XPD

43

Although Stein’s injuries from the motor accident seemed no more than superficial, he never fully recovered from the concussion caused by the blow to his head. His eyes saw the continuing world of 1979 but his mind recognized only the memories, fears and dreams of long ago.

He began to regain consciousness just as Koch was leaving. He looked at the burning wreckage of Colonel Pitman’s Jaguar and at the corpse of the colonel, but he saw the blazing jeep under the African sky.

‘ Aram,’ called Stein. ‘Major Carson is dead. Stay where you are, I’m coming, Aram.’ Very slowly he got to his feet. The police were on the scene by now, but they were all busy coning off the wreckage and trying to slow down the traffic. They had no time to attend to Stein.

Concussed and confused, Stein made his way along the autoroute, staring uncomprehendingly at the passing traffic and sometimes calling for his brother. A motorist, having passed the scene of the accident, slowed and backed up for Stein. ‘Airport,’ said Stein, not once but half a dozen times. The Geneva-Lausanne autoroute passes Geneva airport and this good Samaritan took Stein all the way there and up to the departures level. Stein stumbled out of the car mumbling, ‘Thanks, Colonel.’

It was a measure of Stein’s stamina-and of the apathetic indifference with which airlines treat their passengers-that he was able to go through the procedures of buying a first-class ticket to Los Angeles. Perhaps he would have attracted more attention in the economy section of the jumbo, but airline staff have by now become used to encountering dirty and dishevelled travellers at the luxury end of aeroplanes.

That Saturday evening Geneva airport was crowded with tour groups and Stein’s appearance was not remarked upon by the airport staff. But he was noticed by Max Breslow, who was waiting in a line at the bank counter. He immediately telephoned Chicago.

‘Are you Edward Parker?’ Breslow asked the man on the phone. He brushed aside Parker’s question of who was calling. If it was one of Kleiber’s friends or colleagues the less he knew about Breslow the better. ‘My name does not matter but I am telephoning from Geneva, Switzerland, on behalf of a mutual friend named Wilhelm. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ said Parker.

‘It has all gone wrong here. It is a catastrophe! I doubt if you will see our friend Wilhelm for a long time, he’s in trouble with the police. I have just seen Mr Stein going through the immigration and security to the transit lounge. He is almost certainly going to board the Los Angeles direct flight. Perhaps he has the documents with him, but I didn’t see him carrying a bag. Do you understand all that, Mr Parker?’

It was Saturday afternoon in Chicago. Parker was sitting at his desk eating what remained of a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich long since gone cold. He guessed immediately that the caller was Breslow and fingered his desk clock as he calculated the flight times between Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as the flying time between California and Switzerland. ‘Yes, I understand,’ he said. ‘Go through and make sure Stein boards, would you? I’ll arrange that someone meets him at the other end. Call me again only if he does not board that flight. Will you do that for me?’ Parker had acquired the North American habit of making his demands sound like polite inquiries.

‘Yes,’ said Breslow reluctantly.

Edward Parker was also uncomfortable. He drank more of his coffee without tasting it, his eyes still on the gold-plated desk clock. He would need help in Los Angeles. The only man he could use there was Rocky Ramon Paz, an overgrown ex-wrestler who had-with some financial aid from Parker-made money in the used-car business. Parker could always find local muscle at short notice. But Rocky Paz was not very bright, and Parker knew that direct flights into LA got the attention of customs and immigration, which inevitably meant the presence of the FBI, and often the CIA too.

Parker finished his coffee and then dialled Paz. Suddenly, before getting through, he hung up. He remembered that his latest reports said that the British were in evidence at Los Angeles International. Damn! It was risky but if Stein was walking about with the Hitler Minutes under his arm, getting hold of him was worth almost any risk. And there was the new safe house in Beverly Hills. That would be a perfect place to hold Stein while Paz and his boys worked him over, Parker looked at the clock for the hundredth time and then dialled Paz again.

