Rebus looked around. `In a manner of speaking. It's a two-minute walk from your hotel. Turn right out of the door, cross George Street, and walk down to Young Street. Far end, the Oxford Bar. I'm in the back room.’
When Levy arrived, Rebus bought him a half of eighty-bob. Levy eased himself into a chair, hanging his walking-stick on the back of it. `So what can I do for you?’
`I'm not the only policeman you've spoken to.’
`No, you're not.’
`Someone from Special Branch in London came to see me today.’
`And he told you I'd been travelling around?’
`Yes.’
`Did he warn you against speaking to me?’
`Not in so many words.’
Levy took off his glasses, began polishing them. `I told you, there are people who'd rather this was all relegated to history. This man, he came all the way from London just to tell you about me?’
`He wanted to see Joseph Lintz.’
`Ah.’
Levy was thoughtful. `Your interpretation, Inspector?’
`I was hoping for yours.’
`My utterly subjective interpretation?’
Rebus nodded. `He wants to be sure of Lintz. This man works for Special Branch, and as everyone knows Special Branch is the public arm of the secret services.’
`He wanted to be confident I wasn't going to get anything out of Lintz?’
Levy nodded, staring at the smoke from Rebus's cigarette. This case was like that: one minute you could see it, the next you couldn't. Like smoke.
`I have a little book with me,' Levy said, reaching into his pocket. `I'd like you to read it. It's in English, translated from the Hebrew. It's about the Rat Line.’
Rebus took the book. `Does it prove anything?’
`That depends on your terms.’
`Concrete proof.’
`Concrete proof exists, Inspector.’
`In this book?’
Levy shook his head. `Under lock and key in Whitehall, kept from scrutiny by the Hundred Year Rule.’
`So there's no way to prove anything.’
`There's one way…’
`What?’
`If someone talks. If we can get just one of them to talk…’
`That's what this is all about: wearing down their resistance? Looking for the weakest link?’
Levy smiled again. `We have learned patience, Inspector.’
He finished his drink. `I'm so grateful you called. This has been a much more satisfactory meeting.’
`Will you send your bosses a progress report?’
Levy chose to ignore this. `We'll talk again, when you've read the book.’
He stood up. `The Special Branch officer… I've forgotten his name?’
`I didn't give it.’
Levy waited a moment, then said, `Ah, that explains it then. Is he still in Edinburgh?’
He watched Rebus shake his head. `Then he's probably on his way to Carlisle, yes?’
Rebus sipped coffee, offered no comment.
`My thanks again, Inspector,' Levy said, undeterred.
`Thanks for dropping by.’
Levy took a final look around. `Your office,' he said, shaking his head.
The Rat Line was an 'underground railway', delivering Nazis – sometimes with the help of the Vatican – from their Soviet persecutors. The end of the Second World War meant the start of the Cold War. Intelligence was necessary, as were intelligent, ruthless individuals who could provide a certain level of expertise. It was said that Klaus Barbie, the `Butcher of Lyons', had been offered a job with British Intelligence. It was rumoured that high- profile Nazis had been spirited away to America. It wasn't until 1987 that the United Nations released its full list of fugitive Nazi and Japanese war criminals, forty thousand of them.
Why so late in releasing the list? Rebus thought he could understand. Modern politics had decreed that Germany and Japan were part of the global brotherhood of capitalism. In whose interests would it be to reopen old wounds? And besides, how many atrocities had the Allies themselves hidden? Who fought a war with clean hands? Rebus, who'd grown to adulthood in the Army, could comprehend this. He'd done things… He'd served time in Northern Ireland, seen trust disfigured, hatred replace fear.
Part of him could well believe in the existence of a Rat Line.
The book Levy had given him went into the mechanics of how such an operation might have worked. Rebus wondered: was it really possible to disappear completely, to change identity? And again, the recurring question: did any of it matter? There did exist sources of identification, and there had been court cases – Eichmann, Barbie, Demjanjuk with others ongoing. He read about war criminals who, rather than being tried or extradited, were allowed to return home, running businesses, growing rich, dying of old age. But he also read of criminals who served their sentences and became `good people', people who had changed. These men said war itself was the real culprit. Rebus recalled one of his first conversations with Joseph Lintz, in the drawing-room of Lintz's home. The old man's voice was hoarse, a scarf around his throat.
`At my age, Inspector, a simple throat infection can feel like death.’
There didn't seem to be many photographs around. Lintz had explained that a lot had gone missing during the war.
`Along with other mementoes. I do have these photos though.’
He'd shown Rebus half a dozen framed shots, dating back to the 1930s. As he'd explained who the subjects were, Rebus had suddenly thought: what if he's making it up? What if these are just a bunch of old photos he picked up somewhere and had framed? And the names, the identities he now gave to the faces – had he invented them? He'd seen in that instant, for the first time, how easy it might be to construct another life.
And then, later in their conversation that day, Lintz, sipping honeyed tea, had started discussing Villefranche.
`I've been thinking a lot about it, Inspector, as you might imagine. This Lieutenant Linzstek, he was in charge on the day?’
`Yes.’
`But presumably under orders from above. A lieutenant is not so very far up the pecking order.’
`Perhaps.’
`You see, if a soldier is under orders… then they must carry out those orders, no?’
`Even if the order is insane?’
`Nevertheless, I'd say the person was at the very least coerced into committing the crime, and a crime that very many of us would have carried out under similar circumstances. Can't you see the hypocrisy of trying someone, when you'd probably have done the same thing yourself? One soldier standing out from the crowd… saying no to the massacre: would you have made that stand yourself?’
'I hope so.’
Rebus thinking back to Ulster and the `Mean Machine'…
Levy's book didn't prove anything. All Rebus knew was that Josef Linzstek's name was on a list as having used the Rat Line, posing as a Pole. But where had the list originated? In Israel. Again, it was highly speculative. It wasn't proof.
And if Rebus's instincts told him Lintz and Linzstek were one and the same, they were still failing to tell him whether it mattered.
He dropped the book back to the Roxburghe, asked the receptionist to see that Mr Levy got it.
`I think he's in his room, if you'd like to…’
Rebus shook his head. He hadn't left any message with the book, knowing Levy might interpret this as a
