The Third Man (11 page)

       The car had reached the top of the Wheel and hung there motionless, while the stain of the sunset ran in streaks over the wrinkled papery sky beyond the black girders.

       "Why did the Russians try to take Anna Schmidt?"

       "She had false papers, old man."

       "I thought perhaps you were just trying to get her here—because she was your girl? Because you wanted her?"

       Harry smiled. "I haven't all that influence."

       "What would have happened to her?"

       "Nothing very serious. She'd have been sent back to Hungary. There's nothing against her really. She'd be infinitely better off in her own country than being pushed around by the British police."

       "She hasn't told them anything about you."

       "She's a good little thing," Harry repeated with complacent pride.

       "She loves you."

       "Well, I gave her a good time while it lasted."

       "And I love her."

       "That's fine, old man. Be kind to her. She's worth it. I'm glad." He gave the impression of having arranged everything to everybody's satisfaction. "And you can help to keep her mouth shut. Not that she knows anything that matters."

       "I'd like to knock you through the window."

       "But you won't, old man. Our quarrels never last long. You remember that fearful one in the Monaco, when we swore we were through. I'd trust you anywhere, Rollo. Kurtz tried to persuade me not to come but I know you. Then he tried to persuade me to, well, arrange an accident. He told me it would be quite easy in this car."

       "Except that I'm the stronger man."

       "But I've got the gun. You don't think a bullet wound would show when you hit that ground?" Again the car began to move, sailing slowly down, until the flies were midgets, were recognisable human beings. "What fools we are, Rollo, talking like this, as if I'd do that to you—or you to me." He turned his back and leant his face against the glass. One thrust... "How much do you earn a year with your Westerns, old man?"

       "A thousand."

       "Taxed. I earn thirty thousand free. It's the fashion. In these days, old man, nobody thinks in terms of human beings, Governments don't, so why should we? They talk of the people and the proletariat, and I talk of the mugs. It's the same thing. They have their five year plans and so have I."

       "You used to be a Catholic."

       "Oh, I still believe, old man. In God and Mercy and all that. I'm not hurting anybody's soul by what I do. The dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils," he added with that odd touch of genuine pity, as the car reached the platform and the faces of the doomed-to-be-victims, the tired pleasure-hoping Sunday faces, peered in at them. "I could cut you in, you know. It would be useful. I have no one left in the Inner City."

       "Except Cooler? And Winkler?"

       "You really mustn't turn policeman, old man." They passed out of the car and he put his hand again on Martins' elbow. "That was a joke, I know you won't. Have you heard anything of old Bracer recently?"

       "I had a card at Christmas."

       "Those were the days, old man. Those were the days. I've got to leave you here. We'll see each other—some time. If you are in a jam, you can always get me at Kurtz's." He moved away and turning waved the hand he had had the tact not to offer: it was like the whole past moving off under a cloud. Martins suddenly called after him, "Don't trust me, Harry," but there was too great a distance now between them for the words to carry.

15

ANNA WAS AT the theatre," Martins told me, "for the Sunday matinee. I had to see the whole thing through a second time. About a middle-aged pianist and an infatuated girl and an understanding—a terribly understanding—wife. Anna acted very badly—she wasn't much of an actress at the best of times. I saw her afterwards in her dressing-room, but she was badly fussed. I think she thought I was going to make a serious pass at her all the time, and she didn't want a pass. I told her Harry was alive—I thought she'd be glad and that I would hate to see how glad she was, but she sat in front of her make-up mirror and let the tears streak the grease paint and I wished after that she had been glad. She looked awful and I loved her. Then I told her about my interview with Harry, but she wasn't really paying much attention because when I'd finished she said, I wish he was dead.'

       "He deserves to be."

       "I mean he would be safe then—from everybody."

       I asked Martins, "Did you show her the photographs I gave you—of the children?"

       "Yes. I thought it's got to be kill or cure this time.

       She's got to get Harry out of her system. I propped the pictures up among the pots of grease. She couldn't avoid seeing them. I said, 'The police can't arrest Harry unless they get him into this zone, and we've got to help!'

