash on it. ‘They have got a professional writer working on my story right now.’

‘What did you do in the war?’ said Billy. ‘What did you do that they’ll make it into a movie?’

‘I was a military cop,’ said MacIver proudly. ‘I was with Georgie Patton’s Third Army when they opened up this Kraut salt mine and found the Nazi gold reserves there. Billions of dollars in gold, as well as archives, diaries, town records and paintings … You’d never believe the stuff that was there.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I was assigned to MFA & A, G-5 Section – the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives branch of the Government Affairs Group – we guarded it while it was classified into Category A for the bullion and rare coins and Category B for the gold and silver dishes, jewellery, ornaments and stuff. I wish you could have seen it, Billy.’

‘Just you guarding it?’

MacIver laughed. ‘There were five infantry platoons guarding the lorries that moved it to Frankfurt. There were two machine-gun platoons as back-up, and Piper Cub airplanes in radio contact with the escort column. No, not just me, Billy.’ MacIver scratched his chin. ‘Your dad never tell you about all that? And about the trucks that never got to the other end?’

‘What are you getting at, Mr MacIver?’

MacIver raised a flattened hand. ‘Now, don’t get me wrong, Billy. No one’s saying your dad had anything to do with the hijack.’

‘One of dad’s relatives in Europe died during the war. He left dad some land and stuff over there; that’s how dad made his money.’

‘Sure it is, Billy. No one’s saying any different.’

‘I don’t go much for all that war stuff,’ said Billy.

‘Well, this guy Bernie Lustig, with the office on Melrose … he goes for it.’

‘A movie?’

MacIver reached into his tartan jacket and produced an envelope. From it he took a rectangle of cheap newsprint. It was the client’s proof of a quarter-page advert in a film trade magazine. ‘What is the final secret of the Kaiseroda mine?’ said the headline. He passed the flimsy paper to Billy Stein. ‘That will be in the trade magazines next month. Meanwhile Bernie is talking up a storm. He knows everyone: the big movie stars, the directors, the agents, the writers, everyone.’

‘The movie business kind of interests me,’ admitted Billy.

MacIver was pleased. ‘You want to meet Bernie?’

‘Could you fix that for me?’

‘No problem,’ said MacIver, taking the advert back and replacing it in his pocket. ‘And I get a piece of the action too. Two per cent of the producer’s profit; that could be a bundle, Billy.’

‘I couldn’t handle the technical stuff,’ said Billy. ‘I’m no good with a camera, and I can’t write worth a damn, but I’d make myself useful on the production side.’ He reached for his anti-glare spectacles and toyed with them. ‘If he’ll have me, that is.’

MacIver beamed. ‘If he’ll have you! … The son of my best friend! Jesusss! He’ll have you in that production office, Billy, or I’ll pull out and take my story somewhere else.’

‘Gee, thanks, Mr MacIver.’

‘I call you Billy; you call me Miles. OK?’ He dug his hands deep into his trouser pockets and gave that slow smile that was infectious.

‘OK, Miles.’ Billy snapped his spectacles on.

‘Rain’s stopping,’ said MacIver. ‘There are a few calls I have to make …’ MacIver had never lost his sense of timing. ‘I must go. Nice talking to you, Billy. Give my respects to your dad. Tell him he’ll be hearing from me real soon. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to Bernie and have him call you and fix a lunch. OK?’

‘Thanks, Mr MacIver.’

‘Miles.’ He dumped his cigarettes into the ashtray.

‘Thanks, Miles.’

‘Forget it, kid.’

When Miles MacIver got into the driver’s seat of the Chrysler Imperial parked outside the Stein home, he sighed with relief. The man in the back seat did not move. ‘Did you fix it?’

‘Stein wasn’t there. I spoke with his son. He knows nothing.’

‘You didn’t mention the Kaiseroda mine business to the son, I hope?’

MacIver laughed and started the engine. ‘I’m not that kind of fool, Mr Kleiber. You said don’t mention it to anyone except the old man. I know how to keep my mouth shut.’

The man in the back seat grunted as if unconvinced.

Billy Stein was elated. After MacIver had departed he made a phone call and cancelled a date to go to a party in Malibu with a girl he had recently met at Pirate’s Cove, the nude bathing section of the state beach at Point Dume. She had an all-over golden tan, a new Honda motorcycle and a father who had made a fortune speculating in cocoa futures. It was a measure of Billy Stein’s excitement at the prospect of a job in the movie industry that he chose to sit alone and think about it rather than be with this girl.

At first Billy Stein spent some time searching through old movie magazines in case he could find a reference to Bernie Lustig or, better still, a photo of him. His search was unrewarded. At 7.30 the housekeeper, who had looked after the two men since Billy Stein’s mother died some five years before, brought him a supper tray. A tall, thin woman, she had lost her nursing licence in some eastern state hospital for selling whisky to the patients. Perhaps this ending to her nursing career had changed her personality, for she was taciturn, devoid of curiosity and devoid too of that warm, maternal manner so often associated with nursing. She worked hard for the Steins but she never attempted to replace that other woman who had once closed these same curtains, plumped up the cushions and switched on the table lamps. She hurriedly picked up the petals that had fallen from the roses, crushed them tightly in her hand and then dropped them into a large ashtray upon MacIver’s cigarette butt. She sniffed; she hated cigarettes. She picked up the ashtray, holding it at a distance as a nurse holds a bedpan.

‘Anything else, Mr Billy?’ Her almost colourless hair was drawn tightly back, and fixed into position with brass-coloured hair clips.

Billy looked at the supper tray she had put before him on the coffee table. ‘You get along, Mrs Svenson. You’ll miss the beginning of “Celebrity Sweepstakes”.’

She looked at the clock and back to Billy Stein, not quite sure whether this concern was genuine or sarcastic. She never admitted her obsession for the TV game shows but she had planned to be upstairs in her self-contained apartment by then.

‘If Mr Stein wants anything to eat when he gets home, there is some cold chicken wrapped in foil on the top shelf of the refrigerator.’

‘Yes, OK. Good night, Mrs Svenson.’

She sniffed again and moved the framed photo of Charles Stein which MacIver had put back slightly out of position amongst the photos crowding the piano top. ‘Good night, Billy.’

Billy munched his way through the bowl of beef chilli and beans, and drank his beer. Then he went to the bookcase and ran a fingertip along the video cassettes to find an old movie that he had taped. He selected Psycho and sat back to watch how Hitchcock had set up his shots and assembled them into a whole. He had done this with an earlier Hitchcock film for a college course on film appreciation.

The time passed quickly, and when the taped film ended Billy was even more excited at the prospect of becoming a part of the entertainment world. He found show-biz stylish and hard-edged: stylish and hard-edged being compliments that were at that time being rather overworked by Billy Stein’s friends and contemporaries. He rewound the tape and settled back to see Psycho once more.

Charles Stein, Billy’s father, usually spent Wednesday evenings at a club out in the east valley. They still called it the Roscoe Sports and Bridge Club, even though some smart, real-estate man had got Roscoe renamed Sun Valley, and few of the members played anything but poker.

Stein’s three regular cronies were there, including Jim Sampson, an elderly lawyer who had served with Stein in the army. They ate the Wednesday night special together – corned beef hash with onion rings – shared a few bottles of California Gewürztraminer and some opinions of the government, then retired to the bar to watch the eleven o’clock news followed by the sports round-up. It was always the same; Charles Stein was a man of regular habits. A little after midnight, Jim Sampson dropped him off at the door – Stein disliked driving – and was invited in for a nightcap. It was a ritual that both men knew, a way of saying thank you for the ride. Jim Sampson never came in.

‘Thought you had a heavy date tonight, Billy?’ Charles Stein weighed nearly 300 pounds. The real crocodile-leather belt that bit into his girth and bundled up his expensive English wool suit and his pure cotton shirt was supplied to special order by Sunny Jim’s Big Men’s Wear. Stein’s sparse white hair was ruffled, so that the light behind him made an untidy halo round his pink head as he lowered himself carefully into his favourite armchair.

Billy, who never discussed his girlfriends with his father, said, ‘Stayed home. Your friend MacIver dropped in. He thinks he can get me a job in movies.’

‘Get you a job in movies?’ said his father. ‘Get you a job in movies? Miles MacIver?’ He searched in his pocket to find his cigars, and put one in his mouth and lit it.

‘They’re making a movie of his war memoirs. Some story! Finding the Nazi gold. Could be a great movie, dad.’

‘Hold the phone,’ said his father wearily. He was sitting on the edge of the armchair now, leaning well forward, his head bent very low as he prepared to light his cigar. ‘MacIver was here?’ He said it to the carpet.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Billy Stein.

‘When was MacIver here?’

‘You said never interrupt your poker game.’

‘When?’ He struck a match and lit his cigar.

‘Five o’clock, maybe six o’clock.’

‘You watching TV tonight?’

‘It’s just quiz shows and crap. I’ve been running video.’

‘MacIver is dead.’ Charles Stein drew on the cigar and blew smoke down at the carpet.

‘Dead?’

‘It was on Channel Two, the news. Some kid blew off the top of his head with a sawed-off shotgun. Left the weapon there. It happened in one of those little bars on Western Avenue near Beverly Boulevard. TV news got a crew there real quick … cars, flashing lights, a deputy chief waving the murder weapon at the camera.’

‘A street gang, was it?’

‘Who then threw away a two-hundred-dollar shotgun, all carefully sawed off so it fits under your jacket?’

‘Then who?’

Charles Stein blew smoke. ‘Who knows?’ he said angrily, although his anger was not directed at anyone in particular. ‘MacIver the Mouth, they called him. Owes money all over town. Could be some creditor blew him away.’ He drew on the cigar again. The smoke tasted sour.

‘Well, he sold his war memoirs. He showed me the advertisement. Some movie producer he met. He’s selling him a story about Nazi gold in Germany in the war.’

Charles Stein grunted. ‘So that’s it, eh? I wondered why that bastard had been going around talking to all the guys from the outfit. Sure, I saw a lot of him in the army but he wasn’t even with the battalion. He was with some lousy military police detail.’

‘He’s been getting the story from you?’

‘From me he got nothing. We were under the direct order of General Patton at Third Army HQ for that job, and we’re still not released from the secrecy order.’ He ran his fingers back through his wispy hair and held his hand on the top of his head for a moment, lost in thought. ‘MacIver has been writing all this stuff down, you say, and passing it to some movie guy?’

‘Bernie Lustig. MacIver was going to introduce me to him,’ said Billy. ‘Poor guy. Was it a stick-up?’

‘He won’t be doing much in the line of introductions, Billy. By now he’s in the morgue with a label on his toe. Lustig – where’s he have his office?’

‘Melrose – he hasn’t made it to Beverly Hills or even to Sunset. That’s what made me think it was true … If MacIver had been inventing this guy, he would have chosen somewhere flashier than Melrose.’

‘Go to the top of the class, Billy.’ He eased off his white leather shoes and kicked them carelessly under the table.

‘What was he like, this MacIver guy?’ MacIver had now achieved a posthumous interest, not to say glamour. ‘What was he really like, dad?’

‘He was a liar and a cheat. He sponged on his friends to buy drinks for his enemies … MacIver was desperate to make people like him. He’d do anything to win them over …’ Stein was about to add that MacIver’s promise to get Billy a job in the movie industry was a good example of this desperate need, but he decided not to disappoint his son until more facts were available. He smoked his cigar and then studied the ash on it.

‘Did you know him in New York, before you went into the army?’

‘He was from Chicago. He was on the force there, working the South Side – a tough neighbourhood. He leaned heavily on the “golden-hearted cop” bit. He joined the army after Pearl Harbor and gave them all that baloney about being at Harvard. There was no time to check on it, I suppose …’

‘It was baloney. He as good as admitted it.’

‘They wouldn’t let MacIver into Harvard to haul the ashes. Sure it was baloney, but it got him a commission in the military police. And he used that to pull every trick in the book. He was always asking for use of one of our trucks. A packing case delivered here; a small parcel collected here. He got together with the transport section and the rumours said they even sold one of our two-and-a-half-tonners to a Belgian civilian and went on leave in Paris to spend the proceeds.’ Suddenly Stein felt sad and very tired. He wiped a hand across his face, as a swimmer might after emerging from the water.

‘What are you going to do now, dad?’

‘I lost five hundred and thirty bucks tonight, Billy, and I’ve put away more white wine than is good for my digestion …’ He coughed, and looked for his ashtray without finding it. In spite of all his reservations about MacIver, he was shocked by the news of his murder. MacIver was a con-man, always ready with glib promises and the unconvincing excuses that inevitably followed them. And yet there were good memories too, for MacIver was capable of flamboyant generosity and subtle kindness, and anyway, thought Charles Stein, they had shared a lifetime together. It was enough to make him sad, no matter what kind of bastard MacIver had been.

‘You going to find this Bernie Lustig character?’ said Billy.

‘Is that the name of the movie producer?’

‘I told you, dad. On Melrose.’

‘I guess so.’

‘You don’t think this Lustig cat had anything to do with the killing, do you?’

‘I’m going to bed now, Billy.’ Again he looked for the ashtray. It was always on the table next to the flower vase.

