Mexico Set

19

Charles de Gaulle is the sort of futuristic airport that you might find inside a Christmas cracker that was made in Taiwan a long time ago. Overhead the transparent plastic was discoloured with brown stains, moving staircases no longer moved, carpeting was threadbare, and the imitation marble had cracked here and there to reveal a black void into which litter had been thrown. There were long lines to get coffee and even longer ones to get a drink, and the travellers who liked to eat while sitting down were sprawled on the floor amid the discarded plastic cups and wrappings from microwave-heated sandwiches.

I was lucky. I avoided the long lines. A uniformed CRS man met me as I stepped from the plane. He took my bag and conducted me through customs and immigration, with no more than a perfunctory wave to the CRS officer in charge there. Now he opened a locked door that admitted me to another world. For behind the chaotic slum that the traveller knows as an airport there is another spacious and leisurely world for the staff. Here there is an opportunity to rest and think and eat and drink undisturbed, except for the sound of unanswered telephones.

'Where are you holding him?' I asked the CRS man as he held the door open for me.

'You'll have to talk to Chief Inspector Nicol first,' said the CRS man. We were in a small upper section of the main building that is used by the police. Most of the offices on this corridor were used by the Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité who manned the immigration desks. But the office into which I was taken was not occupied by a man who checked passports. Chief Inspector Gérard Nicol was a well-known personality of the Sûreté Nationale. 'The cardinal' they called him, and he was senior enough to have his own well-furnished office in the Ministry building on the rue des Saussaies. I'd met him several times before.

'Chief Inspector Nicol; I'm Samson,' I said as I went into his office. I kept it very formal. French policemen demand politeness from colleagues and prisoners alike.

He looked me up and down as if deciding it was really me. 'It's a long time, Bernard,' he said finally. He was dressed in that uniform that Sûreté officers wear when they are not wearing uniform: dark trousers, black leather jacket, white shirt and plain tie.

'Two or three years,' I said.

'Two years. It was the security conference in Frankfurt. There was talk of you getting a big promotion.'

'Someone else got it,' I said.

'You said you wouldn't get it,' he reminded me.

'But I didn't believe it.'

He protruded his lower lip and shrugged as only a Frenchman shrugs. 'So now they are sending you to charm us into letting you have custody of our prisoner?'

'What is he charged with?' I asked.

By way of answer, Nicol picked up a transparent bag by the corner so that the contents fell on to the desk-top. A US passport crammed with immigration stamps of everywhere from Tokyo to Portugal, a bunch of keys, a wrist-watch, a crocodile-skin wallet, a gold pencil, a bundle of paper money – German and French – and coins, a plastic holder containing four credit cards, a packet of paper handkerchiefs, an envelope defaced with scribbled notes, a gold lighter and a packet of the German cigarettes – Atika – that I'd seen Biedermann smoking. Nicol picked up the credit cards. 'Biedermann, Paul,' he said.

'Identification from a credit card?' I sorted quickly through Biedermann's possessions.

'It's more difficult to get a credit card these days than to get a carte de séjour,' said Nicol sorrowfully. 'But there's a California driving licence with a photo if you prefer it. We haven't charged him with anything yet. I thought we'd wait until you arrived.'

'That's most considerate of you,' I said. I put the packet of German cigarettes into my pocket. If Nicol saw me do so he made no comment.

'We always try to oblige,' said Nicol. There is no habeas corpus in French law. There is no method whereby a man unlawfully detained may be set free. The Prefect of Police doesn't need a formal charge or evidence that any crime has been committed; he needs no judicial authority to search houses, issue warrants and confiscate letters in the post. He can order the arrest of anyone without even having evidence that any crime has been committed. He can interrogate them and then hand them over for trial, release them or send them to a lunatic asylum. No wonder French policemen look so relaxed.

'May I see what he was carrying?' I asked.

'He had that small shoulder-bag containing shaving things and some underwear, a newspaper and aspirins and so on. That's over there. I found nothing of interest in it. But he was also carrying this.' Nicol pointed to a hard brown leather case on the side-table. It was an expensive piece of luggage without any manufacturer's labels, a one-suiter with separate spaces for shoes, shirts and socks. I suppose the factory made it to the maximum regulation size for cabin baggage, but it was large enough to get anyone into a lot of arguments with officious check-in clerks.