       "She said, 'I thought he was your friend.' I said, 'He was my friend.' She said, 'I'll never help you to get Harry. I don't want to see him again, I don't want to hear his voice. I don't want to be touched by him, but I won't do a thing to harm him.'

       "I felt bitter—I don't know why, because after all I had done nothing for her. Even Harry had done more for her than I had. I said, 'You want him still,' as though I were accusing her of a crime. She said, 'I don't want him, but he's in me. That's a fact—not like friendship. Why, when I have a love dream, he's always the man.'"

       I prodded Martins on when he hesitated. "Yes?"

       "Oh, I just got up and left her then. Now it's your turn to work on me. What do you want me to do?"

       "I want to act quickly. You see it was Harbin's body in the coffin, so we can pick up Winkler and Cooler right away. Kurtz is out of our reach for the time being, and so is the driver. We'll put in a formal request to the Russians for permission to arrest Kurtz and Lime: it makes our files tidy. If we are going to use you as our decoy, your message must go to Lime straight away—not after you've hung around in this zone for twenty-four hours. As I see it you were brought here for a grilling almost as soon as you got back into the Inner City: you heard then from me about Harbin: you put two and two together and you go and warn Cooler. We'll let Cooler slip for the sake of the bigger game—we have no evidence he was in on the penicillin racket. He'll escape into the second bezirk to Kurtz and Lime will know you've played the game. Three hours later you send a message that the police are after you: you are in hiding and must see him."

       "He won't come."

       "I'm not so sure. We'll choose our hiding place carefully—when he'll think there's a minimum of risk. It's worth trying. It would appeal to his pride and his sense of humour if he could scoop you out. And it would stop your mouth."

       Martins said, "He never used to scoop me out—at school." It was obvious that he had been reviewing the past with care and coming to conclusions.

       "That wasn't such serious trouble and there was no danger of your squealing."

       He said, "I told Harry not to trust me, but he didn't hear."

       "Do you agree?"

       He had given me back the photographs of the children and they lay on my desk: I could see him take a long look at them. "Yes," he said, "I agree."

16

ALL THE FIRST arrangements went to plan. We delayed arresting Winkler, who had returned from the second bezirk, until after Cooler had been warned. Martins enjoyed his short interview with Cooler. Cooler greeted him without embarrassment and with considerable patronage. "Why, Mr. Martins, it's good to see you. Sit down. I'm glad everything went off all right between you and Colonel Calloway. A very straight chap Calloway."

       "It didn't," Martins said.

       "You don't bear any ill will, I'm sure, about my letting him know about you seeing Koch. The way I figured it was this—if you were innocent you'd clear yourself right away, and if you were guilty, well, the fact that I liked you oughtn't to stand in the way. A citizen has his duties."

       "Like giving false evidence at an inquest."

       Cooler said: "Oh, that old story. I'm afraid you are riled at me, Mr. Martins. Look at it this way—you as a citizen, owing allegiance..."

       "The police have dug up the body. They'll be after you and Winkler. I want you to warn Harry..."

       "I don't understand."

       "Oh, yes, you do." And it was obvious that he did. Martins left him abruptly. He wanted no more of that kindly tired humanitarian face.

       It only remained then to bait the trap. After studying the map of the sewer system I came to the conclusion that a caf? anywhere near the main entrance of the great Sewer which was placed in what Martins had mistakenly called a newspaper kiosk would be the most likely spot to tempt Lime. He had only to rise once again through the ground, walk fifty yards, bring Martins back with him, and sink again into the obscurity of the sewers. He had no idea that this method of evasion was known to us: he probably knew that one patrol of the sewer police ended before midnight, and the next did not start till two, and so at midnight Martins sat in the little cold caf? in sight of the kiosk drinking coffee after coffee. I had lent him a revolver: I had men posted as close to the kiosk as I could, and the sewer police were ready when zero hour struck to close the manholes and start sweeping the sewers inwards from the edge of the city. But I intended if I could to catch him before he went underground again. It would save trouble—and risk to Martins. So there, as I say, in the caf? Martins sat.

