"The Conduct of Major Maxim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lyall Gavin)

Chapter 3

It began quite simply a message delivered to the barracks asking if he could ring Mrs Howard for a chat about old times. For a moment the name meant nothing – far more memorable things had happened during his time in Armagh – but then he remembered and was puzzled. There had been nothing personal in their brief meetings, she had been a trained professional, saying almost nothing during the drives down towards the border but chatting and smiling happily while they waited ina café. Mostly they had talked about films, he recalled, she looked at very little television and he hadn't read any of the books she mentioned Well, it was only a phone call. He got a German woman answering and asked distinctly for "Frau Howard, bitte There was a pause, and the voice said "Ja, Mrs Howard," which convinced him that 'Mrs Howard' was just a code-name, not even a fake identity She came on a few seconds later "Mr Blagg7How are you' Very good of you to call so soon Can we meet, perhaps' Are you free now7"

A little dazed, he found himself committed to meeting her in an hour's time ata cafénear the station. He could just visualise it a family place where British soldiers hardly ever went -which was probably why she had chosen it. He was still puzzled, but not yet apprehensive/ He wasn't even sure he'd recognise her, but of course he did. Even so, she looked different from the timem Armagh. There she'd been almost middle-aged and stolid, red-cheeked and fluffy fair hair. Now her hair was scraped back in a sort of bun, giving her a leaner look, her clothes were more expensive, though she still had a full and somehow loose figure inside them.

She could easily be German, she certainly sounded like it when ordering him a beer. For five minutes they talked about films and how was he fittingmwith the Battalion again, then she said simply "We would like you to do another job, just like last time "

By then, he'd been half expecting that, but still didn't know what to say.

She went on "We are sorry there is so little time now. But we did not know how this job would go, when I came to Germany "

"When is it, then?"

"Friday – tomorrow – if you can. If not, perhaps we can make it for Saturday "

That was no problem The training programme was on schedule – the Battalion hadn't been turned inside out by a Northern Ireland tour for the past two years – and he could be free from about five o'clock But – "Good," Mrs Howard said "Can you bring a bag, a suitcase, some clothes' And some identification, not the Army. Do you have a passport7"

Most soldiers didn't bother to get passports until they married and thought of family holidaysm Spain. But the SAShad insisted on Blagg having one – occupation given as 'Government official' – in case it needed to shoot him off incognito to somewhere to hell and gone, just as it insisted on keeping him immunised against so many unlikely diseases that his left arm was usually as rigid as Jim Caswell's.

"I'm all right," he said, "but -"

"We may have to stay at a hotel, a motel. That will be no problem. Good. Now – would you like to call Captain Fairbrother? Just to check that I am telling the truth? I will understand – I want you to be sure, quite sure I can give you a London number, but can you please do it on a secure line? You understand that, I know "

He thought of the usual queue of soldiers outside the single telephone box inside the barrack gate, jingling 5 DM coins and looking at their watches every few seconds. Asecure line? Hecould ask the company commander, but he could also imagine the answer. He chuckled Being SAStrained gave you a glimpse behind secret doors that some officers didn't even know existed. And those two evenings out along the border had convinced him of her background.

"It's okay," he reassured her. "No problem. But I don't have a gun."

"I will bring one. A pistol or a revolver?"

"A revolver, if it's not too big. "

"Of course." She smiled. Her teeth were large and rather wide-spaced, but very white. How old was she? Growing up without a mother or aunts, he was bad at guessing older women's ages. She could be forty or fifty, almost anything. She was just a different generation.

"I will be here, outside the station, at six tomorrow. In a blue Volkswagen Polo. Okay?"

When she'd gone, he stayed sipping his beer and wondering. He wished he could check with somebody. Captain Fairbrother, even Jim Caswell But if it was no more a problem than the last time, he'd have forgotten all about it in a month. And this wasn't Provocountry.

