The Salzburg Connection (34 page)

Nield nodded, briefly amused. “They could identify photo-diaries, photographs for this last hour. And that was another angle Elissa missed: Freytag had photography for a hobby.”

Mathison was a hard man to convince. “Would it be likely that Elissa, even protected by using only a code name, had ever met any of those four? Face to face?”

“Normally, no. But today was definitely abnormal. How did she manage to arrange everything so quickly? By coded messages dropped under bridges, or attached to a park seat?”

“I get you. Too little time. And she couldn’t risk talking over a telephone. She had to meet them to enlist their help, give them urgent reasons for such action.” He was remembering Keller’s words.

“And that was the third angle she missed.” Nield looked almost cheerful for a moment. “She is bound to check back with Zürich to find out how the action went. She will hear of the arrests at Bergstrasse. She has too much sense to mention that miscalculation in any report to her boss until she can make sure of complete success with Finstersee. She needs a triumph to justify, or excuse, the risks she took today. If she can deliver the Nazis’ secret file into the right hands, then—” Nield shrugged his shoulders.

“All will be forgiven?”

“If she doesn’t make any more mistakes.”

“I thought you said she was good at her job.”

“She is. But she seems to have been underestimating us, which
sometimes means she could be overestimating herself. And that is unforgivable on her side of the fence.” Nield waited for any more objections. But Mathison was silent. “She intends to get that Finstersee box. From now on, that’s all she is thinking about. We had better not underestimate her.”

Mathison nodded. He was convinced.

Okay, okay, thought Nield, glancing at his watch. He was running later than he had intended, but that last ten minutes was not time wasted. Mathison had to have some reassurance that, if he was being sent to Salzburg after tonight’s crisis, he wasn’t being sent blindly. He’d know that Nield had been trying to think out all the angles, at least. And he must feel now, as Nield did, that there was some margin of safety. “I think we’ll have a couple of days to make our own moves without interference from Elissa and her friends. It takes a little time to get people into position, supply them with some cover, credible justification for being there. Their chief worry will not be us, but the Nazis. And that’s our big worry, too. The Nazis have been guarding that file too long to let it slip out of their hands now.” He hesitated, added carefully, “You have no questions about Moscow’s use of that file?” There was a current fashion, he thought wearily, of equating the Soviet Union and the United States; just two big monsters, no choice between their methods or purposes, too powerful for anyone else’s good. A comforting philosophy that rid one of any feeling of moral obligation or of commitment, or even of the need for a study in depth of recent history.

“They’ll make use of the names, all right,” Mathison said grimly.

Nield could relax. No daydreams on cloud nine here. “And what about us? How would we use them?”

“We’ll lock them away in a nice safe place and then—surprise, big surprise—some amiable filing clerk with security standing will try to filch them in a couple of years, and we’ll be drunk-lucky if they don’t end up in Moscow anyway. Or in Peking, where there will be a new set of Communists with the same old ideas about world power.”

Nield’s eyebrows went up all the way. “Oh, sometimes we do keep the secrets we learn,” he suggested, his words mild enough but his voice sharpening. “What would
you
do with them?”

“Burn them.”

“Yes,” Nield said quietly, “that’s a good solution as long as there is no duplicate list around.”

“Duplicate? For God’s sake, Chuck—why don’t you start worrying about triplicates, quadruplicates—”

“Because I’m not talking about triplicates, quadruplicates, or any other iplicates. The more copies of any document, the less security. Obviously. But even the most super-secret document has a duplicate for insurance. This file of names was moved along with other classified material to the outskirts of Salzburg during the last year of the war. Part of the German Foreign Office went there to escape the Allied bombings of Berlin, and so did SS Intelligence, who controlled this file. Now I ask you, Bill, would they have only one copy of it?”

“No,” agreed Mathison, if slowly. He was annoyed with his own stupidity. One bomb landing on a truck that carried important unduplicated documents could leave a pretty big gap in Intelligence. “Then you had better find the Finstersee file. That’s the only way you’d be able to keep a watchful eye on its names, warn them that they could be blackmailed into betraying their countries all over again, advise them to let you
know if they are approached—” He broke off. “I suppose that’s the kind of use you’ll have for the file—if you find it?”

