‘One of the wireless operators you retrained was a man named Albert Grost. His pilot was called Frohlich. Their whole crew was Jewish, according to the record.’
‘They were pacifists. Claimed they were Buddhists. They flew without ammo in their guns, and delivered stores and people to the Resistance. I remember being amazed that the RAF was flexible enough to find a job for a bunch of conchies.’
‘Shut up, Charlie; your pipe has gone out. These little bastards will eat us alive.’ I took the hint, shut up and lit up again. ‘Frohlich and his crew stole their aircraft; right?’ I nodded, which produced puffballs of smoke from my pipe. I wondered if the Arab was any good at reading smoke signals. Back in the dining room someone had put a record on, Cab Calloway, and a couple danced urgently to it between the tables. I guess they wanted to be noticed. He asked me, ‘Do you know what was in the aircraft when they stole it?’
I couldn’t keep up with rhetorical questions for long. ‘Apart from enough gas to get them to Israel, stores for the partisans, I suppose – that’s what they usually flew. They parachuted them in in containers we called containers.’ He didn’t stop me that time.
‘But what was in the containers when they went missing, Charlie?’
‘I never asked. Guns, ammo and explosives. Detonators; that sort of thing . . .’
‘And?’
‘Uniforms? Clothes . . . or equipment the Maquis couldn’t make for themselves?’
‘. . . and?’
I gave up. ‘Buggered if I know. I told you, I never asked and they never told me.’
‘Money, Charlie. Oodles and oodles of dosh.’
I settled down then for a good old listen. As my dead pal Tommo would have said, Levy was speaking our language. I looked at my watch when he started, and again when he finished. It took him three quarters of an hour to tell the story. Chig brought us another drink when he thought it had gone on long enough, but it was only lemonade, so I was still supposed to concentrate. I ran the story back at Levy in short sentences, to make sure I had it right.
‘When Frohlich and his band of Buddhists stole their aircraft in 1945, and flew it to Israel, they stole their cargo as well. That was enough Stens, .303s and ammo to start a small war . . .’
‘They probably armed the Stern Gang.’
‘. . . and enough plastic explosive to take down the Empire State building . . .’
‘. . . or the King David Hotel.’
‘. . . and a load of money intended for the Resistance groups mopping up Jerry in the Cévennes. How much?’
He paused for effect, which must be an officer thing. It never actually works, but nobody tells them that.
‘One hundred thousand pounds in francs, and another hundred thousand in old English gold sovereigns – they had been requisitioned from the British Museum, which is still mumping on about it. I don’t know why they expected to get through the war without us converting some of their collections into cash for the war effort.’
‘Although two hundred grand is a lot of money to you and me, Captain, it’s not the sort of sum to get too excited about, is it? Can’t we just grab a bit more from the Jerries in reparations?’
‘There is an and, Charlie . . .’
‘And what, the Crown jewels?’
‘. . . and millions and millions of American dollars. Maybe billions . . .’
‘Where on earth did we get those in 1945? Weren’t we giving everything we had left to the Americans by the end of the war, to pay for tanks, guns and aeroplanes? Whose mattress was that lot under?’
He did the pause thing again. He actually looked a bit sick. His tanned face definitely turned a shade paler . . . and he whispered, really whispered, ‘We made it, Charlie.’
‘Made?’
‘Made it. Printed it. Good old De La Rue’s.’
‘The playing card company?’
‘That’s right. They print most of our money as well – except the Scottish and Irish stuff, which is a bit ropey.’
It was my turn to stop for breath. I did that thing I’ve told you about; whistled the intro to a jazz number inside my head. This time it was ‘Caravan’; the Duke’s version.
Then I asked him, ‘You mean we forged billions of American dollars to pay off the French Resistance?’
‘We couldn’t do anything else. We’d put so much forged British and French currency out there that no one trusted it any more. We didn’t have anything left to pay them with, and the French Commies wouldn’t fire off so much as a single round unless we paid first.’
‘Did our American cousins know anything about this at the time?’
‘No.’
‘Billions, you said . . . and it’s still loose out there somewhere?’
‘Possibly. That’s what we need to find out. It just hasn’t turned up anywhere yet.’
‘Do the Americans know about it now?’
‘No, not as far as we know. That’s rather encouraging, I thought.’
‘They are going to be very, very unhappy when they do . . .’
‘Which is why we need to get it back, if we can. There is enough there to destabilize the almighty dollar, and if that happens we’ll all go down the tubes with it.’
‘Did you know that I was once accused of assisting Frohlich’s merry bunch? Someone thought I must be in on it.’ One of those little lights went on in my head: money. ‘. . . That’s why an arrest warrant chased me all over Europe.’
‘And that’s why you’re here. The RAF has been looking for the remains of that aircraft on the quiet, ever since the end of the war. They’ve photographed every square foot of its probable flight path. Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Trans-Jordan – you name it. No one expected it to turn up in Kurdistan, but the
