XPD

29

By Monday, July 23, it was becoming increasingly easy for Sir Sydney Ryden to believe that fate was working against him. He dined that evening at the Beefsteak, an old-established gentleman’s club consisting of little more than a small ante-room, an office, a few armchairs-providing a view of some public lavatories and a war memorial-and a narrow room in which members and their guests dined, all at the same long table.

Fortune placed Sir Sydney next to a bearded TV scriptwriter with decided views upon the government’s promised cuts in the civil service. ‘Take the Home Office,’ said the scriptwriter, reaching for a silver-plated cow which had been emptied of milk, ‘Half the people there are making tea whenever I have been inside the building. You are not at the Home Office, are you?’

‘No, I’m not,’ said Sir Sydney gravely.

The scriptwriter tilted the silver cow so that he could use its nose to draw patterns on the table cloth. ‘I did a documentary there last year. Disgusting waste… We said that in the programme, of course.’

‘Most interesting,’ said Sir Sydney. He glanced round to see if his host had yet escaped from the man who had button-holed him with a request about joining the club committee.

‘What part of the civil service are you with?’ the scriptwriter asked, having failed to discover this by means of indirect remarks.

‘The Foreign Office,’ said Sir Sydney Ryden.

‘They are helping us with a programme we’ll air next April,’ said the scriptwriter. He confidently assumed that everyone was fascinated by a behind-the-scenes glimpse of television. Sir Sydney sipped his port and hoped the young man would talk to his host and leave him alone. He would have made his escape, except that there was still a small matter of paying his share of the cost of the cigars.

‘… and the Germans had put all their gold down into this salt mine… ’ he suddenly heard the scriptwriter saying. ‘The greater proportion of the entire German gold reserves and God knows what documents and stuff… ’ Sir Sydney’s stomach tightened and the port suddenly became vinegar in his mouth. He turned to the bearded man and nodded.

‘Really. And this was your idea?’ said Sir Sydney encouragingly

‘Some looney historian from one of those dud universities in the Midlands. A professor he was… ’ The bearded man laughed. ‘You should have seen him. I wouldn’t have given him a job as a cleaner. But he had the stuff all right. Unusable, mind you. Scriptwriting for TV is a very specialized technique. The Beeb gave him a few quid and sent him packing. The poor old fool was furious but there was nothing he could do about it. “Sue the BBC,” I told him, “and see where that gets you.” One of my people took over the project and started it rolling so that we can air it on the anniversary of the end of the war. That’s when the Yanks got to the mine and found the loot there.’

Sir Sydney relit his cigar, noting with some satisfaction that the flaming match did not tremble. ‘Tell me how your script begins,’ he said, this being the simplest way to have the story retold while he gave his full attention to it.

By now the scriptwriter was steering the silver cow round the salt and pepper so that it left tracks in the table cloth. ‘It’s not my script,’ he said. ‘I’m what they call a script editor. I phone up any writers I think might be able to handle it. We’ve had a four-page outline. The actual script won’t be ready until next month, as I remember.’

‘It must be an awfully interesting job,’ said Sir Sydney and gallantly sat through another half-hour of finer points of script editing until the subject of the salt mine was quite, quite cold.

The next morning Sir Sydney arranged an urgent meeting with the assistant director at the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP is the official department which advises law-enforcement agencies about the legal aspects of serious criminal proceedings. The assistant director promised Sir Sydney that they would support an action against the BBC or any of its employees, and any other person concerned, should they not cooperate with MI6 in its endeavours to suppress the publication of material which was protected by the Official Secrets Act, as clearly this was.

On that same day Sir Sydney Ryden arranged a meeting with the chairman of the BBC board of governors. Without going into any detail, he explained that the revelation of certain aspects of the recovery of the treasure in the salt mine would not be in the public interest.

In the absence of the BBC’s Director General, who was indisposed, the chairman got Sir Sydney Ryden’s permission to bring the head of external services (who was the ranking executive) into the meeting.

Sir Sydney produced a map that one of the MI6 cartographers had prepared overnight. It showed the city of Frankfurt, and the autobahn north which led through Alsfeld and Bad Hersfeld, and the convoy route on the small side road off the autobahn. It showed too the present-day border, with its barbed wire, man traps, minefields, searchlights and machine-gun posts.