One compartment inside the lid was intended for business papers. It even had special places for pens, pencils and a notebook. Inside the zippered section there were four lots of typed pages, each neatly bound into varying-coloured plastic folders. I flipped through the pages quickly. It was all in English, but it was unmistakably American in presentation and content. The way in which these reports had been prepared – with coloured charts and captioned photos – made them look like the sort of elaborate pitch that an advertising agency might make to a potential client.

The introduction said, 'The German yard Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft at Kiel has dominated the market in small- and medium-size diesel submarines for more than 15 years. Two Type 209 (1400t.) submarines are being fitted out and Brazil has ordered two of the same displacement. Work on these will start almost immediately. Two larger (1500t.) boats are already begun for delivery to India. These will not be stretched versions of the Type 209 but specially designed to a new specification.'

Soon, however, the detailed descriptions became more technical: 'The Type 2095 carry Krupp Atlas passive/active sonar in the sail but the TR 1700 also have a passive-ranging sonar of French design. The fire-control system made by Hollandse Signaal-Apparaten is standard, but modifications are being incorporated following the repeated failure of the Argentine submarine San Luis in attacks against the Royal Navy task force.'

'It doesn't look like you've captured a master spy,' I said.

'It's marked secret,' said Nicol defensively.

'But so are a lot things in the museum archives,' I said.

'Never mind the archives, this is dated last month. I don't know anything about submarines, but I know the Russians give a high priority to updating their knowledge of the world's submarines. And I know that these diesel ones are the hunter-killers that would have to be used to find their nuclear-powered ones.'

'You've been watching too many TV documentaries,' I said.

'And I've learned enough at NATO security conferences to know that a report like this that reveals secrets about submarines built in German yards for the Norwegian and Danish navies will get everyone steamed up.'

'There's no denying that,' I said. 'We think Biedermann is a smalltime KGB agent working out of Berlin. Where was he going?'

'I can't tell you.'

'Can't tell me, or don't know?' I said.

'He arrived from Paris in a taxi cab and hadn't yet bought a ticket. Look for yourself.' Nicol indicated Biedermann's personal possessions which were still on the desk.

'So it was a tip-off?'

'A good guess,' said Nicol.

'Don't give me that, Gérard,' I said. 'You say he hadn't bought a ticket. And he hadn't arrived by plane. So he wasn't going through Customs, immigration or a security check when you found the papers. Who tipped you off to search him?'

'Tipped off?'

'The only reason you know all that printed junk is secret is because you were tipped off.'

'I hate policemen, don't you, Bernard? They always have such nasty suspicious minds. I never mix with them off-duty.'

'American passport. Have you told the embassy?'

'Not yet,' he said. 'Where is Biedermann resident?'

'Mexico. He has companies registered there. For tax purposes, I suppose. Is he talking?'

'He helped us a little with some preliminary questions,' admitted Nicol.

'A passage à tabac? I said. It was delicate police euphemism for the preliminary roughing up that was given to uncooperative prisoners under interrogation.

He looked at me blank-faced and said, That sort of thing doesn't happen any more. That all stopped fifty years ago.'

'I was only kidding,' I said, although I could have opened my shirt and showed him a few scars that proved otherwise. 'What's the official policy? Are you holding on to the prisoner, or do you want me to take him away?'

'I'm waiting for instructions on that,' said Nicol. 'But it's been agreed that you talk to him.'

'Alone?'

Nicol gave me a mirthless grin. 'Providing you don't get rough with him and try and blame it on to our primitive police methods.'

So my taunt did find its mark. Thanks,' I said. 'I'll do the same for you some time.'

'It was a tip-off. It was phoned through to my office, so it was someone who knew how the Sûreté works. The caller said a man would be at the Alitalia desk; a scarred face, walks with a limp. A clerk took the call. There's no chance of identifying the voice or tracing the call but you can talk to the clerk if you wish. A man; perfect French, probably a Paris accent.'

'Thanks,' I said. 'Sounds like you've already narrowed it down to eight million suspects.'

'I'll get someone to take you downstairs.'

