‘How does this all tie in with my theory?’ said Hawn.
‘I’m just trying to fill in the background for you. Maybe give you something to chew on. You got the theory — that Nazi Germany was starved of oil and somehow got it from the West. From us, maybe? Correct?’
Hawn nodded.
‘So, can you explain why the Nazis were permanently, chronically short of fuel throughout the war? Why they had to manufacture it themselves? Why they made every desperate effort to block our own — and your — oil supplies across the Atlantic and in the Med, through North Africa?’
‘And can you explain,’ said Hawn, ‘how this permanently, chronically starved fighting force — one of the largest and most sophisticated the world has ever seen — somehow managed, for nearly six years, to have enough fuel to fight to the very last inch of territory? I’ll believe anything about the courage and ingenuity of the German race, but I won’t believe their Panzers and armoured vehicles ran on blood. They ran on high-octane fuel, Mr Robak, and I’d like to know where it came from.’
‘There’s a straight answer to that. Reserves and synthetic fuel.’
‘I know. I got that in the Danieli. From Logan. Only that Frenchman there, Pol, rather shot him down. Pointed out that the synthetic fuel was only suitable for aircraft, not for the heavy stuff. And I don’t know about reserves — but they must have had not just millions, but billions of tonnes stashed away, to carry them right through.’
Robak put another cigarette in his mouth, without lighting it. ‘They had Russia. And they captured huge reserves in France. God knows what they captured in other places.’
‘The Russian oil fields, from what I know, never yielded very much — far less than Rumania, and the Rumanian fields in Ploesti were bombed to hell after 1943, when the Allies captured the airbase at Bari here in Italy.’
It was a moment before Robak answered. He took a bottle out of his dressing-gown pocket and shook out two pills which he swallowed. ‘Just vitamins. Keeps the metabolism going. This hepatitis is one hell of a drag. You got a pretty pat theory there, haven’t you, Hawn? What I call a “negative theory”. Like trying to prove a man’s guilty just because he hasn’t got a cast-iron alibi. Let’s try and be a little more constructive. Let’s just suppose — without mentioning names — that a Western oil company did supply the Germans. How would they have done it?’
‘I was rather hoping you might tell me.’
‘So you want me to write your lines for you, huh?’
‘Let’s say, just a bit of prompting.’
‘Sure. Well, there might have been several ways — as I said, all dependent on the neutrals. Broken convoy across the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico, into Norwegian waters and down to Sweden. Bills of Lading made out to Swiss laundering syndicates. Money-laundering, that is. Switch cargoes and ship the stuff across to Kiel or Rostock. Those were the main German railheads on the Baltic. You’re not writing any of this down. Why not?’
‘I’ve got a good memory. I never forget good stuff.’
‘I’m flattered. All right, take the Middle East. Bring the stuff round through the Canal and ship it up to Turkey, where every kind of dirty game was being played. The Turks swap it over into barges for the Danube. Or maybe they do better — maybe they swap it over on to neutral tankers and bring it up to Trieste or Genoa where there was the only pipeline in Europe at the time, up into Switzerland. And once in Switzerland — well, it was anybody’s oil. Then there was Franco’s Spain, of course. It could have gone through the Straits of Gibraltar, been transferred, shipped down to Oran or Algiers, then up to Vichy, France. But of course, that was before the Rumanian fields fell.’ He paused. ‘How am I doing?’
‘Fine.’ Hawn knew Robak was just playing, but he couldn’t decide just what at. The man was handing him a whole set of plausible theories to work on. They were no doubt the sort of theories he could come up with himself, but why was Robak helping him? Hawn was a poker player and was well-versed in the art of bluffing. The bluff that Robak might be pulling was to give him a broad basis for his theory which might be highly plausible, but because it came from a senior ABCO executive, could not possibly be true. That might be the way Hawn was supposed to take it, anyway.
Since Robak was playing, Hawn decided to play, too. He would bet against Robak’s hand, just to find out how strong it was. ‘What about the Royal Navy, the RAF, Strategic Air Command? By 1944 they had total control of sea and air.’
‘So — maybe they just got a dribble through. A dribble topped up with milk or olive oil, as you
