XPD

41

Willi Kleiber hated to be alone. After his friend Max Breslow had gone back to his hotel, Kleiber went upstairs to the little room which he used as an office and called the phone number that his new client had left with him.

In spite of Willi Kleiber’s off-hand remarks to Breslow, he was in fact extremely pleased at the prospect of working for Helmut Krebs, who was one of the richest men in West Germany. He owned the greater part of a chain of supermarkets that were to be found all over Europe. In the last few years, he had begun manufacturing and packaging many of the goods sold there. His own brands of instant coffee, yoghurt and soft drinks were as good as any of the better-known labels and always just a few Pfennigs cheaper.

It was the Krebs family background that attracted Kleiber to the idea of having him as a client. Krebs’s brother was an ambassador, and his wife and sister were both well-known patrons of the theatre. Some member of the Krebs family was usually represented at any chic international social gathering. Such a client-who mingled in a world where widespread concern about kidnapping, murder and blackmail was on everyone’s mind-could open unlimited business opportunities to a company which traded on its capacity to reassure potential victims.

Kleiber was not surprised therefore to find that Krebs’s confidential secretary was guarded in his response to Kleiber’s suggestion that he should see Mr Krebs at once, rather than wait until the appointment they had made for the next morning.

‘Mr Krebs has a dinner engagement,’ said the secretary.

‘So do I,’ said Kleiber. ‘I must leave by eight o’clock.’

‘Mr Krebs is having dinner in Venice,’ said the secretary coldly. ‘ Venice, Italy,’ he added in case there should be any doubt. ‘He will be using his private jet.’ Nothing could have been better calculated to sharpen Kleiber’s interest.

He told Kleiber to hold the line and it was several minutes before he returned to say, ‘Very well. Mr Krebs will see you this evening. Be at Geneva airport at six o’clock sharp. You can speak with Mr Krebs on the aircraft, which will bring you back to Geneva again at 7.30. I’ll arrange a car to take you to your appointment if you wish.’

‘No need,’ said Kleiber. ‘I’ll use my own car.’

‘I’ll ask the pilot to send someone to collect you. Wait by the bar on the departures level and one of the staff will take you through the formalities. Be sure you bring your passport. You’ll have to clear customs and immigration of course.’

‘I understand,’ said Kleiber, although the self-importance of the man at the other end was intolerable to him. It was always secretaries and clerks and doormen who were so rude, thought Kleiber; it was likely that Mr Krebs himself would prove to be gracious and charming.

‘One more thing, Mr Kleiber,’ said the voice at the other end. ‘I am responsible for Mr Krebs’s personal safety and security. You will make quite sure that you are not carrying anything that could possibly be used as a weapon. I include even small penknives, or boxes of snuff, in that category. You might be asked to submit to a body search. You are a professional, I believe? I’m sure you’ll understand the reasons for such precautions.’ His voice made it clear that he did not care at all whether Kleiber understood.

‘I do,’ said Kleiber. He kept his temper under a tight rein, He guessed that Krebs had been threatened by one of the lunatic left-wing student groups. Perhaps it was not going to be a divorce case. Perhaps it was going to be something more important than that.

‘Six o’clock sharp at the bar on the departures level, Geneva airport. The crew member will be wearing a plain uniform with peaked cap.’

‘I’ll be there,’ said Kleiber, and tried to hang up before the secretary did, but lost the race. He smiled to himself. It would be amusing to be able to tell Max that he had been to Venice, Italy, since seeing him this afternoon. He consulted his watch. There would be enough time for a game of tennis before he showered and got ready for the meeting. He wondered which of his staff he would be able to beat soundly. Willi Kleiber only enjoyed tennis when he won a resounding victory.

Promptly at six, Kleiber arrived at the rendezvous. He was wearing a grey, lightweight, wool-and-polyester suit, white shirt, English club tie and polished side-zip ankle boots. The uniformed man who met him nodded deferentially and escorted him through the special customs and immigration room provided for private aircraft movements. A blue Ford Escort was waiting to take them out to the far side of the airport.

Kleiber looked at his watch and nodded in admiration at such efficiency. It was only fifteen minutes past six when he stepped into the Jet Commander. This eight-seater was one of the older types of twin-jet executive aircraft, but the sleek design and its blue and grey livery made Kleiber decide that it was one of the most beautiful aircraft he had ever seen. Inside, the leatherwork was blue, with grey carpeting to match the exterior colouring. There was that fugitive smell of real hide, metal polish, warm oil and some other indefinable aroma which distinguishes expensive sports cars from the mass-produced imitations, and there was the sound of ice cubes rattling gently in Waterford glass.

‘Would you take a seat at the very front, Mr Kleiber,’ said the man who had escorted him through the immigration and formalities. ‘Mr Krebs is already aboard. He’ll come forward to join you in a few minutes.’

