Pray for a Brave Heart (18 page)

“Paula Waysmith?” Denning was incredulous. Paula was the girl all men thought they had to protect. “And what had Rauch to do with Paula?”

“He entered her room.”

“But he isn’t a thief.”

“Not a jewel thief,” Keppler said. “But I shouldn’t trust any valuable information near Herr Rauch’s nervous fingers.”

“But Paula—”

“She is a friend of a young woman called Francesca Vivenzio. Do you know anything about her?”

“No. I just met her today.”

“You have never heard of Falken?”

“No.”

Keppler studied the toe of his shoe. Then he said, “So we have Rauch. And we have the man who searched Meyer’s pocket.”

Falken, Denning wondered, Falken… He said politely, “What did he take?”

“Why do you think he took anything?”

“Why else did he run when he was challenged?”

Keppler smiled. “You are back to normal, my friend. You weren’t so much out of training after all. Yes, he took a wallet with money and a few scraps of paper. He threw away the wallet and money before the police car reached him, so he can’t plead he is an ordinary thief.”

“He’s denying everything?”

“He was—for the scraps of paper weren’t traceable. Only, he couldn’t wear gloves when he picked Meyer’s pocket, so we have fingerprints on the wallet. We can’t prove the wallet was Meyer’s, but we can prove the man is lying when he says he never saw it in his life. And when Inspector Bohren suggested his fingerprints might be in the murder car too, he was obviously nervous.”

“But he wasn’t the driver of that car.”

“No. But he could have travelled in it on his way to Bern.”

“From Berlin? He spoke with flat hard vowels and slurred consonants.”

“From East Berlin. That we did find out.”

“His politics?”

“He keeps saying he was a Nazi.”

“He
says
that?” Denning shook his head. “Then he is the first Nazi I’ve ever heard of who admitted it freely.” But this suits Le Brun’s theory, he was thinking. Had Le Brun been right, was I wrong? “Perhaps I’m wrong,” he said slowly. “Perhaps the ex-Nazis are behind all this.”

“Once he was a Nazi—and that information he volunteers; now he is a Communist, which is more evident than he realises with his limited brains. Bohren has quite an ear for their phrases. That’s the trouble about regulated ideas: the phrases are never original, the same words keep recurring. But basically he’s a thug pure and simple, a man who can be bought to do any ugly work.”

“Clever of them,” Denning said. “An ex-Nazi who’s now a Communist.” Then he looked sharply at Keppler. “And was that why you were so noncommittal before Le Brun, when we were discussing the two agents, Eva and Rauch? Did they too once work for the Nazis?”

Keppler nodded.

“And now for Soviet Russia?”

Keppler nodded again. “Not for military intelligence, however. We’ve always considered them minor agents, interesting to watch. We could have arrested them any time, under Article 272. But the small fish can pilot you to the big fish, you know.”

Denning was silent. The small fish… Charles-Auguste Maartens, a frightened little man, a very small fish…

“Well,” Keppler said, “there are all the pieces. What kind of picture do they make?”

Denning half-closed his eyes. He was beginning to see the
first vague shape. First, Nikolaides needed help when he sent Charles Maartens to Max Meyer in Frankfurt. Then, in Bern, Nikolaides didn’t need help: he needed it so little that he tried to end any interest he had aroused. He discredited Max Meyer. Ah…he did not only want to discredit, he also wanted to discourage Max himself. Was that the explanation for the totally unnecessary piece of acting by the fake Maartens? Max was not only to look like a fool—that would not have discouraged him, not Max—he was to feel he had been fooled.

Denning looked at Keppler.

“No guesses, at least?” Keppler asked.

“Guesses, yes. And probably stupid.”

“Such as?” Keppler was smiling. He liked that quick look in Denning’s eyes.

Denning said, “Nikolaides wanted Bern to himself. He wanted Max Meyer to leave, completely discouraged. Why? Because the diamonds are in Bern. What’s more—they must be stealable.”

“Then they’ve been sold. They’ve been sold to a private individual—” Keppler snapped his fingers.

“—on whom Nikolaides can safely go to work in his usual way,” Denning added.

“But what about Genoa? Was that only an addition by Nikolaides to make sure that the Americans would take action?”

They looked at each other. “It could be,” Denning said slowly. “At least, Nikolaides seemed to have his own ideas about Americans and their motives. I remember Meyer told me—yes, Genoa could have been Nikolaides’ idea of a sure bait.”