They drove south-west, roughly paralleling the East-West border, not getting significantly close to it. They were heading, she said, for Bad Schwarzendorn, a little spa town just into the hills beyond Paderborn. A strange little place; it had one of these great walls of blackthorn twigs fitted onto a wooden framework at least ten metres high. Pumps pushed the spa water up so that it trickled down the twigs and partly evaporated, making the water even thickermminerals, before it was fed into the town baths. The twigs turned to rigid fossils, and you could sit in the downwind side of the great wall and breathe the cool damp air blowing out of it. That was supposed to do you good, too. The Germans were still great believers in spa cures. Half, more than half, the patients were paid for by health insurance schemes, and most of the local guest houses had contracts with one company or another. You bathed, you walked the neatly laid out paths in the pine woods, you breathed the salty air – then sat down to a huge Fleischschnitte mit Bratkartoffeln. She grinned, rocking her head from side to side. There was nothing the Germans would rather spend money on than alternately wrecking and repairing their health.

Just before it got dark, he had her stop the car on a lonely stretch of road and fired the gun out of the window at a tall flower sticking up in a field about ten yards away. The third shot exploded the head in a flutter of purple petals. The revolver was about what he'd expected: A Spanish near-copy of a.38 Colt, with a heavy trigger pull. He reloaded and they drove on.

"I could not get a holster," she said. "Did you want one?"

"No. They're like clothes: no use if you don't choose them yourself. Pocket's best, otherwise… How're we going to play this?"

She lit a cigarette and thought for a moment. "We will be apart. He does not expect you, but he is suspicious. He is about sixty years, small, fat, with chins A big nose, the gold half-glasses, not much hair and he will dress like a businessman. Also he will have with him a newspaper."

"Just him by himself?"

She went straight on past the question "There is a bigcaféthat is part of the Park Hotel, some of it inside, some outside. I will sit down there at ten, outside if it is warm enough, if there are others. He will come past, make sure that I see him, then I follow him. I think he will be alone; I do not know who he could get to come with him, but… that is what I want you to worry about. To watch me, not him The man himself does not worry me "

Perhaps he should have asked why, then, but instead he picked on a more obvious problem. "He could take you to a car."

"I will not get in."

"D'you think he'll be there before you'"

She flashed him a quick smile of professional camaraderie. "I think so So if you can go in first, you see him, then come out and…" politely she left the details of his work to him.

"It's a payoffjob?"

"We will both have newspapers. But he may need time to read mine." From that, Blagg assumed she would have a wadof money in the folds of her paper. Almost exactly the way it had been on the border The other border.

She said suddenly, but mostly to herself "He may not be ready to trust me…"

"If he's come across the border-"

"No, no, no He is not from there "

Then she shut up for the rest of the drive Bad Schwärzendem wassmall, elderly, rich, very clean, very quiet Mrs Howard gave him an idea of the place by driving slowly around the flat unfenced park that was the core of the whole town. Almost half a mile square, the trim grass was criss-crossed with wide paths and avenues of lime trees, brightly lit by modernistic street lamps. And running diagonally across the middle was the huge blackthorn hedge, foursquare and utterly meaningless. Just a wall half a kilometre long, running dead straight from nowhere to nowhere and reaching way up beyond the lamplight.

It might cure anything you could name, Blagg thought, but who in hell could have thought of building itmthe first place?

They parkedjust out of sight of the hotel, and he walked on ahead It was only half past nine on a mild early summer evening, but already most of the residents were in bed or immobilised by Fleischschnitte A few elderly couples doddered like moths around the blaze of light that was thecaféand a few more sat solidly at the tables, but it was a small crowd and Blagg felt obvious, apart from being generations too young. He went in through the hotel itself and came into thecaféfrom the back.

The man he was looking for was immediately obvious, crouched at a back table beside a large potted plant, complete with a folded newspaper, gold glasses and a bad case of nerves. He looked so obvious that Blagg spent the next twenty minutes covertly watching for a second man, but couldn't identify one At ten to ten he walked out towards the park and kept strolling around-a moving man is less suspicious than one standing still – then bought an ice cream from a stall A strolling, eating man is positively innocent.

He saw Mrs Howard go in; five minutes later, the fat mancarneout, walking awkwardly because he wasn't sure at what pace to go. Mrs Howard followed, moving easily, glancing naturally up to check the weather, then down at her wnst-vvatch. They went on past the ornamental fountain and the rows of plastic chairs in front of the bandstand and on down the far side of the wall.