‘If he owed MacIver twenty-five thousand dollars …’

‘We’ll talk about it in the morning, Billy. Where’s my ashtray?’

‘I’ll catch the TV news,’ said Billy. ‘Think they’ll still be running the clip?’

‘This is a rough town, Billy. One killing don’t make news for long.’ He reached across the table and stubbed his cigar into the remains of Billy’s beans.

Chapter 6

The man behind the desk could have been mistaken for an oriental, especially when he smiled politely. His face was pale and even the sunshine of southern California made his skin go no darker than antique ivory. His hair was jet black and brushed tight against his domed skull. ‘Max Breslow,’ he said, offering a hand which Charles Stein shook energetically.

‘I was expecting to meet Mr Bernie Lustig,’ said Stein. He had selected one of his most expensive cream-coloured linen suits but already it was rumpled, and the knot of his white silk tie had twisted under his collar. He lowered his massive body into the black leather Charles Eames armchair, which creaked under his weight.

‘Mr Lustig is in Europe,’ said Max Breslow. ‘There is work to do there for our next production.’

‘The final secret of the Kaiseroda mine?’ said Stein, waving his large hand in the air and displaying a heavy gold Rolex watch and diamond rings on hands that were regularly manicured. When Breslow did not react to this question, Stein said, ‘Mr Miles MacIver is an old friend of mine. He promised to get my son a job with your film.’ Breslow nodded. Stein corrected himself. ‘MacIver was a close friend of mine.’

‘You were in the army with him?’ He had a faint German accent.

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Stein. He stroked his sideburns. They were long and bushy, curling over his ears.

Breslow picked up a stainless-steel letter-opener, toyed with it for a moment and looked at Stein. ‘It was a sad business with Mr MacIver,’ said Breslow. He said it with the same sort of clinical indifference with which an airline clerk comforts a passenger who has lost his baggage.

Stein remembered MacIver with a sudden disconcerting pang of grief. He recalled the night in 1945 when MacIver had crawled into the wreckage of a German Weinstube. They were in some small town on the other side of Mainz. The artillery had long since pounded it flat, the tanks had bypassed its difficult obstacles, the infantry had forgotten it existed, the engineers had threaded their tapes all through the streets, and left ‘DANGER BOOBY TRAPS’ signs in the rubble. Stein remembered how MacIver had climbed down from their two-and-a-half-ton winch truck saying that goddamned engineers always put those signs on the booze joints so they could come back and plunder it in their own sweet time. Stein had held his breath while MacIver climbed over the rubble and across the wrecked front parlour of the wine bar. For a moment he had been out of sight but soon he reappeared, flush-faced and grinning in triumph, fingers cut on broken glass and sleeve dark and wet with spilled red wine that shone like fresh blood. He was struggling under the weight of a whole case of German champagne.

MacIver had eased a cork and it had hit the roof of the cab with a noise like a gunshot. They poured it into mess tins and drank the fiercely bubbling golden champagne without talking. When they had finished it, MacIver tossed the empty bottle out into the dark night. ‘It’s a long time between drinks, pal.’

‘For an officer, and a flatfoot, you’re a scorer,’ said Stein.

It was a hell of a thing for an officer to do. A long time between drinks; he could never hear that said without thinking of MacIver.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Breslow politely. His head was cocked as if listening to some faint sound. Stein realized that he’d spoken out loud.

‘It’s a long time between drinks,’ said Stein. ‘It’s an American saying. Or at least it used to be when I was young.’

‘I see,’ said Breslow, noting this interesting fact. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘OK,’ said Stein. ‘Rum and Coke if you’ve got it.’

Breslow rolled his swivel chair back towards the wall so that he could open the small refrigerator concealed in his walnut desk.

‘It’s darned hot in here,’ said Stein. ‘Is the air-conditioner working?’ His weight made him suffer in the humidity and now his hand-stitched suit showed small dark patches of sweat.

Breslow set up paper napkins and glasses on his desk top and put ice into one of them before adding the rum and Coke. He did it fastidiously, using metal tongs, one cube at a time. For himself he poured a small measure of cognac, without ice.

Stein had been nursing a floppy straw hat. As he eased himself slowly from the low armchair to get his drink from the desk, he tossed his hat on to a side table where film trade magazines had been arranged in fan patterns.

He didn’t get his drink immediately; going to the window he looked out. Melrose came close to the freeway here in one of the older districts of the city. This office was an apartment in a two-storey block repainted bright pink. Across the street brick apartment buildings and dilapidated little offices were defaced with obscene Spanish graffiti and speared with drunken TV antennae, and the whole thing was birdcaged with overhead wires. The freeway traffic was moving very slowly so that the Hollywood hills beyond wobbled in a grey veil of diesel fumes. Stein pulled his sunglasses from his face and pushed them into the top pocket of his jacket. He blinked in the bright light and dabbed his face with a silk handkerchief. ‘Damned hot.’ The sun was blood red and its light came through the slats of the venetian blind to make a pattern across Stein’s wrinkled face. It was always like this the day after a bad storm.

‘I’ve spoken to the janitor,’ explained Breslow. ‘The repairmen are working on the air-conditioning. Yesterday’s heavy rain got into the mechanism.’

‘MacIver owed me money,’ said Stein, ‘a lot of money. He gave me a part of his interest in your movie as surety.’

‘I hope you took the precaution of having him put that in writing,’ said Breslow.

‘Right,’ said Stein. He did not enlarge upon it; it was best to keep such untruths as brief as possible.

‘We are not even in the pre-production stage at present,’ said Breslow. He put the cognac to his mouth but it did no more than moisten his lips. ‘It is possible still that we will decide not to make the film. Unless we make it, there will be no money.’

‘All MacIver’s war experiences, was it?’

‘Together with some anecdotes he gathered from his comrades, some guesses about what went on in high places, and some creative writing concerning MacIver’s intrepid contribution to the Allied victory.’

Stein took his drink from the desk and tasted it before adding another measure of Coke. Then he looked at Breslow who was still enjoying his own description of MacIver’s manuscript.

‘The movie-going public is always interested in such stories,’ explained Breslow. ‘A little gang of rear-echelon soldiers stealing everything they could lay their hands on.’ His eyes were still on Stein and he smiled again. ‘Crooks in uniform: it’s an amusing formula.’

Stein’s hands went out with a speed that was surprising in such an overweight physique. His huge fingers and thumb grasped Breslow’s shirt collar with enough force to rip the button loose. He shook Breslow very gently to mark his words. ‘Don’t ever act disrespectful to me or to MacIver or any of our friends, Breslow. We don’t let strangers discuss what we did back in 1945. We left a lot of good buddies out there in the sand and the shit and the offal. I buried my kid brother on the battlefield. We stumbled on a little good fortune … that’s the way it goes. The spoils of war … we were entitled. You just remember that from now on.’ He released his grip and let Breslow straighten up and adjust his collar and tie.

‘I’m sorry to have offended you,’ said Breslow, with no trace of regret. ‘I understood you to say that you were not one of Mr MacIver’s comrades.’

Stein realized that he had been deliberately provoked into revealing more than he’d intended. ‘The spoils of war,’ said Stein. ‘That’s what it was.’

‘No offence intended,’ said Breslow, with a humourless smile. ‘You can call it anything you want; it’s quite all right with me.’

Disarrayed by his exertions, Stein hitched up his trousers and tucked in his shirt with a practised gesture. ‘Were you in the war, Mr Breslow?’

‘I was too young,’ said Breslow regretfully. ‘I spent the war years in Canada working for my father.’

‘Breslow,’ said Stein. ‘That name comes from Breslau, the German town, right? Were your folks German?’

‘What do I know about towns in Germany!’ said Breslow in a sudden burst of irritation. ‘I am a US citizen. I live here in California. I pay my taxes and stand at attention when they play the national anthem … What do I have to do? Change my name to Washington DC?’

‘That’s a good joke,’ said Stein, as if admiring an expensive watch. He took the Coca-Cola can and shook the last few drops into his glass before draining it.

‘You’ll get your money, Mr Stein,’ said Breslow. ‘Providing of course that you furnish the necessary agreement signed by Mr MacIver. We’ll not wait for probate if that’s what’s worrying you.’ Breslow sipped a little of his cognac. ‘There is a lot of money available to buy the documents Mr MacIver spoke of.’

‘What documents?’

‘Secret documents … about Hitler. Surely you’ve heard of them.’

‘I might have heard rumours,’ admitted Stein.

‘A great deal of money,’ said Breslow.

‘And the job for my son?’

Breslow looked again at the biographical résumé that Stein had put on his desk. ‘Well, he has no experience of movie making, and of course no labour-union membership.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Still, it might be possible to make a place for him. Especially if he’s inherited his father’s forcefulness.’

Breslow tucked the résumé under the leather corner of his large blotting pad. Then he took the Coke tin and the glasses, wiped away a few spilled drops and threw the paper napkins into the waste basket. It was a fussy gesture and Stein watched him with contempt. ‘I’ll get my secretary to fix an appointment for me to meet your son,’ said Breslow. He smiled and moved towards the door. Stein did not move. ‘Unless you have any questions …’ said Breslow to spur his departure.

‘One question, Mr Breslow,’ said Stein. ‘Why are you carrying a gun?’

‘Me?’

‘Don’t kid around with me, Breslow. It’s in a holster in your belt. I saw it just now.’

‘Oh, the tiny pistol.’

‘Yeah, the tiny pistol. What’s a nice respectable movie producer like you doing with a Saturday night special in your waistband?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Breslow, ‘I have to carry a lot of cash.’

‘I knew there had to be a reason,’ said Stein. He reached for the broad-brimmed, floppy hat and plonked it on his head.

Max Breslow watched the street through the slatted blinds. He saw Charles Stein go to the Buick Riviera with the vinyl top which he’d left in the empty dirt lot behind the liquor store, and waited until he saw the car bump its way over the pavement edge and join the east-bound traffic. Only then did Breslow unlock and go through a door into the adjoining room.

It was as bleak and impersonal as its neighbour: plastic woven to look like carpet, plastic coloured to look like metal, and plastic veneered with wafers of richly coloured woods.

Sitting at a side table, in front of a small sophisticated cassette recorder and a pair of discarded headphones, a broad-shouldered man was waiting patiently. Willi Kleiber had close-cropped hair and a blunt moustache of the sort that British army officers used to favour, but no one would have mistaken Willi Kleiber for such. He had the wide head and high cheekbones that are so often the characteristics of Germanic people from the far side of the River Vistula. His nose was large, like the cutting edge of a broken hatchet, and his body was heavy and muscular. He had taken off his khaki golfing jacket and loosened his tie. His legs were stretched out so that his shiny, black high boots could be seen below his trousers.

‘What do you think, Willi?’ Max Breslow asked him.

Willi Kleiber pulled a face. ‘You did all right, Max,’ he said grudgingly.

‘What will happen next?’

Kleiber held the headphones together and wound the wires round them carefully as he considered his reply. ‘We’ve got rid of Lustig. You’ve let Stein know we can pay a lot of money for the documents, and soon he will discover that he’s lost a great deal of money. Then he will come back to us.’

‘How did you get Stein’s money?’

‘Not me; the Trust. When you have the active assistance of some of the most successful bankers in Germany, such swindles are easy to arrange.’

‘What did you mean … We’ve got rid of Lustig? You said you’d given him money for a vacation in Europe.’

Kleiber grinned. ‘You leave that side of things to me, Max. Don’t give Bernard Lustig another thought; the less you know about him, the better.’ He zipped up the front of his jacket to make a sudden noise.

‘I wish I’d never got into this,’ said Breslow. He could not muster the enthusiasm and energy that Kleiber brought to these crazy adventures, and wished he’d been able to stay out of this madness. Listening to Kleiber talking of such antics over coffee and cognac was amusing; but now he was involved, and he was frightened.

‘The Trust needed you,’ said Kleiber.

Breslow looked at him and nodded. Kleiber was simplistic, if not to say simple. Orders were orders and obeying them was an honoured role. Breslow had been the same when he was a young man. All that wonderful idealism, and the sense of purpose that is known only to the young, all squandered to the whims of Hitler and his fellow gangsters. What a tragic waste.

‘You were a Nazi, Max. Don’t ever forget it. And don’t count on anyone else forgetting it.’

‘That was a lifetime ago, Willi,’ said Breslow wearily.

Kleiber closed the lid of the tape recorder with a sound that was intentionally loud. ‘Remember last year, when the old woman recognized you in that coffee shop in Boston? She shouted “SS murderer” at you, didn’t she? She won’t forget, Max. You need the Trust. They’re not Nazis, either, Max, but they will help.’

‘That old woman in the coffee shop was mad,’ said Breslow.

‘You left your breakfast and rushed into the street, Max. You told me so yourself.’

Billy Stein was waiting in the shiny new Buick Riviera parked alongside the liquor store. He leaned across the passenger seat to open the door for his father, and had the engine started by the time his father climbed into the car. The warning buzzer sounded. ‘Can’t you do something about that buzzer? I hate these darned seat belts.’ Finally Stein senior got the safety belt round his enormous frame. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. He moved a canvas overnight bag on to the back seat.

