Spy Line (10 page)

I looked at the cover. ‘Fifty thousand dollars?’ Could it be true?

Hoffmann nodded. No smile this time. They were serious people, these philatelists. ‘In this year’s catalogue the adhesives alone are listed at nearly that – of course catalogue values don’t mean a lot – but I have a prospect in Munich…He’s phoned me three times about it. He is becoming
demented with the thought of owning it and insists that I let him see it…I am interested in hearing his assessment of its value. He spends a lot on his collection.’

‘And your insurance friend?’

‘The fool! He stole the money from his company. Filed a false claim, forged a cheque and made it payable to himself. Can you believe it? He was detected immediately. Pleaded guilty. His company said they had to prosecute him. There were too many other employees who might try the same trick. They were right of course, and he knows that. I went to see him yesterday.’

‘In prison?’ I handed the cover back to Hoffmann.

‘Yes, in Graz. I gave evidence for him at the trial. I said he was honest and of good character but of course the evidence said he was a thief.’

‘He must have been pleased to see you,’ I said.

‘I’m selling his collection too. He’s flat broke now; the lawyers took his last penny. He’s selling everything.’ Hoffmann put the cover back into his pocket.

‘Aren’t you nervous about carrying a valuable thing like that?’

‘Nervous? No.’

‘What was the sentence?’

‘My client?’ He spoke through a mouthful of baba.

‘The insurance man.’

He took his time in swallowing cake and then took some tea. ‘Five years. I took him a colour photo of that cover.’ He tapped his pocket. ‘And the prison governor gave him special permission to have the picture in his cell.’ Hoffmann sipped tea. ‘The joke is that I’m beginning to think it’s a forgery. In which case it’s worthless.’ He laughed down at his plate as if trying to resist it but finally ate the last of the cake.

‘Did you know that right from the start?’

‘Not for sure.’ He wiped his lips.

‘You suspected it?’

‘I put it under the ultraviolet light. You can’t be too
careful. Then I took it to someone who knows. I’m still not certain one way or the other.’ He drank more tea. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cream cake? They are delectable here, as light as a feather.’

‘No thanks.’

‘It’s a weakness of mine,’ he confessed. He’d finished the baba but left a huge blob of thick cream on the side of his plate. ‘Not even apple strudel?’

‘No.’

‘You go into the auction and bid for Lot Number
584
. It will come up in the morning at about ten o’clock but it would be safer if you were there a little early.’ I looked at him. I recognized that this was my briefing: London Central had sent me here to buy. ‘Pay cash for it. It is estimated at one thousand schillings. I will leave you three thousand Austrian schillings; that should be enough. Take it to Vienna and phone von Staiger. You’ve heard of the Baron, I suppose?’

‘No,’ I said.

He looked surprised. ‘You won’t actually meet him but there will be instructions for you.’ He passed me a visiting card. Its printed content consisted only of Staiger’s name and title and the description ‘Investment Consultant’. In minuscule handwriting a Vienna address had been added in pencil. The use of aristocratic titles was illegal in Austria but Staiger, like many others, seemed not to care about that.

From his back pocket Hoffmann took his roll of money and counted out the Austrian notes. With it there was a small printed receipt form, of the sort sold in stationery shops. ‘Sign there please,’ he said.

I signed for the money. ‘You won’t be at the auction tomorrow?’

‘Alas, no. I go to Munich tonight.’ He smiled as he made sure my signature was legible and put the receipt away in his wallet. ‘Hold up one of the number cards to bid. Sit at the front where the auctioneer can see you and then no one else in the room knows you are bidding. Your Lot will be
ready for collection about five minutes after you’ve bought it. By paying cash you won’t have to establish your credit or say who you are.’

‘Will I be seeing you again?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. He waved a spoon at me.

‘Is there anything else you are going to tell me?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘From this point onwards Baron Staiger runs the show.’ He used his fork to scoop up the huge dollop of cream and put it in his mouth. There was a look of pure bliss on his face as he held it on his tongue and then swallowed it. ‘You haven’t drunk your tea,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said.

He got up and clicked his heels as he said goodbye. I sat there for a few minutes more sipping my tea and looking round the room. I noticed he’d left me with the bill.

I took the catalogue Hoffmann had left for me and strolled out on to the terrace that overlooked the River Salzach. It was too chilly for anyone else to be seated there but I relished the idea of being alone.

