Spy Line

7

I remember telling a young probationer named MacKenzie that the more casual the briefing was, the more hazardous the operation you were heading into. It was the glib sort of remark that one was inclined to provide to youngsters like MacKenzie who hung upon every word and wanted to do everything the way it was done in the training school. But I was to be given plenty of time to think about the truth of it. When, afterwards, I considered the way in which I'd been brought into the Vienna operation, I inclined to the view that Stowe had been given no alternative: that he was instructed to choose me to go.

The operation was called Fledermaus, not 'Operation Fledermaus' since it had been decided that the frequency rate of the word 'operation', and the way in which it was always followed by a code name, made it too vulnerable to the opposition's computerized code breaking.

Certainly Fledermaus was cloaked in Departmental secrecy. These BOA – Briefing On Arrival – jobs always made me a little nervous, there being no way of preparing myself for whatever was to be done. It seemed as if the determination to keep this task secret from the Americans had resulted in a strictness of documentation, a signals discipline and a delicacy of application that were seldom achieved when the aim was no greater than keeping things secret from the KGB.

I flew to Salzburg, a glittering toytown dominated by an eleventh-century fortress with a widely advertised torture chamber. The narrow streets of the town are crammed with backpack tourists for twelve months of every year, and postcards, icecreams and souvenirs are readily available. My hotel – like almost everywhere else in Austria – was not far from a house in which the seemingly restless Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart once resided.

My arrival had been timed to coincide with an important philatelic auction and I checked into the hotel together with a dozen or more stamp dealers who'd come in on the same flight. Their entries in the book showed a selection of home addresses including Chicago, Hamburg and Zurich. On the reception desk a cardboard sign depicted a youthful Julie Andrews, arms outstretched, singing 'The Sound of Music tour – visit the places where the film was shot.' Behind the desk sat a fragile-looking old man in a black suit and stiff collar. He used a pen that had to be dipped in an inkwell and rocked a blotter upon each entry.

The hotel was gloomy, spacious and comfortable. It was the old-fashioned sort of grand hotel still to be widely found in Austria, and the sweet synthetic scent of polish hung in the air: an indication of manual work. An ancient lift, crafted of brass and mahogany, lurched upwards inside a wire box with a wheezing sound, and sudden rattles, that persuaded me to use the stairs for the duration of my visit. There was even a man in black waistcoat and green baize apron to carry my bag.

An Austrian named Otto Hoffmann had met me at the airport and made sure I got a comfortable room in the hotel. 'At the back overlooking the river,' he said in his powerful Austrian accent, and a chilly draught hit me as he opened the window and peered out to be sure the water was still there. 'No traffic noise, no smells of cooking, no noise from the terrace café. Tip the porter ten schillings.' I did so.

Hoffmann was about forty years old, a short, hyperactive man with merry little eyes, a turned up nose and smiling mouth. His manner plus his large forehead, his pale unwrinkled skin, the way his small features were set in his globular head, and his sparse hair, all gave him the appearance of an inebriated baby. I don't know how much Hoffmann had been told about 'Fledermaus' but he never mentioned that name. He knew that my cover story of being a stamp dealer was completely untrue and he'd obviously been chosen for his knowledge of philately.

'And now I shall buy you a drink,' he said as he closed the inner window and put his hand on the radiator to be sure the furnace was working. He meant a cup of weak tea. Because he kept his money in his back pocket, in a large roll secured with a rubber band, he had a disconcerting habit of tapping his behind to make sure his money was still there. He did this now.

He briefed me while we were sitting in the hotel lounge. It was a cavernous place with a celestial dome where angels cavorted and from which hung an impressive cut-glass chandelier. Around the walls there were potted plants set between other small tables and soft chairs where fellow guests, unable or unwilling to face the crowded streets, sat drinking lemon tea in tall glasses together with the rich pastries, or gargantuan fruit and icecream concoctions, that punctuate the long Austrian days.

He ordered two teas and a rum baba. He told me they were delicious here but I was trying to give up rum babas.