The car bumped out of the car park and into the traffic. ‘Not exactly like Metro, is it? I guess he works out of that apartment to evade the city business tax.’ They drove past the liquor store with rusty bars on the windows and a new wire cage on the doors. ‘Melrose sounds like a good enough address for a movie company,’ said Billy, ‘until you see which end of it they’re located.’

‘Right,’ said his father. Charles Stein opened the glove compartment and found some cigars. He ripped the metal cap off one of them, and used the dashboard lighter to get it going. He puffed on it energetically before he spoke. ‘Seems like our Mr Bernie Lustig is not around any more.’ He worked his lips to get a fragment of tobacco leaf out of his mouth. ‘Seems like he’s gone to Europe for an unspecified duration.’

‘So who did you talk with?’

‘A gent who calls himself Max Breslow.’

‘German?’

‘Canadian,’ said Stein sarcastically. ‘It must be one of those Red Indian names.’

‘You don’t like him?’ said Billy.

‘He’s a Nazi, Billy. I can always recognize them.’

Billy nodded. He was used to such pronouncements about anyone with a German name who was not immediately identifiable as Jewish. ‘He says he was too young to be in the war.’

‘But you don’t believe him?’

‘He’s got very black hair,’ said Stein. ‘And when a guy’s hair suddenly goes black overnight, he’s old.’

Billy Stein laughed and his father chuckled too.

‘And he has a gun,’ added Charles Stein, realizing that his verdict on Max Breslow was not carrying much weight with his son.

‘Half the people I know in this town have a gun,’ said Billy. He shrugged. ‘At home we’ve got that damned great souvenir gun you brought home from the war.’

‘But I don’t go around with it stuck in my waistband,’ said Stein. Billy smiled. It would be hard to imagine such a large piece of ordnance anywhere but on the wall of Charles Stein’s study.

‘So you want to go straight to the airport?’

‘With just one stop at Jim Sampson’s law office. La Cienega, in the big Savings and Loan building – he’s expecting me. Then take me to the airport. We’ll go south to La Tijera. It’s a fast way. Right?’

If Billy had hoped that the meeting with his old army friend Jim Sampson would get his father into a better state of mind, his hopes were dashed by the sight of Charles Stein emerging from the Savings and Loan building on La Cienega. His father slumped into the passenger seat. ‘The airport.’ He searched in the glove compartment and found an airline timetable. ‘I knew I would have to go to Switzerland, Billy. I’m going to have to go right now.’

‘I don’t like to see you worried, dad. Is there anything I can do?’

‘There’s a direct flight … I don’t like what’s going on here, Billy. Colonel Pitman is going to have to hear about it, and I never like putting this kind of thing in writing.’ He pulled his nose. ‘And it’s risky talking on the phone these days.’

‘It will be good for you,’ said Billy. ‘A change of scene.’

While Billy picked his way through the heavy airport traffic his father made sure that he had enough cash and his credit cards for the trip. At last his son swung the car into the parking lot with an arrogant skill he had developed as a car park attendant during his college days.

‘Looking forward to seeing the colonel again? You like him, I know. Stay through the weekend, dad. Have a good time.’

‘I always get a real kick out of seeing him,’ said Stein. ‘He’s an old man. He’s running out of time, you know. A great man, Billy. Make no mistake about that.’ He puffed on the cigar.

Billy switched off the engine and looked at his watch to see how long there was before his father’s plane departed. ‘Say, dad, if this colonel of yours was such a gung-ho hero, how come that when he got out of West Point they didn’t send him to the Rangers, or the Airborne, or the Green Berets or something?’ He flinched as he recognized a sudden anger in his father’s face. But his attempt to modify this implied criticism only made matters worse. ‘What I mean is, dad, why the heck did the colonel end up running some little quartermaster trucking battalion?’

Charles Stein took his son’s arm in a grip that caused him pain. ‘Don’t ever let me hear you say anything like that again. Not ever. Do you understand?’ Stein spoke in a soft and carefully measured voice. ‘Do you think you’d have had your fancy Princeton education and your T-bird and your Cessna and your yacht, if it wasn’t for the colonel and what we risked our necks for back in 1945?’

‘Jesus, dad. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.’

In a moment the anger had passed. ‘It’s time I told you all about it, Billy. I’m not getting any younger and the colonel has been a lot on my mind lately. Last night I dreamed about the night we stole those trucks.’ And Stein told his son about the fateful night when he went to the colonel suggesting the ways in which the paperwork could be fixed so that the trucks carrying the bullion and treasures would be documented as if they were taking rations to an artillery company right near the Swiss border. Billy listened with amazement.

‘Was it your idea, dad? You never told me that.’

‘I never told you half of it, Billy. Maybe I should have told you a long time ago. Yes, Colonel Pitman was in town when our secret orders arrived from Third Army. Pitman was a major then, I was the orderly room corporal. A motorcycle messenger brought an envelope marked with the rubber stamp of Army HQ and plastered with SECRET marks. The guy on the bike wanted his receipt signed by Pitman. I couldn’t tell him that Pitman was in town with a bottle of scotch I’d got for him and planning to screw a young fraulein he’d met that morning in the mayor’s office. It was wartime. The battalion was on alert and ready to move. For being off base and fraternizing with a German civilian he would have been court-martialled.’

‘You forged his signature?’

‘That’s what orderly room corporals are for.’

‘You saved his career, dad.’

‘And he saved my ass a few times too, Billy. We made a good team.’

‘And what were those secret orders?’

Stein laughed. ‘Secret orders from Army HQ. The war in Europe was in its final few hours. I was convinced it contained orders shipping us stateside and I wanted to be the first one to know.’ He leaned closer to his son. ‘I figured I might be able to get a couple of bets on before the official announcement was made.’ He laughed again. ‘So I was mighty disappointed when I read we were to supply transport for an escort detail. Just a milk run from Merkers to Frankfurt, I remember thinking at the time. Little did I realize that I was holding in my hand a piece of paper that would net me several million dollars.’

The two men sat silent in the car for several minutes, then Stein said, ‘Just look at the time. We’d better get moving or I’ll miss the flight to Geneva and find myself changing planes in Paris or London or something.’

‘Take care of yourself, dad.’

‘You bet your ass I will, Billy,’ said Charles Stein.

It was Friday, 25 May 1979.

Chapter 7

On that same Friday in London, Boyd Stuart and Jennifer had lunch at Les Arcades, a small brasserie in Belgravia. There was an auction at Sotheby’s across the street and the tables were crowded. Jennifer Ryden – as she now preferred to be known – wore a pale fur coat. Her eyes were bright, her lipstick perfect and her skin glowing with health. She was the same bright, beautiful girl that Boyd Stuart had fallen so madly in love with, but now he could see her with clearer vision.

‘Daddy has been quite wonderful!’

‘Sending me to California, you mean?’

‘Isn’t that supposed to be secret?’ she said. There was no mistaking the rebuke. She stabbed a small section of dry lettuce and put it into her tiny mouth. She never ate food that might dribble down her chin or drip on to her clothes. That was how she always managed to look so groomed and clean.

‘I have no secrets from you, Jennifer,’ said Boyd Stuart.

She looked, up from her plate and smiled to acknowledge that her ex-husband had won the exchange. ‘You haven’t come across that inlaid snuff box, I suppose?’

‘I’m sure it’s not in the flat, Jenny.’

‘Nor the gold watch?’

‘No,’ said Stuart.

‘It’s inscribed “Elliot” … an old watch, a gold hunter.’

‘You’ve asked me a dozen times, Jenny. I’ve searched high and low for it.’ In response to Stuart’s signal the waiter served coffee.

‘I’ve brought a list,’ she said. She reached into her Hermès bag for a small leather pad and gold pencil. He had always dreaded those little lists which she presented to him. There were shopping lists and reading lists, appointment lists and, only too often, lists of jobs that others had to complete for her. ‘I found the photo of mummy in the silver frame,’ she said, carefully deleting that from the list of possessions before passing it to him. ‘Jennifer Ryden’ was engraved at the top of the sheet of watermarked paper and the handwriting was neat and orderly without errors. ‘It’s the gold watch that is most important,’ she added. ‘That detective story book is from the London Library; if we can’t find it, I shall simply have to pay them … Did you look in the tiny drawer in the dressing table, the one that sticks?’

‘I’ve told you, Jennifer, if you don’t believe I’m capable of finding these odds and ends, you can look around yourself. You still have your key.’

She gave a theatrical shiver. ‘Seeing all the furniture and things would bring all the horrors back to me.’

‘You’ve taken most of the furniture,’ said Boyd Stuart, ‘and the bedroom and the hall have been redecorated.’

‘It was daddy’s watch. He’s so attached to it. I do wish you would have a proper look.’ She tipped her head to one side and gave him her most winsome smile.

‘Are you meeting someone?’

She swung round to see out of the window. There was a spindly young fellow waiting outside. He looked like the sort of young man Jennifer had always had to carry parcels, hail taxis and hold umbrellas over her. His checked cap was pulled low over his eyebrows and he wore a regimental tie and a well-cut suit. He saw Jennifer getting to her feet and waved to her. She didn’t wave back. ‘Now don’t just say you’ll look for them,’ she said, touching the sheet of paper, ‘and please arrange for someone to forward my mail.’

‘Jennifer, darling,’ said Boyd Stuart, ‘divorcing you is going to make me the happiest man in the world.’

‘That’s loutish,’ said Jennifer Ryden, using one of her favourite terms of disapproval.

‘I am a lout,’ said Boyd Stuart. ‘I’ve always been a lout.’

‘Well, don’t be a lout about daddy’s gold watch,’ she said.

‘I’ll search for it,’ said Boyd Stuart.

She looked at him as she drew the fur coat over her shoulders, and felt bound to offer an explanation. ‘It has sentimental value. Mummy and daddy are furious with me for losing it.’

‘Jennifer, you didn’t let yourself into the flat and force open that antique desk of mine, did you?’

‘Boyd! How could you suggest such a thing?’

She glanced at herself in the mirror and touched her hair in a gesture which reminded Stuart of her father. She kissed him goodbye but, heedful of her lipstick, she did not allow their lips to touch. Boyd Stuart watched her as she walked out, saw the effect she had upon the eager young man awaiting her and recognized something of himself. He was still thinking of her when the waiter brought him the bill for lunch.

Chapter 8

Geneva was cloudy and cool when the jumbo jet brought Stein there on the afternoon of Saturday, 26 May 1979. Erich Loden, Colonel Pitman’s chauffeur, had been permitted to go through the customs and the underground tunnel to wait for Stein at the gate.

‘Your son phoned to say you were coming, Mr Stein. The colonel was resting but I was sure he’d want me to come out and meet you as I usually do. Two pieces of luggage, Mr Stein?’

‘Shiny aluminium.’ Stein handed him the baggage receipts. ‘I’ll step across to change some money at the bank counter, Erich. I’ll see you at the customs – green door. Where’s the car?’

‘Immediately outside – arrivals level.’

Stein nodded. He laid ten 100-dollar notes on the counter and received in return a disappointingly small number of Swiss francs. Stein liked large-denomination money – it simplified his calculations and kept his silk-lined, crocodile-leather wallet from bulging too much.

He followed the driver past the immigration desk and through the crush of people waiting outside the customs hall. There was the white Rolls-Royce, with Swiss registration plates, parked exactly outside the glass doors. The driver was holding the door for him.

‘A new one, Erich?’

‘We just had delivery, sir. The colonel has a new Rolls every five years. Always white, always the same tan upholstery, tinted windows, stereo hi-fi, FM radio and telephone. He still has the Jaguar, of course. He prefers that when he’s driving himself.’ Stein tapped the roof before getting in. ‘When is he going to change over to a Mercedes, Erich?’

‘The colonel would never buy a German car. You know that, Mr Stein. He sent the colour TV back to the shop when he discovered that parts of it were manufactured in Germany.’

Stein laughed. He liked Erich Loden, who had been the colonel’s driver, servant and general factotum for over twenty years and remained devoted to him.

Stein got into the back seat of the Rolls and twiddled with the knobs of the radio, but reception was blocked by the steel-framed airport buildings. He pulled a cassette from the box and plugged it into the player. The music of Django Reinhardt filled the car. He turned the volume down.

The driver slid behind the wheel and started the engine. ‘Any calls downtown, Mr Stein? You want me to go past the cake shop?’

‘Well,’ said Stein as if considering the suggestion for the first time, ‘why don’t I just stop by for a cup of coffee at Madame Mauring’s.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the driver. It was a joke that both men understood. Stein rarely took the trip from the airport to Colonel Pitman’s house without stopping at the well-known Mauring’s Tea Room & Confiserie near the cathedral.

The decision made, Stein leant back and watched the world go by. The modern factories gave way to expensive apartment blocks and tidy lawns, then came the shopping streets, displays of carefully arranged cheeses and sausages, and the scaly glitter of wristwatches, swimming through the windows in endless shoals.

Madame Mauring was an elderly woman with tight, permanently waved grey hair and a ruddy complexion. She made many of the cream cakes herself, as well as some marzipan slices of which Stein was especially fond.