‘Director Janecke and Director Thorns of the Reichsbank were the two men who handled all the gold in Nazi Germany,’ said Sir Sydney Ryden. ‘I have here some of the documents which show the shipments made to the Kaiseroda mineshaft at Merkers during those final weeks of the war. You see the signatures.’

The two BBC men looked at the map and the border of East Germany which encompassed the tiny town of Merkers.

‘This is the document from the Reichswirtschaftsministerium which assigned space in certain selected mines for the protection of such treasures as they considered most valuable,’ said Sir Sydney passing it across the desk.

SECRET

List of Money, Gold, Bullion, Found in Salt-Mine Cave,

Merkers (H-6850) Germany, 8 April 1945

Gold Reichsmarks, bags 446

Austrian crowns, bags 271

Turkish pounds, bags 73

Dutch gold, bags 514

Italian gold, bags 62

Austrian coins (miscellaneous), bags 3 (nos. 2, 15, 96)

British coins (miscellaneous), bags 3 (nos. 12, 17, 15)

Gold bars, bullion 8198

American $20 gold pieces, bags 711 (25,000 dollars per bag)

Miscellaneous coins, bags 37

Gold francs, bags 80 (10,000 francs per bag)

Miscellaneous money and coin, bag no. 1

Italian gold coins, bags 5 (20,000 per bag)

British gold pounds, bags 280

Foreign notes, miscellaneous, bags 80

Reichmarks

1000 Mark notes, bags 130 650,000,000 Marks

100 Mark notes, bags 1650 1,650,000,000 Marks

50 Mark notes, bags 600 300,000 Marks

20 Mark notes, bags 500 100,000 Marks

5 Mark notes, boxes 800 60,000 Marks

____________________

2,300,460,000 Marks

Gold bar, 1

Silver bars, 20

Silver plate, boxes 63 and bags 55

Gold, 138 pieces in bags 49

Gold, miscellaneous pieces, bag 1

Gold, French francs, bags 635

Swiss gold, bags 55

Crated gold bullion, boxes 53

Crated gold bullion, long boxes 2

Valuable coins, bags 9

Coins (not marked), bags 5

Turkish gold coins, bag 1

Mixed gold coins, bag 1

American dollars, bag 1 (12,470 dollars)

Austrian gold (marked GA ‘V’), bags 13

Miscellaneous gold of various countries, bags 6

Danish gold coins, bags 32

Platinum bars, bag 1 containing 6 bars

Roubles, bags 4

Silver bars, bags 40

Gold bullion, bags 11

British pounds, bag 1

Documents (metal boxes marked FHQu) 82

The two BBC officials studied the documents and looked at the map. Soon they exchanged significant glances and one of them asked, ‘You’d not want the full list of gold and valuables made public, Sir Sydney?’

The DG gave one of his cheerless smiles. ‘I wouldn’t like to define exactly our priorities.’

This evasive reply was enough to convince them that the Russians had been deprived of their rightful share of the treasure from a mine which became part of the Russian zone. Now, believing that they understood the full implications of Sir Sydney’s mission, they were fully ready to help. The producer of the documentary would be informed that there was litigation threatened by an unspecified complainant. Photocopies of all relevant material made ostensibly for the legal department would actually be sent to Sir Sydney Ryden’s home address within twenty-four hours.

The DG expressed his gratitude and was pleased he had not had to mention his visit to the DPP’s office. It was always better to handle these things at the very top, where the people concerned knew where their duty lay.

By eleven a.m. the following day, Sir Sydney had personally read all the material the BBC delivered to his office.

‘Just a lot of bilge,’ said Sir Sydney. Fatigue muted the relief and delight he might otherwise have shown. ‘A boring little script about the US army finding the bullion in the mine; the documents and archives are scarcely mentioned. Interviews with some high-ranking officers who were nowhere near the mine, and some US army signal corps photographs of the sacks of gold.’ He looked up at Boyd Stuart. ‘I had a sleepless night for nothing, Stuart.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Stuart. ‘In fact, the research office is collecting all references to the Merkers mine-worldwide in all languages.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that we have this damned TV programme material already on record?’