“Come,” Keppler said, his excitement growing. “Keep throwing your ideas to me; I’ll throw mine to you; between us,
we’ll catch some truth. Forget Genoa at the moment. Back to Bern. Nikolaides must have been very sure that the diamonds were here, easy to steal, before he cancelled Maartens’ meeting with Meyer. He must have been very sure.”

“He made a deal with them,” Denning said slowly.

“With the political agents of the power that was smuggling the diamonds?” Keppler grinned. “Don’t you admire my restraint?” He waved away his aside. “A deal…” he said thoughtfully. “Nikolaides was to end our interest in the diamonds; in return, Nikolaides was told the name of the buyer. Yes…that would be sufficient for Nikolaides. Only the diamonds, therefore, would be a big enough bribe. Who was this poor foolish buyer, anyway?”

“No interest,” Denning said. “But what is important is
how
his money will be used.” Max had talked in Berlin of a secret fund for political purposes. Was it already set up?

“Nikolaides won’t let that trouble his conscience.”

“But Max would have.
That’s
why he was killed.”

“Perhaps,” Keppler said slowly, “he had even discovered how the money was to be used.” He glanced at his watch. The message in Meyer’s pack of cigarettes should have reached them by this time. He rose. He tried to conceal his sudden worry. “Certainly Nikolaides didn’t know he was being drawn into murder when he made the deal. That’s the trouble when you start doing business with political gangsters. Their plans always go far beyond yours.”

“My heart bleeds for him,” Denning said grimly. “No doubt he’ll start thinking he’s in danger, too. Well, I hope he sweats it out.” Then, thinking of danger, he thought of Le Brun who had made contact with Taylor today. “Le Brun—will he be all right?”
he asked anxiously. He looked at Keppler, who was walking round the room restlessly. “Le Brun,” he said again, “shouldn’t you warn him?”

Keppler stared at Denning for a second, as if he were making a long journey back to cope with that question. “Yes,” he said, “yes.” He passed a hand wearily over his eyes. And Denning, watching him, wondered what further guesses Keppler had been making by himself. They had upset him.

“Of course,” Denning said, “all these guesses of ours may be wrong.”

“Guesses they may have been,” Keppler said grimly, “or suppositions, or inferences, or deductions. But there’s enough truth to—”

On a wall above his desk a bell rang, then rang three times more in short quick jabs. Keppler glanced up as Denning had. He took a deep breath. He relaxed. A smile came back to his face as he crossed the room with his light step. “I switch the front bell to ring up here at night,” he explained as he unlocked the door. “Doesn’t alarm my sister.” The dog outside had risen and was growling in a deep bass rumble. “I heard the bell, Fafner. I heard it,” he said, and the door closed.

Denning looked round the room, then at the books and records near his comfortable chair. He felt a touch of envy, a warm sympathetic envy, more a recognition of what he would like than a hunger for something he could not possess. Here I am, he thought, a stranger in another’s armchair: yet not a stranger. His friends are my friends. There is the Brahms Fourth, asking to be played. There, on the shelf above, is Rainer Maria Rilke, waiting to be read.

A corner of one’s own, like this: it wasn’t so much to ask,
it wasn’t so difficult to obtain—except for the jobs that had to be done, the business of life pulling you away, pushing you out from your own thoughts or from the ideas that others could offer you. Jobs to be done, the business of living. Were they the things that unsettled you? Or were they merely an excuse?

He reached over to the bookshelf and pulled out the thin book of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems. It fell open easily at “Day in Autumn”. So Keppler liked to read this too.
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich nimmermehr…

The homeless man finds it too late to build.

The lonely man will keep his loneliness,

Will lie awake, will read, will write long letters,

Will wander to and fro under the trees

Restlessly, while the leaves run from the wind.

Keppler was back in the room, a strange mixture of excitement and triumph. “Make any more guesses?” he asked when he had regained his breath.

“Only about the shape of my own life.” Denning pushed the book of poems back into place on the shelf. He tried not to look too curiously at the envelope in Keppler’s hand.

Keppler smiled suddenly. “Here,” he said, “read this and see if it makes any sense.” He held out the envelope. “I looked at it, down in the hall. Couldn’t resist it,” he admitted.