‘I’ve brought you a present,’ said Stein, producing from his flight bag some perfume he had bought on the plane ‘For my favourite girlfriend. “Infini”.’

‘You are a nice man, Mr Stein,’ she said and gave him a swift decorous peck on the cheek. Stein smiled with pleasure. ‘And now I bring for you the new almond cake. It’s still warm but never mind, I will cut it.’ This was a considerable concession. Madame Mauring did not approve of any of her creations being sliced before they were quite cold.

Stein sat down in the little tea room and looked round the bright wallpaper and the old-fashioned cast-iron tables with something of a personal pride. Charles Stein had financed Madame Mauring’s little business venture after tasting the cakes she supplied to a large restaurant on the Rue du Rhône. That was eighteen years ago, and last year he had allowed Madame Mauring to buy him out.

‘Next year, or the year after, I am giving the team room to my daughter. Her husband works at a good restaurant in Zurich. They will both come back here to live.’

‘That will be nice for you, Madame Mauring. But I can’t imagine this place without you. What about all your regular customers?’

‘I will keep my apartment upstairs,’ she said. ‘And your room, too – that will be untouched.’

‘Thank you, Madame Mauring. This is where we began, you know.’

‘Yes,’ she said. She had heard many times the story of how the Americans had started their merchant bank in these rooms above a jewellery shop in the narrow street which wound uphill to the cathedral. Prosperous trading in the immediate post-war period had enabled them to move the bank to more appropriate premises facing the lake on the Quai des Bergues. Every nook and cranny of this place brought back memories to Stein. He had been back and forth across the Atlantic frequently in those days, learning quickly how deals were made in Switzerland, giving the colonel courage enough to fight the competition and calming down irate clients when things went wrong. Madame Mauring had always insisted that one room upstairs was his but Stein had almost forgotten the last time he had used it.

‘Take the rest of the almond cake with you,’ she said. ‘I have a box all ready.’ Stein did not resist the idea. He found it very reassuring to have some food with him, even in such a well-organized house as that of Colonel Pitman.

‘She’s a good woman,’ he told the driver as he settled back into the leather seat of the Rolls and brushed from his lips the last crumbs.

‘The colonel never goes there now,’ said the driver. ‘He says that the cakes and coffee are not good for his digestion. The “nut house” he calls it, did you know that?’

Stein grunted. The truth was that Colonel Pitman was not interested in food. One look at him would tell you that: thin, finickety and abstemious. Most of the West Point officers seemed to be the same. The colonel was always boasting of how he could still fit into his wartime uniform. It was not an achievement by which Stein set large store.

‘There will be a traffic jam downtown. It’s rush hour and with the bottlenecks at the bridges there is just no way to avoid it.’

The car was halted by traffic when the driver spoke again. ‘I wouldn’t want to step out of line, Mr Stein …’ he began hesitantly.

‘What is it?’

‘I thought you should know that the colonel takes a rest every afternoon. That’s why he didn’t come out to the airport. You may not see him until you go down for drinks.’

‘How long has this been?’

‘Some three weeks,’ said the driver. ‘The doctor brought a heart specialist from Lausanne and gave him a check-up last month. He told him he’s got to slow down.’

‘I see.’

‘That didn’t go over well with the colonel, you can probably imagine what he said, but he took the advice just the same.’

‘He’s quite a man, the colonel,’ said Stein.

‘You’ve known him a long time, Mr Stein. It’s just wonderful the way all you men from the same battalion kept up your friendships and put together enough money to finance a business together. It was some idea, Mr Stein! A little private bank, here in Geneva. How did you think of it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Stein. ‘One of the boys suggested it in fun, and then we considered it seriously.’

Stein remembered that night when they realized how much gold they had stolen. There were all sort of crackpot ideas about what to do with it. Burying it in the ground was the most popular suggestion, as he recalled. Only Stein came up with anything sophisticated: start a private bank. It was the one kind of business where the gross overprovision of capital would not be too conspicuous. Stein had little trouble getting the colonel to agree. Ever since that day when Lieutenant Pitman had arrived at battalion headquarters he had always looked to Stein for advice. But it was Colonel John Elroy Pitman the Third who had turned on enough charm to get a retired US army general and an impoverished English knight to take seats on the bank’s board. Thus equipped with names on the letterhead, the rest was relatively easy. The Swiss authorities had been very co-operative with British and US nationals in those days: they’d even opened up Swiss banks to Anglo-American teams searching for Nazi loot.

‘How long have you known the colonel, Mr Stein? If you don’t mind my asking.’

‘I first met the colonel in 1943,’ said Stein. ‘He was only a lieutenant in those days but he was the toughest son of a bitch in the regiment, I tell you. He took the regimental boxing championship in middleweight three times in a row. For a middleweight he was heavy, see. He was one hundred and fifty pounds and having trouble staying under the prescribed one hundred and sixty, on account of all the drinking he was doing in the officers’ club. Yes, quite a man.’

‘We never see any of his family over here,’ said the driver. He moved in his seat to see Charles Stein in the mirror and hesitated before saying, ‘It’s a shame the colonel never got married. He loves children, you know. He should have had a family of his own.’

‘The battalion was his family,’ said Stein. ‘He loved those men, Erich. For some of those dogfaces he was the only father they ever knew. Don’t get me wrong, now, there was nothing unnatural about it; the colonel just has a heart bigger than any man I ever knew.’

The guitar music came to an end and Stein pushed the cassette back to repeat it. ‘How long since the colonel was stateside?’ Stein asked.

‘Not since he got out of the army.’

‘That would be about 1948,’ said Stein. ‘It’s a long time.’ He watched the scenery. The Alps loomed large above them by now, and lost in the mist and cloud there were the Juras on the far side of the lake. It was cold near the water without the sunshine. Such a place would not suit Charles Stein; he found the surrounding mountains oppressive and the inhabitants cold and formal. They were near to the French frontier here but there could be no mistaking the Swiss orderliness as they passed through villages where the dogs were securely chained and the logs sorted by size before being stacked outside the houses.

The Rolls turned in as soon as the gates swung open. The gravel crunched under the tyres and the Rolls moved slowly past the well-tended lawns and the summer house where Colonel Pitman sometimes took afternoon tea. The gravel drive ended in a circle round an ornate fountain. It provided an appropriate setting for the grand mansion that faced rolling lawns and shrubs as far as the trees that lined the lake shore. It was a sinister old place, thought Stein. The sort of large property that unscrupulous Geneva property salesmen are likely to say belonged once to Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward or the ex-Shah of Iran. On the steps there was a servant in a green baize apron ready to help the driver with the guest’s baggage.

The house was a cheerless assembly of turrets and towers, looking like a scaled-down version of some neo-Gothic town hall. Inside, Stein’s footsteps clattered on the decorative stone. Even now, in May, it was chilly. The furniture was massive – shiny red mahogany sideboards and tall, glass-fronted cupboards filled with forgotten crockery. Four suits of armour were guarding the hallway, only the shine of their metal distinguishable in the gloom. On the hall table, under a large bowl of fresh flowers, were the day’s newspapers and some magazines and letters, all unopened and unexamined.

A servant showed Stein up to a bedroom on the first floor. Alongside a big mahogany bed with a cream silk duvet cover there was an antique table with fresh fruit in a bowl and a coffee-table book on vintage cars. Over the bed hung a painting by some Dutch eighteenth-century artist: sepia sailing barges, sepia water, sepia sky. The servant opened the windows to reveal a wrought-iron balcony just large enough to permit the window shutters to fold back fully and provide a view of the garden and the lake, colourless in the grey afternoon light.

‘Would you like me to unpack now, sir?’

‘No, I’m going to climb into a hot tub and get some of that travel dust out of my wrinkles.’

‘Very good, sir. You’ll find everything you need, I think.’ The servant opened the cabinet alongside the window. There were tumblers and wine glasses with some bottles of claret in a rack and an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s bourbon.

‘And in the ice box there’ll be branch water,’ said Stein delightedly. ‘The colonel never forgets a thing.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ said the servant. He paused respectfully and then said, ‘Dinner will be served at 7.30, sir. The colonel will have a drink in the study about seven. He would like you to join him there.’

‘I sure will,’ said Stein.

‘The bell is by the door should you require tea or coffee or anything to eat.’ He always said the same thing, but Stein did not interrupt, knowing that he preferred it this way: he was Swiss.

‘No, I’m just fine. I’ll see the colonel at seven, in the study.’

With a short bow, the servant departed. Stein opened the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and poured some down the sink. He had long since lost his taste for bourbon, but there was no point in hurting anyone’s feelings. After flushing some bottled water after it, Stein held the whisky to his nose. That sweet smell brought the memories flooding back upon him. He marvelled at the silence and stood for a moment or two in the sunless light, holding the whisky and looking out across the mauve rippling surface of the lake. From the hall below there came the soft chimes of the colonel’s favourite clock. He remembered his mother quoting the old Polish proverb, ‘In a house of gold, the hours are lead.’

Stein’s arrival at short notice meant that there were other guests for dinner. They were all casual acquaintances, people whom Pitman had met by way of business. A commodity broker from Paris on vacation with his wife and teenage daughter, and a French couple who owned a car-leasing agency in Zurich. The conversation was confined to polite banalities. So although Stein was able to outline the MacIver episode before the guests arrived, it was not until dinner was finished that Stein and Pitman were alone.

‘You’re looking well, Stein.’

‘You too, Colonel.’

‘What about a nightcap? Shall we see what we have in the cellar?’

It was always the same ritual. They went downstairs into the neatly arranged basement, passing the coal storage and the gleaming racks of logs to enter the long corridor where the wine was stored. ‘Claret or burgundy?’ the colonel asked.

‘The wine we drank at dinner was delicious.’

‘We might be able to do better than that,’ promised the colonel, searching carefully through the ranks of dusty bottles. ‘For an old army buddy we serve only the best.’

Behind the wine there was a storage area where old suitcases were piled. There were some stags’ heads and other hunting trophies there too, tusks and antlers grimy and cobwebbed. Stein remembered when they were the colonel’s pride and joy, but some of the boys from the battalion had made jokes about them at a party back in the late sixties, and the colonel had changed his mind about them. Colonel Pitman set great store by the opinion of his men. Perhaps sometimes he overdid this tendency.

‘Hermitage!’ said the colonel. ‘You’ll enjoy this one, I’m sure. It has the real flavour of the north Rhône and will make an interesting comparison with that Châteauneuf-du-Pape we had at dinner.’ The decision made, Pitman led the way upstairs to his study, negotiating the cellar steps with a care that made Stein concerned for him. ‘I get a little giddy sometimes,’ he explained.

‘Let me take that bottle, Colonel.’

Colonel Pitman held tight to the rail and picked his way up the steep steps. ‘I’ve never fallen,’ he explained, ‘but the light here is deceptive.’

‘All these wine cellars are the same,’ said Stein. ‘The steps wobble as you go out. You’ll have to cut back on the Evian water, Colonel.’

The colonel chuckled softly, appreciating Stein’s attempt to relieve his embarrassment.

They went to Pitman’s study. It was a small room, decorated like a businessman’s office. There was an oak desk arranged between the windows, two comfortable leather armchairs with a battered foot rest and brass ashtray near them. The walls were filled with photos and certificates and souvenirs of the colonel’s army days and his hunting expeditions. On the shelf near the door were some silver motor-racing trophies.

The light was better in here and Stein was shocked to see how much Colonel Pitman had changed since his last visit just a few short weeks ago. Age seemed to be shrinking him.

Pitman sat down and began to remove the cork from the wine bottle. ‘We’re all getting older, Corporal, there’s no denying that. I had some ghastly news the other day, you’d better prepare yourself for a shock. One of our number is gone.’

‘That’s bad news, Colonel.’

‘Master Sergeant Vanelli. Can you believe it, a fine strong man like that?’

‘Yes, sir, you told me about Vanelli,’ said Stein. In fact the colonel had told him on his last two visits to the house.

‘Reach me two of those stem glasses from the case behind you. Yes, Vanelli left a wife and two daughters. The best senior NCO in the battalion, I would have said. Don’t you agree?’ He took a tissue and carefully wiped any trace of sediment from inside the neck of the bottle, then poured wine into the two glasses Stein had set up on the desk. ‘They got the usual cash settlement, of course. We sent it within fourteen days, as we always do. It came to a lot of money, but only because the US dollar is not what it used to be in the old days. It’s not so long ago that we were getting over four Swiss francs to a dollar; now I’m lucky to get one-seventy. You’d be appalled to hear what it’s costing me to run this house. And, with a lot of money tied up in long-term US fixed-interest investments, we’ve taken quite a beating over the last few years. I think I’ve shown you the figures, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, Colonel, you have. It was something no one could have foreseen.’ Stein walked over to the window. The sky had cleared. It was a fine spring night, bright enough to keep a few birds fidgeting in the purple sky before settling down. Pitman came across to the window as if to discover what Stein was looking at. ‘No one could have foreseen what would happen to the money markets,’ said Stein.

Clumps of young beech trees and some willows made a pattern upon the oily-looking lake. It was just possible to see the movements of motor-car lights crawling along the road that skirted the far shore. It was Saturday evening and the road was busy. Colonel Pitman was holding two glasses of wine. ‘Taste that, Corporal,’ he said handing it to him.

‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Stein with a courtesy appropriate between master and man. In deference to both colonel and climate, Stein had changed into a sober, dark, woollen suit.

The two men drank and then Pitman said, ‘MacIver you say his name was?’

‘Military police platoon. He was the lieutenant with them.’ So the colonel had been thinking about Stein’s news all through dinner.

‘I just can’t seem to place him somehow,’ said Pitman. ‘And you went along to the film company and talked?’

‘Like I told you, Colonel. They said that Lustig – the man MacIver had talked about – was away in Europe. I spoke with a guy who calls himself Max Breslow. He says he’s probably going to make the film.’

‘What kind of man is he?’

‘Not the kind of guy I’d want to share a seat with on a hang-glider. I have a feeling they know something. I have a feeling they’re going to give us a lot of trouble.’

‘We already have a lot of trouble,’ said Pitman gravely. ‘I told you on the phone that I was personally checking things at the bank. Well, I’ve checked them and we are facing a disaster.’

‘Disaster?’

‘The bank is in trouble. We’re in conflict with the Creditanstalt. Unless we can get them to change their attitude, it looks as if we stand to lose one hundred million dollars.’

‘One hundred million dollars,’ Stein smiled. ‘You’re kidding, Colonel. Come on now.’

‘I wish I was kidding,’ said Pitman. ‘But I’m afraid we have been the victim of a monumental swindle.’

‘One hundred million dollars,’ said Stein breathlessly. So it was the colonel who had the most surprising news after all. Stein had put his drink down by now and his arms were thrashing about as he drowned in an ocean of dismay. ‘We’ve got a highly trained and highly paid Swiss and German banking staff downtown. How in hell could we be gypped out of one hundred million?’

‘The Creditanstalt is the biggest bank in Austria and it’s state owned. They gave a man named Peter Friedman – and that’s probably a fake name anyway – letters of credit for one hundred million dollars for ten big consignments of pharmaceuticals which were in the Zurich airport free zone. The documents say that Friedman was exporting these drugs from Holland to Yugoslavia, where the deal was to be handled by Interimpex, which is the Yugoslavian international trade corporation. Friedman can’t transfer the Austrian bank’s letters of credit – because they are not transferable – but he can’t be prevented from getting money by assigning the benefit to someone.’

‘How did we get into the act?’

‘Our bank gave Friedman the money, in exchange for that assignment of the benefits of the sale of the pharmaceuticals. A perfectly ordinary trading sequence; and it can be very profitable, as it has been in the past.’

‘OK, Colonel, never mind the commercial. What happened next?’

‘Friedman vanished. We checked the cases in the Zurich airport free zone …’

‘Aspirin?’

‘Not quite, but nowhere near as described in the shipping documents. Maybe worth two million dollars.’

‘Can’t we still cash the letters of credit with Creditanstalt?’

‘I wish we could, but letters of credit are not negotiable – so we can’t handle it – and become void if any part of an import/export transaction is illegal, or even misdescribed. This was misdescribed: the cases contain the wrong drugs. And today we hear from the Yugoslavs that these pharmaceuticals are not even destined for Yugoslavia. Interimpex are only acting as agents in a deal for someone else.’

‘Shit!’

‘We are the victims of a carefully planned swindle,’ said Pitman. ‘I’m not a banker – never have been, never will be – but I’ve learned a thing or two in over thirty years of watching those experts we employ to run our bank. One thing I’m sure about: old Mr Krug is even more upset than you are. And the young cashiers are worrying in case word of it gets around and affects their careers in banking. It’s not an inside job.’

‘Did they check it with you, Colonel? Before they paid out the money, did they check it with you? You’re in the bank almost every day, Erich told me so.’

‘They check everything with me,’ said Pitman. ‘They all run in and out of my office clucking like old hens. I’ve even seen Krug holding banknotes up to the light, to check out the watermarks before cashing fifty dollars for a tourist. But this seemed like a gilt-edged investment … with no risk at all.’

‘What about references?’

‘Friedman gave us wonderful references. My manager suspected that the drugs were not destined for Yugoslavia, because one hundred million dollars seemed far too much for a poor country like that to spend on one type of pharmaceutical. But that made it look better, rather than worse. Such things have happened before, and the bank has made a lot of money from such deals.’

‘Why didn’t those crazy bastards check the references out?’

‘Easy, Corporal. There’s nothing to be gained by getting excited. My manager did exactly that. We got a glowing reference from one of the best banks in West Germany. It said Friedman had been doing business with them regularly over the last eight years and they gave him a first-class rating.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Stein.

‘I’ve been on the phone to the president of that bank in person, a Dr Böttger. He says that they have no record of such a letter ever having been sent. Furthermore he says that it is their policy never to give such recommendations.’

‘And the letter … No, don’t tell me.’

‘It’s missing from our files.’

‘Jesus!’ Stein hit himself on the face in anger. ‘One hundred million dollars. Can we stand that kind of a loss? What happens now?’

‘I’ve been reluctant to let news of our trouble leak out but I’ll have to turn to other banks to help us. We tried one of the big ones yesterday and they turned us down flat. But that’s not significant. We’ll ride out the storm, Corporal, I’m convinced of it.’

‘Why our bank? Are we the most stupid?’

‘By no means. But we were suited to this kind of swindle. There’s no doubt that the people concerned studied our methods carefully and maybe got someone inside to steal the reference from the files. But references are not normally guarded very carefully. A cleaner could have stolen it. There was no reason to think it would be something a thief would want. Furthermore they knew enough about our banking methods to guess that we would say yes to the Peter Friedman deal. It was rather like deals we’ve made before and made money from. And they perhaps guessed that we’d finance it alone, rather than syndicating it with other banks.’

‘And who is this Dr Böttger? What do we know about him?’

‘He’s the president of a very successful German bank,’ said Pitman.

‘Shit,’ said Stein again, banging a hand on the chair in a purposeless display of energy.

‘There is nothing we can do about it right now,’ said Pitman. ‘Better that we talk about the documents. You saw Lieutenant Sampson?’

‘Yes,’ said Stein.

‘A good young officer,’ said the colonel. ‘An excellent transport officer, always kept his paperwork in order, I remember.’

‘Well, he’s not an officer and he’s certainly not young any more,’ said Stein. ‘I play poker with him every week. He’s got a big law practice with offices in LA, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. Two partners do nearly all the work nowadays. Jim Sampson is in semi-retirement.’

‘Time flies,’ said the colonel.

‘OK,’ said Stein. ‘Well, I went to see him and told him that we’ve got people talking about making the Kaiseroda mine business into a movie.’

‘And he gave you a legal opinion?’

‘He went bananas!’ said Stein. ‘He sat down heavily and went a pale shade of white. But he kinda got used to the idea after a while. I pointed out to him that doing a movie about the Kaiseroda mine doesn’t have to mean showing us stealing any trucks. Maybe they just want to do a story about the treasure.’

‘And if they don’t just do a story about the treasure?’

‘Sampson says that MFA&A and the Allied Reparations Agency issued statements in 1945 that there was nothing missing. Jim Sampson says that, to prosecute us, the US government would have to admit that they were lying through their teeth. He thinks it’s unlikely.’

‘I can see why his partners put Jim into semi-retirement,’ said Colonel Pitman testily. ‘You didn’t tell me he was senile. Doesn’t he read the papers? Doesn’t he know that all the world’s governments tell lies all day every day, and show no sign of contrition even when they are caught out in such untruths?’ Colonel Pitman reached for the wine bottle and poured more for both of them. ‘Goddamned idiot, Sampson. I knew he’d never make captain.’

Stein tried to placate him. ‘Jim says it’s unlikely the US government will act. They’ll just say they know nothing about it.’

‘Very cool, calm and collected, was he?’ said Colonel Pitman sarcastically. ‘Do you remember Jim Sampson on the day I offered to cut him into our caper?’

‘Lieutenant Sampson was in charge of the maintenance platoon,’ said Stein. ‘We had to have him with us so that he could verify to the military police that we’d got a mechanical failure and had to stay halted at the roadside while the rest of the convoy continued.’

‘Never mind the details,’ said Pitman. ‘Can you remember all that stuff Jimmy Sampson gave us about having a sick mother who would suffer hardship if he went to Leavenworth?’ The colonel gave a cruel little laugh as he remembered the scene. He put down his drink and walked across the room to the humidor next to the drinks tray. He opened it with the key that released the pressure on the air-tight lid. ‘Want one?’

He didn’t wait for an answer, nor did Stein reply. He had never been known to decline a good cigar, and certainly not one of the cigars that Colonel Pitman had delivered from Davidoff, the best cigar merchant in Geneva.

The colonel selected a large cigar with considerable care. ‘I’m not allowed cigars nowadays,’ he explained. ‘But I’ll enjoy watching you smoke one.’ He cut the tip from it, presented it and lit it for Stein. ‘What are we going to do, Corporal?’ he said at last.

‘Losing one hundred million will wipe us out,’ said Stein.

‘Word of it will get around,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘Maybe the bank could sustain the loss, but lost confidence will make it very difficult for us to continue trading, unless we find someone who will buy us out. There are the government guarantees and so on. So far, I haven’t taken advice about the legal implications because I don’t want to go spreading the story all round town.’

‘Say two million dollars from the cases of drugs in Zurich airport free zone,’ said Stein. ‘What else have we got in fixed-interest stocks and gold and stuff that we could sell?’

‘Maybe three-quarters of a million US dollars,’ said the colonel sadly. ‘I’ve been all through our assets time and time again. We’ve taken a terrible beating with the decline in value of the US dollar. We should have diversified much more. If I sold this house, maybe I could put another million into the pot.’

‘Nix on that, Colonel,’ said Stein. ‘None of the boys would want to put you on the street, or even in some lousy little apartment block downtown. By the time we’d shared it out, it wouldn’t be so much. We all shared in the benefits and we all have to share in the losses.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘I guess this is the end of the bank.’

‘My fault,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘I take a nice fat salary for looking after everyone’s money. I can’t go on living in luxury after letting you down.’

‘Then maybe we should sell the documents to Breslow, or to the highest bidder,’ said Stein.

‘Let’s not jump out of the frying pan into the fire,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘At present we are only short of money – and, let’s face it, none of the boys are paupers. If we put those old documents on the market, we might find ourselves facing fifteen years in Leavenworth. I’d want to get a lot of legal opinion before we let anyone know what we’ve got.’

‘Maybe you are right,’ said Stein.

‘You read all that stuff years and years ago,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘I can remember you sitting upstairs, buried under it all. What’s in them?’

‘All kinds of junk,’ said Stein evasively. ‘My dad spoke fluent German. He always wanted me to learn, but you know how kids are. I have difficulty reading it, and that stuff we have is all written in the sort of bureaucratic double-talk that makes our own official documents just as baffling.’

‘I remember you showing me one lot of documents,’ said the colonel. ‘It was the minutes of a meeting. You were very excited by it at the time, you almost missed your lunch.’ The colonel grinned. ‘The pages were annotated and signed “Paul Schmidt” in pencil. You told me that he was Hitler’s interpreter.’

‘Schmidt was head of the secretariat and chief interpreter for Hitler and the Foreign Office in Berlin.’ He tasted the cigar, letting the smoke come gently through his nostrils. The last remaining shreds of light caught it, so that it glowed bright blue like some supernatural manifestation.

‘I remember it,’ said Pitman. He was speaking as if the effort of conversation was almost too much for him. ‘Führerkopie was rubber-stamped on each sheet. You said it was the minutes of some top-secret meeting.’

‘That’s right,’ said Stein softly. Outside in the hall the old long-case clock struck midnight; the chimes went on interminably and sounded much louder than they did in the daytime. ‘What did you do with those documents?’ said Colonel Pitman.

‘It’s better you don’t know,’ said Stein in the edgy voice of Corporal Stein, the orderly room clerk who never got anything wrong.

‘Perhaps it is,’ agreed Pitman. He went across to switch on extra lights, as if hoping that they would illuminate the conversation too. He looked at the Persian carpet that was hanging on the wall. It was a Shiraz – all that now remained of the treasures from the Kaiseroda mine. The carpet had been thrown from the truck when they first began to unload, a dirty stain on the canvas wrapping into which it had been sewn. The colonel still recalled the markings: Islamisches Abteilung, part of the Prussian state museum’s treasures, put into the salt mine to keep them safe from Allied bombs and Red Army artillery. In the hysterical atmosphere of that night, Jerry Delaney, who had driven the first truck right behind the colonel’s jeep, had shouted, ‘A present for the colonel,’ and the soldiers had cheered. They were good boys. Colonel Pitman felt a tear welling in his eye as he remembered them. Now he touched the surface of the carpet to feel the tiny knotted pile and the tassels. They were fine men; he had been proud to lead them.

‘What must we do?’ said Colonel Pitman.

‘We’ll have to know more about these film people, Colonel. They could be very dangerous, but …,’ he fluttered his hand, ‘but maybe they can be handled. Let’s see what they’re after.’

Pitman turned to look at him and nodded.