The path was well lit and as straight as the wall. Blagg gave Mrs Howard fifty yards, then followed on the grass, keeping the row of lime trees between himself and the fat man. It couldn't have worked if the Burger of seventy years before hadn't planted with eyes like rulers; as it was, he could make each tree overlap the next to give himself a reasonable amount of cover. And any second man could be no closer.

They moved like that for nearly a quarter of a mile, passing nobody andm silenceenough for him to hear the clicking of Mrs Howard's high heels. The cold moist air drifted out of the wall at him, an unnatural feeling on that gentle evening.

Then, leaning in for a snatched glance at the fat man, he saw it and wished to hell he'd seen it on their drive around the park Halfway along the wall a tunnel led through it from side to side, framed by a heavy wooden arch. If anybody was waiting, it had to be there.

He dropped the last oozy remains of the ice cream and hurried forward, abandoning caution (a running man is always suspicious). He had gained only fifteen yards when he heard Mrs Howard's footsteps hesitate and knew the fat man had turned into the tunnel. But then she walked calmly on. He moved cautiously again – the man was probably looking back from the archway – and took out the gun. She stopped again, he heard a mutter of voices, and then her steps faded in the archway.

He had made only a few more yards when a small pistol wentsmack, echoing out of the tunnel He ran. Another gun fired, then the small one again, and Mrs Howard staggered back out of the archway and sat down heavily, losing her newspaper but keeping the gun. The fat man wobbled out after her and both shot each other from a few feet apart Blagg snapped his wrist against a tree-trunk for steadiness and started shooting from thirty yards range. The third shothit the fat man's head and pieces burst off it, like flower petals. The body flopped and tumbled into the trough of water that drained from the wall. Mrs Howard wriggled and moaned a little and lay still.

Suddenly it was all very different from the two eveningsm Armagh, and Blagg began to feel very lonely.

"I didn't know she'd got a gun," he finished. "I mean – that was why I was there. She should have letme decide." He sounded professionally affronted.

"You're sure they were both dead?" Maxim asked.

"Yes. I know."

"Why didn't you go to your own platoon commander?"

Blagg gave him a brief and almost sneering look, then shrugged. "He wouldn't have understood, like. He's a nice boy, but…"

"Your company commander, then7"

"Yes, but. I mean, I haven't been back there long and none of them was ever in Sass…"

Certainly some things the SASdid routinely would surprise a normal regimental officer. Or, as the regimental officer might put it, nothing the SASdid wouldever surprise him. Caswell had finished the rifles and half leant, half sat on the bench, a new cigarette smouldering in his fist. He watched Blagg and nodded occasionally.

"Did you jump off right away?" Maxim asked.

"Well, I sort of… First I just took the car. Got the keys out of her bag. I mean, nobody would know about the car. "

"You didn't have to stop and fill it up?"

"No, sir But there was a five-litre can in the boot; I put that in, just for safety, like. I just drove around, thinking. In the morning I got on a train at Dortmund for Ostend and got on a ferry."

"What were you using for money?"

"Well, I had a bit, of course…" Blagg looked at the floor.

It was perfectly clear what he'd used for money. In a way, Maxim was pleased that he'd been cool-headed enough to think of it. Still…

"How much was there?"

Blagg cleared his throat "3,750Deutschmarks I don't know why it was that, seems a funny sort of amount, really…"

Maxim guessed it was the result of bargaining: the German had wanted 5,000, Mrs Howard had offered half…

Caswell had been doing a little currency conversionmhis head and was looking slightly shocked. He obviously hadn't heard any figure mentioned before.

"Well, don't chuck it around," Maxim said. "A lot more people'll believe you if you handm abig wad of ready cash And what happened to the gun?"

"In the river."

"And her luggage?"

"Same place. I went through it – it was only a bag – and she didn't have anything special, like passports or things. Just ordinary."

"You've been back here over a week…

"It took me a bit of time to find out where Sergeant Caswell was, sir. I mean, I couldn'tjust ring up and ask, could I'"

"Did you try and get hold of Captain Fairbrother or anybody else in the Army?"

"No, just Jim here, sir."

"Does anybody else in this country know you're back7"

Blagg frowned at his fingernails.