“Doesn’t it make sense?”

“In its own field, yes. Of considerable importance, I’d say. But as you’ll see, there isn’t a thing in this report about the Herz diamonds. Or about Charles Maartens.” Keppler shook his head. “Yet there must be some connection. Why else should Meyer have held that pack of cigarettes in his hand when he saw he was a marked man? Why underline its importance in just that way?” He laid the envelope on Denning’s knee. Yes, he thought as he moved over to his desk, Meyer himself was the connection, Meyer and whatever he had verified in Bern today. That was the connection between this report and the Herz diamonds.

Denning opened the envelope, an ordinary-sized envelope able to be slipped safely inside a man’s pocket. Inside, there was a stiff sheet of cream paper, glossy, hard, cracking where it had been folded carefully between the paragraph spacings. The typewritten text was clear, perhaps even heavier, more intense than the original had been. And this, thought Denning as he unfolded the page, this had been a small black dot—no more than a period at the end of a sentence or of an address on an envelope, no more than a flaw on a piece of cigarette paper. And this, he thought as he began reading, was Max speaking. Max had written this just before he left Frankfurt. Less than a week ago. Five days ago, to be exact.

For a moment, he saw Max quite clearly. Too clearly. Max with a smile in his intelligent brown eyes as he stood among the piles of books, the open trunk, the discarded magazines in a Berlin room. Max saying, “—when we meet in Bern, I’ll be able to fill in a lot of gaps for you.”

Denning passed a hand wearily over his eyes. For a moment, the heavy black type blurred and shifted. For a minute, he sat quite still, not reading.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Keppler’s voice asked from across the room.

Denning nodded. He began reading.

The page was closely typed, single-spaced. There were three major paragraphs—three case histories, seemingly—followed by a small separate note. Concise, factual, written with abbreviations and ellipses so that as much information as possible could be packed into one page. Max Meyer had worked carefully over this composition.

Denning read the case histories quickly through, then— letting his mind enlarge the cryptic phrases into fuller sentences and a richer context—he began to read again. The three case histories became alive: they became three men.

Alexander Burkart was the first. He was a neurologist of established reputation who had worked in Vienna until 1938, in Zurich until 1945, and then (apparently he had trusted the Communists more than the Nazis) had returned to his clinic in
the Russian sector of Vienna. He had no political affiliations, his sole interest was research. In 1949, he was “invited” to Leningrad. From then until July, 1952, he was consistently praised in the Soviet press. In that month he escaped to Falken, Switzerland. His appearance there was given no publicity. In March, 1953, Alexander Burkart arrived legally, quietly, in the United States. Since then he had been living and working, again without any publicity, in Baltimore.

But on the second of May, 1953, Burkart had left Baltimore, taking a few clothes and books. And all that could explain this sudden departure was a typewritten sheet of paper, a brusque letter, which stated that, as Burkart could not live or work in America, “a fascist country filled with hysteria and warmongering,” he was returning to his clinic in Vienna. The signature was identified as Burkart’s. And only the fact that two scientists, with whom he was working at Johns Hopkins, happened to call on Burkart that Saturday evening and had found the letter before his landlady discovered it, enabled the disappearance to be kept as quiet as his arrival in the U.S.A.

The two colleagues could not believe the letter: Burkart had begun a series of experiments for whose success he held the highest hopes; he was keenly excited about his research and had often praised the freedom of his working conditions; the books which he had seemingly taken were replaceable anywhere, but the notes and important material on which he had been working had been left in his laboratory safe. His colleagues immediately relayed their suspicions to the authorities at Johns Hopkins, who at once communicated with the Immigration Service, the F.B.I., and the C.I.A. The Immigration Service reported that only three weeks previously, Burkart had taken
out his first papers for citizenship, and had also made inquiries about the possible immigration of his sole surviving relatives— his daughter and son-in-law, who had been living in Munich since 1946. Within two days of the disappearance, the search was on. It was important to handle the whole matter with the greatest secrecy: Burkart’s life could be at stake. While the F.B.I. followed a lead to a foreign freighter, ultimate destination Hong Kong, which had fuelled at Baltimore on the second of May for its leisurely journey down the eastern seacoast of America, the C.I.A. arm of the search reached Munich. Burkart’s daughter was tactfully questioned, but knew nothing. The search spread farther through Western Germany. Meyer’s office was alerted.