I looked up Lot Number
584
. It came in the section of the auction designated ‘Deutsches Reich Flugpost – Zeppelinbelege’ and was written in that unrestrained prose style used by men selling time-share apartments on the Costa Brava.

Lot 584. Sieger Katalog 62B. Brief. Bunttafel IV. ÖS 1,000, – 1930 Südamerikafahrt, Paraguaypost. Schmuckbrief mit Flugpostmarken, entwertet mit violettem Paraguay-Zeppelin-Sonderstempel ‘Por Zeppelin’ dazu violetter Paraguay-Flugpoststempel 16. 5. Brief nach Deutschland, in dieser Erh. ungewöhnl. schöner und
extrem seltener Beleg, Spitzenbeleg für den grossen Sammler.

From which I gathered that in 1930 the cover illustrated in colour on Plate 4 was expected to fetch one thousand Austrian schillings. It had been sent from Paraguay on the
Graf Zeppelin
airship with all the necessary postal formalities, and having become a great philatelic rarity it was available as centrepiece for some ‘big collector’.

The colour photo showed a well preserved light blue envelope with several different rubber stamps and adhesives, addressed to a Herr Davis in Bremen. It didn’t look like anything worth a thousand schillings.

As I was sitting there by the river and staring up at the Hohensalzburg fortress that blocked off half the skyline, the glass doors swung open and a man joined me on the terrace. At first he seemed unaware of my presence. He walked across to the metal balcony and checked how far there was to fall, the way most people do.

As the man turned to obtain a better view of the castle across the river I had a chance to study him. It was one of the Americans I’d seen earlier. He was dressed in a short forest-green hunter’s coat, fashionably equipped with big pockets, straps and loops. His hair was streaked with grey and neatly trimmed and on his head he wore a smart loden cap. He spoke without preamble. ‘When I visited Mozart’s birthplace yesterday it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.’ He had a rich cowboy voice that belied his declared emotion. ‘Number nine Getreidegasse: ever been there?’

‘Once…a long time back,’ I said.

‘You need to go real early,’ he went on. ‘It soon gets to be full of these pimple-faced backpackers drinking Coke out of cans.’

‘I’ll watch out for that,’ I said and opened my catalogue hoping he’d go away.

‘Mozart gets himself born on the third floor, and that’s inconvenient, so they only let you look at the museum downstairs. It’s kind of dumb, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I really go for Mozart,’ he said. ‘
Così fan tutte
has got to be the ultimate musical experience. Sure, critics go for
Don Giovanni,
and Mozart’s wife Constanze said the maestro rated
Idomeneo
number one, but
Idomeneo
was his first smash hit. The sort of box office receipts
Idomeneo
rang up in Munich made young Wolfgang a star. But
Così
has real class. Consider the psychological insight, the dramatic integrity and the musical elegance. Yes, sir, and it is sweet, sweet all the way through. I play
Così
in the car: I know every note, every word. My theory is that those two girls weren’t fooled by the disguises: they wanted to have fun swapping partners. That’s what it’s really about: swapping. Mozart couldn’t make that clear because it would have been too shocking. But think about it.’

‘I will,’ I promised.

‘And shall I tell you something about that great little guy? He could compose in his head: reams of music. Then he’d sit down and write it all out. And do you know, he’d let his wife prattle on about her tea parties and be saying “So what did you say?” and “What did she tell you?” And all the time he’d be writing out the score of a Requiem or an opera or a string quartet, keeping up a conversation at the same time. How do you like that?’

‘It’s not easy to do,’ I said feelingly.

‘I can see you want to get back to your catalogue. I know there’s some kind of big-deal stamp collector’s shindig in the hotel. But I never reckoned you as a stamp collector, Bernie.’

I tried not to react suddenly. I slowly raised my eyes to his and said, ‘I collect airmail covers.’

He smiled. ‘You don’t recognize me, do you, Bernie?’

I tried to put his face into a context but I couldn’t recognize him. ‘No,’ I said.

‘Well, no reason you should. But I remember seeing you when I used to share an office with Peter Underlet and then Underlet went to Jakarta and I went to Bonn and worked for Joe Brody. Jesus, Bernie. Have you forgotten?’

‘No,’ I said, although I had forgotten. This man was a stranger to me.

‘On vacation huh?’

‘I had a few days’ leave due.’

‘And you came to Salzburg. Sure, screw the sunshine. This is the spot to be if you are looking for a chance to get away from it all. Are you…’ he paused and delicately added ‘…with anyone?’

‘All alone,’ I said.