"Come along, lad." Caswell's voice was sharp but quiet. "Major Maxim may be able to do something, but God Himself won't be able to help you if you don't tell the whole story The theologyofthatwasn't too sound, Maxim thought, but it seemed to work. Blagg muttered: "Couple've people I know, Rotherhithe way. You want to know what they'd tell the pig-feet if they come asking around'"

"You needn't bother "

"All I want, sir, really – is if you can get Captain Fair-brother to say I really was working for The Firm Or them themselves. If they'd just tell Battalion that, it would be all right." Blagg sounded fnghteningly earnest, as if life – and death-was just that simple.

"I'll do what I can " Maxim glanced at Caswell: any furtherquestions? Caswell gave the smallest shake of his head, ground out the cigarette in a tin-lid and began picking up the rifles.

Blagg reached. "Here, Sarge, let me -"

"I'm not a bleeding cripple!"

Blagg snapped into a fighting crouch and immediately Caswell was ready for him, a rifle held across his chest like a quarter-staff. The oil-dusty air shimmered with pent-up violence.

"It's a great day for the Army," Maxim said pleasantly, "when the sergeants insist on doing all the work."

The tension died like a match flame. Caswell straightened up, nodding angrily at his own obtuseness. Blagg wasn't offering to help because of any stiff arm; the lad wasn't that sensitive. It was just that although he'd run away from the Army, he wanted to prove he was still a soldier, even by something as simple as putting rifles in racks.

Caswell stroked his moustache with an oily forefinger. "Behind the door there. Don't drop more than half of them."

Blagg picked up four of the gutted weapons. "You're sure they aren't loaded, Sarge?"

The rack looked as if it had been built for the long Lee-Metfords of the South African War. Blagg fitted the rifles in, ran a chain through the trigger guards and padlocked it. The bolt actions went in a small safe bricked into the outside wall. They were ridiculous precautions for guns that couldn't any longer fire live ammunition, but airliners have been hijacked with toy pistols. Terrorism didn't take sunny Saturday afternoons off.

"You left the car in Dortmund," Maxim said. "Do you remember the number?"

Even better, Blagg seemed to have written it down. Maxim sighed. "Anything else that might interest the police if they pick you up?"

Silently, Blagg showed him the paper. The car number was worked somehow – Maxim couldn't see how – into an innocent-looking sum of minor expenses. Almost the first thing taught in the SASis to memorise map references, so that no piece of paper will betray your base or objective.

"Sorry," Maxim said. "How about the phone number she gave you in Soltau?"

That wasn't part of the sum; Blagg looked annoyed with himself.

"Never mind, you weren't to know. How do I get hold of you?

Blagg glanced at Caswell, who said: "I'll know how." Maxim was about to say No, and then didn't. He didn't want Jim Caswell to get involved any deeper, but he couldn't really help it. Blagg on his own around London was a babe in the woods, even if he thought of himself as a two-gun tiger, as he probably did. Under Jim's eye in the country he was as well hidden as they could hope for.

He still didn't like the risk to Caswell, and took it out on Blagg. "Corporal, don't let anybody, including yourself, tell you you've been anything but a bloody twallop. You might still come out luckier than you deserve-provided you do what Jim and I tell you. But if you do anything clever and landjim in it, then I'll go straight to the MPs and tell them everything you've told me. Have you got that?"

"Sir," Blag said stiffly. "But you will talk to…?"

"I'll do what I can. But you've been dealing with some funny people. Jim – ring me if you need to. Just as a precaution, call yourself… say, Galloway – and leave a message. I'll ring you back. "

"I'll do that. Don't worry about this end." The atmosphere had become formal, more like a company office at a time of serious decisions. It was a good mood to leave with them.

Caswell ceremonially escorted Maxim to his car and, still in uniform, saluted as he drove away. When he got back to the armoury, Blagg had found a broom and was poking at the pitted, oil-stained concrete. Caswell nodded approval and lit another cigarette.

After a while, Blagg said: "He was the one that lost his wife, didn't he? Out in the Gulf, was it?"

"That's right. Some wily oriental gentleman put a bomb on board her plane. I was with him. He saw it. "

"Jesus," Blaggsaid thoughtfully. "Something like that happened to me, I'd sort of want to kill somebody."

Caswell put his clenched fist to his mouth, as if politely masking a yawn, and drew hard on his cigarette. "He did, lad," he said in a slow smoke cloud. "He did."