They were holding Paul Biedermann in the specially built cell block that is one floor below the police accommodation. It is a brickbuilt area with a metal-reinforced ceiling. In 1973 – by which time airports had become a major attraction for hijackers, assassins, demonstrators and lunatics and criminals of every kind – the cell block was tripled in size and redesigned to provide twenty-five very small solitary cells, eight cells with accommodation for three prisoners each (current penology advising that four prisoners together fight, and two get too friendly), and four rooms for interrogating prisoners in secure conditions. Three cells for women prisoners were also built at that time.

Paul Biedermann was not in a cell of any sort. They were holding him in one of the interrogation rooms. Like most such rooms it had a small observation chamber large enough for two or three people. The door to that was unlocked and I stepped inside it and watched Paul Biedermann through the mirrored glass panel. There was all the usual recording equipment here but no sign of its being recently used.

The interrogation room in which Biedermann was being held had no bed; just a table and two chairs. Nothing to be broken, bent or used as a weapon. The door was not a cell door; there was no iron grill or bolts, and it was secured only by a heavy-duty mortise lock. After I'd had a good look at him I opened the locked door and went inside.

'Bernd. Am I glad to see you.' He laughed. The scars down the side of his face puckered, and his smile was so broad that his twisted face looked almost demented. 'Jesus. I was hoping it would be you. They said that someone was coming from Berlin. I can explain everything, Bernd. It's all a crazy mistake.' Even under stress he still had that low-pitched hoarse voice and the strong American accent.

'Easy does it, Paul,' I said. I looked around the white-tiled room but I couldn't see any obvious signs of hidden microphones. If the observation chamber was not in use they were probably not recording us. Finally I decided not to worry too much about it.

'I did everything you told me to do, Bernd. Everything.' He was wearing expensive linen pants and open-neck brown shirt with a scarf tied at the neck. There was a soft brown cashmere jacket thrown carelessly on to one of the chairs. 'Have you got a cigarette? They even took away my cigarettes. How do you like that.'

I offered him the pack of Atika cigarettes. They were his own cigarettes from the things on Nicol's desk. He took one and I put the pack on the table. There was a tacit understanding that he'd get them if he was good. I lit his cigarette and he inhaled greedily. 'Were you carrying all that secret junk I saw upstairs?'

'No,' he said.

'You weren't carrying it? You never saw it before?'

'Yes. That is to say, yes and no. I was carrying it. But I don't know… submarines.' He laughed briefly. 'What do I know about submarines?'

'Sit down. Relax for a moment. Then tell me exactly how you got the papers,' I said.

He exhaled smoke, and waved it away with his hand as if trying to dispel the smoke in case a guard came and took the cigarette away from him. 'I always travel light. I was flying to Rome. I have a holiday place on Giglio – that's an island…'

'I know where Giglio is,' I said. Tell me about the papers.'

'I travel light because a car always collects me at the airport and the only clothes I'll need will be those that I keep there.'

'What a life you have, Paul. Is that what they call la dolce vita down there in Giglio.'

He gave me a fleeting smile that was no more than a grimace. 'So I just carry a little shoulder-bag that is well under regulation size for cabin baggage.'

'Just clothes inside it?'

'Hardly anything inside it; shaving stuff and a change of linen in case I get delayed somewhere.'

'So what about the brown leather case?'

'I paid off the taxi outside the arrivals hall and went in through the main entrance, and before I got anywhere near the Alitalia desk the taxi driver came running after me. He gave me the brown case and said I'd forgotten it. I said it wasn't mine but he was already saying that he was illegally parked and he pushed it to me and disappeared – it was very crowded – and so I thought I'd better take it to the police.'

'You thought it was a genuine mistake? What did the cab driver say when he gave it to you?'

'He said, I'm the cab driver. Here's the bag you left behind.'

'Give it a minute's thought, Paul. I'd really like to get it right.'

'That's what he said. He said, I'm the cab driver. Here's the bag you left behind.' Biedermann waited, looking at my face. 'What's the matter with that?'

'It could be all right, I suppose. But if I was a cab driver and someone had just paid me off, I wouldn't feel the need to say who I was, I'd be egoistical enough to think he'd know who I was. And neither would I be inclined to tell him what the bag was. I'd expect my passenger to recognize it immediately. I'd expect him to fall over with excited appreciation. And I'd hang around long enough for him to manifest that appreciation in the time-honoured way. Right, Paul?'