‘I wish we could have had dinner together,’ said the man regretfully. ‘But I have to be back in Vienna tonight. Tomorrow I’m on the flight to Washington DC.’

‘Too bad,’ I said.

‘I just had to make this pilgrimage,’ he said. ‘Sometimes there are things you just have to do. Know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well, good luck with the stamp collecting. What did you say it was…Zeppelinpost?’

‘Yes,’ I said, but of course I hadn’t told him that. I’d just said airmail.

He waved and went back through the doors to the lounge. If he’d been sent by Joe Brody with the task of making me squirm, he’d done rather well. I closed the catalogue and resumed my contemplation of the grim grey walls of Festung Hohensalzburg on the far side of the river. I needed a belly laugh. Perhaps after I’d had a stiff drink, I’d stroll across town, catch the funicular up to the fortress and take a look round the torture chamber.

I didn’t eat dinner in the hotel. I found a charming little place near the Mozart statue, or it might have been near the Papageno fountain or the Mozart footbridge. I heard the music of an accordion playing a spirited version of ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ and went in. The interior was done in dark wood panelling with red check tablecloths. It was almost empty. On the walls there were shiny copper pans together with the actual mario nettes that had been used to perform the Mozart operas in the world-famous
Marionettentheater.
Or maybe they were plastic replicas. The waiter strongly recommended the breaded pork schnitzel, but as my mother told me, you should never trust a man in lederhosen. It took several glasses of the local Weizengold wheat beer to help me recover. The accordion music was on tape.

I got back to the hotel late. There were men everywhere: standing about in the lobby, others drinking solemnly in the bar and all of them eyeing each other warily. I knew they were stamp dealers, for I could detect the ponderous gravity that so often attends the first evening when men are gathered together for business purposes.

Even the serious drinkers were quiet. A group near the bar were speaking in that stilted German that is usually the sign of the expatriate. One said, ‘I don’t know why people say the Austrians are venal, it took them more than a century to discover how much money they could make out of Mozart.’

His companion shushed him. Rightly so, for even his quiet voice was audible on the other side of the hotel. Then suddenly there was a loud shuffling and squeaking noise from the revolving doors and into the lobby there came two young couples. They had gleaming complexions and perfect wavy hair. Their clothes were chic and expensive and the women wore glittering jewellery and they all had that boisterous self-confidence with which the wealthy are so often endowed. They were not stamp dealers. Everyone turned to see them, for their sudden entrance into the sombre hotel lobby was unwelcome, like noisy brightly coloured TV advertisements interrupting the soft nostalgia of an old black and white film.

They must have sensed the feelings their unexpected appearance had provoked, for they became quieter and their movements more composed as they made their way across the marble floor. The lift was not working, so they went up the grand staircase to their rooms. The eyes of every man followed the progress of the glamorous people, the women with their long dresses decorously lifted as they ascended the stairs, the young men murmuring together.

I looked around for the mysterious American but there was no sign of him. I had done enough for one day: I went to bed. As I put my head on the pillow a clock began to chime eleven and soon another one joined in.

The auction started exactly on time, as most things do in that part of the world. It was all Zeppelin mail today, starting with the earliest examples, mail of the ‘pioneer’ airships
Viktoria Luise
and
Schwaben.
Then came one postcard from the airship
Deutschland
which bore the airship company’s red stamp, and the bidding just kept going and going until it reached the sky. There were three men after the card and the room went silent as the auctioneer just kept his litany of numbers going with glances from one side to the other. The bidding stopped suddenly as two of the men seemed to
decide simultaneously that there was no longer a margin of profit left. Crack, went the hammer, and the reaction was a sudden shuffle of tense muscles and released breaths. They were all writing the price into their catalogues. This would set a higher value for such items and would mean a reappraisal of their stocks.

The room wasn’t crowded but there was a continuous flow of people as specialists interested in particular items came in and took part in some spirited bidding and then went to drink coffee in the glassed-in sidewalk café, or out on the terrace to smoke and chat with their colleagues.

They must have been running a bit behind time that morning, for the auctioneer kept glancing at his watch and there seemed to be a general tendency to hurry things along.

As the auction reached 1914, and the wartime Zeppelins, there was something of an exodus that left only a couple of dozen specialists. Whether this was because the First World War items were a neglected part of the stamp collector’s world, or because this particular auction contained poor examples, I had no way of knowing. But when the auctioneer announced the beginning of a Hungarian collection of
Graf Zeppelin
mail, sold by order of the executor of the deceased man’s estate, almost every chair was taken, and there were some who preferred to remain standing at the very back.