‘I’m going to take a few other documents back to California with me,’ said Stein. ‘I’ll feed them some odds and ends to see how they react. Meanwhile you follow up this trouble we’ve got with the bank. Talk to the other banks, see if they’ll support us. Maybe it’s somehow connected to this Breslow guy.’

‘You know best, Corporal, you always have done,’ said Pitman.

Chapter 9

All cops who regularly ride the cars have an ‘eating spot’. Doughnut shops are a favoured choice. Such places always have good coffee ready to drink and, if a radio call comes in during the break, a doughnut can be snatched up and taken along. Also, doughnut shops are usually situated near busy intersections and have conveniently large parking places for their customers. All in all, a doughnut shop is a good place to start looking for a cop.

The cars outside the Big O Do-nut Shop, where the Santa Monica Freeway passes over La Brea, were parked nose to the wall, except for the ‘black and white’. That was parked nose out, the way all police drivers leave their vehicles while taking a refreshment break. The two uniformed police officers could be seen inside the brightly lit windows. It was 11.34 P.M. on Saturday, 2 June, when a local resident, an eighteen-year-old auto mechanic named William Dawson, went up to the table occupied by the police officers and said he wanted to report a crime. This public-spirited action was prompted by some difficulties Dawson was having at the time with the county Probation Department.

Dawson, whose interest in motor cars extended all the way from repairing them to stealing them and driving them while under the influence of drugs, had become curious about the presence on La Brea of a dented green Cadillac. It was a 1970 Fleetwood Eldorado, featuring the 8.2 litre engine – the biggest production car engine in the world. In his written statement, Dawson said that he was looking closely at the car with a view to finding its owner and purchasing it. He said he wanted to fit the engine into a hot rod he was building, although more than one officer in the detectives’ room expressed the opinion that Dawson was about to steal the car.

Accompanying Dawson to the parked Cadillac, the two officers were shown blood marks on the road surface under the car. Forcing open the capacious luggage space, they discovered the bound body of a man. His age was difficult to determine, for his head had been removed from his torso and was not anywhere in the vicinity. The smell – which had first prompted Dawson to go to the police – was enough to indicate that the victim had been dead for a week or so. One of the police officers vomited. For his assistance to the police, Dawson was given a letter stating the facts for the Los Angeles county superior court, to which he was responsible for the probation order.

That the murderer, or murderers, had been interrupted or disturbed during the commission of the crime became apparent to the investigating officer within a few hours. It seemed likely that the criminal, or criminals, had intended to eliminate both the Cadillac and the corpse by running the car into the Pacific Ocean. The police computer revealed that the car was registered in the name of Bernard Lustig who lived in a large house in Portuguese Bend in the Palos Verdes peninsula, a plush suburb known locally as ‘The Hill’.

The door of the Lustig ranch-style home was opened by a Spanish-speaking maid when the detectives called the following morning, Sunday, 3 June. Mr Bernard Lustig was not at home. He had left the house at about nine o’clock in the evening, on Wednesday, 23 May, together with two guests with whom he had sat drinking for about an hour. The maid, whose comprehension of the English language was limited, thought that the three men had been talking about movies. That was, she explained, her employer’s principal interest. In fact, she added, since his separation from his wife fourteen months earlier, movie making had been Mr Lustig’s only interest.

Detective Lieutenant Harry Ramirez looked the girl up and down. She was young and attractive.

‘Could I see your papers?’ said Ramirez. ‘Do you have a resident alien’s card?’

‘Everything is with my aunt at her house in San Diego,’ said the girl.

‘California driving licence?’ The girl shook her head. Ramirez changed to Spanish. ‘Half the inhabitants of Los Angeles county have left their papers with that aunt of yours in San Diego,’ he told her bitterly.

‘I can get them,’ said the girl impassively. They both knew it was a game. The girl had come across the border without permission to work. But Ramirez knew that, even in the old days, illegal immigrants he had deported were back at work within seven days. Now, since Mexico had discovered oil, the US immigration officials could seldom be persuaded even to start the paperwork. Ramirez snorted and called the girl a bad name. When he remembered the way in which his father had conscientiously gone through the process of getting his papers, so that Harry and his brothers and sisters could grow up as citizens, it made him angry that the authorities turned a blind eye to this generation of wetbacks.

‘You share his bed,’ said Ramirez. ‘Don’t tell me no, I say you share his bed – puta!’

The girl began to cry. Whether that was at the shame of being called a whore, or at the prospect of being deported, no one could be sure, not even the girl.

‘He’s dead,’ shouted Ramirez. ‘They cut off his head and we still haven’t found it. Maybe it’s here.’

The girl’s eyes opened wide in terror.

‘Now, tell me about the men,’ said Ramirez.

The girl nodded and sat down wearily. ‘It is true,’ she said sadly. ‘Once I go to bed with him. Just once. It was after his father died. He was crying. He was so sad …’ Even with the girl’s full co-operation the description of the two men was sketchy.

The first lucky break the homicide officers got on the Lustig killing was a direct result of the killers’ haste. In order to prevent identification, they had removed the head and started to remove the hands. The forensic laboratory technicians stripped the lining from the luggage compartment and discovered, down under the tank, a very thin gold calendar wristwatch. A fresh cut in the leather strap confirmed that it had been worn by the victim (and the watch was identified as Lustig’s property by his housemaid). On the assumption that the dismemberment of the body would have taken place soon after the killing, the watch provided an indication of the probable time and date of the murder. The watch had stopped at 2.23 A.M. on 24 May, following the visit the two men made to the house.

The second lucky break came several days later. Marilyn Meyer was one of the meter maids who patrolled the streets of downtown Los Angeles in specially built single-seat vehicles, from which they pounced to affix parking tickets upon cars parked in violation of local by-laws. Like so many pretty girls in Los Angeles, she had come to the city in search of a career in the movie industry and stayed to enjoy the climate.

It was this meter maid who remembered the black Porsche sports car parked outside Bernard Lustig’s office on the afternoon of Wednesday, 23 May, and again on the following morning. She remembered that the ticket she had affixed to the car the previous day was still in position and she added a new one. It was not a tow away zone so she took no further action, but the Porsche parked carelessly on the pavement stayed in her mind. She noted the Illinois licence plates and regretted that out-of-state ‘scoff-laws’ could get away with such traffic violations. She even told a friend that the city should find some way of collecting out-of-state fines.

Detective Ramirez passed a formal identification request to the traffic authorities in the state capital of Illinois, Springfield, where the computer revealed that the registered owner of a black Porsche 928 with that licence number was an Edward Parker. Further inquiries revealed that Edward Parker and his Japanese-born wife had lived in Chicago for nine years; previous to that he had lived for more than three years in Toronto, Canada, and before that he had resided overseas. These inquiries also extracted from the computer the triple-digit-code that indicated that all police inquiries concerning Edward Parker must first be cleared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Identification Department) in Washington DC.

The bungled murder of Bernard Lustig, instead of resulting in a simple disappearance, had started a homicide investigation. In early June details of this became known to the KGB’s Moscow Centre. To what extent the reckless way in which Parker had risked becoming entangled in the investigation was also known to the Centre is unrevealed. Certainly by this time more than one meeting had taken place between officers of the First Directorate’s Illegals Section, who directly controlled Edward Parker, and specialists of the Communications Division, who would, if the worst came to the worst, arrange his escape route and temporarily close down his most vital networks.

Subsequent to these meetings in Moscow, one of the KGB’s most senior and experienced officers flew to Mexico City, where on Monday, 11 June, there was a meeting at the Soviet embassy. This curious turreted building, looking like the sort of Gothic folly in which wealthy nineteenth-century industrialists installed their mistresses, crouches behind some tall, straggly trees and a high fence. It was a hot day and the unending traffic on the Calzada de Tacubaya could be heard through the double glass of the ambassador’s private study, in spite of the noise of the air-conditioning. His Excellency was not present; he had been asked to vacate the room, since it was the one most recently tested for electronic devices.

The short notice at which Moscow had arranged this meeting in Mexico City is evidenced by the documents the Technical Operations Directorate – which provides KGB documentation, both real and forged – gave to Moscow Centre’s representative. Described on his diplomatic passport as a consular clerk grade three, he was a KGB general.

He was a tall, grey-faced man, gaunt to the extent that the bones and ligaments of his face and hands were clearly discernible, like those of an anatomical model. General Stanislav Shumuk, a Ukrainian born in Kiev, was recognized by the American agents who photographed him entering the embassy that day in June.

Shumuk had made his reputation in the late 1960s when, using a computer, he had compiled details of thousands of Canadian residents who had relatives living in Poland, the German Democratic Republic or the USSR. A large proportion of such people were Ukrainians. Systematically, Shumuk enrolled many such Canadians into the service of the KGB by threatening reprisals on their relatives. Described as a masterly operation in the KGB Secretariat’s secret report to the Central Committee, it was used to justify the cost of the enormous computer which was provided for the KGB in April 1972. This was the largest computer – measured by information storage – in use in the USSR.

Stanislav Shumuk consulted the steel pocket-watch he kept in his waistcoat pocket. He was dressed in a grey flannel suit, its Moscow-style tailoring baggy compared with Edward Parker’s beautifully fitted, hand-stitched suit. Parker had arrived thirty minutes early for the meeting, having flown in the previous evening from a convention in Kingston, Jamaica.

Shumuk put his watch away. ‘What time was Grechko expected?’

‘Downstairs they said he was booked on the Braniff non-stop flight that arrives at two o’clock.’

‘For a meeting arranged for 2.30,’ said Shumuk, ‘I regard that as inconsiderate.’

Parker nodded. He knew it was no use suggesting that they begin talking without Grechko. Shumuk had a reputation for keeping to the rule book.

It was Edward Parker’s first sight of the renowned general, whose mouth was turned down in a permanent sneer and whose face registered disdain for everything from the fine old engraving of Karl Marx to the jungle of potted plants which filled the sun-drenched windows. The only thing that won Shumuk’s approval was the tiny cups of strong black coffee that the Mexican kitchen maid brought to them every fifteen minutes or so.

It was after three o’clock when Yuriy Grechko arrived. Anticipating the mood of his superior, he was agitated and nervous. Mounting the stairs two at a time was rash: Mexico City’s altitude forbids such exertions and Grechko came into the room gasping and red-faced. When Parker shook hands with him he noted the damp palm that Grechko offered, and there was no doubt that Shumuk noted it too.

Stanislav Shumuk opened his briefcase and began to sort through his papers. The other two men watched him. There was only a few years’ difference in age between Edward Parker and Shumuk but they represented two different generations. ‘Stash’ Shumuk had been a combat soldier with the Soviet army – or the Red Army as it was still called then. He was one of the young officers who had taken NKVD detachments forward during the first big German attack in the summer of 1941. They had had to stiffen Red Army resistance, and they had done it by means of the firing squad. Colonels, generals, even political commissars had fallen to his bullets during those grim days when the Germans advanced as far as Moscow’s suburbs.

The reputation his execution squads had gained for him then had done his career no harm. After the war he had applied the same single-minded determination to his studies at Moscow University before returning to become deputy chief of the Training Section and later to chair the First Main Directorate’s Purchasing Committee for a year. Shumuk had changed very little from that tall, young NKVD lieutenant in the badgeless uniform, his shoulder bruised blue from rifle recoil and his face impassive. He had the same toneless voice in which he had read the death sentences, the same unseeing pale grey eyes, the same shaved skull, and the same trim waistline that came from a daily routine of strenuous exercises.

Shumuk looked up and studied his two colleagues, and there was no admiration in his gaze. He decided that they were mentally, morally and physically inferior to him. Yuriy Grechko, with his expensive western clothes, curly hair and soft mouth, was decadent, if not depraved. He had been corrupted by western living and the sheltered life of the diplomatic service; and he should never have been appointed to the vital position of legal resident in the USA. He was too young, too inexperienced and too lacking in stamina. Shumuk decided to say so in the report. Edward Parker was little better: he had spent the years between 1941 and 1945 not in resisting the Fascist hordes but in guarding some remote Red Army supply depot from a Japanese invasion that never came. Now, while his wife and grown-up daughter worked as booking clerks for Aeroflot and struggled to make a living in one of the less salubrious suburbs of Sverdlovsk, Parker was sharing his bed with some Japanese woman and living in a vast house in Chicago. The woman was a long-term Party member, of course, and the whole arrangement had been approved if not instigated by Moscow Centre, but Shumuk was old-fashioned enough to find it distasteful.

He lit a cigarette. He was old fashioned about cigarettes too; he preferred this coarse Makhora tobacco. Waving the smoke away impatiently with thin bony fingers, he noticed Edward Parker’s nose twitch. He must have detected the aroma of the tobacco; did it remind him of his youth, as it did Shumuk?

Little wonder then that the meeting was bitter and recriminatory. Shumuk started by announcing that he had already decided to pull Parker out, and proposed giving him until the end of June to get his networks prepared for regrouping. Parker would report in person to Moscow Centre on Monday, 2 July.

