The Grave of Truth (6 page)

‘No,' Ellie said. ‘Only from friends wanting to know he was all right—nothing official. Why?'

The pale eyes focused on her face. ‘Your husband was a witness, Madame. He saw the assassins. I'm a family man myself. I would persuade him to get out of Paris and take a trip somewhere. It might be a good idea if you and your children went with him.' He set the soft hat on his head, tweaked the brim till it came down on his forehead, made her a little gesture like a bow, and let himself out.

Ellie stood in the narrow hallway; slowly her hands came together and locked.

‘Oh, my God,' she said.

Minna Walther held out her hand; Max took it. It was cool and quite steady. He thought she looked ill; the skin around her eyes was taut, emphasizing the Slav cheekbones; there were black shadows under her eyes.

‘Help yourself to a drink,' she said.

‘No, thanks,' Max said. He noticed the half empty glass beside her chair. Tension crackled in the air like electricity after a storm.

He had gone to a barber's for a shave, and spent an hour walking along the Seine near Les Invalides, thinking thoughts that had taken him a long way from Paris. As he faced Sigmund Walther's widow, it could have been a lifetime since he had taped that interview in the same room, instead of twenty-four hours. He had a sense of sharp anticipation, a flutter in the stomach, as he waited for her to speak.

‘You have something to tell me about my husband,' she said.

‘Yes,' Max answered. He found a cigarette, offered one to her, and lit them both.

‘Please,' he caught the tension in her voice, ‘please tell me.'

‘I held your husband as he died,' he said quietly. ‘He said one word, and it didn't come out by accident. He meant me to hear it. “Janus.”' He watched her as he said it. No shade of expression passed over her face. The large grey eyes returned his look. ‘Was that all? He said nothing else?'

‘No. He died immediately afterwards,' Max leaned a little forward in his chair. ‘What did he mean, Fräu Walther?'

‘I don't know. Janus was a Roman god—it doesn't make sense.'

‘You've never heard him mention it?'

‘No, never.'

Max felt suddenly depressed. ‘Could I change my mind and have a drink now?'

‘Of course; I'll get it for you—what would you like?'

‘Don't move, please, I'll get my own. One for you?' He was surprised when she emptied the glass and held it out to him; she didn't seem the type of woman who drank except to be polite.

He poured whisky for them both and his depression deepened. He hadn't expected her to lie. ‘Janus.' She hadn't been surprised; he had the feeling that she had been expecting him to say it. He sat down opposite her.

‘Your husband was murdered,' he said, not looking at her. ‘Janus was the reason, that's what he was trying to tell me. If you want to get the people who killed him, you've got to tell me what Janus means. Before you answer, Frau Walther, I'd like to tell you something. It's not the first time I've heard it said by a dying man.'

The rigidity went out of her so quickly that she sank back in the chair and closed her eyes. ‘Who are you working for?'

‘Why should I be working for anyone?' he countered. ‘Stop lying to me, Frau Walther. Who is Janus?'

‘A Roman god with two faces,' she said. ‘That's all I know. It's a code of some kind. Sigmund was trying to find out what it meant.' She raised her head and looked at him. ‘When did you hear it first?'

‘In 1945. It didn't mean anything to me then; it was just part of a nightmare. Since then it's become a real nightmare; I dream about it—something in me won't let it rest. Then your husband gets shot down, and it's right back in the present day. You asked me who I was working for—I'm not working for anybody but myself. I want to know who or what Janus is, that it can kill a man like Sigmund Walther.'

‘And the other man,' she asked him, ‘the one you mentioned who said it before?'

‘That's a long story,' Max Steiner said. ‘Let me ask you something—do you want to find your husband's murderers?'

There was a spot of colour blazing on each cheek when she answered him. ‘I'll do anything, pay anything—how could you even ask—'

‘Because I want to be sure,' he interrupted. ‘You may prefer to let the police handle it. Their record for finding high-grade political assassins like the two who shot your husband isn't all that impressive. You may be frightened for yourself—or for your children.… I'm just on the fringe of the thing; you may know far more than you're prepared to tell me. But I'm going to find out what this means, and I came here to ask you to help me.'