In summer Los Angeles becomes as dry and as dusty as the little desert towns further inland. And yet, like an oasis in this grey urban sprawl, Beverly Hills is half hidden under a jungle of greenery-its trees so robust and leafy, its lawns so bright and green, that to go there is like entering the sharp-edged world of the hyper-realist painters.

Bronwyn is a large mansion with a fifteen-foot wall surrounding its half-acre of garden. Its heated pool is bright blue, with springboards, ladders and tiled surround so clean and new that it looks like some piece of surgical equipment. However new the pool and Jacuzzi, Bronwyn was built in the early thirties, which makes it one of the oldest houses in the neighbourhood. Following the anglophilia that was then rife, it was modelled on photos of a timber-framed Elizabethan mansion in Essex. Unfortunately, the architect had not visited England and there were no photographs of the sides or back of the original, so the part of Bronwyn that faced the pool was ‘Hollywood Spanish’. The stucco cloisters had been decorated with bright-red, patterned tiles. Huge chinaware pots overflowed with pink camellias in flower and there was blood-red, double-flowering bougainvillea and golden chrysanthemums.

All of this was reflected in the still water of the pool and there was an uncanny silence until, from the far side of the house, there was the bark of a guard dog and a curse in rapid Spanish as a man tried to quiet the restless creature. Boyd Stuart’s feeling of confidence changed to one of unease. He was watching the back of the house through a thin gap between the wall and the warped wood of the service door, which bore a neatly painted notice stating that deliveries were only accepted between eight and eleven Monday through Friday. Stuart was dressed in the same blue coveralls that the contract gardeners wore, and he had moved along the garden wall of Bronwyn snipping at the already perfectly trimmed hedge with a large pair of shears. Close inspection would have revealed that the pair of shears was not of the type normally used for topiary but was an instrument of heavier weight and finer steel which combat engineers use to dismantle wiring defences. Bending down as if to inspect the roots of the hedge, Boyd Stuart applied the jaws of the tool to the chain-link fence. He cut through it with a satisfying snick. Quickly, he continued the process until he had cut a door in the fence.

There was a shout from inside the house and a girl in a small two-piece swimsuit came out of the kitchen door. She was a short, active girl with black, shiny hair and bronze-coloured skin, for which her yellow swimsuit was a perfect foil. She turned on the controls for the steaming hot Jacuzzi and it began to boil and bubble like a witch’s cauldron. There was another call from the man inside the house, asking about the Jacuzzi. The girl did not answer. The man emerged from the house and stood almost hidden in the flowery cloisters. He was a huge, barrel-chested man; even at this distance it was easy to see that he was well over six feet tall, with hairy arms and chest and oily black hair that was long enough to grow into ringlets. ‘Someone must be upstairs always,’ said Rocky Paz angrily.

‘Then you go,’ said the girl. ‘You are always in the pool. We are not your servants.’

‘Whore,’ shouted the man.

‘Cuckold,’ shouted the girl, but she reached for a towelling coat and put it on. ‘For just one hour,’ said the girl. ‘Then I must go to Rodeo Drive; I have a hair appointment.’

‘Hair appointment,’ said the man, rubbing his hand on his chest and tossing back his head in a gesture of contempt. ‘Do you think this is a goddamn garden party?’

The girl pushed her way past him and flounced into the house. The man sighed and went after her. ‘Now don’t get into one of your moods,’ Stuart heard him say as he disappeared inside. Stuart pushed at the wire fence to bend it open and make a gap large enough for him to get through. Then, with a quick look over his shoulder at the empty streets of Beverly Hills, and a quick scan of the upper windows of Bronwyn, he was through the fence and racing-head down-for the shrubbery.

Boyd Stuart got behind a wooden alcove built as an outdoor dining space. There was a large, glass-topped table there and a dozen metal dining chairs, their bright plastic seat pads piled in the corner. He removed his blue coveralls and put them out of sight. He could hear only his own breathing; the house was quiet. The dining alcove was conveniently near to the one-storey kitchen, with another door leading directly into the main structure of the house. Stuart stepped inside. The air-conditioning was on and the air was cool, and the house shuttered and dark. The oak staircase was wide and elaborate with large carved roses at each landing.