There was a moment’s hushed silence before Yuriy Grechko attacked this plan. It was obvious to everyone present that there was little chance that Grechko would survive such a drastic reshuffle as would surely follow the change in illegal resident. The arguments continued for over two hours. Grechko and Shumuk had clashed before, in the Dzerzhinsky Square building, and this time the discussion degenerated into what was little more than a shouting match. It was Edward Parker who decided the matter. He explained that he had gone to Los Angeles simply because his agent needed him there. As resident, such a decision was rightfully his to take. Furthermore, he told them, he was using an agent who might refuse to work with any new resident that Moscow assigned to the job. It had taken him years to build relationships with some of his top men. It was pointless to discuss the advisability of having him back in Moscow unless the KGB was prepared to start building up what would be badly damaged networks.

It was a power-play of course. Shumuk knew that; so did Grechko. Grechko was sweating; Shumuk’s grey face twitched as it used to when he was running his agents through the German lines in the last few months of the war, trying to make contact with the remnants of the Communist Party in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Not many of those agents survived but the work had been done. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were now workers’ democracies, their stability a tribute to the secret political police that Shumuk had helped install there. He was proud of that, as he was of the Order of Alexander Nevsky which his wartime contribution had earned for him.

The harsh words and shouting died suddenly; as if by common consent, the contest was finished. Grechko wrung his hands and Parker sat down in a heavy oak armchair which was placed in the window amongst the luxuriant plants.

It was all right for the other two, thought Parker. Shumuk was concerned only with the paperwork on his desk in Moscow, and as for Grechko, if it all went wrong, Grechko need fear little more than being declared PNG, persona non grata. Only Parker faced the prospect of twenty years in a federal penitentiary, the sort of sentence which would ensure that he died in prison.

‘In the Ukraine,’ said Shumuk primly, ‘we have a saying: there are some nightmares from which the only escape is to awaken.’

The other two men looked at him but did not reply. Their hostility was unmistakable. Shumuk said, ‘I’ll grant you another month.’ He brandished his papers again. He had not referred to the papers from his case, noted Parker, never quoted them or read them. He used them simply to toy with; the Soviet Union was overprovided with men who liked shuffling official papers. ‘It’s against my better judgement,’ added Shumuk. ‘We’ll leave it another month, but it’s against my better judgement.’ He put the papers into his case and locked it using the combination lock. Then he glanced scornfully at the two men and went strutting from the room like a dowager duchess.

‘Apparatchik!’ said Grechko bitterly, although he was not a man much given to criticizing the bureaucratic tendencies of his superiors.

Parker who had spent twelve years absorbing the mores and manners of North America said, ‘He’s a horse’s ass, Grechko, and you know it.’

Grechko smiled nervously. ‘Tell me about this man Kleiber in Los Angeles,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Is he reliable? Do you know anything about him? Will he continue to work with us?’

Parker shrugged, drank the dregs of his cold coffee and shrugged again.

Grechko waited for some further reaction but none came. The shrug could mean that Kleiber was reliable or that he was not. It could mean that Parker did not know, or that he did not intend to discuss the matter.

Chapter 10

The job in California did not prove to be the sun-drenched poolside sinecure that Boyd Stuart’s girlfriend Kitty had predicted. A couple of weeks later – still devoid of suntan – he was sitting in a grimy office on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles, talking to an earnest young Englishman.

This near to the freeway, the boulevard is a six-lane highway strung with overhead wires, littered with palms and generously provided with gas stations and religious meeting halls. The buildings are low and hastily finished. In June they are hot and the noise of the heavy traffic loud and unceasing.

The Secret Intelligence Service in London had made contact with Lustig Productions’ new man, Max Breslow. They had found a young commercial attaché in the British embassy in Washington who had once had dealings with Breslow about a previous film production. Now he had been urgently sent to Los Angeles in order to bump ‘accidentally’ into his old acquaintance in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Stuart’s visitor was wearing a dark blue flannel blazer with regimental buttons and a motoring-club badge on the pocket. His hair was long and straight and so was his nose. Even without the accent and the clothes, there would be no mistaking him for anything other than what Jennifer called ‘Eton and Harrods’.

‘There would in fact be considerable advantages if this fellow actually made the film in England,’ said the visitor. He looked round the dingy little office which the department had provided for this meeting. It was his first experience of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.

‘Spare me all that sales talk,’ said Boyd Stuart wearily. ‘Just tell me about Max Breslow.’ From somewhere at the back of the building there came the sound of someone practising scales on an out-of-tune piano.

‘Not just the government allowances that all films can get, but special tax deals can be arranged if he uses British crews and British studios.’

This was the right man to send, noted Stuart approvingly. No one could doubt this lad’s pitch was anything but sincere. He wondered how much they had confided in him before sending him. ‘How old is Breslow? What’s he know about the film industry?’

‘He’s old enough to set up a film,’ said the young man with a smile. He poured himself some more tea from the teapot on the desk. ‘He’s a businessman. He’s put together a couple of small productions in New York using front money from Germany and then sold them to television on the strength of the rough assembly. He’s got good contacts in Germany.’

‘Television?’

‘Television here in America, but cut into a feature film for Europe and Asia. It’s done quite a lot nowadays.’

‘Only two films?’

‘Only two here but he’s produced a dozen or more cheapies in Europe, mostly in German studios. He works with an executive producer who stays with the movie while Breslow goes after the money boys.’ He drank some tea and then said, ‘Breslow isn’t an old-time movie mogul. He’s not a Goldwyn or a Cohn. You won’t meet any stars sipping champagne round his pool. He doesn’t live in Beverly Hills or Bel Air. He has a modest little condominium somewhere out near Thousand Oaks on the way to Ventura and shares his pool with a few neighbours. No, Breslow is not a movie man. You only have to talk to him for five minutes to discover that. He couldn’t distinguish a zoom lens from a Coke bottle, and he’s perfectly willing to admit it.’ The young man stretched his feet out and propped his teacup and saucer on his chest. Doubtless it was a mannerism copied from some elderly tutor, a rich uncle or an ambassador, thought Stuart. ‘You can see if you agree. I’ve fixed an invitation to dinner for you chez Breslow tomorrow. He thinks you represent a firm with money to invest in films.’ The piano exercises paused for a mercifully long time, then started from the beginning once more.

‘Breslow’s in his fifties … a well-preserved sixty perhaps. I’m not trained for the cloak-and-dagger stuff.’ The visitor smiled but, getting no response to his smile, continued. ‘Quite tall, lots of hair, no sign of going grey. Good firm handshake, if that’s anything to go by, and very friendly.’

‘Has anyone put him on the computer?’

The visitor drank his tea and looked at Stuart. In Washington they had hinted that he was going to meet one of the SIS’s best agents but the young man found Boyd Stuart older, wearier and far less polished than he had expected. ‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘that’s something I’m not supposed to know about, but I’d say it’s rather unlikely.’

‘Why unlikely?’

‘My briefing was rather circumspect, old chap, but I gathered that nothing is so far being communicated to our American friends. And we both know that anything that goes through the Bonn computer will be known in Washington within twenty-four hours.’

Stuart nodded and concluded that his visitor was less idiotic than his manner would indicate. ‘Have some more tea,’ he said, ‘and tell me what else you got out of him.’

‘You brought this with you, I suppose,’ said the visitor, watching the tea being poured. ‘It’s a damned funny thing, I buy the self-same brand of English tea in my supermarket in Washington and it never tastes the same.’

‘You think he’s going to make the film?’

‘He didn’t seem to be in a great hurry.’

‘I heard he has a script.’

‘It’s still not right, he says.’

‘Where is the front money coming from?’

‘He says it’s all his own.’ The visitor scratched his chin. ‘I think he’s fronting for someone. I don’t know what you’re up to with this fellow but I’d advise caution.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That your Porsche outside?’ It was a casual question. Too casual.

Stuart laughed. ‘What a hope! Back in London I spend most of my spare time on my back under a 1963 Aston Martin.’

The young man came to life. ‘A DB4! You lucky dog. In Washington, I’ve picked up a Sunbeam Tiger fitted with an American V8 engine but one of the bearings is giving me trouble. It’s all in pieces at the moment … That’s one of the reasons I cursed the orders that brought me here to the coast. You should see my garage – bits of the engine all over the place. If my wife goes in there and trips over one of those bowls in which I’m soaking the valves …’ He pulled a face to indicate the pain it would cause him. ‘Not yours, eh, that Porsche?’

‘Which bloody Porsche?’

‘I saw it at the airport when I arrived. It was parked in the hotel car park. Then yesterday I saw it cruising slowly down Sunset Boulevard when I was talking with our pal Breslow.’

Boyd Stuart got up and walked to the window. ‘Where is it now?’

‘In a lot across the road, alongside the Pioneer Chicken.’

Stuart looked through the dark tinted glass which was advertised as a way of cutting air-conditioning costs. It gave the office privacy from passersby. Across the street he could just see the back of a black Porsche tucked behind a Chevrolet pick-up. Sitting inside the Porsche was Willi Kleiber, and behind the wheel Rocky Paz, a local strong-arm man turned car dealer. But even had Stuart seen their faces it would have meant nothing to him; he had never met either of them. ‘A Porsche,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Not exactly inconspicuous, is it?’

‘In this town it is. Look for yourself; the streets are full of them, especially black Porsches.’

‘In that case perhaps you’re overreacting,’ said Stuart. ‘How can you be certain that this was the same car you saw? Did you get the license?’

‘It’s an Illinois licence. And he’s got a hand-operated spotlight mounted behind the windscreen slightly off centre – it’s a 1978 Porsche 928. It’s the same car all right.’

‘At the airport, you say?’

‘When I got off the plane from Washington. It was a million to one that I should notice him, but I notice cars like that.’

‘Always the same man driving?’

‘Couldn’t see who was inside, I’m afraid. I thought it was one of your people, to tell you the truth.’

‘You’ve got the green Datsun at the kerb?’

‘Hertz; from the airport.’

‘Give me three or four minutes to get my car ready to go. Then get in your Datsun and take a ride round Palos Verdes Drive. You know where I mean? Let’s take a look at him. Would you do that for me?’

‘You bet I would! Do you really mean it?’

‘And keep going until we find a nice lonely stretch of road, without any filling stations or McDonald’s. We’ll shake an explanation out of him.’

‘Depend on me,’ said the young man, galvanized by new-found enthusiasm.

‘And pull this door locked when you leave.’

Boyd Stuart opened the door of the battered cupboard that held two brooms and some telephone directories and rattled around the wire coat-hangers to get his jacket. He put it on and said, ‘Wait a minute, though. Let’s do it another way. Why don’t you take my car? It’s a white BMW with dark tinted glass.’

‘No rainbow-paint job or flashing light top?’ said the young man sarcastically.

‘And I’ll take your Datsun. OK?’

The visitor got the car keys from his pocket and gave them to him. ‘It’s a rented car, remember. Don’t bend it.’

‘Good,’ said Stuart handing over the keys of his BMW. By this time Stuart had begun to have second thoughts about the chase but it was no longer socially possible to voice such thoughts.

‘If you lose me, phone me at the apartment tonight.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Let’s say about 10.30.’

‘I won’t lose you,’ said the visitor. ‘I’ve done enough rally driving to hang on to a Datsun with a BMW. But I can’t guarantee to keep the Porsche in sight if he tumbles to what’s going on.’

The temperature touched 100° Fahrenheit in Los Angeles that day. The hot Santa Ana wind brought the sour smell of the desert and made the city unbearable. Overhead the sky was white and baleful. Stuart hurriedly fitted the keys into the Datsun and started it up. He watched the BMW come into view and glanced in the mirror in time to see the driver of the black Porsche toss the remains of his chicken into the trash bucket, together with a shower of fried potatoes and a dollop of coleslaw. The tinted window closed with a purr and the car shivered in a blue haze as the engine came to life with a deep roar. By the time Stuart had the Datsun moving, the Porsche came bumping its way out of the Pioneer Chicken parking lot. He followed both cars on to Venice Boulevard.

The San Diego Freeway traffic was thin and fast on the southbound side of the elevated highway. He matched his speed to the other cars and trucks, and found the black Porsche and his own BMW in the number one lane. He pulled ahead of them and positioned himself so that he could see them in the mirror. Then the Porsche accelerated suddenly and the youngster from the embassy gave chase. It was a foolish thing to do.

Somewhere in the complex crossover of the Marina Freeway intersection Stuart lost sight of the other two cars. One moment they were clearly visible behind a huge Vons delivery truck. Then the great articulated vehicle changed lanes to find the westbound loop that would bring it to the Marina del Rey. It closed out the rearward view like the curtains closing upon the last act of a play. As the truck passed across the mirror, the highway reappeared but this time empty. Damn! They’d left the freeway. It was about half a mile before the next exit sign appeared. It seemed like a hundred miles. Stuart slammed his car into the slow lane and roared down the ramp at Centinela Boulevard. One way the road dead-ends. Stuart swung down into the street and on to the pavement as he squeezed past an angry lady in a Buick to make an illegal U-turn at the lights, almost hitting the large sign which says such turns are forbidden here. He came back under the freeway, his engine roaring at its concrete confines. Only then did he realize that there was no entrance to the freeway here and he changed lanes to make a left turn. Coming through the amber he caused a panel truck to flash its lights as he narrowly missed hitting a motorcyclist. Stuart swore again. To get to the northbound side of the freeway he had to drive a block to find the next ramp.