I was ready well before Lot 584 was offered for sale. Face down on the table in front of me there was a large white card printed with a big black number 12. That was my number and when the bidding for 584 began I tipped it up so that it was visible to the auctioneer. For a fraction of a second he met my eyes to tell me that I was in the auction, and increased the bid accordingly. Behind me there must have been a dozen or more bids offered somewhat mechanically. The price kept going up, and it was hard to know whether my raised card made any difference. The auctioneer looked into the distance and deliberately gave no clue as to where the bids were coming from.

The bidding slowed. That first flurry of bids had gone, leaving more serious ones. ‘One thousand nine hundred!’ he called, and as the total increased each bid was a bigger jump. Suddenly we were into bigger bids. I tipped the card to keep the bidding going but someone behind me was interested too. We were now at double the estimated price and the bids were still coming!

The auctioneer didn’t look surprised. That morning there had been other things to surprise him more: items ignored and items fetching three or four times their estimates. I tried to remember how much cash I had in my wallet over and above the money that Hoffmann had left with me. ‘Two thousand five hundred!’ They were 100-schilling increments now, and still going.

‘Two thousand six hundred!’ Behind me there were two other people bidding for the damned envelope. I turned but could not see either of my rivals.

‘Two thousand nine hundred!’ The auctioneer was looking at me now, an eyebrow lifted. I showed my bidding card again and he lifted his eyes to somewhere at the back of the room.

‘Three thousand…’ and even before he said it he was looking over my head and saying ‘Three one…Three two…’

His eyes came back to me. I held the card resolutely upright and his eyes passed discreetly over me and to the room. ‘Three three…three four…three five…’ He hadn’t even brought his eyes back to me. There must be two of them fighting it out. And they weren’t slowing. I turned to see the room. One of the auction officials was standing in the corner at a telephone. He lifted his hand. So it was a phone-in customer who was bidding against me plus someone at the back of the room.

‘Three thousand seven hundred schillings!’

Some sort of pause had come in the bidding, for the auctioneer’s eyes came back to me. ‘Three thousand seven hundred schillings at the back of the room,’ he said.

I nodded. The auctioneer said, ‘Three eight at the front of the room.’

From somewhere behind me I heard a German voice say, ‘Three nine,’ and then another German voice say, ‘Four thousand on the phone.’

‘Four thousand one hundred at the back of the room,’ said the auctioneer. And then immediately, ‘Four two…three…four, five.’ Even the auctioneer was surprised. ‘Four thousand six hundred at the back of the room.’

He was looking at me. I nodded. He looked up and said, ‘Four…’ and then said, ‘Five thousand one hundred schillings to the back of the room.’

I turned to get a proper look at who was bidding and was in time to see the man at the telephone wave a hand to indicate the bidder had stopped.

‘For the second time: five thousand one hundred schillings,’ said the auctioneer looking at me quizzically.

I lifted the numbered card. ‘Five two at the front.’

For a moment I thought the bidding had stopped. I was relieved. If I turned out all my pockets and persuaded the hotel to take an English cheque I might put together that amount of cash. Then the auctioneer said, ‘Five three…’ and then without looking in my direction at all he said, ‘Five four…Five five.’

Someone else had joined the bidding and before I could catch my breath the price was at six thousand Austrian schillings.

The auctioneer was tapping his hammer again. ‘For the third time…’ I shook my head. ‘Gone!’

Once again the Department had given their orders and then so arranged things that the man in the field could not carry them through. I put the numbered card in my pocket as a souvenir and got to my feet. I wanted to see the man who now owned what I’d been sent here to buy.

He made no attempt to avoid detection. He looked sixtyish; wavy hair, a bit overweight but physically rather
trim. He was wearing a Black Watch tartan jacket and dark slacks with a spotted bow tie. His neatly trimmed grey beard and gold-rimmed bifocals all added up to an American college professor on a sabbatical. He was leaning against the edge of a table and as he saw me he smiled and edged his way past the other men to join me. I waited for him.

‘Oh boy! I wondered what was happening,’ he said in English with a soft American accent. ‘I thought you maybe had a buy bid too.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I had a limit.’

‘And am I glad you did. We could have gone through the ceiling. Can I buy you a drink?’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘I haven’t seen you around before.’

‘I work in London,’ I said.