Stuart hurried upstairs to where he could see a light burning, but as he got to the top of the stairs a man’s voice said quietly, ‘Hold it, pal, or I’ll blow you apart.’

Stuart turned to see someone he had not seen before. He was as big as the man he had seen at the pool but ten years older-a muscular man with high cheekbones and wavy grey hair. He was fully dressed in a single-breasted grey flannel suit. In his hand he held a.38 revolver very steady. It was Boyd Stuart’s first confrontation with Edward Parker, the USSR illegal.

‘Who are you?’ Parker said.

‘I’ll tell you who I am,’ said Stuart feigning anger. ‘I’m your bloody landlord, that’s who I am.’ It was a reckless improvisation but it seemed to work. He saw it in Parker’s face. ‘So you can put away that damned gun or I’ll have you thrown out.’ It was Stuart’s British accent that helped the deception-that and Stuart’s confidence and obvious lack of fear.

‘Landlord?’

It was absurd, thought Stuart, that he could be so calm and calculating when men were waving guns at him. It had been like this in the shoot-out in the bus depot in Turin, and when the Hungarians spotlit him climbing through their border wire, to say nothing of going through the police lines in Rostock. ‘Yes, landlord,’ said Stuart. ‘I haven’t signed the agreement, you know-perhaps your lawyer hasn’t told you that… ’

Parker frowned and tried to remember whom he had asked to arrange for the use of this safe house and what the details had been.

Stuart gesticulated angrily, waving his hands and shaking his head. It was all a matter of timing, of course. Stuart was watching the gun out of the corner of his eye. It scarcely wavered but Stuart had moved closer. The closer a man is to such a weapon the safer he is, providing he is adroit and well trained, until, with a gun that actually touches the body, even a first-month trainee should be able to knock it aside more quickly than the trigger can be pulled.

‘Are you listening to me?’ said Stuart, keeping up the pressure and moving ever closer. ‘I’m the landlord, not a burglar. Now put that damned gun away.’ That was probably as much as he would get out of that one, Stuart decided. Any moment now, Parker would stiffen, become more suspicious and he would have lost the momentary advantage.

Stuart chose his moment well. A gesture with the right hand, slightly more frenetic than the previous ones, became a hand chop that landed on Parker’s wrist, while Stuart’s left hand grasped the gun barrel and twisted hard. Parker’s fingers were trapped in the trigger guard and the wrist turned back hard enough to inflict severe pain and torn muscle. Parker screamed. By now Stuart had the pistol in his left hand. While Parker was still gulping air to fuel his screams, Stuart brought the pistol butt down upon his head. It skidded across Parker’s skull and took a small piece of flesh from his ear. This glancing blow would have felled most men, but Parker had exceptional strength. In spite of his pain, he continued to fight. His hand injured, he lowered his head and butted Stuart in the chest. It was like meeting the shovel of a bulldozer. It was Stuart’s turn to grunt with pain but he kept hold of the gun, and still held it in his hand as Parker locked his arms round him in a bear hug that squeezed the air from his lungs.

The two men blundered round the landing like some broken mechanical toy. Stuart felt his strength going and struggled to breathe. He kicked viciously. Now he had lost his cold calm, and his actions were generated by a growing panic as he swung his weight backward and forward, trying to break free from the terrible bear hug that seemed to black out his brain. His strength was almost spent when Parker’s foot missed the edge of the landing and the two of them, still locked in the embrace, crashed down the stairs, rolling over and over, arms and legs thrashing the air, elbows, knees and heads rattling upon the uprights, and bodies bumping down the carpeted steps.

It was Stuart’s good fortune that Parker’s head hit one of the carved roses with enough force to chip the wooden petals from it and render Parker unconscious. Stuart took a moment or two to recover himself and then, with leaden footsteps, he dragged himself back up to the upper landing.