This side of the freeway was crowded with commuters making an early start back to their families in the valley. Stuart weaved through the heavy traffic and now and again slowed to a crawl. There was no sign of the other two cars, and eventually he turned off the freeway and returned to the Marina del Rey. His department had arranged for him to live on the Hare Krishna II, a thirty-five-foot cabin cruiser moored near the California Yacht Club building, and using the power, telephone and TV antenna hook-ups.

He put the air-conditioning to its coldest, took off all his clothes, poured himself a big malt whisky and drank some before stepping under the shower. It had been a frustrating day and he was continually hampered by having to work in a city with which he was only superficially acquainted and where he was almost totally devoid of the sort of contacts he needed. He wrapped himself in a big bathrobe and looked at the time. It would be the middle of the night in England; he abandoned the idea of phoning Kitty. He switched on the television and went rapidly through some quiz games, ‘Bugs Bunny’ and a black-and-white film about the French Revolution. He made himself a toasted ham sandwich, opened a tin of mixed nuts and settled down in front of a situation comedy. The boat moved lazily as a big ketch slid out from its mooring.

It was 9.30 when the telephone rang. A polite voice inquired if he was Mr Boyd Stuart.

‘Rampart Division, Los Angeles Police Department. Sergeant Hernandez. Traffic accident investigation.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You rent a white BMW from Citisenta Rentcar?’

‘That’s right? Where is it?’

‘Right now it’s being shovelled into the back of a dump truck, Mr Stuart. When did you miss it?’

His mind raced ahead, trying to decide whether to confirm that his car had been stolen.

‘Are you still there, Mr Stuart?’ the police sergeant asked.

‘Was the thief hurt?’

‘He sure was, sir. The gas tank exploded and made a fireball that scorched three lanes of the Harbor Freeway. Nothing left of him to identify, I’m afraid.’

‘No other car involved?’

‘No, sir. We figured it was stolen. The car rental company know about the accident already – that’s how we got your number – but you’ll have to come down to the station tomorrow and do some paperwork with me. Ask for AI Follow-up. Would noon be OK?’

‘I’ll see you at noon, Sergeant Hernandez.’

Stuart fetched the notebook from his jacket pocket. There was a phone number scribbled in the margin of the page of addresses. They had told him to use it only in an emergency. This was an emergency. He dialled the number and heard an answering machine telling him that Dr Curtiss was not available at this time but, if the caller would leave a name and address and telephone number, he would call back. If the caller was in pain, the recorded voice added, an osteopath on emergency call would be sent immediately.

‘I’m in pain,’ said Stuart and gave the south Pasadena address that London had told him to give in such a situation.

He sat with the lights off and the curtains drawn back. He could see the harbour lights reflected in the water and the dark outlines of countless boats. An osteopath was a good cover for a case officer, he thought. Not too difficult to get a licence, and it would account for him going anywhere at any time of day or night.

The osteopath arrived at midnight. Stuart heard him clatter down the gang-plank. This was the man whom London had assigned to control him. Some agents in the field could operate for years and never meet their controller and Stuart studied him with interest. This man was a swarthy forty-year-old, with short hair and tired eyes which he rubbed sometimes with the back of his fist. He was wearing light blue cotton trousers, an openneck shirt and a dark blue cashmere cardigan. He carried a black leather case which he put down just inside the front door.

‘We’ll close the curtains if you don’t mind,’ said the man. He walked across the cabin and closed them without waiting for a reply.

‘The pain …’ said Stuart.

‘Never mind all that crap that London told you to say,’ said the man. ‘Just pour me a scotch and water and tell me why I had to be dragged away from my chess game.’

Stuart gave him the whisky and watched him pour a lot of water into it. Then the man switched on the TV and tuned it to the Japanese channel. ‘Sit close and talk softly,’ said the man.

‘Didn’t you check this boat for bugs?’ said Stuart.

‘Sure we did, but why take chances?’ He sipped his drink. ‘Are you a chess player?’

‘Not seriously,’ said Stuart.

‘We play for money, and I was on a winning streak tonight …’ He pulled a face. ‘No matter, tell me the story.’

Stuart went carefully through the whole business. At the end of it, the man did not react for a long time. He stared at the small screen of the TV set as if enjoying the Japanese singing contest. ‘Centinela Boulevard exit from the freeway,’ he said finally. ‘Just about the only one I can think of, in the whole city, where there’s no entrance ramp on the other side.’

‘That’s why I lost them,’ said Stuart.

‘Could be they chose it for that very reason. It would be a good way to do it. Stick in the fast lane all the way to the changeover … cut suddenly across the lanes to the exit, and leave you ahead with no alternative but to take the Centinela ramp and find yourself in a tangle of street traffic … Too bad you didn’t get a better look at the man in the Porsche.’

‘It was a deliberate killing, you mean?’

The case officer did not answer him. He said, ‘The accident investigation cops have a routine they call AI Follow-up. I don’t want you getting tangled into it. You make sure you’re Mr Clean when this Sergeant Hernandez talks with you.’

‘OK.’

‘Give me the keys of that kid’s Datsun; I’ll handle that. I’ll give you another car and put the keys into your mailbox well before noon. Just forget you ever saw this British kid from the Washington embassy. Tell the cops you left your car in the marina car park with the key in the ignition. Plenty of people do that; the cops won’t be arguing about it. No other keys on the ring, were there?’ he said, suddenly anxious. The Japanese vocalists were becoming noisy.

‘I’ll switch that TV to some other station.’

‘Leave it,’ said the case officer. ‘Were there any other keys?’

‘Just the hire-car keys.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Stuart forcibly.

‘Well, at least you did something right,’ said the case officer with a sigh. Stuart let it go. A man dragged away from a game he had been winning deserved some indulgence. ‘Go through with your dinner with Breslow tomorrow. Don’t mention losing your car unless he brings it up. Play the innocent. Say the embassy guy phoned you to put you in touch.’

‘It could be Breslow had a hand in the killing,’ said Stuart, irritated by the man’s casual manner.

‘So you’re not just a pretty face,’ said the case officer with mock admiration. He reached for his black leather medical case and opened it to reveal a thick wedge of documents and a cardboard box. He opened the box before giving, it to Stuart. ‘I brought this for you,’ he said. It was a brand-new, blue-finish .38 revolver still in the special preservative wax-paper wrapping. ‘You know how to use it, I suppose?’

‘Point it and pull the trigger?’

He shook his head and reached into his pocket for ammunition. ‘No. You have to load it first.’ He took the gun, broke it and spun the chamber. ‘You’ll get the hang of it. I’m going back to my game.’ He got to his feet and swigged the remainder of his drink.

‘Good luck,’ said Stuart.

The case officer smiled for the first time. ‘The same for you, feller,’ he said. ‘You realize that the guys who zapped that white BMW probably figured you were inside it?’

‘I’m not just a pretty face,’ said Stuart.

‘Don’t buy a holster for that piece. Tuck it in your trousers. It’s difficult to get rid of a holster in a hurry, and I might not be around to help you out.’

‘Can I switch off the Japanese singing now?’ said Stuart.

‘Can you manage that on your own?’ said the case officer as he went back up the gangway.

Stuart remembered the keen young man with the dismantled sports car which would never be put together again, and only with some difficulty resisted the temptation to get very drunk. Involving an outsider in an operational role was considered an unpardonable sin; and this youngster had been ‘diplomatic’. Stuart knew it would go into his personal file in letters of fire.

Chapter 11

On the Ventura side of the county line, tucked between the mountains and the freeway, Westlake is a ‘planned community’ landscaped tastefully round a man-made lake. It is replete with countless pools and jacuzzis, tennis courts and stables, and there is a country club where, from the large picture windows of the restaurant, members fresh from the whirlpool baths can look across the tops of their cocktails and anticipate with satisfaction the completion of the second eighteen-hole golf course.

Max Breslow turned off the Ventura Freeway at the Westlake intersection. He turned into the shopping mall’s huge parking lot, passed the realtors, Swensen’s ice cream, Joe’s Photo and the hairdressers. He noted his wife’s yellow Chevette and the ‘Small is beautiful’ bumper sticker outside the supermarket and parked his Mercedes 450 SEL outside Wally’s Delicatessen.

‘Good evening, Mr Breslow,’ said the manager.

‘Good evening, Wally,’ he replied, accepting the common fiction that the manager was the proprietor.

‘Your order is just about ready to go. Can I fix you a drink while it’s packed?’

‘The usual, Wally.’

‘A Bloody Mary with all the fixings coming up, sir.’

Max Breslow noted with approval that the manager must have had a cold can of tomato juice ready and waiting for him, for the drink arrived almost as soon as he had ordered it. He sipped it while the manager waited for his reaction.

‘Excellent,’ said Breslow. The manager smiled and moved away to get the pickled herring and Westphalian ham which had been ordered on the phone. Breslow realized that he had been manipulated into having a drink. The food was probably not even prepared yet, but he didn’t mind that at all. He was always happy that men – and women too – should find him easy to manipulate, for in that way he was able to read their motives more easily and retain for himself the final control over any situation. That was the relationship he had contrived with Charles Stein. If that fat fellow thought that he was exploiting Max Breslow, well and good. Max would not wish to deprive Stein of that satisfaction. Even years later, long after this delicate business was settled, Max Breslow would allow Stein to brag and bluster about the Hitler Minutes, should he wish to do so. Max would be happy to go to his grave with his share of the secrets. But Kleiber was different. Breslow had the uncomfortable feeling that nowadays Kleiber had gained control.

‘Hello, darling.’

Max looked up and smiled. His wife had changed her hair style and he knew it was important that he comment upon it. ‘You look wonderful, my dear,’ he said. The Italian silk jacket and the matching skirt were cut in a design exported only to the USA. Her afternoon at the beauty salon, the faint tint in her hair, the professionally applied rouge and eye shadow, the bright scarf at her neck, all provided her with that healthy outdoor look which made Californian women so attractive to him, and made her look so much younger than her true age.

And Marie-Louise had adapted to this part of the world with a zeal that still surprised her husband; she went to classes in Japanese flower arrangement and low-calorie Mexican cooking, and even played sitar music on the quadrophonic hi-fi. And yet, despite all her time in America, Marie-Louise had not been able to eliminate from her speech the traces of her Berlin upbringing. Max Breslow dismissed it from his mind and gave his wife a decorous kiss that did not smudge her make-up. She would, he thought resignedly, say ‘darlink’ for the rest of his life, and for the rest of her own life too, probably.

‘You haven’t forgotten that we have visitors for dinner?’ she reminded him.

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he said. He had been thinking of this man Boyd Stuart while driving home through the canyon. Willi Kleiber, who knew much more about such things, guessed that Stuart must be an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service. It would be an interesting evening, thought Breslow. Stuart’s organization was one which Max Breslow held in high esteem.

Marie sat down beside her husband but would not have a drink. She was still trying to lose another five pounds. It was absurd that she should wait for him, since they would both have to go home in their separate cars, but she preferred to do so. The manager brought the ham and herring wrapped in heavy moistureproof paper bearing the name ‘Wally’s Deli’ and a card that said, ‘We are sorry you cannot join us but please call again soon – Wally.’

Max toyed with the parcels. He was pleased that his wife had asked him to get these items. He had worried lest once again the meal was going to be vichyssoise followed by quenelles, puréed vegetables and a Bavarian cream. And his wife was not the only one obsessed with these new food-processing machines. Nearly every dinner party they went to nowadays served machine-mashed baby food. Max detested it.

‘Will you write the name cards, Max darling? I always get the spellings wrong.’

‘And what line of business are you in, Mr Stuart?’

Boyd Stuart was sitting next to his hostess but Max Breslow interrupted a conversation about the gasoline shortage to answer down the length of the table, ‘Mr Stuart is considering putting some of his company’s money into a film I’m making.’

There was a silence and then Marie Breslow offered second helpings of her lemon mousse round the table. Max Breslow’s response was a fixed smile of displeasure. Sometimes he wondered whether his wife enjoyed provoking him.

‘Mr Stein was actually there,’ announced Max Breslow suddenly in the silence. He nodded to where Charles Stein was upending a large cut-glass bowl of mousse and scraping the last of it on to his plate.

‘Actually where?’ said the bearded man sitting opposite Stuart. He was a psychiatrist who lived – together with his wife, who taught the art of relaxing to east Los Angeles delinquents – in a split-level town house almost next door to the Breslows.

‘Merkers, Thuringia … a place in Germany. I’m making a film about it.’

‘Oh, that place,’ said the bearded man. ‘Would you think me rude if I poured myself a little more of that German wine? You must be the last people in Westlake holding out against the Californian whites.’

Max Breslow smiled but made no comment.

Stuart said, ‘I’m interested to hear that you were at Merkers, Mr Stein. Did you go into the mine itself?’

‘The place where the treasure was found,’ explained Mrs Breslow to the psychiatrist’s wife.

‘Can’t say I did,’ said Stein. ‘More’s the pity. I would have liked to get my hands on some of that stuff they found in there.’

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