it. I thought I'd have to get to know her a bit first of all.
But of course now that she's seen me on my white horse and wearing my Sunday suit of armour I can hurry that along.'
'Suppose Veronika doesn't know this Lotte. What then?'
'Suppose you think of a better idea.'
Belinsky shrugged. 'On the other hand, your scheme has its points.'
'Here's another thing. Both Abs and Eddy Holl, who was Becker's contact in Berlin, are working for a company that's based in Pullach, near Munich. The South German Industries Utilization Company. You might like to try and find out something about it. Not to mention why Abs and Holl decided to move there.'
'They wouldn't be the first two krauts to go and live in the American Zone,' said Belinsky. 'Haven't you noticed? Relations are starting to get a shade difficult with our Communist allies. The news from Berlin is that they've started to tear up a lot of the roads connecting the east and west sectors of the city.' His face made plain his lack of enthusiasm, and then added: 'But I'll see what I can turn up. Anything else?'
'Before I left Berlin I came across a couple of amateur Nazi-hunters named Drexler. Linden used to take them Care parcels now and again. I wouldn't be surprised if they were working for him: everyone knows that's how the CIC pays its way. It would help if we knew who they had been looking for.'
'Can't we ask them?'
'It wouldn't do much good. They're dead. Someone slipped a tray-load of Zyklon-B pellets underneath their door.'
'Give me their address anyway.' He took out a notepad and pencil.
When I had given it to him he pursed his lips and rubbed his jaw. His was an impossibly broad face, with thick horns of eyebrows that curved halfway round his eye-sockets, some small animal's skull for a nose and intaglio laugh-lines which, added to his square chin and sharply angled nostrils, completed a perfectly septagonal figure: the overall impression was of a ram's head resting on a V-shaped plinth.
'You were right,' he admitted. 'It's not much of a hand, is it? But it's still better than the one I folded on.'
With the pipe clenched tight between his teeth, he crossed his arms and stared down at his glass. Perhaps it was his choice of drink, or perhaps it was his hair, styled longer than the crew-cut favoured by the majority of his countrymen, but he seemed curiously un-American.
'Where are you from?' I said eventually.
'Williamsburg, New York.'
'Belinsky,' I said, measuring each syllable. 'What kind of a name is that for an American?'
The man shrugged, unperturbed. 'I'm first-generation American. My dad's from Siberia originally. His family emigrated to escape one of the Tsar's Jewish pogroms. You see, the Ivans have got a tradition of anti-Semitism that's almost as good as yours. Belinsky was Irving Berlin's name before he changed it. And as names for Americans go, I don't think a yid-name like that sounds any worse than a kraut-name like Eisenhower, do you?'
'I guess not.'
'Talking of names, if you do speak to the MPs again it might be better if you didn't mention me, or the CIC, to them. On account of the fact that they recently screwed up an operation we had going. The MVD managed to steal some US
Military Police uniforms from the battalion HQ at the Stiftskaserne. They put them on and persuaded the MPs at the 19th Bezirk station to help them arrest one of our best informers in Vienna. A couple of days later another informant told us that the man was being interrogated at MVD headquarters in Mozartgasse. Not long after that we learned he had been shot. But not before he talked and gave away several other names.
'Well, there was an almighty row, and the American High Commissioner had to kick some ass for the poor security of the 796th. They court-martialled a lieutenant and broke a sergeant back to the ranks. As a result of which me being CIC is tantamount to having leprosy in the eyes of the Stiftskaserne. I suppose you might find that hard to understand, you being German.'
'On the contrary,' I said. 'I'd say being treated like lepers is something we krauts understand only too well.'
Chapter 17
The water arriving in the tap from the Styrian Alps tasted cleaner than the squeak of a dentist's fingers. I carried a glassful of it from the bathroom to answer the telephone ringing in my sitting-room, and sipped some more while I waited for Frau Blum-Weiss to switch the call through.
'Well, good-morning,' Shields said with affected enthusiasm. 'I hope I got you out of bed.'
'I was just cleaning my teeth.'
'And how are you today?' he said, still refusing to come to the point.
'A slight headache, that's all.' I had drunk too much of Belinsky's favourite liquor.
'Well, blame it on the f/hn,' suggested Shields, referring to the unseasonably warm and dry wind that occasionally descended on Vienna from the mountains.
'Everyone else in this city blames all kinds of strange behaviour on it. But all I notice is that it makes the smell of horseshit even worse than usual.'
'It's nice to talk to you again, Shields. What do you want?'
'Your friend Abs didn't get to Munich. We're pretty sure he got on the train, only there was no sign of him at the other end.'
'Maybe he got off somewhere else.'
'The only stop that train makes is in Salzburg, and we had that covered too.'
'Perhaps someone threw him off. While the train was still moving.' I knew only too well how that happened.
'Not in the American Zone.'
'Well, that doesn't start until you get to Linz. There's over a hundred kilometres of Russian Lower Austria between here and your zone. You said yourself that you're sure he got on the train. So what else does that leave?'
Then I recalled what Belinsky had said about the poor security of the US
Military Police. 'Of course, it's possible he simply gave your men the slip.
That he was too clever for them.'
Shields sighed. 'Sometime, Gunther, when you're not too busy with your old Nazi comrades, I'll drive you out to the DP camp at Auhof and you can see all the illegal Jewish emigrants who thought they were too smart for us.' He laughed.
'That is, if you're not scared that you might be recognized by someone from a concentration camp. It might even be fun to leave you there. Those Zionists don't have my sense of humour about the SS.'
'I'd certainly miss that, yes.'
There was a soft, almost furtive knock at the door.
'Look, I've got to go.'
'Just watch your step. If I so much as think that I can smell shit on your shoes I'll throw you in the cage.'
'Yes, well, if you do smell something it'll probably just be the f/hn.'
Shields laughed his ghost-train laugh and then hung up.
I went to the door and let in a short, shifty-looking type who brought to mind the print of a portrait by Klimt that was hanging in the breakfast-room. He wore a brown, belted raincoat, trousers that seemed a little short of his white socks and, barely covering his head of long fair hair, a small, black Tyrolean that was loaded with badges and feathers. Somewhat incongruously, his hands were enclosed in a large woollen muff.
'What are you selling, swing?' I asked him.
The shifty look turned suspicious. 'Aren't you Gunther?' he drawled in an improbable voice that was as low as a stolen bassoon.
'Relax,' I said, 'I'm Gunther. You must be Becker's personal gunsmith.'
'S'right. Name's Rudi.' He glanced around and grew easier. 'You alone in this watertight?'
