Yesterday's Spy

Chapter 26

By the time the River Rhine gets to Bonn, it is wide and grey and cold, smeared with fuel oil and flecked with detergent. And north of the capital it meanders through flat featureless land that continues all the way to Holland and the North Sea, and the wind makes the river choppy.

The police helicopter came low over the waterway, lifting enough to clear the masts of a liquid-gas tanker, and then of a big Dutchman, low in the water, with a deck-cargo of yellow bulldozers. Once over his cranes we crossed waterlogged fields and high-tension cables that sparkled in the rain, like a spider’s web wet with dew. And then we saw them.

The helicopter reared, and turned abruptly as we came to the concrete of the rain-washed Autobahn. The five trucks were keeping to a steady fifty miles per hour and the pilot had timed our approach to coincide with a burst of speed by the two white Porsche cars that had been following them.

The flashing police-lights made long reflections on the road, and the trucks slowed and followed the police cars into the heavy vehicle park of a service area. Our helicopter put us down gently just before the huge diesel trucks cut their engines, one by one.

‘Perfect,’ said Schlegel. I’d never heard him use that word before.

The policemen got out of their Porsches, put on their white-topped caps and stretched their limbs. They had been providing us with a commentary for the last half hour. Now they saluted Schlegel and awaited instructions.

‘Ask them for their driving licences,’ said Schlegel derisively. ‘Jesus Christ! Don’t tell me a traffic cop can’t find something wrong with everybody.’

They didn’t smile, and neither did the men who climbed down from the cabs of the trucks.

‘Check the manifests, check the customs seals, check the brakes,’ said Schlegel. He tapped my arm. ‘You and me are going to give them the once-over lightly, before we open them up.’

They were gigantic fifty-ton diesels: twelve forward speeds and two reverse. Cabs like glasshouses, ergonometrically designed seats, and behind them a rest bunk. There were racks for vacuum flasks of coffee, and cheap transistor radios were taped to the sunshields. A set of Michelin maps was duplicated for each of the five cabs, and there was a German phrase-book and a repair manual. They had been on the road for almost twenty-four hours. The cabs had become a smelly clutter of empty cigarette packets and butts, squashed paper cups and discarded newspapers.

‘We would see it,’ Schlegel reminded me. ‘Champion was frightened that we would see it, smell it, or hear it. Otherwise there was no point in arranging that charade with those kooks.’

One of the traffic policemen brought the manifest to Schlegel. It was the same as the ones we’d got from the dock office in Marseille. It described the load as a general consignment of engine parts, construction materials, fabrics and chemicals. Schlegel handed it back. ‘Frisk all of them,’ he told the policeman. ‘If you find as much as a pocket knife, it might be enough to hold them for inquiries. And I want the exterior of the trucks examined by someone who knows how many differentials a truck like this needs and where to find them.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the policeman.

There was a steel towing-cable padlocked to the underside of the chassis and, in special cradles behind the cabs, there were steel wheel-chocks. Schlegel rapped one of them. The metal was too heavy to get an echo out of it.

Schlegel looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

‘Why?’ I said. ‘When you can put it inside so easily?’

‘I suppose you are right,’ said Schlegel. ‘We’re going to have to bust them open.’ The vehicles were so large, and the wheels so big, that we were able to get right under the chassis without crouching very low. ‘Look at the suspension,’ said Schlegel. ‘With one of these brutes you could schlepp Cologne cathedral away in the middle of the night, and still throw the opera house in the trunk.’

‘And it could take plenty more, too,’ I remarked. We looked at the massive leaf springs. The upper one was still curved, and the lower, supplementary spring not yet tensioned.

‘That’s got to be it!’ said Schlegel, in great excitement. ‘You’ve hit it.’

‘The weight!’

‘Exactly. These trucks must be almost empty. Look at that! We should have noticed that from the way they were sitting on the road.’

‘And a customs man would have noticed. In fact they might have put them on a weighbridge while the manifest was stamped.’

‘Why? Why? Why?’ said Schlegel. He punched the great rubber tyre.

‘So that we would be talking about fifty-ton diesel-truck suspension, somewhere on the banks of the lower Rhine, while Champion is earning a promotion from colonel of propaganda to general of god-knows-what.’

Schlegel grunted, and came out from under the truck. He waved to the policeman. ‘Forget it,’ he called. ‘Let them go.’

‘They say they are going right the way down the Autobahn to Munich,’ said the policeman.

‘Are the papers in order?’

‘They say they are going to get new papers in Bonn.’

‘Let them go,’ said Schlegel. ‘They can keep going all the way to Vladivostok for all I care.’ He smiled. ‘That’s all, boys: go get yourselves some coffee.’

The policemen looked at Schlegel with that same inscrutable superiority with which they look up from your driving licence.

Schlegel turned back to me. ‘Munich,’ he said with disgust. ‘And after that, Brindisi or Lisbon — it’s a merry dance he’s been leading us.’

‘There’s something else,’ I said.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know — but he didn’t send five empty trucks from Marseille docks to Bonn just to grab our attention.’

‘Why not?’ said Schlegel. ‘He did it! And while we chased them, he got to where he wanted to go.’

‘You don’t know Champion,’ I said. ‘That’s not fancy enough for him.’

Littered with old food wrappings, smelling of spilled fuel and warm fat, these coffee shops on the Autobahns are the most desolate places in Europe. An endless succession of strangers gobble mass-produced food and hurry on. The staff are glassy eyed and melancholy, trapped in a river of traffic, which swirls past so that the fumes, noise and vibration never cease.

‘And lousy coffee,’ added Schlegel.

‘Do you know how much it costs to hold a chopper on the ground while you dunk that doughnut?’

‘You’re a lot of fun to have around,’ said Schlegel. ‘Did I ever tell you that?’ He opened his shirt and scratched himself.

‘Not lately,’ I admitted.

‘Hit me with one of your dust-packets, will you.’

I gave him one of my French cigarettes.

‘Why?’ he said for the hundredth time. He lit the cigarette.

‘There’s only one explanation,’ I said.

He inhaled and then waved the match violently to put the flame out. ‘Give.’

‘He brought something off that boat.’

‘And unloaded it during the night,’ finished Schlegel. ‘On the other hand, they’ve been making such a good average speed.’

‘It’s all double-think,’ I said.

‘Let’s get back to Nice,’ said Schlegel. He scratched himself again, but this time there seemed to be an element of self-punishment in it.