The Quiller Memorandum

18 : OBJECT 73

The hands of Captain Stettner had begun shaking.

I sat facing him, trying to think, but gave it up. The room was so filled with his horror that detached thought was impossible. He picked up a telephone long before he had finished reading my deciphered version of the Rothstein document.

"Fifteen," he said to the switchboard.

That would be their forensic laboratory, the safest place for keeping a glass phial whose contents might be dangerous.

"Captain Stettner," he said, his voice only just under control. "You have an object numbered 73 in your keeping. Have you received any orders to open it?" He went on staring at me, and I remembered his uneasiness when the bogus doctor from Phoenix had come to this office to inject him. "Then if you receive any such order, refer to me first, immediately. I have information that the contents are highly dangerous. Please take all steps to ensure that it remains sealed and locked away. Accidental breakage could cause a whole-scale disaster."

He went on a bit more about this, and there was a mist of sweat on the receiver when he put it down. Then I had to wait while he finished reading the decipherment. The single sheet of paper went on quivering in his hands.

"I don't know," he said at last, "anything about these matters. Anything about this bacillus. Do you?" He was like a child pleading to be comforted, to be told that it wasn't really dark, only night-time.

"Not much," I said.

He was running the back of his hand round his face. "I mean," he asked without hope, "is it possible that Dr. Rothstein was deranged in some way?"

"In a world as mad as this, how do we define derangement?"

No comfort in that. He tried again. "This – this talk of a plague. Could one small phial cause such a thing?"

I wished he'd straighten up so that I could sound him on the general background of Solly's operations. Perhaps it would be quicker in the long run to tell him the worst and then put a few questions of the kind that interested me more.

"Yes, a phial that size could do it. At this moment, America, Russia, England, France, Japan and China – there are probably others – are researching on botulinus toxin, culturing it and killing it to provide the basis for an antidote. Eight ounces of it could wipe out the world population. We all need the antidote, just as we all need the best anti-missile missile, to make sure we can go on living in brotherly love. It may be that Rothstein was also working on that toxin, but it isn't what he put into the phial. That's just one of the plague-group."

A telephone began ringing and he cut the switch, so I carried on. "There are three forms of plague. The classic bubonic type causes the superficial lymph-glands to swell and suppurate into dark abcesses. Type two, the septicaemic, poisons the blood. Type three affects the lung. It's even more infectious than the bubonic, which killed off a quarter of the population of Europe in the fourteenth century – the English called it the Black Death. This third type is the pneumonic. Dr. Rothstein gives it the more correct name in that document: pastorella pestis. It's a rod-shaped bacillus that can be grown in a laboratory on suitable culture medium. Once it gets loose, infection is by exhaled droplets and the incubation period is a short one three or four days. Three times quicker than smallpox."

He didn't look comforted. He said dully: "A quarter of the population of Europe. Did you say that?"

"At that time, twenty-five million people." My thoughts ran on aloud, just as they had at the Nurnberg Trial when I had spoken of Heinrich Zossen. "A heavy toll of human life, mein Hauptmann, Iagree. Even the Nazi plague of our own century wiped out only half that number in the death camps."

It didn't register. He was thinking of Argentina, and object number 73. I tied the ends for him: "Natural resistance to the pneumonic plague in South America is fairly low at present because there hasn't been an epidemic there for a long time, though it's endemic in Brazil, Peru and Ecuador. So I would say that if Dr. Rothstein's brother in the Argentine had opened that phial and tipped the contents from the balcony of a packed cinema, as instructed, the seventy thousand Germans and ex-Nazis in San Caterina would be dead within a week."

He said nothing for a full fifteen seconds.

"Herr Quiller… Why did he want to do this?"

"Because they killed his wife."

"But I do not understand. It is one of your little jokes, again."

"I hope you'll never understand. You're too young to understand. You must ask your elders. They know about these things. They killed twelve million people in five years. Half were Jews. And you can hear their reason for killing six million Judenfrei when you listen to them pleading their innocence at the courts. They say they killed them because they were ‘only Jews’. Nothing personal, you see. No hate, or thoughts of vengeance, or even fear. Just the Yellow Star, the selection-camp, and the gas-chamber. Difficult to understand. I understand Dr. Rothstein's reason better. He was committed to personal vengeance and it was measured solely by the depths of his love for one woman and by the desolation of her loss to him. And a thousand shall fall."

He got up and stood over me, a thin young man still trying to get to grips with the world he'd been born in.

"But the others! The plague wouldn't have stopped at any frontier. The whole of San Caterina – and then the whole of the Argentine -"

"And beyond, until they got the diagnosis correct and put the sulpha drugs to work. Rough justice is like that it takes the innocent as well. He knew that. He knew there are half a million of his own race in the Argentine but even that didn't stop him preparing that phial and writing this bequest to his brother. Dr. Rothstein meant to avenge his wife before he died, and if that wasn't possible he meant his death to bring it about."

Stettner looked down at me with his clear blue unimaginative eyes and I was impatient with him because I'd asked two of my questions about Solly's operational background and he didn't even catch on. Either that, or he didn't know anything more about Solly than I knew.

