Night Journey (15 page)

“It means,” said Dwight, ‘ the complete destruction of our system in Milan. Damned bad luck, old man; it wasn't your fault, but there it is. It means the virtual break-up of Lorenzo & Co. Unless——”

“I'm
sorry
,” I said.

“Unless,” said Jane, “ these men don't tell the Italian
O
.
V
.
R
.
A
. about Lorenzo.'

“We couldn't risk it.”

“They've acted on their own so far.”

“Luckily for Mencken, otherwise he would hardly have stood a chance.”

“Robert's hands ought to be seen to,” Jane said. “ They're bleeding.”

I looked down. “It's nothing. I took the bandages off to wash.” I was feeling better at last.

“I'll get them and put them on again,” she said.

There was silence while she was out of the room. Andrews was whistling lightly between his teeth. She came back and began to bandage my hands.

Dwight said: “ I doubted all along if the gallop was going to be worth while. We've sacrificed one of our best bloody systems for absolutely nothing.”

“What about Ricci?” I said.

“He came to no harm.”

“That at least I am thankful for.”

“No harm so far, at least. One doesn't know where the ramifications are going to end.”

“Some of these cuts are quite deep,” Jane said. Her hands were cool and slightly caressing.

Andrews twisted a lighted match so viciously that it hummed as it flew out of the window.

“We do not know yet if we have sacrificed one of out best systems for
absolutely
nothing. This is what Dr Mencken has yet to tell us. Will you explain, Mencken, please, a little more of what you learned of Professor Brayda's work and why you think as you do about von Riehl.”

I tried to. When I had finished Dwight said: “I think he's right. Dorio, who is keeping tag on von Riehl, said he had made arrangements to stay in Milan for five days—with an occasional trip to Garda no doubt thrown in. Now he's cancelled his arrangements here and has wired Fräulein Volkmann to tell her of the change.”

“Who is Fräulein Volkmaan?” I asked.

“His Strength through Joy,” said Dwight. “You know, old man.”

Andrews got up and hitched his trousers over his stomach. “You got a pretty good idea, from what Brayda said in your presence, what he had been working on?”

“Oh, yes.”

“A new gas?”

“Not new,” I said. “But a rather startling development of an old. He is using chlorovinyl di-chlorarsine as a starting point. He also frequently mentioned bromo-benzylcyanide, but I was not able to follow whether this was to be developed as as alternative or whether some amalgamation was in his mind. The first result of the improvement, so far as I could make out, would be to have an effect similar to chlorovinyl di-chlorarsine but with a much heightened persistency figure.”

“Very fascinating,” said Andrews. “What does it all mean?”

Jane took my other hand.

“Chlorovinyl di-chlorarsine is a vesicant,” I said. “Somewhat like mustard gas, you understand. These gases are the most useful in modern warfare because of their persistency. That is, they can linger two or three weeks in favourable conditions.”

“And this improvement?”

“I gather he claimed the increased persistency might leave the components active for months. It would make decontamination very difficult.”

Dwight began to cough. Perhaps talking of it had nudged his body's memory.

“But I never gathered whether this persistency wonld be constant in all conditions. It might—I would guess—be most useful in the summer months when high temperatures are likely.”

“This chloro stuff,” said Dwight gasping. “ Do we know about it?”

“Yes, the British invented it.”

He drew back his lips. “What sort of military potential would this improvement have?”

“In actual battle, do you mean? It would depend on the tactics. I suppose for shelling or bombing rear yes it would have great advantages, but for use in a—in what you would call a mobile war, I would think it might defeat its own object by making a place as untenable for an advancing army as for a retreating one.”

Andrews laughed sardonically.

“This question of military potential is a hang-over from Dwight's last war training, Mencken. Forget about battles. In total war the gun that blows up a pill-box is much less important than the man who spreads dirty stories about the commandant's champagne orgies. So with gas. What I want to know is its effect if dropped on a city—what effect would it have on the morale of the people living there?”

