XPD (47 page)

The case officer sat down again and watched the sun put on its act of dying. Finally, when the room had darkened, he said, ‘You were the one who got those two agents out of Rostock two years or so back?’

It was a breach of regulations to talk of such things but the two men had got to know each other by now.

‘What a cock-up,’ said Stuart. He could remember only arriving back in London to discover Jennifer’s bed companion.

‘The way I heard it you should have got a medal,’ said the case officer.

‘I didn’t even get paid leave,’ said Stuart.

‘I knew one of them,’ said the case officer. ‘A little Berliner with a high-pitched laugh … liked to wear a blade in his hat. He escaped from a prison in Leipzig back in the fifties when they broke up one of our networks.’

‘I remember him,’ said Stuart. Both the men he had rescued were old-timers, men who had worked for London for many years. If they had been younger and stronger he might have left them to save themselves, but for these two he had gone back through the road blocks and brought them out again with him. Looking back he wondered at the madness of it.

‘You were the big hero of the department at the time,’ said the case officer. ‘There were guys in East Germany who would have had you canonized.’

Stuart laughed. ‘You have to be dead to be canonized.’

‘I didn’t know before,’ said the case officer apologetically. ‘I wouldn’t have kidded around with you if I’d known you were the agent who brought those two guys out of Rostock – that was really something!’

The two men sat in silence for a while. Then the case officer said, ‘I heard a rumour that these Hitler Documents – or whatever they are – have been destroyed.’

‘I heard the same thing,’ said Stuart.

‘But the department will keep the file open?’

‘The department will keep the file open,’ said Stuart. ‘That’s one thing you can be sure about. My orders are unchanged; I’ve got to locate Stein and Kleiber, then ask London for instructions. Kleiber is now the centre of all London’s queries.’

‘We’ll find Stein,’ said the case officer, as if reading Stuart’s mind. ‘I’ve put every last man I can spare on to it. I’ll locate him, I promise you. It wasn’t such a fiasco tonight. At least it will make the Russians run for cover and maybe think again before kidnapping anyone else at the airport. When Stein does show up we’ll have a free hand to work on him.’

‘I like Stein,’ said Stuart.

‘He’s a crook,’ said the case officer. ‘And from what I hear the concussion has made him a little crazy.’

‘But I like him,’ said Stuart. ‘And this is not the sort of business where one can be too choosy about the crazies.’

Chapter 44

To the casual observer, Charles Stein might have appeared a little drunk, but the uniformed studio policeman scarcely gave him a glance. The suit he wore was an old one; it had been in his locker at the club in Roscoe ever since he’d played squash there many years ago. They had had all shapes and sizes going through the studio gates that morning. Goodness knows how many actors must have attended those earlier downtown auditions, he wondered, when so many had been selected for these screen tests with make-up and costume.

Charles Stein’s concussion had produced many of the symptoms of drunkenness and yet, like those people who gain a reputation for being able to hold their drink, Stein learnt how to disguise and hide those symptoms. But he could not shake off the belief that Aram was still alive and well, and events following his accident on the
autoroute
were confused and somewhat hazy in his mind.

Find Max Breslow. It was as if this was the coherent, rational, all-consuming motive for everything that Charles Stein did. It had been in his mind when he fought his way back to consciousness after the car crash. It had troubled the dreams he had had in the upstairs lounge of the jumbo and screamed in the voice of its engines. Now his lips moved as he gave himself that same instruction and clasped it to his mind as fiercely and as lovingly as he cradled the gun in his arms.

‘Breslow?’ The corridor stretched to infinity and the doors were set close together. Puny doors on flimsy hinges which, with a little extra effort, Charles Stein could have ripped away.

‘No.’ Adolf Hitler, dressed in a well-cut grey jacket and plain black trousers, shook his head. ‘No,’ he said again.

The next room was little different. Adolf Hitler was admiring himself in a full-length mirror. He waved Stein away with an imperious hand. ‘Breslow!’ shouted Stein, his voice echoing in the narrow corridor. In the next room, a third Adolf Hitler was tying a shoelace. Charles Stein slammed the door very hard. A voice complained loudly from somewhere at the other end of the building.