‘Who is it?’ It was Stein’s voice. He had heard the commotion.

‘It’s Stuart-the Brit,’ called Stuart. ‘Stand away from the door.’ He put his foot up and, bracing his hand flat against the wall behind him, kicked at the lock. The door splintered and left the remains of the lock dangling from the frame.

Charles Stein was inside. He was in his underclothes and bound to a chair with a nylon clothes line, but he had managed to loosen the sticky tape from his face and spit out the gag. A low wattage bulb provided meagre light.

Stuart reached into his pocket for the Swiss Army knife that was a part of his normal attire. He sawed at the nylon until it parted. Stein remained in the chair and began rubbing his ankles where the bindings had constricted him.

‘Who are these bastards?’ said Stein.

‘They work for the Russians,’ said Stuart. ‘Can you walk? We’ve got to get out of here, there are more of them.’

Stein was still rubbing his wrists and ankles as the blood gradually resumed its circulation. He looked at the pistol that Stuart was holding. ‘You didn’t shoot any of them?’

‘Not yet,’ said Stuart, helping the fat man to his feet.

‘I can make it,’ said Stein.

‘You go ahead. There’s a car at the front.’ Stuart looked at his watch. ‘At least it will be there two minutes from now; a light green Cadillac. Get inside and wait for me.’

Stein hobbled down the stairs clinging to the baluster rail and flinching with the pain. When he got to the unconscious form of Parker at the foot of the stairs, he stepped over him gingerly.

‘Go ahead,’ called Stuart. One by one he looked into the rooms to check them. They were all empty, until he got to the main hall and opened the door that led to the drawing room and to the kitchen beyond it. Inside the drawing room he found his case officer and the girl, in the beachrobe. She was standing disconsolately in the middle of the room, while the case officer pointed a pistol at her.

‘All clear upstairs?’ the case officer asked Stuart.

‘Seems to be OK,’ said Stuart. ‘Stein is groggy but he’s able to walk. The big grey-haired fellow is out for the count.’

‘I heard you come down the stairs with him.’

‘Thanks for your help,’ said Stuart bitterly.

‘You were doing all right.’

Stuart rubbed his grazed and battered face. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

The girl pulled her beachrobe tighter round her body and tugged at its knotted belt. ‘Where’s the other one?’ Stuart asked.

‘One of my boys is taking care of him in the kitchen,’ said the case officer.

‘A neat job,’ said Stuart. It had been a perfect snatch-squad operation. From the twenty-four-hour watch at the airport to seeing Rocky Paz kidnap Stein as he came out on to the street from the baggage hall, it had been exemplary. But perhaps Stuart was tempting providence to say so, for no sooner were the words out of his mouth than there was the sound of two shots and a cry of pain. As if on cue, the girl dashed for the door. The case officer fired but the bullet went high and ricocheted off the oak ceiling of the hallway beyond.

Stuart ran towards the front door to make sure Stein was in the car, but he was nowhere to be seen and Parker was no longer stretched out on the floor; two more bullets whined past Stuart’s head. He turned and, using Parker’s gun, fired at the upper landing where the gun flashes had come from.

Someone had extinguished the fluorescent lights in the kitchen. The inside of this shuttered house was dark. There were two more shots and the sound of feet coming down the stairs very fast. The big man with ringlets came past, pumping a shell into a shotgun. He kicked the inner door open so that it swung round and banged against the wall. The daylight from the doorway lit the hall like a photo flash. There, in the rectangle of the doorway, Stuart saw the whole scene. There was the unnaturally blue water of the pool, a great transparent cube against the dark greenery, and framing it a fringe of bright flowers. The case officer had gone through the kitchen and now was running along the poolside as the man raised the shotgun.