She didn't answer. She got up from the chair, wearily, as if she were exhausted, found a cigarette and lit it. The lighter closed with a snap that could be heard, the room was so quiet.

‘Sigmund was an old-fashioned man,' she said suddenly. ‘He loved his country. It's been fashionable for a long time among certain Germans to reject their race and their history, as if denying them could wipe out what happened in the war. It can't, and Sigmund knew that. We have to forget about the past and concentrate on the future. I'll help you to find out what Janus means. Not just to find the men who killed him, and the people who sent them to do it. But to carry on his work for Germany.'

‘And Janus is connected with that work?' Max asked her.

‘Yes,' Minna Walther said. She stood leaning against the fireplace, looking down at him. ‘You'll have to come to Germany.'

‘I was planning to,' he said. ‘One thing: we've got to trust each other. You've got to tell me everything your husband knew.'

‘I will,' she said quietly. ‘I'm flying home this afternoon. I'll go through my husband's files and have everything ready for you to look at. When will you come?'

‘When is your husband's funeral?' Max asked her.

‘The day after tomorrow. In Hamburg. Our home is there.'

‘His family came from Silesia,' he said.

‘So did mine,' Minna Walther answered. ‘Where were you born, Herr Steiner?'

‘Berlin,' he said. He stood and for a moment they faced each other.

‘I'm very sorry about about what happened,' he said.

‘He had a good life,' she said softly. ‘A lot of people loved him. Telephone me and I'll meet you at the airport.'

He took her hand once more and held it. He hadn't kissed a woman's hand since the war, but he did so then. Outside in the corridor, walking down the thick-piled carpet to the lift, he thought suddenly, Christ, Steiner—what's got into you? Then the lift came and he stepped inside, as he had done the day before with Sigmund Walther by his side. He went back to his office and wrote a special article on the murder and the short political career of the dead man, for the end of the week issue. It was easy to do; he avoided sensationalism, and at the back of his mind was the fact that Minna Walther and her family might read what he had written. He gave it in to the editor-in-chief, and waited while he finished it. Martin Jarre put the script down.

‘Good. It'll be the lead story and we'll run a cover with Walther's head in a mock-up. You're looking better this morning—get a good night's sleep?'

‘No,' said Max. ‘I didn't go home. I stayed in the office. I'm glad you like the piece, but it's just the tip of an iceberg. I want to do an in-depth investigation job on this Walther murder.'

‘Why?' Jarre frowned. ‘What have you held back?'

Max picked up the script. ‘Something that could bring his killers after me,' he said. ‘But they don't know I know anything. I'm asking you for a
carte blanche
on this one: expenses, time, the lot. If I succeed in finding out what I'm after, you'll have a big story. Very big. If I don't, you can kick my arse. Or pay the funeral expenses.'

Jarre's frown became a scowl, and then cleared suddenly. ‘All right, Max. Write your own ticket. Be careful.'

‘Thanks, I will. I'm going to Germany on Thursday. I'll report back when I've got something. I'd like a credit account opened in the Deutsche Bank in Bonn, with facilities in West Berlin and Hamburg. Twenty-five thousand marks as a start.'

‘I'll make the arrangements,' Jarre said. ‘It would help if I knew what you were looking for.'

‘It'd help if I knew myself,' Max Steiner said, as he went out.

The men who had killed Sigmund Walther boarded the Swissair flight to Geneva less than two hours after the murder. They carried Swiss passports, made out in the names of Kesler and Franconi; the elder of the two was grey-haired, wore glasses and carried a briefcase, the younger was blond, soberly dressed, and carried a small handcase and an armful of the financial papers. They were described respectively as a civil engineer and an accountant. The dark wigs they had worn for the killing had been pushed into a rubbish bin en route for the airport. The two handguns, all serial numbers erased and never used before, had been dropped in a paper bag into the Seine. They abandoned the stolen car, picked up the self-drive which had been left parked in the car park behind Les Invalides, and driven to Orly airport to catch their flight.