The fourth Adolf Hitler was sitting slumped in his chair. He did not respond to Breslow’s name. The fifth was crouched over a table, staring closely at a mirror as he combed his hair over his forehead and positioned it with a long squirt of hair spray. The sixth Adolf Hitler was applying make-up, touching his cheeks with greasepaint and rubbing it carefully into the surrounding colouring. Dozens of bare yellow bulbs outlined his reflection, so that another Führer touched foreheads with this one. And the images – reflected from one mirror to another – made a long golden tunnel peopled with Adolf Hitlers, their balletic gestures synchronized to perfection.

‘Breslow!’

A thousand Hitlers stood up and glared at Stein, raising their hands mockingly in mute salute to him.

‘Breslow!’ Stein’s voice was so loud that it made the thin hardboard walls of the dressing room rattle as they echoed back the sound of it. ‘Breslow!’ It was more like a cry for help than a threat. ‘Breslow!’ shouted Stein again. He was beginning to realize that Max Breslow controlled a thousand Führers. It was Breslow he would have to finish off. Breslow had become the focal point of all Stein’s anger, sadness and frustration. Through the painful haze of his concussion, he blamed Breslow for everything from Aram’s death to that of Colonel Pitman.

‘I’m coming to get you, Breslow!’ Stein shouted again.

‘Close that door!’ called the make-up assistant. ‘Every kook in town is auditioning for this Hitler role,’ he muttered. ‘And that fat guy toting the old gun has got to be the noisiest ham in the building.’

‘The moustache is coming off again,’ Hitler told him quietly. ‘Will you give me a little more of that gum?’

Max Breslow had counted the days to when he would first enter the studio and see the Reich Chancellery set. First and foremost came his anxieties about the film itself. This was the most expensive set and it was important that, in the jargon of the trade, its ‘production value’ got to the screen. He ran his hands across the twenty-foot-high doorway of simulated green marble. Over the entrance Adolf Hitler’s initials were carved into a gigantic shield. Max Breslow pushed open the mahogany doors to the Führer’s study, remembering the two black uniformed SS guards with their white gloves and impeccable jack-boots who used to stand there.

Yes, this was it. Nearly a hundred feet wide and fifty feet across, with dark red marble walls nearly forty feet high. Max Breslow had often been in the Führer’s study. He remembered the great cofferwork ceiling of rosewood and Lenbach’s full-length portrait of Bismarck over the marble fireplace. Facing him there were the windows that gave on to the colonnade and the Chancellery garden. Once the big lights were illuminating the trees and shrubs and the painted background, it would all come to life. All the batteries of photographic lighting were dark and idle, for the time being there was only the feeble studio lighting that enabled the technicians to see their way round the set. And yet this too helped to bring the place alive for Breslow, for there was an artificiality to film lighting, a whitewash effect which even the best-designed sets could never survive. This shadowy place was more like the one he had once known. Breslow reached out to the silk-shaded light on the Führer’s desk and switched it on. It was ‘practical’, and its light shone across the Gobelin tapestry on the wall. Breslow had never lost his admiration for the technicians who were able to produce such convincing imitations of woods and metals. He looked at the Führer’s desk inlaid with leather. The set dresser had prepared everything for tomorrow, the first day of shooting. The green blotter, the telephone, some reference books and the pen set had all been faithfully copied from old photographs taken by the propaganda service soon after the new Chancellery was built. Breslow went round the desk and sat down to survey the set from Hitler’s high-backed brown leather chair. Often, when bringing messages to the Führer, back in those exciting days of the war, he had wondered what it would be like to sit here seeing the world from the point of view of the man who had changed it out of all recognition. Well, now he knew. From Hitler’s point of view, the world consisted largely of that huge painting of Bismarck at the far end of the room. Was it the daily sight of Otto von Bismarck which had provoked Hitler into ever greater excesses? Had it driven this mad fool to the final smash-up?

Max Breslow sat for a long time, lost in contemplation of the events which had taken him from the Reich Chancellery and brought him in a complete circle back to it again. Staring into the gloom of his imposing set, Breslow’s eyes moved down from the Bismarck portrait to the armchairs grouped round the fireplace below it. He leant forward to stare into the darkness.