There was no time to think. Stuart aimed and fired automatically. The ringleted man in the doorway was too close to miss. The bullet shattered his shoulder blade, as Stuart intended that it should, and the shotgun went off and covered the surface of the pool with a thousand tiny splashes. The man was yelling, and kept yelling even after he too had tumbled forward into the hot bubbling water of the Jacuzzi.

Stuart ran forward and on to the patio. The case officer had turned towards the sound of the shotgun. ‘Take the car,’ he yelled to Stuart, and already he was kicking open the decorative tea house at the end of the garden to be sure that Stein was not there.

From the front of the house Stuart heard the Cadillac engine as the getaway car arrived. He ran round the side of the house and jumped into it. The driver was tickling the gas pedal nervously. Stuart pushed him aside and climbed behind the wheel. ‘Jesus, what a mess,’ said the driver. ‘Of all places… Beverly Hills, where the cops are thickest. They’ll be all over us.’

Even as the car began rolling forward the double gates were closing. Stuart had studied them closely from the outside during his half-hour of gardening. They were electrically controlled, reinforced with steel cross-braces and topped with a tangle of barbed wire. ‘Hold tight!’ shouted Stuart above the noise of the engine. ‘We’re going to have to get a good run up to it.’ He put the car into reverse and touched the accelerator. The Cadillac shot backwards. Before he could apply the brake, the back of the car had crashed through the conservatory. There was a sound like heavy surf hammering on to the beach as the glass shattered and potted plants and shelving crashed down upon them. A flower pot broke upon the roof of the car, scattering earth and a dozen seedlings over the windscreen. Stuart revved the engine as the rear bumper locked into the bent ironwork. It broke free with a bang and the car sped forward faster and faster until it hit the gates with a clang like a peal of bells. It ripped the hinges and tangled up the barbed wire. With a terrible scream of tyres it broke loose and Stuart brought the steering wheel round as the car skidded across the grass and on to the road. Something caught in the car’s underside, rattled loudly, then broke free. They were away.

‘We lost your dad,’ Stuart told Billy Stein.

‘What in hell does that mean; you lost him?’

The three men were in the sitting room of the Steins’ home. The case officer was in an armchair near the window, pretending to be fully occupied by the view across the city of Los Angeles. Without turning round he said, ‘Your dad was in his underclothes-bright blue shorts and singlet-he came out of the house holding on to a towel round his neck. We thought he was jogging.’

‘You thought he was jogging!’ said Billy Stein. ‘I hear you talking about guns going off, and girls screaming. You wreck the car, ramming the gates. You thought my dad was jogging! You told me you were going to rescue him.’

‘We did rescue him,’ said the case officer. ‘But he scrambled over the fence and came out through the front lawn of the house next door.’

‘Jesus,’ said Billy Stein. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the old man. Concussed in a car accident, kidnapped by the Russians, held prisoner until you rescue him and then he takes off up the road in his underpants… ’

‘We’re laying it all on the line for you,’ said Stuart, ‘because we need to know where he’s likely to go.’

Billy Stein smiled. ‘He won’t come here. He’s not so dumb that he’ll come home where you are waiting for him.’

‘Does he have an apartment anywhere?’

‘What the tabloids call a love-nest; is that what you mean? No, that’s not him at all. My dad was never that subtle, or extravagant. If he had some kind of affair going he’d have brought the girl right back here to the house. You can forget that one.’

‘Clubs?’

Billy Stein shook his head. ‘Only his regular poker game.’

‘We’re going to leave one of our people here in the house,’ said Stuart.

‘That’s OK,’ said Billy Stein. ‘There’s lot of food and stuff.’ He looked at Stuart for a moment before continuing. ‘You’re not kidding about the Russians? Did they really kidnap the old man?’

‘Your dad will tell you all about it, once we find him,’ said Stuart.

Encouraged by the friendly tone in Stuart’s voice, Billy Stein said, ‘It was a frame-up in London, wasn’t it, Mr Stuart? Your people know I didn’t kill anyone?’

The case officer turned his head to see how Stuart handled this question.