They didn't sit together on the journey. Kesler took papers out of his briefcase and studied them, making notes, and Franconi read the London
Financial Times
. Kesler ordered a vodka and tonic: Franconi asked for coffee. The flight was uneventful; after a time Kesler put his papers away and stared out of the window at the piercing blue sky. He had been killing professionally since the late fifties; five years in the Foreign Legion had provided him with a hiding place. It was full of people like him, with false names and war crimes behind them, men too unimportant to merit the help of the SS escape organization, Odessa; Poles and Ukrainians and Germans, members of the terrible Einsatzkommandos who had exterminated Jews in the East, concentration camp guards, rankers in the Waffen SS who had thrown away their uniforms and papers and crossed the Italian frontier with the refugees and the army of displaced persons that roamed Europe.

Kesler was a Pole by birth; the Legion accepted him and thousands like him, and sent them to fight for France in Indochina. He had survived the siege of Dien Bien Phu, and returned to civilian life with skills in every kind of modern weapon, and a reputation for ruthlessness that filtered through to people interested in recruiting such men. He went to Marseilles, because he had contacts there through the Legion, and worked for a narcotics ring. That was where he met Maurice Franconi and fell in love. Franconi was an Italian Swiss who had been in petty crime since he was a boy, graduating from male prostitution to theft and extortion from his victims.

Kesler set up an apartment with him, and began to teach him to better himself. He had proved quick and skilful; after a few months he was as good as Kesler with a knife or a handgun. Employment was found for him too, and between them they murdered seventeen people, five of them women, in the next two years. This had been their biggest assignment; the payment was in proportion to the importance of the victim and to the risk involved. After this, Kesler thought peacefully, he and Maurice could retire, buy a little place in Tangier, where they had friends.… The sexual aspect of their lives was less important than when they had first met; their relationship was tender, at times almost as of father and son. They liked music and the theatre; Maurice had become a keen reader of the classics, under Kesler's tutelage. Kesler's own background had been middle-class in his native Poland; he was a cultivated man and he enjoyed improving his lover's mind and introducing him to the arts. They had a perfectly balanced relationship and, unlike some of their homosexual friends, there were no stormy quarrels, no jealousy. At the end of their first two years together, they had gone through a ceremony of homosexual marriage, and both men wore wedding rings on their right hands.

The plane landed on schedule at Geneva airport; they met in the car park, where the car hired the previous evening was waiting for them. Kesler paused with his hand on the door. ‘To be on the safe side,' he said, ‘let's just check it, shall we?' Franconi crouched down and opened his handcase. He took out a small pencil torch with a surprisingly strong beam and, getting his knees dusty, inspected the underside of the chassis by both front and rear doors. Kesler said, ‘We may as well make sure of the rest of it. No harm in being careful. I'll do the top half if you'll get underneath.'

Franconi nodded and smiled at him. He had fine white teeth, and when he smiled he was handsome. He stripped off his jacket and crawled under the chassis. Kesler checked on everything above; the boot swung open when he was sure the lock was clean; it was empty. The wipers satisfied him, so did the bonnet. He opened the passenger door and checked that the mechanism for opening the bonnet was free of even a hair-trigger wire, and then opened it, so that the engine could be inspected. He was looking inside when Franconi came up from underneath. He had dirtied the back of his shirt and trousers, and there was a smudge on his face. ‘Nothing,' he said. ‘Did you find anything—'

‘No,' Kesler said. ‘Turn round and I'll brush you down. The car's all right.'

‘You don't trust anybody do you?' Maurice said.

‘That's why I'm still alive.' Kesler helped him put on his jacket. ‘I've checked cars ever since we started working for them. I don't say for a moment they'd get rid of us—we're much too useful—but you never know. There was a man used to work for Gabriel—the drug boys got a lead on him and he made a deal. Somebody passed Gabriel the word, and they fixed his car for him. He'd been told to check but he forgot one thing. The cigarette lighter.'

Maurice got in and started the car. ‘I'm hungry, aren't you, Stanis? I could do with a good lunch. I suppose the restaurant will be closed by the time we get in.'