‘It’s me,’ said the voice of Charles Stein. ‘It’s me, Breslow. I knew you’d come.’

Breslow stood up. He felt his heart beating at abnormally high speed. ‘What the devil do you want? I thought you were dead.’

‘I’m going to kill you, Max. I’ve been waiting here a long time. I’ve been waiting to kill you. That’s what kept me alive, Max.’

Breslow reached for the carved wooden armrest to steady himself. He was frightened by the tone of Stein’s voice. There was some quality in the voice that persuaded Breslow immediately that he was in earnest. Breslow held tight to the arm of the chair and felt the palm of his hand sweaty under his grip. There was not much light here. He could only just see the gross shape of Stein slumped in the big armchair, his crumpled white suit visible against the dark red marble wall behind him. Breslow had mistaken the white shape for a dust sheet thrown over some genuine piece of antique furniture.

‘It’s too late now,’ said Breslow. ‘The papers are destroyed. The Jaguar burnt.’

‘I know,’ said Stein. ‘I lost every last penny I had in that auto … Bearer bonds: two million dollars’ worth of them.’

Breslow inched along the edge of the Führer’s desk. He had always thought that desk absurdly out of proportion to the human scale and now, as he moved along it, it seemed as long as a football field.

‘Just stay exactly where you are,’ Stein called. Now that Breslow’s eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness he could see that Stein was not sprawled back in the armchair; he was crouching forward. Breslow continued to move sideways only a fraction at a time. He knew that the left side of the desk was in line with the double doors behind it. He had remembered that from the real thing, and from the photographs he had given the set dresser. Now he prayed to God that the technicians had placed everything exactly the way the research indicated that it had been. At last he could get his left hand to the chamfered corner that surmounted the massive leg.

‘You’re moving,’ called Stein loudly. It was a good-natured complaint of the sort that children might use when playing the game of ‘statues’. Breslow strained his ears and fancied he heard the distant sound of a police-car siren. It was no more than a stifled whine but then sometimes they only used the siren just before crossing the intersections, and cut it off until they got to the next one.

‘I’ve got a gun,’ said Stein. He still had not moved from the armchair. ‘And I know how to use it.’ Breslow remained very still. There was no point in getting killed if the police were already on their way. He was comforted by the fact that he could not now hear the siren. The police dispatchers only authorized one police car at a time to use the siren: that was how you could differentiate police sirens from those of the fire department, which let all vehicles use them.

‘Stand still, damn you!’

Suddenly Breslow remembered that this was a sound stage. Those vast padded doors he had passed through would not permit even the roar of low-flying aircraft on the approach to Los Angeles International Airport to mar the recordings. There was no chance that he could have heard a siren of any kind. No sound could get into here, and none – not even a pistol shot – could get out. That’s why Stein had chosen this place. He could play with him like a cat with a mouse.

Breslow felt himself sweating and knew his face must be flushed and shiny. He wondered whether Stein could see from that distance. Perhaps he had even planned it carefully enough to bring night glasses. He must run; once Stein got closer to him he would have no chance. He whirled round and ran for the doors. Crack! There was a flash as Stein fired but the bullet whined over his head, chipped a piece of wood from the ‘marble’ and threw a handful of splinters at him. By now Breslow had reached the big mahogany doors and was struggling to get through them and away. His panic seemed to give him the agility and the strength of two men, but no matter how hard he tugged at the door knobs the door didn’t budge or even rattle.

‘Oh, my God!’ These were not practical; these were dummy doors, as solid and immovable as the remainder of the wall. Breslow turned the other way and ran, as another shot flashed and whined through the darkness. Breslow was suddenly punched in the abdomen and felt a blow to the knees. He nearly cried out aloud but enough of the old discipline remained to repress his emotions to a grunt. He had blundered straight into the mahogany cabinet that was placed under the seventeenth-century Gobelin tapestry. His splayed arms encountered the ornaments on the cabinet top. There was a crash as some statuettes and a beautiful George II bracket clock hit the floor with an agonizing crash of breaking movement and jangled chimes. He heard Stein chuckle.