Nield nodded. “We’d run a lot of interference, try to block any of the opposition’s possible ploys.”

Mathison watched Nield curiously. What’s he trying to make up his mind to tell me? wondered Mathison. I’m beginning to know that look in his eyes. “It will be a headache for you. And a nightmare for those names on the list.”

Nield had decided. Very quietly, he said, “The nightmare may have begun.”

“A duplicate list has been discovered?”

“It
may
have been discovered,” Nield said carefully.

“How do you reach that idea? Is it just a hunch? Or do you actually know?”

“It’s a hunch, and all my own, and a hell of a thing to carry around.”

Mathison said nothing. If Nield’s instincts were flashing a warning signal, there could be some basis in fact for them.

Nield frowned thoughtfully at the middle distance. “The Nazis hid important documents in Czechoslovakian lakes, too. And the Czechs searched diligently, backed by Moscow experts. They found two deposits last year. One of those they publicised quite freely—great triumph for Communist Intelligence, that sort of angle. And indeed it was. But they were pretty cagey about their second find. They were too clever to say nothing at all about it—after all, you can’t hide diving or dredging operations done on a big scale—but their description of the contents of the chests they hauled up in the second lake was too simple, too disarming. So the nasty thought keeps coming back: just what was inside one of those chests? Something that was
going to be so useful to them that they weren’t telling what? The duplicate list of unsuspected Nazi agents?”

That could be a warning signal, thought Mathison, but it wasn’t quite enough. “Perhaps.”

Nield nodded. “It might not be, and again it might. I’ve been wondering, you see, why the Communists ever betrayed Eric Yates to the Nazis just when he was on to something as big as the Finstersee cache. The timing of that was all wrong.”

This was adding some flesh to the bones, thought Mathison. He waited expectantly.

“It would have been so much more likely that the Russians would keep intercepting his radio messages to the Chicom agents in Warsaw, even let him deal with poor old Bryant all the way to the bitter death, and
then
seize the Finstersee chest while they made sure that Yates got his last reward from the Nazis. On the other hand, I have to admit that the Russians might have been plain stupid, or just too damned clever, which often comes to the same thing. They may have tipped off the Nazis before they knew that Eric Yates was working on anything as important as Finstersee. That would be ironical. And it does happen. Sometimes.”

“You don’t sound too persuaded.”

“I’d be more persuaded if the Russians had been showing any interest, these last six weeks, in the Styrian lakes of the Salzkammergut region—they had located Yates’s transmitter some time ago and must have been listening to his messages when they tipped off the Nazis—or even if they had shown one-tenth of the interest they took in Lake Toplitz before the first big finds there in 1959. It’s strange how cool they’ve been playing it. They have sent a couple of men now and again to
the villages near Finstersee, but they never seemed interested in the lake itself, only in any strangers who were visiting that part of the country. The Soviet agents may have been checking to see that Finstersee slept on undisturbed.” Nield laughed softly. “And we can be stupid, too. We didn’t take any rumour too seriously, because the Russians didn’t. It’s so easy to believe that a rumour is only myth pretending to be historical fact, especially when you’ve checked once and found nothing. Then the rumour becomes an old wives’ tale, just so much hysterics.” He became grimly serious. “We should have kept checking and double-checking, no matter what the risks. Two years ago, I lost one friend up there, near Finstersee. That seemed too big a price for any rumour. And yet, we’ll pay a lot more, and pay and pay, if the Communists have the Nazi file.”

“There has to be a limit to any check and double-check,” Mathison said sympathetically. “Or else a rumour could become a mania.”

“There’s that, too,” Nield conceded. He stopped brooding. “It’s a hell of a life,” he added briskly. “In any case, I’ve just been spilling out some of my own worries in the last few minutes. Perhaps they are ill-founded, perhaps not.”

“I wouldn’t neglect them.”

“Seriously? Go on, Bill, be honest about them. Now’s the time. We can’t afford any after-thoughts once you are on your way to Salzburg.”