The day had gone badly for me and frustration was setting in. After two days' grinding work on the cipher I had produced nothing that would take me any nearer to Phoenix. This document could have nothing to do with what Solly had wanted to tell me. He wouldn't have any reason to tell me that his living obsession was to wipe out a South American town, because I couldn't be expected to champion the idea. Either his obsession had followed a normal course, pushing him across the edge of reason so that he was self-blinded to the risk of annihilating a whole continent, or he had made elaborate plans for his brother to organise an underground inoculation scheme to save the innocent before the plague was set on the march. It made no difference to me or to my mission. If Isaac Rothstein were a sane man he would have put the phial straight into an incinerator, realising his brother's state of mind.

Solly would never have told me of this. Then what had he been so desperate to tell me? There was no clue in the document, which was simply a detailed form of instruction to his brother: how the bacillus was to be disseminated, how to avoid infection during the act of dissemination, steps to be taken during the four-day incubation period, so forth.

There was of course an obvious parallel to be assumed, and it would have to be thought about later when I had left the aura of Captain Stettner's pathological horror of disease.

Because I knew that Solly had been doubling.

"I am grateful to you, Herr Quiller," Stettner was saying. "I shall of course take this decipherment straight to my superiors."

Before I went I asked him: "Did you find anything else in that laboratory, anything significant, anything you decided not to tell me about?"

He seemed surprised. "Nothing."

"I've done you a service, Herr Hauptmann, and you would be the first to reciprocrate. So I'll take your word that the canister was all you found."

"You have my word. Apart, of course, from the various papers we allowed you to see at the time. There was nothing else."

He wasn't lying. I wished he had been. It would have been something to bite on.

I left him and found the 230SL where I had parked it, half a kilometre from the Z Bureau. It was a model they'd never expect to find me driving, but once they'd got on to it they'd tag me at a distance because it was so distinctive, and distance-tagging was difficult to sense. They knew I might visit the Z Bureau at any time, so the car had been parked well clear. But I was expecting a tag to show up and there wasn't one. The half-kilometre was a dead clear run and I got into the car with a sense of foreboding. The rope they were giving me was getting longer, and I feared it.

Going over to the offensive was more difficult than I'd thought. Two days wasted on the Rothstein document, with still no clue to the way in.

There was only one feature of the day's work that eased my frustration: I now believed in Pol and in his briefing. The German General Staff did have – or might have – the means of triggering a non-nuclear war. Because of the parallel assumption.

Night was down and the streets shone with the aftermath of the sleet. There was a chance of getting the Mercedes into the Hotel Zentral lock-up without being recognised. If they still had a man posted in the bar at the corner he would be watching for the BMW.

I waited on the far side of the traffic-lights until a line of cars had built up, then followed the two who peeled off and took my street, keeping close behind them on the principle that one of three cars is less noticeable than if it travels alone. The windows of the bar were steamed-up but there was a black area low down in one corner and I turned my head away as I passed the place, swinging into the glass-roofed courtyard of the hotel with the riding-lights switched off.

The courtyard was oblong and the glass roof ran from the hotel building to the row of lock-ups. Observation could be kept on it only from the windows of the hotel itself and from a single house on the other side of the street, whose windows faced the open gates of the court. Three of these were lit and the fourth heavily-curtained. The lower windows of the hotel were of frosted glass and the five upper ones were all lit. I hadn't been seen putting the new image into the lock-up, though I might have been seen driving it into the court.

Findings: the 230SL was probably a good bet if I had to get away in a hurry.

Routine checks made on entering my room indicated no interference. They were keeping their distance, paying out the rope.

One hour's thought cleared up a lot of unanswered questions and posed some new ones. The Rothstein parallel assumption was given a thorough examination and still stood up. The frustration was eased a little and I even had the grace to send in a brief report to Control:

Correction to Signal 5. Container found at Rothstein lab. didn't carry microfilm but a phial charged with heavy culture of pneumonic plague bacillus and ciphered message to R's brother in Argentine detailing method of starting epidemic in San Caterina. Contact Captain Stettner Z Bureau if want details.

Ten minutes with the feet above head-level, the eyes closed. Review mental hooks for the day. One left: telephone the Brunnen Bar.

The line was clear of tapping. There was indeed a message for Herr Quiller: would I please ring Wilmersdorf 38.39.01 before midnight?

She answered after the second ring. There was no tapping at her end either.

I asked: "Are you feeling better?" There had been blood on her thighs.

"I am better now."

"They gave me your message -"

"Yes. You must come to see me."

"Too dangerous, Inga. It could start all over again."

"There is no danger. You must come as soon as you can. I have something important for you. Believe me." There was a choice of two reactions: to follow her view of the situation, or to follow mine. I said:

"I'll be with you in fifteen minutes."

My view of the situation might not be right but it was riskable. But I left the car in the lock-up, walking to the post-box and sending the signal before I got a taxi. I wanted the very fast 230SL to stay unseen in case there was trouble and I had to drive myself out of it.