Kleiber touched the leatherwork with sensuous appreciation. The aircraft had been designed to provide the passengers with a clear view; the leading edges of the wings were to the rear of the rearmost windows. From here he would have a fine view of the landscape.

‘Champagne cocktail sir?’ A steward appeared with some glasses on a silver tray. Kleiber nodded, and a large cut-glass goblet was placed on his armrest, together with a linen napkin and a platter of thin water biscuits. Kleiber twisted in his seat to look for Mr Krebs but the rear of the passenger cabin was curtained off. ‘Please fasten your seat belt, sir. We’re about to take off.’

Kleiber nodded and settled back into his seat again. This was the life he wanted. He closed his eyes; for a moment this was his private jet and beside him there was some big-breasted girl accompanying him on a weekend of hot sun, cool ocean and crisply laundered bedding. Without opening his eyes he sipped more of his champagne cocktail.

The motors of the aircraft rose in pitch to an ear-splitting scream and then, brakes released, the jet ran forward and on to the perimeter track. Kleiber sat back and drank his champagne. He could see the pilot talking into his microphone to clear the take-off with flying control. At the end of the runway, the plane rocked on its wheel brakes for a moment. Then, with engines at full revolutions, it started down the runway, gathering speed until it hurled itself into the air.

Kleiber looked round. The cabin attendant, and the man who had greeted him by name, were strapped into their seats two rows behind him. There was no one else in sight. He rested his head back on the seat and looked out of the window. The landscape tilted away more and more as the jet pulled its nose back into a steep climb, to gain altitude for the flight over the Alps.

The sun painted the peaks bright yellow as the sheer-sided valleys sank into limpid pools of blue shadow. There was nothing comforting about such beauty, thought Kleiber; it was daunting. For countless years the slowly moving glaciers had chiselled at the mountains; now only the very hardest crystalline substructure remained. It was just one more example of the way that nature favoured the strongest-or the most adaptable. The cocktail contained too much brandy and not enough bitters for his taste, but no matter. He looked at the spectacle below them. A direct route to Venice would take them right over the highest peaks of the Alps. He spotted the Matterhorn, its gaunt, angular shape like some hungry beggar among its plump, snowy brethren.

Kleiber passed a hand over his eyes and felt a feverish sweat upon his forehead. Even the champagne glass pressed there did not cool his brain. He felt giddy and tried to hold his drink more tightly, but in spite of his grip the glass fell from his twitching fingers and smashed against the metal bulkhead. He saw the bubbling champagne splash across the toes of his boots and felt the nausea and the curious sensation of endlessly falling that he had known before only after reckless drinking. He pushed a hand over his mouth as he felt the vomit; he could not undo the buckle. His tie seemed to be choking him and he felt the sweat dripping down his face. He reached forward to… he reached forward… and then there was only falling and blackness, and eventually only blackness.

‘He’s gone, Melvin. Where in hell did you get those Mickey Finns?’

‘ New York. A bartender on Third Avenue. Used to be a singles joint but lately it’s turned really rough.’

‘Remind me not to go there.’

‘They wouldn’t let you in, Todd. You got to be eighteen.’ Kalkhoven’s assistant grinned. The pilot was looking round. Melvin Kalkhoven gave him a thumbs up and the pilot began talking to the ground, asking for a change of route to Frankfurt am Main.

Todd Wynn began to pick up the broken pieces of glass from the smashed champagne goblet, Kalkhoven went back to get the US Army blankets and the stretcher. By the time they got to Frankfurt, the unconscious Wilhelm Kleiber would have to be ready for transfer to a US Air Force medical transport aircraft. The documentation was all ready. Kleiber had become Captain Martin Moore, an infantry officer stationed in Berlin, now suffering from an unidentified virus disease and being returned to a specialist hospital in the USA for tests.

The decision to abduct Wilhelm Kleiber had been taken at the highest level of American intelligence. On Wednesday, August 1, the deputy director of Central Intelligence had taken what by now was being called ‘the Parker File’ to the director’s seventh-floor office in the CIA building in suburban Langley, Virginia. The transcript of Kleiber’s conversation with Parker, recorded the previous evening, was an important factor in the decision.

The deputy director asked for freedom to handle this case in the way that the project chairman proposed, but the involvement of Yuriy Grechko-a Soviet embassy official-in Edward Parker’s espionage activities meant that the decision would have to be agreed to by the President’s closest advisers. The director discussed the file with his deputy for ninety minutes. At the end of what was actually a briefing, the director left, using his private key-operated elevator and chauffeur-driven black Lincoln for a pre-lunch meeting with the Secretary of Defense and the President’s national security adviser. Eventually it was decided that President Carter’s well-publicized successes with the Soviet leaders at the SALT talks in June were not a good reason for modifying in any way the CIA’s actions to limit Russian espionage against the US. The CIA was given permission to act against the spies ‘with maximum vigour.’