“Well, you cannot live and work in gas masks and special protective clothing for weeks on end. It might, if used in sufficient quantity, make a town quite uninhabitable. But there is one other effect that would nave a much mere dangerous influence on civilian morale. It was this side-effect that I understood was worrying Brayda …”

“Well?”

“He had been experimenting on mice and rats, you know. He found the blisters caused by this gas had a tendency to recur even after months.”

“You mean they wouldn't heal?”

“They would heal but then break out again in the surrounding tissues. They tend to ulcerate and become fatal.”

There was a silence.

“The blisters would become cancerous?” Andrews asked.

“I am not a medical man. But an ulcer which will not heal might be called that. At least it could very easily give rise to such a belief in a population subjected to it.”

“My God!” said Dwight “That's pretty. That's really pretty.” I had never seen such as expression on face before.

“That is the extent of your information?” Andrews said.

“Yes.”

“Well, it's enough. Perhaps our system has not been broken up in vain.”

“What can we
do
?” asked Jane.

Andrews got up. “ I think we have to assume that von Riehl has enough information—or believes he has enough—to carry back to Germany. Right? Was Dorio able to make a copy of the telegram von Riehl sent to his Fräulein?”

Dwight looked up. “ Eh?”

When the question was repeated: “I'll get it.” He went out.

Jane had finished my hands. “ Thank you,” I said.

Andrews rubbed his chin. You could hear the scrape of his thumb.

Dwight came back. “Fräulein Volkmann, Hotel du Lac, Garda. Am Enable return Garda. Urgent business cuts our holiday short. Meet me Milan station to-morrow evening to leave by seventeen-fifty train for home.
A
.
R
.”

Andrews took the copy and read it himself to make sure. Then his eyes went from one to another of us. “Well, that is the position. Any suggestions?”

No one spoke. Dwight passed a hand over his hair. His face had not lost its unpleasant expression.

“There's one solution,” he said.

Andrews grunted. “I'm glad you feel that way too.”

“We should have to check our facts very carefully,” Dwight said, as if he had not wanted to commit himself to a decision and was annoyed at having been forced to do so. “ We've got to check on the total destruction of the laboratory——”

“I can vouch for that,” I said. “ It was a smouldering ruin.”

He frowned. “—and check on whether any duplicate notes have been found. It may be impossible to be sure, but we have sources. In the next few hours we've got to squeeze our sources till they squeak. It would be crazy to take on a job like this unless we were certain not only that it was imperative but that it would achieve its object if successful.”

“Job?” I said. “What job?”

Andrews sat perfectly still with his fat shoulders slightly hunched like a plump green parrot on its perch.

“On the lowest level, Dwight. On the lowest level it might be worth doing anyway.”

“I wouldn't consider moving on the lowest level at all,' said Dwight. “ There's only one motive would justify it.”

“You know what the last report said.”

“What last report?” I asked in exasperation.

Jane said: “Reports are issued sometimes, summing up the political aspects of the war. They come from various sources, but they're usually reliable. Aren't they, Vernon?”

“To hell with the last report,” said Dwight vigorously.

“We've got to check on the destruction of the laboratory and whether other people know what von Riehl knows. This is the absolute minimum, before I'm prepared to move at all.”

They seemed to be talking in riddles, or as if there was some empathy between them that I could not share. I glanced at Jane, and thought from her expression that somehow she had followed their reasoning part way.

“What do you figure on doing?” she asked.

Dwight said: “ You'll not be in this hunt, Jane—nor Mencken. You've both done your part. This is between Andrews and me.”

“But what can you
do
? How can you do it?”

“Lay off. You'll get your instructions, such as they are.”

I had been thinking. “ You mean in some way you are going to try to destroy the information von Riehl carries?”

Andrews laughed. “ Trust our half-German friend to put it in such polite language.”

