Citadel (12 page)

Basil got to work quickly. Here of all places was
no place to tarry. He untaped the Riga Minox from
his left shin, checked that the overhead light
seemed adequate. He didn't need flash, as Technical
Branch had come up with extremely fast 21.5
mm film, but it was at the same time completely
necessary to hold still. The lens had been prefocused
for 15 cm, so Basil did not need to play with
it or any other knobs, buttons, controls. He took
on faith that he had been given the best equipment
in the world with which to do the job.

He had seven pages to photograph—2, 5, 6, 9,
10, 13, and 15—for the codebreaker had assured
him that those would be the pages on which the
index words would have to be located, based on
the intercepted code.

In fact, Sade's
Justine
proved very helpful, along
with a first edition of Voltaire's
Pensées
and an
extra-illustrated edition of
Le Decameron de Jean
Boccace
, published in five volumes in Paris in
1757, Ah, the uses of literature! Stacked, they gave
him a brace against which he could sustain the
long fuselage of the Minox. Beneath it he displayed the page. Click, wind, click again, on to the
next one. It took so little time. It was too sodding
easy. He thought he might find an SS firing squad
just waiting for him, enjoying the little trick they'd
played on him.

But when he replaced all the documents in their
proper spots, retaped the camera to his leg, and
emerged close to an hour later, there was no firing
squad, just the nervous Marque,
le directeur
, waiting
with the tremulous smile of the recently violated.

“I am finished,
monsieur le directeur
. Please examine,
make certain all is appropriate to the condition
it was in when I first entered an hour ago.
Nothing missing, nothing misfiled, nothing where
it should not be. I will not take offense.”

The director entered the vault and emerged in
a few minutes.

“Perfect,” he said.

“I noted the Sade. Nothing else seemed necessary
to our study. I am sure copies of it in not so
rare an edition are commonly available if one
knows where to look.”

“I could recommend a bookseller,” said
le directeur
.
“He specializes in, er, the kind of thing
you're looking for.”

“Not necessary now, but possible in the future.”
“I had my secretary prepare a document, in
both German and French.”

Basil looked at it, saw that it was exactly as he
had ordered, and signed his false name with a
flourish.

“You see how easy it is if you cooperate,
monsieur
?
I wish I could teach all your countrymen the
same.”

By the time Macht returned at four, having had
to walk the last three blocks because of the traffic
snarl, things were more or less functioning correctly
at his banquet hall headquarters.

“We now believe him to be in a pinstripe suit. I
have put all our watchers back in place in a state
of high alert. I have placed cars outside this tangled-up area so that we can, if need be, get to the
site of an incident quickly,” Abel briefed him.

“Excellent, excellent,” he replied. “What's happening
with the idiot?”

That meant Boch, of course.

“He wanted to take hostages and shoot one
every hour until the man is found. I told him that
was probably not a wise move, since this fellow is
clearly operating entirely on his own and is thus
immune to social pressures such as that. He's now
in private communication with SS headquarters
in Paris, no doubt telling them what a wonderful
job he has been doing. His men are all right, he's
just a buffoon. But a dangerous one. He could have
us all sent to Russia. Well, not me, ha-ha, but the
rest of you.”

“I'm sure your honor would compel you to accompany
us, Walter.”

“Don't bet on it, Didi.”

“I agree with you that this is a diversion, that
our quarry is completing his mission somewhere
very near. I agree also that it is not a murder, a sabotage, a theft, or anything spectacular. In fact, I
have no idea what it could be. I would advise that
all train stations be double-covered and that the
next few hours are our best for catching him.”

“I will see to it.”

In time Boch appeared. He beckoned to Macht,
and the two stepped into the hallway for privacy.