'Yeah… It seemed all right at the time. But I was flustered.'

'Are you quite sure that the man who gave you the case was the man you paid off in the cab?'

Paul Biedermann's face froze. Then he inhaled again and thought about it. 'Jesus. You're right, Bernd. The cab driver was wearing a leather jacket the same colour as one I've got, and a dark-blue shin. I noticed his sleeve while he was driving.'

'And the one who gave you the case?'

'He was in shirt-sleeves. I thought my driver had taken his jacket off. But the second man's shirt was white. Jesus, Bernd, you're a genius. Some bastard planted that bag on me. I was going to find the police office when they arrested me.'

'You were near the Alitalia desk,' I said. 'Don't get careless, Paul. Who would have known you would be at the Alitalia desk?'

'Can you get me out of here?' he said. His voice had that soft, whispery quality that I'd heard from other desperate men.

'I'll try,' I promised. 'Who'd know you'd be at the Alitalia desk?'

'Only the girl in the hotel reception. She phoned them for me. Was it your people who forced the case on me? Is it a way of getting me to work for you?'

'Don't be stupid, Paul.'

'Why would the Russians do it? I mean they could have asked me to take the bloody case and I would have taken it. I've taken other things for them, I told you that.' He stubbed out his cigarette. He had that American habit of stubbing them out half smoked.

'Yes,' I said, although he hadn't told me about carrying packages for them. There was a long silence. Biedermann fidgeted.

'Why did they do that?' said Biedermann. 'Why? Tell me why.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I wish I did know.' Nervously he reached for another cigarette and I lit it for him. 'I'll go and talk to the chief inspector again. London have asked for you. He's waiting to hear if Paris will release you into my custody.'

'I hope to God they do. Trying to sort this out in the French courts will take years.'

I unlocked the door with the key Nicol had given me. Biedermann, as if anxious to do me some extra service, for which I might pay in goodwill, said, 'Watch out for that guy Moskvin. He's an evil old bastard. The other one is almost human at times, but Moskvin is a fink. He's really a fink.'

'I'll do what I can for you, Paul,' I promised.

I went out and locked the door. I went back along the corridor to the stairs to speak again with Nicol. I was at the top of the stairs when I almost bumped into a woman in a blue overall coat. She was quite young, about twenty-five, and carrying a tiny plastic tray upon which there was a coffee with froth on it and a dried-up sandwich. 'With the compliments of Chief Inspector Nicol,' the woman said in a shrill working-class accent. 'It's for the man being held in custody. The inspector said you had the key.'

'Yes, I have. Do you want it?'

'Will you take the coffee to him?' she said nervously. 'Inspector Nicol wouldn't approve of you giving the key to anyone – bad security.'

'Very well,' I said.

'Don't be too long. The inspector has to go to a meeting.'

'I'll be right with him,' I promised.

I spent no more than a minute giving Paul Biedermann the coffee and sandwich. 'They gave me lunch,' he said looking at the miserable sandwich. 'But I'd love the coffee.' It had that bitter smell of the high-roast coffee that the French like so much.

I locked him up again and went upstairs to see Nkol. He was still behind his desk. He was speaking on the phone but he beckoned me inside and ended his conversation abruptly. 'Did you get anything out of him, Bernard?' A vase of cut flowers was now on his desk. It was the undefinable Gallic touch; that little je ne sais quoi that the French like to think makes them human.

'He says the case was planted on him.' I said. I put the door key on Nicol's desk. I noticed that the desk had been tidied and the contents of Biedermann's pockets were now back inside the plastic bag.

'By a cab driver? He got that taxi cab from a rank in the Rivoli? How would you arrange for him to select that particular cab? Not very convincing, is it?'

'I think it was another person who gave him the case. I think he might have been set up.'

'Why would anyone do that? You said he was a small-time agent.'

'I can't think why they'd do it,' I admitted.

'Paris still hasn't replied, but they should come through any time now. Since we've got to sit here, can I send out for a drink for you?'

'A grand crème like the one you just sent to your prisoner would be most acceptable. Do you do that with all the prisoners, or was that just to impress me?'

'And a brandy with it? That's what I'm going to have.'

