XPD

38

Charles Stein also arrived in Geneva on that first Saturday of August. He was worried. His telegram to Colonel Pitman had said they would meet at the ‘nut house’. He wondered if Pitman might have forgotten that when the bank had been at its original premises near the cathedral-a chaos of muddle and excitement-they had always called it the ‘nut house’, and when Madame Mauring took over, filling the new shop window with almond cakes, the name seemed newly appropriate.

‘I need something from the safe.’ The cathedral clock chimed and Stein looked at his watch.

‘Here’s the key, Mr Stein. You’ll find everything in good order. There’s not much petty cash, I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t want to touch anything of yours, Madame Mauring,’ Stein told her. ‘I want that packet I left here.’

‘It’s all as you left it, Mr Stein. You help yourself.’

The safe was an absurdity-a single key operating a set of four spring bolts. It would impress no one, except perhaps some proud owner. On the other hand, who would be looking for anything very valuable in the safe of a small tea room? And there was more to it than that. Stein leaned to direct the green-shaded desk light into the safe’s shallow interior. Using both hands he inserted the stubby index fingers of both hands into small recesses. It was awkward and Stein breathed heavily with the exertion of it, until with a soft metallic click the whole back wall of the safe’s interior hinged forward, to reveal the dials of a far more modern safe.

Stein had committed the combination to memory and now he quickly twirled the dials, before opening the inside door. From it he got an envelope. It was no larger than a medium-sized book, perhaps a centimetre thick. Stein opened it to check the contents. These were Hoffmann-La-Roche bearer shares. Each sheet had a nominal value of 3.3 Swiss francs, and an actual value of about £25,000. The contents of this packet were worth some two and a quarter million dollars to anyone who pushed them across a bank counter anywhere in the world. Then, reverently, he took from the safe another package even more valuable: the Hitler Minutes. It was not impressive looking: a cheap office folder, as thick as a packet of cigarettes.

Stein had brought with him the small brown canvas bag which he usually carried on trips. Now he emptied it on the table to make room inside it for the packet of bearer bonds. The outer pocket contained a toothbrush, shaving tackle, Bufferin tablets, nail clippers and an unopened plastic box containing one tablet of Roger & Gallet soap. Charles Stein was most particular about soap and he had used this particular brand-sandalwood perfumed-for over twenty years. In the bag’s larger pocket there were shirts, underwear, socks and handkerchiefs. He felt inside the plastic wrapping of the shirts to be sure that the identity papers he had got from Delaney were still there. He looked again at the Brazilian passport. Stein’s photo was not a recent one but it would do.

‘The colonel has arrived,’ said Madame Mauring looking round the door. ‘More coffee and cake?’ She seemed to sense that something terrible was about to happen.

‘Yes, please, Madame Mauring.’

‘The colonel said coffee doesn’t agree with him.’

‘Maybe today he won’t care,’ said Stein.

She smiled and opened the door so that Colonel Pitman could enter the room. ‘I say, today maybe you’ll have coffee,’ said Stein, speaking slightly more loudly so that Pitman would hear.

‘Yes, please, Madame Mauring.’ He waited until she had gone. ‘So this is where you hid the Hitler Minutes.’

‘They’re right here,’ he said. ‘You want to see?’

Colonel Pitman nodded. Stein indicated the package on the table and then Madame Mauring brought the coffee tray. She pushed the Hitler Minutes aside to make room for the cups and saucers. Pitman picked them up. The cardboard folder had been blue originally but now the colour had faded to almost light grey. A long time had passed since some clerk of the US Army’s Government Affairs Group, G-5 Section, had hurriedly typed the inventory tag: ‘Merkers H-6750. Typewritten documents, German language, approx. 300 pages’. American metal seals, and earlier German wax ones, were still in place but the tapes and strings had been cut. The initials of the archive specialist from the MFA &A were still faintly legible on the box-shaped, rubber-stamp mark. Pitman riffled the corners of the documents, like a card sharp preparing for a good evening.

Madame Mauring fussed with the coffee things, looked at the two men, and then left without speaking. ‘She’s all right,’ said Stein in reply to Pitman’s unasked question. ‘She’s always been grateful to us for letting her have the lease.’

‘What shall we do, Charles?’ Sometimes it was Corporal, but now it was Charles.

‘Get out of this store, then get out of this town, then get out of this country.’

‘I would hate leaving my house,’ the colonel said. It was easy for Stein, he was comparatively young and fit and still had everything he would need to settle down in some new environment and start a new life. But Colonel Pitman did not want to leave this place. He liked to be near the doctor he trusted, with the servants he liked and in a house he had grown to love. ‘Must I go too, Charles?’

‘I think you should, Colonel.’

‘What about your son Billy?’ said Pitman. He fidgeted with the papers as he looked at them. It was damnable when a man needed a good cigar and a large brandy and could not have them.

‘I told that shmendrick the British sent to see me in LA,’ said Stein. ‘Them holding Billy don’t cut any ice with me. If I give them these papers, we’ve got nothing to bargain with. I told them I’ll get lawyers and fight for Billy through the State Department. That’s the only language these government bastards understand. I told him that if they didn’t release Billy, I’d give xeroxes of all this junk to Stern magazine and the Washington Post, making it a condition that they campaign for Billy’s release.’

‘My God, but you’ re a hard man,’ said Pitman.

‘It’s logical,’ said Stein.

Pitman nodded. It was logical, but how many men would be able to make such a decision about their son? Perhaps that’s what leadership was. Perhaps leadership was asking people to do things the hard way, simply because that was the way you were prepared to act yourself. Pitman chided himself that he had never been prepared to do anything the hard way.

‘There was a man tailing me,’ said Stein, ‘the Brits I guess. How do you like that; the sons of bitches had a man tailing me. He was on the plane too.’

‘Did he follow you here?’ said Pitman nervously.

‘Nah! I changed planes in Paris. I got rid of him at the airport. You stay in the toilet long enough, the guy following you will eventually come in, to check up. Some tough kid I used to know in New York City told me that. I waited for him, and beat him senseless.’

‘You did what?’

‘I slugged him. I put him inside the toilet and set the latch to show it was in use. The cleaners will find him.’

Pitman shuddered. ‘I’ll drive you to the airport, Chuck.’ Then Pitman said, ‘How do you know he was someone the British sent?’

‘Who else would have sent him?’

Pitman nodded. ‘I’ll drive you to the airport, Charles. Then I’ll take the car across the border into France. There is a hotel on Lake Annecy where I go sometimes. I could stay there for a few days until it’s blown over.’

‘It’s not going to blow over, Colonel. We’re fighting City Hall, don’t you see that? The Brits and the Krauts both want the Hitler Minutes. If we don’t let them have them, they’ll blow us away. But if we do let them have them, they’ll also blow us away.’

‘I’m too old to run, Charles,’ said the colonel. ‘Too old and too exhausted. When you get to my age, nothing matters any more; the whole damned world becomes boring, like a movie you sat through too many times.’

‘Where’s your car?’ said Stein. ‘We’ve got to get going.’