‘Not quite all of it, sir. Research picked it up from their routine scrutiny of police permission for filming. The BBC wants to send a camera crew to get footage of the Foreign Office exterior and interior, for the beginning of their documentary. We asked the FO to request a copy of the treatment before giving permission. They would have got a copy of the script too, as soon as it was completed. That was to be a condition of giving the BBC the permits.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Sir Sydney philosophically. ‘I suppose it’s better that we catch it twice, and find it harmless, than miss it altogether and have a disaster on our hands.’

‘Precisely, sir. Perhaps you underestimate the organization you have yourself created.’

‘Don’t butter me up, Stuart. I can’t abide it.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘How is the interrogation of young Stein going?’

‘He doesn’t seem to know very much, sir. His father probably doesn’t confide in him a great deal.’

The DG nodded. Such paternal secretiveness came as no surprise. He hadn’t discovered the names of his father’s clubs until the old man was almost on his deathbed. What man did confide in his son, he wondered. ‘Nothing at all, eh?’

‘Inference, sir. I think we can rule out this house in which Colonel Pitman lives. Stein says his father told him he’d moved the documents out of there some time ago, and I believe that. Stein senior has a protective attitude towards Colonel Pitman. I think he’d remove such documents simply to make it safer for the colonel.’

‘It sounds extraordinary to me,’ admitted the DG, who could not imagine any of the young men in his department adopting such a protective attitude towards him.

‘I believe it, sir,’ said Stuart. ‘Wherever the documents are, I think that the Pitman house can be eliminated.’

He looked Stuart up and down. ‘Has something happened?’

‘We have a positive identification on the photo, Director.’

‘Start at the beginning,’ said the DG. He sat down on the sofa, stifling a sigh, to convey to Stuart the complexities of his job.

‘The photograph of three men that was found in the safe belonging to Franz Wever,’ said Stuart. ‘It was taken in wartime. One of the men was Franz Wever himself, the second man was Max Breslow. Now we have identified the third person in the photo.’

‘And…?’

‘His name is Wilhelm Hans Kleiber. He made quite a name for himself during the war. We have references to him from the Berlin documents centre. He’s also on RFSS microfilm series T- 175 in the Washington National Archives, and we found him in the Hoover Institution document collection at Stanford University. He was born in a village near Konigsberg, East Prussia. Kleiber joined the army in 1938, became an Abwehr officer and then the SS took him into the RSHA as they took over all the intelligence services. He was taken into the Gehlen organization when it got going again after the war.’

‘A dedicated fellow,’ said the DG bitterly, but there was a trace of respect in the irony.

‘A cynic perhaps,’ said Stuart. ‘A mercenary.’

‘Consistently anti-Communist, isn’t he?’ said the DG. Before Stuart could answer, he asked, ‘Still alive then?’

‘Very much alive,’ said Stuart. ‘Resident in Munich, at least that seems to be where he pays his tax. He is the senior partner of a security company. They own a small fleet of armoured cars used to transport bullion and bank notes… for bank and factory payrolls.’

‘What else?’ It was impossible to guess how much the DG really knew.

‘That’s all we have officially, sir.’

The DG smiled. ‘And unofficially, Stuart? Am I to be taken into your confidence about what you’ve learnt unofficially?’ The DG was able to imbue even the friendliest words with a tone of biting sarcasm.

‘He might be a Moscow Centre operative,’ said Stuart.

‘And who has provided us with this alarming scenario?’

‘The collator, sir.’

The DG was taken aback. He had been expecting Stuart to name some junior clerk in the Identity Department, or some long-retired field agent to whom Stuart had indiscreetly mentioned his quest. ‘So the collator says he’s Moscow Centre,’ said the DG thoughtfully. He pulled his nose, ‘Not such an anti-Communist as I thought, eh Stuart?’

‘If there is some sort of war-crimes guilt hanging over Kleiber’s head, the Russians might have used it to blackmail him into working for them.’

‘You read my mind, Stuart. We’ve seen that one before, haven’t we?’

‘We have indeed, sir. Many times.’

‘It’s a tricky one,’ admitted the DG.

‘We are still “red-flagged”,’ said Stuart. ‘No computer read-outs, no police files, no foreigns.’

‘Are you complaining, Stuart?’ He said it mildly.