As we reached the door he asked one of the auction staff where he could pick up his purchase and was told to go to the cashier’s office – a room on the ground floor at the back of the hotel. It was all well-organized, and evident that the same firm held auctions here regularly.

‘Jesus, look at that rain and it’s becoming hail,’ he said as we walked past the bookstall and along the corridor.

There was a line waiting outside the cashier’s office when we got there. We joined the line. ‘It was a good item but I’ve seen better,’ said the man, continuing with the conversation. ‘My name is Johnson, Bart Johnson. I work in Frankfurt but I come from Chicago. Are you a Zeppelinpost expert?’

‘No,’ I said.

He looked at me and nodded. ‘Well Graf Zeppelin is a kind of hero for me. I was always crazy about airships. It started when I was a kid and someone gave me a piece of fabric from the
Shenandoah
that crashed in Ohio in 1925. I’ve still got it, framed on the wall. Yes, back in my office I keep a file on everything. And I looked up Berezowski’s
Handbuch der Luftpostkunde…
You know that of course?’

‘I’m not sure I do.’

‘Jesus, I depend on Berezowski even more than I rely on the
Sieger Katalog.’
In his hands he had a catalogue and a blue folder containing cuttings and handwritten notes. He flipped it open to refer to it.

I sensed that some reaction was expected so I said, ‘Do you really?’

‘Berezowski’s 1930 book is a classic for this kind of reference. It’s been reprinted: you can still buy copies. I’ll give you an address and you can get one mailed. But in the clippings I came across an article that Dr Max Kronstein wrote in the
Airpost Journal
in January 1970. He says the Paraguay post office refused to accept International Reply Coupons;
that’s
why Paraguay mail is so rare. The only mail with Paraguay adhesives came from residents – foreign residents.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ I said.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ He flipped the file closed and put a gold pencil into his pocket. ‘And ever since Sieger listed the mail to Europe as being worth ten per cent more than mail to USA, our customers prefer it. In fact I looked up Kummer: he says that only sixty items went to the USA and about 180 to Europe so I’d say it was the other way around. Mind you, you can never be sure because mail sent to Europe might have been destroyed by the war, while items in American collections remained safe.’ He kept a finger in the file, as if it might be necessary for him to prove these contentions to me by references to it.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Sure. I know. I mustn’t go on so much. You seem kind of disappointed. Was it for your own collection?’

‘No, it was just a job.’

‘Well, don’t take it to heart, fella. There’s a whole lot more Zeppelinpost out there waiting to be bought. Right?’ I nodded. He stroked his beard and smiled. The line moved forwards as some dealers emerged from the office with their purchases.

‘Say, who was that character I saw you talking with on the terrace yesterday?’

‘An acquaintance,’ I said.

‘What’s his name?’

‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ I said. ‘I thought he was with you.’

‘Thurkettle,’ he supplied. ‘He said his name was Ronnie Thurkettle. So he’s not a buddy of yours?’

‘I hardly know him.’ Now I remembered the name but his face was still not familiar to me.

‘Say, what kind of work does that guy do? He’s not in the stamp business is he? I used to see him in Frankfurt and all around but I never figured what kind of job he has.’

‘Works for the State Department,’ I said. ‘But that’s all I know about him.’

‘He buttonholed me yesterday. He came on real friendly, but he just wanted to pick my brains about Zeppelinpost. He doesn’t know the first thing about airmail. He was expecting me to explain the catalogue to him. I told him to go and get a good book on the subject. I’m not about to give lessons to guys like him: he’s not my kind. Know what I mean?’

‘How did he take it?’

‘Take it? He backed off and changed the subject. He’s not a friend of mine. No way. I just used to see him around when I was in public relations. Frankfurt; I’d see him at those little shindigs the contractors give to entertain visitors: cute little weenies on a stick and diluted Martinis. You know. I guessed he was with the government. Washington is printed all over him: right? But I thought maybe he was a civilian with the army.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘State.’

‘I stay well away from those guys. They bring trouble and I don’t need it.’ The line moved again until we were at the front. A soft buzzer sounded and the security man signalled for us to go in. There was not much room in the cashier’s office. A morose clerk looked through a small metal grille.
Behind him there was a girl with a table piled with philatelic covers and cards in transparent plastic and a cash box full of cheques and money of all denominations. ‘Johnson’s the name. Johnson, Bartholomew H.,’ said my companion. ‘Lot 584. Six thousand schillings. I have an account, with you.’ The room had an unfamiliar smell, like incense. Maybe it was the clerk’s after-shave. Or the money.