'The auction sale consists almost entirely of Austrian and German material,' he told me. 'Of course the biggest market for that is Austria and Germany, but there will be American dealers, bidding as high as the present exchange rate of the dollar permits. Also there will be compatriots of yours from London. London is an important trading centre for philatelic material, and there are still many important German and Austrian collectors there. Mostly they are refugees who fled the Nazis and stayed in England afterwards.'

The waitress brought our order promptly. The tea came in a glass, its elaborate silver-plated holder fitted with a clip from which a spoon was suspended. She put two large chunks of lemon on the table and splashed a generous amount of an alcoholic liquid upon a shiny sponge cake which bore a crown of whipped cream. 'Are you sure…?' Hoffmann asked again. I shook my head. The waitress scribbled a bill, put it on the table and sped away.

'And what am I doing here?' I asked, keeping my voice low.

He frowned. Then, as he understood me, he twitched his nose. On the table he had two beautiful catalogues. He passed one to me. It was an inch thick, its coloured cover, magnificent art paper and superbly printed illustrations, making it look more like an expensive book of art reproductions than a commercial catalogue. They must have cost a fortune to produce. He opened it to show me the pictures of stamps and old envelopes, tapping the pages as some picture caught his attention. 'Most of the really good items are from the old German states. Württemberg and Braunschweig, with a few rarities from Oldenburg, Hannover and so on. Here too are some choice things from old German colonies: mail from China, Morocco, New Guinea, Togo, Samoa.'

As he leafed through the catalogue Herr Hoffmann lost the thread of his conversation. His eyes settled upon one page of the catalogue. 'Some of these Togo covers sound wonderful,' he said in an awed voice, and read the descriptions with such concentration that his lips quivered. But he tore himself away from the wonderful offerings to show me the auction schedule printed on the inside cover. The hours – eight o'clock in the morning until approximately three o'clock in the afternoon, with an hour off for lunch – were listed to show the numbered Lots that would be offered in each session. There were several thousand Lots for the sale, which would last five days. 'Some rich collectors employ agents to come to the auction and buy selected items on their behalf. The agent gets a nice fee. You will be such a person.'

'Why don't they bid by post?'

He gave a slight grin. 'Some collectors are suspicious of these auctions. When you bid by post the amount you authorize the auctioneer to spend is supposed to be your tip-top offer. The auction house undertakes to charge you no more than one step above the next best bid.' He squeezed lemon into his tea and chased a pip around with his spoon but, after testing the side of his glass with his fingertips, decided it was too hot to drink.

'And?'

He gave another sly grin; his face slipped naturally into this expression, so that it was hard to know whether he was amused or not. 'Whenever I bid by post it always seems that someone has mysteriously kept bidding right up to one step below my maximum offer. I find I always pay the whole of whatever I bid.' He picked up his fork and looked at his cake with the concentration a demolition expert gives to placing dynamite.

'So collectors have agents who make sure the bids and the bidders are real?' I said.

'Exactly. Even then it is difficult to know if there is a swindle. Sometimes there will be an auction official on the phone taking phone bids and the auctioneer will have in front of him the postal bids. It is difficult to be sure exactly what is happening.' His conversation had been marked by the little smiles but now he became serious as he took his fork and ate a section of his rum baba. 'The pastry chef is Viennese,' he confided as he savoured it.

'And what else will the agent have to do?'

'He should have examined the Lots for which he is going to bid, to make sure they are not damaged, or repaired or forgeries.'

'Are there many forgeries about?'

'There are some Lots in this auction with estimated prices of about one hundred thousand U.S. dollars. That is a great deal of money by any standards. Many people pay less than that for the lease of a house to live in.'

'You make your point, Mr Hoffmann,' I said. 'But don't the auction houses have experts? Don't they know enough about stamps to recognize a forgery?'

'Of course they do. But auction houses get their percentage of the sale price. What inducement do they have for detecting a forgery? And what do they do then – accuse their customer of dishonesty? If the forgery is sold they get a nice share of the money. If they send it back they lose a customer and make an enemy and lose their percentage too.' He stopped abruptly and ate some cake. Two men who'd been sitting at a nearby table had got up and were walking out. They were Americans to judge by their clothes and their voices, neatly dressed with fresh faces and polished shoes.