There was no apparent observation on the entrance to the block of apartments. The hall, lift and top-floor passage were deserted. I pressed the bell.

She was in a tunic and slacks of a red so vivid that it glowed on my hand as I touched her and burned in her eyes as she watched me. It was the first time I had seen her in colour.

She said: "This is Helmut Braun."

He was a small soft-eyed man with slightly hooded lids and a short kittenish nose. He never put his hands anywhere but let them hang by his sides, and he was as confident as she was nervous. She glanced twice at the ebony table within the first half-minute.

"I am officially working for them," he said to me with a shy smile.

I was on the wrong foot and the thought was unpleasant. We always try to estimate whatever situation we go into, beforehand-even a few seconds beforehand. It was twenty minutes since I had telephoned her and I was still unprepared for three things: the vivid red of her clothes, the presence of the man Braun, and the object lying on the table. It was a black-covered file of papers.

It would have to be played by ear, and we never like that.

"For them?" I asked him. He might be anyone, Z Commission, a doubler, one of her lovers. He wasn't in my group: there hadn't been a single ‘c’ in his first sentence.

"Phoenix," he smiled.

We were obviously here for business because he picked up the file and offered it to me with a pert bow. "This is for you, Herr Quiller."

Inga sat on the black Skai settee, a flame on charcoal. I looked at her once before I opened the file but she was staring at her hands. The file was thin quarto and there was one word on the first sheet: Sprungbrett. Springboard.

I asked: "Do you want me to look at it right away?"

"We think you should." His accent was Bavarian.

They both watched my face as I turned the sheets. The second sheet carried a list of names, all of them high-ranking officers of the German General Staff. Next was a list of armed units in readiness. There followed the main outline of the operation, detailing preliminaries, major attack-sectors and spearheads. The operation was to be launched by carefully-integrated land, sea and air contingents immediately following a false announcement by five international news-services that a bomb-test in the Sahara had misfired and was spreading fallout across the Mediterranean. Under cover of alarm conditions the immediate assaults would be directed against Gibraltar, Algeria, Libya, Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Sicily. Franco in the west, Nasser in the east, and Mafia battalions taking hold in southern Italy. A fait accompli before the major powers could put out the fire. And this only the springboard of a non-nuclear war in a nuclear age, with neither Russia nor the United States mutually threatened.

It took me fifteen minutes to read the file, during which time no one spoke. I dropped it back on to the table and said

"There's no date. No D-Day, no H-Hour."

Helmut Braun looked pained. "I hadn't noticed that. It would be very difficult for me to find out the date of the operation. It was highly dangerous for me in any case to get this file."

Inga had been watching me but now she looked at her hands again. I could tell nothing from her expression except that she was nervous about the whole thing. Braun was still looking hurt.

"There's a testing-team set up in the Sahara," I said reflectively, "at the moment. No one's been told when they intend to fire their bomb."

"We can assume it's a matter of days, Herr Quiller."

I stood close to him and asked: "Why did you make it your business to get hold of this file and what decided you to let me see it?"

His hands hung at his sides. He looked at me straight in the eyes. "I am a friend of Inga's. She knows I am working against Phoenix. She told me about you. I wanted to do something active- definitive – and it was a chance for me after so many years of passive opposition to them. Herr Quiller, I am a Jew." His hands moved at last, their fingers opening in an appeal for my understanding. "I can do nothing with this file, but you can. So I brought it to you."

Then Inga moved and hissed out a breath and he swung his eyes to her and then to the door. In silence he went across the room and bent at the door, listening.

Sixty seconds is a long time. The silence went on for longer than that and he stood crouched like a cat at the door. She was beside me but I didn't look at her. Knowing that if there came another sound he would hear it, I left the situation in his hands and used the time for thinking.

It sometimes comes to people like us that we are faced with the terrible temptation of risking all on a single throw. This happened to me now. But we never throw blind. There have to be certainties in support of the decision to take a risk that size. In my case there were these:

I knew why the Brunnen Bar hadn't been put under observation on the night when Oktober had been here. I knew why Solly had been killed. I knew why Inga, tonight, was wearing red. And I knew why the briefing draft of Operation Springboard had been given freely into my hands.

But certainties can lodge in the mind as a partial result of stomach-thinking, which is always dangerous. Sometimes the facts in our possession interlock so elegantly that we reject the few pieces that spoil the edge of the picture. Therefore a risk is always present when the all-or-nothing type of throw is made; but the risk is calculated.

Braun moved, coming away from the door.

"I am an easily-frightened man," he said. "I wish I weren't like that. My operations would then be less passive, less ineffectual." He had spoken in a whisper.

I looked down at the file. "You're not doing badly." It seemed to cheer him up and he asked: "You'll take it to your people?"

"Yes. As soon as I've got confirmation on it. My people like us to vet this kind of thing at source, to save wasting time. And time looks short, with this one."

"How will you get confirmation?"

"I'll go to the source. The Phoenix base. I know where it is. The house by the Grunewald Bridge."

At the edge of my field of vision I saw Inga begin shivering.