The new importance that the project had now been given, and the need to tackle it on a worldwide basis, meant moving it out of the Domestic Operations Division and giving it a new file number. However, the project chairman and Sam Seymour, the file editor, retained their roles. So did Melvin Kalkhoven, the field agent.

It was Kalkhoven who planned the seizure of Wilhelm Hans Kleiber. Kalkhoven flew from Washington to Frankfurt on the night of Wednesday, August 1, in order to obtain the full cooperation of the German security service. The BND’s officer in Hamburg (who was responsible for direct contact with London and liaison with the British Secret Intelligence Service) was not told of this development. Neither was the British SIS informed. As with all such high-priority matters, it was dealt with on a strict ‘need-to-know’ basis.

Melvin Kalkhoven made urgent contact with a well-known German business man-Helmut Krebs-and asked him if his name might be used in connection with a security operation. Krebs, a man of impeccable credentials, well known in Washington, readily gave his consent. Together Krebs and Kalkhoven arranged how phone calls should be placed to discover the whereabouts of Wilhelm Kleiber. Repeated urgent messages left with Kleiber’s office and at his home finally produced results.

There are thirty-six telephone links between Germany and Switzerland. Each link has 500 telephone lines. Thus it was necessary to tap-or at least monitor calls on-some 18,000 separate phone lines during the period when Kleiber’s office staff or family would be expected to pass on to him the fictitious message from Krebs.

The telephone call that Kleiber received from his Munich office enabled the telephone monitoring department-Amt 3-of the federal intelligence service of West Germany to give CIA field agent Kalkhoven a transcript of Kleiber’s conversation and the address of the lakeside house near Geneva where he took the call. It confirmed that Kleiber had swallowed the story about Krebs. The CIA office in Frankfurt, having already secured a luxuriously fitted Jet Commander, now had it flown to Geneva and put a CIA crew on standby there.

Kalkhoven’s brief included a strict instruction that the final phase of the operation must have top-level approval. So, at five a.m., Friday, August 3, the duty officer on the Operations floor at Langley received Kalkhoven’s coded telex marked NIACT (to get action before the following morning). Decoded, the message read, ‘He whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed.’

The seriousness of abducting a German national from Switzerland and the repercussions it could bring, meant another long meeting with the deputy director and the project chairman. The reply did not reach Geneva until the following day. It was 2.25 p.m. on Saturday, not much more than two hours before Kleiber phoned asking for an immediate meeting, when Washington ’s reply got to Kalkhoven. The text of the cable from Langley approved of the Kleiber kidnap plan and revealed a new dimension of the project chairman. ‘Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.’ But, as Kalkhoven pointed out, that is New Testament.

By the time the prostrate body of Wilhelm Kleiber was loaded into the Military Air Transport Service Boeing C-135 at Frankfurt, Melvin Kalkhoven was holding a handful of messages and instructions. The CIA knew about the raid that the Swiss police had made upon Kleiber’s lakeside house, and their contact inside the Swiss intelligence service office in Berne believed that the tip-off had come from London.

Kalkhoven sat at the purser’s desk at the rear of the big Boeing transport. The cabin ahead of him was dark, except for the dim red safety bulbs and a crack of yellow light round the crew-compartment door at the very front. He had a small reading light by which to read the documentation. His assistant came back from checking that Kleiber was still unconscious. They had administered an anaesthetic that would have to be renewed before they got to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

‘What will they do with this guy, Melvin?’

‘Looks like there’ll be enough evidence to hang that California murder on him.’

‘Don’t kid me, Melvin. We didn’t snatch this guy in order to deliver him to the Justice Department. And if he goes into court on a murder rap, he’s going to complain mightily about the travel arrangements we made for him. The agency would end up with a lot of egg on its face, Melvin, so why not level with me?’

‘I don’t run the company,’ said Kalkhoven. ‘I just work for it. This operation has become very high powered. I have to get written permission from Langley every time I defecate.’

‘You think they’re going to turn him round?’

‘Give him a job with us, you mean? I sure as hell hope not, Todd. I don’t want to be working next to a murderous bastard like that guy out there.’

‘New policies mean new allies, new allies mean new friends. That’s the name of the game, Melvin, you only have to read your newspapers to see that.’ Todd looked round to see Melvin Kalkhoven’s face. It was underlit by the low-voltage desk light; hunched over the sloping desk, he looked more than ever like some nineteenth-century Bible-puncher, thought Wynn.

‘ “Forsake not an old friend for the new is not comparable to him; a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.” ’

Todd Wynn smiled nervously and wondered if Melvin Kalkhoven knew that people called him ‘the Bible-basher’. Probably he did; he always seemed to know more than he revealed.