       The wind had risen again, but it had brought no snow: it came icily off the Danube and in the little grassy square by the caf? it whipped up the snow like the surf on top of a wave. There was no heating in the caf? and Martins sat warming each hand in turn on a cup of ersatz coffee—innumerable cups. There was usually one of my men in the caf? with him, but I changed them every twenty minutes or so irregularly. More than an hour passed: Martins had long given up hope and so had I, where I waited at the end of a phone several streets away, with a party of the sewer police ready to go down if it became necessary. We were luckier than Martins because we were warm in our great boots up to the thighs and our reefer jackets. One man had a small searchlight about half as big again as a car headlight strapped to his breast and another man carried a brace of Roman candles. The telephone rang. It was Martins. He said, "I'm perishing with cold. It's a quarter past one. Is there any point in going on with this?"

       "You shouldn't telephone. You must stay in sight."

       "I've drunk seven cups of this filthy coffee. My stomach won't stand much more."

       "He can't delay much longer if he's coming. He won't want to run into the two o'clock patrol. Stick it another quarter of an hour, but keep away from the telephone."

       Martins' voice said suddenly, "Christ, he's here. He's—" and then the telephone went dead. I said to my assistant: "Give the signal to guard all manholes," and to my sewer police: "We are going down."

       What had happened was this. Martins was still on the telephone to me when Harry Lime came into the caf?. I don't know what he heard, if he heard anything. The mere sight of a man wanted by the police and without friends in Vienna speaking on the telephone would have been enough to warn him. He was out of the caf? again before Martins had put down the receiver. It was one of those rare moments when none of my men was in the caf?. One had just left and another was on the pavement about to come in. Harry Lime brushed by him and made for the kiosk. Martins came out of the caf? and saw my men. If he had called out then it would have been an easy shot, but it was not, I suppose, Lime, the penicillin racketeer who was escaping down the street; it was Harry.

       He hesitated just long enough for Lime to put the kiosk between them: then he called out "That's him," but Lime had already gone to ground.

       What a strange world unknown to most of us lies under our feet: we live above a cavernous land of waterfalls and rushing rivers, where tides ebb and flow as in the world above. If you have ever read the adventures of Allan Quartermain and the account of his voyage along the underground river to the city of Milosis, you will be able to picture the scene of Lime's last stand. The main sewer, half as wide as the Thames, rushes by under a huge arch, fed by tributary streams: these streams have fallen in waterfalls from higher levels and have been purified in their fall, so that only in these side channels is the air foul. The main stream smells sweet and fresh with a faint tang of ozone, and everywhere in the darkness is the sound of falling and rushing water. It was just past high tide when Martins and the policeman reached the river: first the curving iron staircase, then a short passage so low they had to stoop, and then the shallow edge of the water lapped at their feet. My man shone his torch along the edge of the current and said, "He's gone that way," for just as a deep stream when it shallows at the rim leaves an accumulation of debris, so the sewer left in the quiet water against the wall a scum of orange peel, old cigarette cartons and the like, and in this scum Lime had left his trail as unmistakably as if he had walked in mud. My policeman shone his torch ahead with his left hand, and carried his gun in his right. He said to Martins, "Keep behind me, sir, the bastard may shoot."

       "Then why the hell should you be in front?"

       "It's my job, sir." The water came halfway up their legs as they walked: the policeman kept his torch pointing down and ahead at the disturbed trail at the sewer's edge. He said, "The silly thing is the bastard doesn't stand a chance. The manholes are all guarded and we've cordoned off the way into the Russian zone. All our chaps have to do now is to sweep inwards down the side passes from the manholes." He took a whistle out of his pocket and blew, and very far away here and again there came the notes of the reply. He said, "They are all down here now. The sewer police I mean. They know this place just as I know the Tottenham Court Road. I wish my old woman could see me now," he said, lifting his torch for a moment to shine it ahead, and at that moment the shot came. The torch flew out of his hand and fell in the stream. He said, "God blast the bastard."