“Herr Hauptmann, I want this considered as
fair warning. This agent must be captured, no matter
what. It is on record that you chose to disregard
my advice and instead go about your duties at a
more sedate pace. SS is not satisfied and has filed
a formal protest with Abwehr and others in the
government. SS Reichsführer Himmler himself is
paying close attention. If this does not come to the
appropriate conclusion, all counterintelligence activities
in Paris may well come under SS auspices,
and you yourself may find your next duty station
rather more frosty and rather more hectic than this
one. I tell you this to clarify your thinking. It's not
a threat, Herr Hauptmann, it's simply a clarification
of the situation.”

“Thank you for the update, Herr Hauptsturmführer.
I will take it under advisement and—”

But at that moment Abel appeared, concern on
his usually slack, doughy face. “Hate to interrupt,
Herr Hauptmann, but something interesting.”

“Yes?”

“One of Unterscharführer Ganz's sources is a
French policeman on duty at the Bibliothèque
Mazarine, on Quai de Conti, not far from here. An
easy walk, in fact.”

“Yes, the large complex overlooking the river.
The cupola—no, that is the main building, the Institut
de France, I believe.”

“Yes, sir. At any rate, the report is that at about
three p.m., less than twenty minutes after the
bomb blast—”

“Flare is more like it, I hear,” said Macht.

“Yes, Captain. In any event, a German official
strode into the library and demanded to see the director.
He demanded access to the rare book vault
and was in there alone for an hour. Everybody over
there is buzzing because he was such a commanding
gentleman, so sure and smooth and charismatic.”

“Did he steal anything?”

“No, but he was alone in the vault. In the end,
it makes very little sense. It's just that the timing
works out correctly, the description is accurate,
and the personality seems to match. What British
intelligence could—”

“Let's get over there, fast,” said Macht.

This was far more than
monsieur le directeur
had
ever encountered. He now found himself alone in
his office with three German policemen, and none
were in a good mood.

“So, if you will, please explain to me the nature
of this man's request.”

“It's highly confidential, Captain Macht. I had
the impression that discretion was one of the aspects
of the visit. I feel I betray a trust if I—”

“
Monsieur le directeur
,” said Macht evenly, “I assure you that while I appreciate your intentions, I
nevertheless must insist on an answer. There is
some evidence that this man may not be who you
think he was.”

“His credentials were perfect,” said the director.
“I examined them very carefully. They were entirely
authentic. I am not easy to fool.”

“I accuse you of nothing,” said Macht. “I merely
want the story.”

And
le directeur
laid it out, rather embarrassed.

“Dirty pictures,” said Macht at the conclusion.
“You say a German officer came in and demanded
to check your vault for dirty pictures, dirty stories,
dirty jokes, dirty limericks, and so forth in books
of antiquarian value?”

“I told you the reason he gave me.”

The two dumpy policemen exchanged glances;
the third, clearly from another department, fixed
him with beady, furious eyes behind pince-nez
glasses and somehow seemed to project both aggression
and fury at him without saying a word.

“Why would I make up such a story?” inquired
le directeur
. “It's too absurd.”

“I'll tell you what we'll do,” said the third officer,
a plumper man with pomaded if thinning hair
showing much pate between its few strands and a
little blot of moustache clearly modeled on either
Himmler's or Hitler's. “We'll take ten of your employees
to the street. If we are not satisfied with
your answers, we'll shoot one of them. Then we'll
ask again and see if—”

“Please,” the Frenchman implored, “I tell the
truth. I am unaccustomed to such treatment. My
heart is about to explode. I tell the truth, it is not
in me to lie, it is not my character.”

“Description, please,” said Macht. “Try hard.
Try very hard.”

“Mid-forties, well-built, though in a terriblefitting
suit. I must say I thought the suit far beneath
him, for his carriage and confidence were of
a higher order. Reddish-blond hair, blue eyes,
rather a beautiful chin—rather a beautiful man,
completely at home with himself and—”

“Look, please,” said the assistant to the less ominous
of the policemen. He handed over a photograph.

“Ahhhh—well, no, this is not him. Still, a close
likeness. Same square shape. His eyes are not as
strong as my visitor's, and his posture is something
rather less. I must say, the suit fits much better.”