I was so angry that for a minute I could not speak. I watched him lighting one of his endless cheroots; his big fleshy face appeared and disappeared through the smoke like that of a djinn in a fairy tale. He seemed to be all grease and discoloration and pitted skis.

“Old man,” said Dwight putting his hand on my shoulder nad gripping tight. “ Old man, the solution is all too obvious—that's what Andrews means. The difficulty is to face the solution—that's all.”

“What
did
the last report say?” Jane asked.

“I've told you, that can't be decisive.”

“But it might help us to know. It can't matter now if we all know, can it?”

Dwight hesitated. “ Italy is shortly going to move in the Balkans, probably against Greece—as a prestige action, justifying her partnership in the Axis. and she may move east too, from Cyrenaics towards Egypt, at the same time. God help her if she does, I say; but that's not the point. By the end of this month Britain will have five more divisions in the Middle East. We're still desperately short of armour, and might even be called on to help Greece. Our instructions—I mean our personal instructions here—naturally covet any action which might cause disorganisation or delay in Italy's war machine.… Well, as you know, von Riehl has been in Italy two weeks preparing a report on her supply position. Her supply and production rates are anything but good, and they must be improved. Well, I suppose if anything were to happen to von Riehl and his report were to be destroyed, that of itself would be as potent a single act of disorganisation as could be accomplished.

That's what Andrews is arguing—that you can justify a killing on two grounds.”

So now it was out.

As a man unused to the Imperatives of espionage, I was separate from them at this moment—seperated even from Jane, though I did not suppose that this had ever happened before in her life.

After what seemed a long time I said: “When does killing cease to be murder?”

Andrews smiled. “ When war is declared.”

I watched Jane lighting a cigarette from the stub of an old one. I stared at a flying beetle that had come in through the open window and was banging against the light-shade. I stared at my neatly bandaged hands.

“It is impossible.”

“On what grounds? Andrews asked evenly. “ Morally or literally impossible?”

“Literally anyway,” I said with sudden relief. “ It could not be done. There is no way to do it.”

“There might be.”

“Then there is no one—on our side—who
would
do it?”

“You've worked in a laboratory, Mencken?”

I stared. “ Most of my life.”

“The routine work, the small jobs, the checking and filing of details; you might leave such work to your assistants?”

“If I had them, yes.”

“And the dangerous experiment, the crucial trial of a theory; to whom would you leave that?”

“I should do it …” I stopped before the word “ myself.”

“I,” said Andrews, “have long held a theory which has been held up for lack of the materials to experiment. My theory is that highly-placed Nazis are as mortal as other men. There is a strong feeling in some quarters to the contrary; you may have noticed that few of them develop the diseases ordinary men die of. I shall be interested to put my theory to the test.”

“Our orders visualised nothing like this,” Dwight said bitterly.

I thought he was prepared to go through with this thing, but unlike Andrews he could not rationalise it, make it a part of his own self-approval.

“Our orders are capable of wide interpretation.”

“Not this wide. Von Riehl is a prominent man. What we do is bound to be misunderstood.”

“No secret service man ever has the approval of his govenrment. You ought to know that.”

Dwight shook his head obstinately. “I wish there wasn't this second reason for acting. That's the only one—if any–that'll get to the world.”

“Well, what of it?”

“Our only
real
reason for acting is our belief that von Riehl has knowledge about a poison gas that might otherwise have died with its inventor. If it were not for that we should never have thought of taking any action at all!”

“That's reason enough.”

“Of course that's reason enough! But it should be the
only
one! If it comes out, as it will, as a political murder, it may set a fuse for a whole train of assassinations and counter-assassinations.”

“D'you think I care?” said Andrews, opening his eyes wide. “D'you think I care? This Queensberry Rule stuff makes me want to sick up. The age of chivalry died two hundred years ago, old man, old man. Ask the refugees being machine-gunned and dive-bombed on the roads. Ask them in Rotterdam! Ask them in Prague! Ask them in Warsaw! Grow up, Dwight! Grow up!”