'You talked me into it. Thanks.'

He reached for the internal phone but before he grasped it said, 'What coffee that I sent down for him?'

'You sent a coffee and sandwich down to him, didn't you?'

'A coffee? What do you think this is, the Ritz? I don't send coffee down for prisoners. Not here; not anywhere.'

'You didn't?'

'Are you mad? A prisoner can break a cup and slash his wrists. Don't they teach you anything in England?'

I stood up. 'A young woman gave it to me. She was wearing a blue overall coat. She looked like a secretary but she spoke like a truck driver. She had a very strong Paris accent. She said the coffee and sandwich came with your compliments and would I give it to the man in custody. She said you had to go to a meeting…'

'She wanted to get you out of the way,' said Nicol. He picked up the key and shouted for the uniformed man who was sitting at a desk in the next room. He took the staircase at one leap and I was right behind him.

It was too late, of course. Paul Biedermann was on his knees in the corner, his forehead on the floor like a Muslim at prayer. But his contorted position was due to the muscular contractions that had twisted his body, put a leer on his face and stopped his heart.

Nicol held Biedermann's wrist, trying to believe there was a pulse still beating there, but it was obvious that all signs of life had gone. 'Get the doctor,' Nicol told his uniformed man. A police officer may presume death but not pronounce it.

Nicol picked up the coffee-cup, sniffed it and put it down again. The sandwich was untouched. It was a miserable, dried-up sandwich. It obviously wasn't part of the plan that he should eat the sandwich.

'We'll be up all night,' said Nicol. He had gone white with anger. 'My people will be furious when they hear. When prisoners die in custody it's always police brutality. Everyone knows that. You told me that yourself, didn't you? Can you imagine what the communists will make of this? There'll be hell to pay.'

'The Russians?'

'Never mind the Russians,' said Nicol. 'I've got all the communists I need right here in the National Assembly. I've got more than I need, in fact.'

'It's my fault,' I said, once we were back in his office.

'You're damned right it is,' said Nicol, his anger unabated by this appeasement. 'And that's the way it's going to go down on paper. Don't expect me to cover up for you.' He got a few sheets of lined paper from the drawer and pushed it across his desk towards me. 'You'll have to give me a written statement. I know you'll say you can't; but you'll have to write out something.'

I looked at the blank paper for a long time. Statements are always on lined paper. The police don't trust anyone to write in straight lines. Nicol uncapped a ball-point pen and banged it down on to the paper to hurry me along.

'You're not going to ask me to stay here?'

'Stay here? Me? Keep you here? And explain to my Minister that I let some foreigner go down and murder my prisoner? Write a statement and get out of here, and stay out. The sooner I'm rid of you, the better pleased I'll be. Go and explain it all to your people in London. Although how the hell you will explain it I can't begin to guess.'

The curious rigmarole with the phoney taxi driver began to make sense. The KGB were determined to frame me. It would look as if I put a "sacred" tag on Biedermann, when there was no real investigation in progress, to help him work as a KGB courier. And then, they'd say, the murder was done to silence him.

Now the big conundrum was finally answered. Now I knew what Stinnes had been doing in Mexico City. He'd been sent there to set up Biedermann, and Biedermann was being made ready for this murder for which I'd be blamed. Of course they'd not let Stinnes know the whole plan; that was not the KGB way. Communism has never escaped that conspiratorial climate in which it was born, and in the field even senior KGB officers are kept to their individual tasks. But what care and attention they put into then: tasks. Even while I was sitting there frozen with anxiety, and twisted up with indecision, I had to admire the scheme that had trapped me. The KGB were not noted for their brilliant ideas, but their dogged planning, determination and attention to detail could often make something out of a lousy idea.

Well, the mouse was nearing the end of the maze. Now I knew what trap faced me. But surely to God no one in London Central would believe that I could be a KGB agent, and certainly not one who'd murder Biedermann or MacKenzie in cold blood. But then I remembered the way that Frank had wrung out his conscience to give me a chance to run off to Moscow. There could be nothing more sincere than that; Frank had risked his job, his chances of a K and his pension for me. Even Frank believed I might be guilty, and he'd known me since I was in my cradle. I wouldn't get the benefit of the doubt from those stoney-faced Oxbridge men in London Central.