'You make them all sound like a lot of crooks,' I said.

'I hope I don't. I know dealers I would trust my life to. But it is a precarious trade,' said Hoffmann and smiled as if that was what he liked about it. I had the feeling that the idea of selling forgeries did not offend him in the way that it should have done. I wondered if he was in some way connected with the forgeries that the Department commissioned from time to time. Reading my mind perhaps, he gave me a sly grin.

'Are the people here all dealers?'

He looked round the sepulchral lounge. Waitresses in formal black dresses and white starched aprons padded silently to and fro across the white marble floor with trays of teas and cakes. The men, a mixed collection but for the most part middle-aged or elderly, were bent low, scribbling annotations in their catalogues and whispering conspiratorially to each other, rather as we were. 'I know most of them,' he said.

'And all men?'

'Yes, I don't know of one important female stamp dealer. There are virtually no female collectors even. Should a woman inherit a collection she sells almost immediately: you can depend upon it.' He decided his tea was cool enough to drink and tasted it.

I was flipping through the catalogue. 'How do they decide the estimated price?' I asked.

'Don't take much notice of that,' he said. 'That's just to whet your appetite. The estimated prices are far below what the auctioneer expects to get.'

'How much below?'

'There is no way to answer such a question. Auction houses vary. Crazy things happen. Sometimes two agents arrive, both instructed with buy bids.'

'What is a buy bid?'

'It means buy at any price.'

'At any price?'

'The craving – the reckless lust – that some collectors show for an item they particularly want is difficult to describe. Some collectors become unbalanced, there is no other word to describe it.' He fastidiously wiped his fingers on the napkin and then brought from his pocket a small folder of tough clear plastic. Inside it there was a used envelope (or what I'd learned to call a cover) with a stamp (or what I'd learned to call an adhesive) on it. 'Look at that.'

He handed me a white envelope adorned with quite an assortment of stamps and postmarks. Smudged and discoloured, it had been readdressed twice and was such a mess that I would probably have thrown it straight into the waste bin had I found it on my desk. It meant nothing to me but I looked at it with the kind of reverence he obviously expected of me. 'Most attractive,' I said.

'A man went to prison for that,' said Hoffmann. 'A respected man, chief clerk in an insurance office. He was a customer of mine: nearly fifty years old, with three children and a pensionable job. He had a decent little collection. I'd provided quite a lot of the things myself. He was knowledgeable about his own speciality. He regularly gave talks, and displayed his stamps to philatelic societies. Then he heard that a well-known collector had died and he knew that this cover was amongst the collection. It would be the gem that completed his collection. He asked me if I could find out when it was coming on the market. He was determined. By a lucky chance I knew about it. I guessed the widow would dispose of everything: they always do. You don't like to go sniffing round too soon. It upsets the family. On the other hand if you wait too long some other dealer will go in there and pick up the whole collection… buy it up for nothing sometimes, when the relatives don't know what they have inherited. There are some unscrupulous people in this business, I can tell you.'

'I'm beginning to believe it,' I said.

'Is there something wrong with your tea?'

'No. It's delicious.'

'You're not drinking it.'

'I'll get around to it.'

'The widow was a rich woman. The collection was unimportant to her. When I went there and asked her about the collection she decided to make me her agent, to value and then sell the whole lot of it. It put me in a difficult position in respect of the other collector but I never really considered that he was seriously in the market for it anyway. There are only thought to be four or five covers like that one. The last time one of them was auctioned it fetched fifty thousand dollars and that was almost ten years ago. Even if this one fetched no more than that one did, my insurance company friend just didn't have access to that sort of money.'

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 Flugpost-marken, entwertet mit violettem Paraguay-Zeppelin-Sonderstempel 'Por Zeppelin' dazu violetter Paraguay-Flugpoststempel 16.5. Brief nach Deutschland, in dieser Erh. ungewohnl. 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 collectors' 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.