‘Such a decision was obviously necessary, sir. But we are being overtaken by events. Unless we have a chance to use the normal channels and procedures, there is a danger that these people will do what they plan to before we have a chance to frustrate them.’

‘You put your case most judiciously,’ said the DG, but he gave no sign that he was swayed by it.

‘Shouldn’t we tell Washington about Kleiber, sir? They could help us such a lot on the German end.’

‘How would you go about it?’

‘A request for information exchange. Give them details of the King’s Cross murders, the explosion at Wever’s farmhouse and the photo of Kleiber. Ask them if they can link any of it with Max Breslow and so on.’

‘Very well, Stuart. Assemble a telex and let me have a look at it after lunch. I don’t like the idea of Moscow Centre getting involved.’

‘No, sir.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that at all, Stuart. Think what the Kremlin could do with the Hitler Minutes if the stuff was turned over to their propaganda machine.’

‘Exactly, sir.’

Boyd Stuart’s meeting with his opposite number in the CIA’s London station was unofficial.

‘And the old man agreed?’ said the CIA man.

Stuart swallowed some gin and tonic before answering, ‘He’ll make it official this afternoon.’

‘You told him what we think about Kleiber?’

‘I said our own collator thought Kleiber was a Moscow Centre agent,’ said Stuart.

‘Suppose he checks?’

‘That’s OK. I talked with the collator. The collator will hum and haw and say maybe. You know what Leslie is like. He’s been there too long to make the mistake of giving anyone a definite opinion.’

The CIA man laughed. ‘Especially when that opinion might explode in his face and dribble all down his Eton tie.’

‘ Harrow,’ said Stuart. ‘Leslie went to Harrow, and his tie is Guards Armoured Division.’

The CIA man punched Stuart playfully. ‘You’re a goddamned kidder, Boyd.’

‘It’s true,’ said Stuart. ‘I’m simply stating facts.’

‘And I like the way you tell ’em,’ said the CIA man. He waved a hand and ordered more drinks from the barman. They were in the Salisbury, an old pub in St Martin ’s Lane, glittering with cut-glass mirrors, shiny brass fittings and shiny brass show-biz people, getting into the swing of the midweek matinee performances which they would soon take on stage at the nearby theatres. A lady with pink hair and stage make-up blundered backwards into Stuart and spilt his drink. ‘Don’t worry about it, dear,’ she said, ‘no harm done.’

Stuart patted the whisky drops from his sleeve.

‘Even my station chief couldn’t beat that one,’ said the CIA man admiringly. ‘She blunders into you, and tells you there’s no need to apologize.’

Stuart moved backwards into a corner and took his companion with him. ‘What I need to know,’ Stuart said, ‘is whether Max Breslow is part of the Moscow Centre network. And I need to know fast.’

‘I’ve promised you the print-out,’ said the CIA man. ‘And you’ll have it as soon as it comes off the terminal. But I’ll have to retype it. I can’t risk the original going outside the building.’ There was a cheer from the other side of the bar as one of the regulars arrived, a pretty blonde girl in a white trouser suit. ‘For you alone, Boyd. That’s the deal, remember? No one you work with is to be told where this information is coming from.’

‘Was that the deal?’ said Stuart, as though trying to remember.

‘OK, Boyd, I apologize. We both got to live with our own people. I know you’re OK. You’re going to need the follow-throughs. I’ll be in Washington on Friday but I’ll check with you at home late Sunday night. Don’t try to reach me at the office, just in case.’

‘Kleiber’s security company,’ said Stuart. ‘Fill me in on that.’

‘You’re trying to measure him up for the killings, are you? No problem there, pal. He’s a rough asshole. That organization of his takes on some tough jobs: debt collection from clubs, bars and brothels where I wouldn’t go without I was inside a Tiger tank. Credit investigation, anti-terrorist stuff and anti-mob assignments. The decapitation is something he’d be able to handle, Boyd. He’s got to be a number one suspect as far as we’re concerned. Did I tell you that we’ve got a similar decapitation killing in Los Angeles?’

‘You told me.’

‘You think it connects up?’

Stuart looked at the CIA man, wondering how much he knew and how much he might have guessed. ‘Could be,’ he said finally. What the CIA man did not reveal to Stuart was that the preliminary scan was already done, and that it showed Kleiber was a one-time employee of the CIA.