‘It was a frame-up,’ Stuart replied. ‘But they could make it stick if you don’t cooperate with us.’

‘I’ll cooperate,’ said Billy, ‘but I wanted to get it clear between you and me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is it OK for me to phone Mary Breslow?’

‘You phoned her this morning,’ the case officer said over his shoulder.

Stuart nodded his approval. ‘But Billy… nothing about your dad, or about the murder charge in London. Just sweet nothings, OK?’

‘Sure thing,’ said Billy.

‘You know Max Breslow was a Nazi?’ said the case officer.

‘You sound like my dad,’ Billy told him. ‘Are you another one of these guys who can’t stop fighting the war?’

‘Go and make your call,’ Stuart said. ‘But remember that the guy in the hall will be listening on the extension.’

‘You’re too damned soft with that kid,’ the case officer said after Billy’s departure.

‘I think he’s a good sort,’ said Stuart. ‘No grudges, no tantrums, no smart-ass remarks. Hell, even when I admit that he was framed in London he practically thanks me.’

‘Rich kids,’ said the case officer. ‘They’re all like that.’

‘Are they?’ said Stuart. ‘Then let’s hope I meet more of them.’

The case officer got up from Charles Stein’s favourite armchair, and took out his cigarettes so that he could light a fresh one from the stub in his ringers. ‘Chain-smoking,’ he said after it was alight. ‘Does that disgust, you?’ Stuart didn’t reply. ‘Because it disgusts me.’ He stubbed the old cigarette out with unnecessary vigour. ‘OK, so I’m hard on the kid. You’re right; he’s OK.’

The case officer sat down again and watched the sun put on its act of dying. Finally, when the room had darkened, he said, ‘You were the one who got those two agents out of Rostock two years or so back?’

It was a breach of regulations to talk of such things but the two men had got to know each other by now.

‘What a cock-up,’ said Stuart. He could remember only arriving back in London to discover Jennifer’s bed companion.

‘The way I heard it you should have got a medal,’ said the case officer.

‘I didn’t even get paid leave,’ said Stuart.

‘I knew one of them,’ said the case officer. ‘A little Berliner with a high-pitched laugh… liked to wear a blade in his hat. He escaped from a prison in Leipzig back in the fifties when they broke up one of our networks.’

‘I remember him,’ said Stuart. Both the men he had rescued were old timers, men who had worked for London for many years. If they had been younger and stronger he might have left them to save themselves, but for these two he had gone back through the road blocks and brought them out again with him. Looking back he wondered at the madness of it.

‘You were the big hero of the department at the time,’ said the case officer. ‘There were guys in East Germany who would have had you canonized.’

Stuart laughed. ‘You have to be dead to be canonized.’

‘I didn’t know before,’ said the case officer apologetically. ‘I wouldn’t have kidded around with you if I’d known you were the agent who brought those two guys out of Rostock -that was really something!’

The two men sat in silence for a while. Then the case officer said, ‘I heard a rumour that these Hitler Documents-or whatever they are-have been destroyed.’

‘I heard the same thing,’ said Stuart.

‘But the department will keep the file open?’

‘The department will keep the file open,’ said Stuart. ‘That’s one thing you can be sure about. My orders are unchanged; I’ve got to locate Stein and Kleiber, then ask London for instructions. Kleiber is now the centre of all London ’s queries.’

‘We’ll find Stein,’ said the case officer, as if reading Stuart’s mind. ‘I’ve put every last man I can spare onto it. I’ll locate him, I promise you. It wasn’t such a fiasco tonight. At least it will make the Russians run for cover and maybe think again before kidnapping anyone else at the airport. When Stein does show up we’ll have a free hand to work on him.’

‘I like Stein,’ said Stuart.

‘He’s a crook,’ said the case officer. ‘And from what I hear the concussion has made him a little crazy.’

‘But I like him,’ said Stuart. ‘And this is not the sort of business where one can be too choosy about the crazies.’