Macht sat back. Yes, a British agent had been
here. What on Earth could it have been for? What
in the Mazarine Library was of such interest to the
British that they had sent a man on such a dangerous
mission, so fragile, so easily discovered? They
must have been quite desperate.

“And what name did he give you?” Abel asked.

“He said his name was … Here, look, here's the
document he signed. It was exactly the name on
his papers, I checked very closely so there would
be no mistake. I was trying my hardest to cooperate.
I know there is no future in rebellion.”

He opened his drawer, with trembling fingers
took out a piece of paper, typed and signed.

“I should have shown it to you earlier. I was
nonplussed, I apologize, it's not often that I have
three policemen in my office.”

He yammered on, but they paid no attention,
as all bent forward to examine the signature at the
bottom of the page.

It said, “Otto Boch, SS Hauptsturmführer, SSRHSA,
13 rue Madeleine, Paris.”

Action This Day (cont'd.)

The train left Montparnasse at exactly five minutes
after five p.m. As SS Hauptsturmführer Boch,
Gestapo, 13 rue Madeleine, Paris, Basil did not require
anything save his identification papers, since
Gestapo membership conferred on him an elite
status that no rail clerk in the Wehrmacht monitoring
the trains would dare challenge. Thus he
flew by the ticket process and the security checkpoints
and the flash inspection at the first-class
carriage steps.

The train eased into motion and picked up
speed as it left the marshaling yards resolving
themselves toward blur as the darkness increased.
He sat alone amid a smattering of German officers
returning to duty after a few stolen nights in Paris.
Outside, in the twilight, the little toy train depots
of France fled by, and inside, the vibration rattled
and the grumpy men tried to squeeze in a last bit
of relaxation before once again taking up their vexing
duties, which largely consisted of waiting until
the Allied armies came to blow them up. Some of
them thought of glorious death and sacrifice for
the fatherland; some remembered the whores in
whose embraces they had passed the time; some
thought of ways to surrender to the Americans
without getting themselves killed, but also of not
being reported, for one never knew who was keeping
records and who would see them.

But most seemed to realize that Basil was an
undercover SS officer, and no one wanted to brook
any trouble at all with the SS. Again, a wrong word,
a misinterpreted joke, a comment too politically
frank, and it was off to that dreaded 8.8 cm antitank
gun facing the T-34s and the Russians. All of
them preferred their luck with the Americans and
the British than with the goddamn Bolsheviks.

So Basil sat alone, ramrod straight, looking neither
forward nor back. His stern carriage conveyed
seriousness of purpose, relentless attention to detail,
and a devotion to duty so hard and true it positively
radiated heat. He permitted no mirth to
show, no human weakness. Most of all, and hardest
for him, he allowed himself to show no irony,
for irony was the one attribute that would never
be found in the SS or in any Hitlerite true believer.
In fact, in one sense the Third Reich and its adventure
in mass death was a conspiracy against irony.
Perhaps that is why Basil hated it so much and
fought it so hard.

Boch said nothing. There was nothing to say. Instead
it was Macht who did all the talking. They
leaned on the hood of a Citroën radio car in the
courtyard of the Bibliothèque Mazarine.

“Whatever it was he wanted, he got it. Now he
has to get out of town and fast. He knows that
sooner or later we may tumble to his acquisition
of Herr Boch's identity papers, and at that point
their usefulness comes to an abrupt end and they
become absolutely a danger. So he will use them
now, as soon as possible, and get as far away as possible.”

“But he has purposefully refused any Resistance
aid on this trip,” said Abel.

“True.”

“That would mean that he has no radio contact.
That would mean that he has no way to set
up a Lysander pickup.”

“Excellent point, Walter. Yes, and that narrows
his options considerably. One way out would be to
head to the Spanish border. However, that's days
away, involves much travel and the danger of constant
security checks, and he would worry that his
Boch identity would have been penetrated.”