“No after-thoughts. If your guess is anywhere near accurate, then this whole job of ours has become twice as urgent. Elissa is trying to find the Finstersee file in order to suppress it. If Moscow has already got one set of names, it certainly doesn’t want any copy to fall into Western hands. Because the value
of this file to them—for any blackmail purposes—lies only in the fact that we don’t know what names are on it. Without the Finstersee file, we could neither warn the men whose names are listed nor protect ourselves from them.”

“And if my guess is wild, if there exists only one copy of that file?”

“Then we had better find it before Elissa tracks it down.” He looked at Nield with a smile. “Still not quite sure of me?”

“It wasn’t that,” Nield said quietly. “I just wanted to make sure you knew how rapidly we’d have to move. And why. That’s always important.”

“Especially when you’re dealing with an amateur,” Mathison said, his grin widening as he recalled that afternoon, back in New York, when he had first met Charles Nield. “I know, I know. I sounded off plenty, before.” I was going to Salzburg, but on my own terms. I might have had Anna Bryant killed, and myself, too. “So all right. I’m now going to Salzburg to warn Mrs. Bryant that she’s in danger and to offer her our help. I’ll also ask her quite frankly what her husband knew about Finstersee. Anything else?”

“No. That should start everything moving.”

“You mean, that’s all you want me—” began Mathison in surprise.

“It will be quite enough. Keep your visit as natural as possible. I don’t want you to do anything to create any serious doubts.”

“Elissa,” Mathison said wryly, “seemed to have had some doubts about me as it was. And I was being as natural as hell.”

“If she had had real doubts, you’d have been as dead as Greta Freytag right now. Look, didn’t I reassure you there is a margin of safety for you in Salzburg?”

“Sure. I believe you. Or you wouldn’t be sending me there. I would only foul up your entire operation.”

Nield stared at him, recovered, said quietly, “Elissa’s first interest in you came through Felix Zauner when he detailed her to follow you. But—and this is important—he has checked thoroughly on you and finds you above suspicion. I got that from a very good source. So you can believe it. Elissa will, too. All that worries her now is the possibility that Greta Freytag identified her as Langenheim to you when—”

“Not to me,” Mathison said quickly. “Freytag told Lynn Conway, who told me.”

There was a long silence.

“You know who she is?” Mathison asked.

Nield nodded. “Send Conway back to New York.”

“But she is here on a job. She takes it seriously. And what do I tell her, anyway, to explain why she’d be better out of Zürich? What’s more, I’ve no authority over her. If she pulled rank, she could start giving the firm’s lawyer a few instructions herself.”

“Look here, Bill, most of Willi’s group in Yates’s organisation were picked up tonight at Bergstrasse. But there may be a couple, even three, left in that particular cell for Keller to clean out. He needs a little time to get the information on them, to plan and make his moves. And if they questioned Greta Freytag before they killed her, then they have the Conway girl’s name. Zürich is no good for her at the moment, no good at all.”

“Keller said he would keep an eye on her.”

“That means three men watching her around the clock on an eight-hour basis. Simple, if she stays in her hotel. Will she?” Nield suddenly swore. “Complications are something we expect in this job, but if anything really gets me riled up it’s the
unnecessary
complication. How the hell did Conway step into all this?”

“How did any of us?”

Nield calmed down. “How much did you have to tell her?”

“That Yates was engaged in espionage—she saw Keller’s men at the office, and she also saw the rhubarb in the hall this morning when Keller came charging to the rescue.”

Nield wasn’t pleased. “And what did you tell her about Langenheim Lang?”

“Only that Langenheim was possibly Yates’s mistress, and worked with him. Lynn had already guessed as much from Miss Freytag’s reactions.”

Nield’s frown deepened. “Get her out of Zürich.”

“How?”

There was a pause. Nield’s face cleared. “Salzburg. She would have the same reasons as you have for being safer there.”

There’s more than Lynn’s safety at the back of that quick mind, thought Mathison. “I turned her down on Salzburg,” he said abruptly.

“She wanted to go?”

“Jimmy Newhart suggested it when he called us from New York.”

“Then it would be a completely normal thing for her to travel to Salzburg to see Anna Bryant?”

“If these were normal times, yes. Look here, Chuck, you can’t possibly want her there. She’d—”