‘Then in late 1946 his world blew up in his face. Rice — or R-E-I-S-S, as he was now known — had been a top Nazi agent all the time. The stuff he’d given the Americans was mostly phoney — except what could be checked on — while he was feeding all ABCO’s secrets straight back to the Abwehr. But it appears he wasn’t just a secret agent.
‘The Allies in Germany were going through the archives and found that Rice had been top-dog in a petro-chemical firm employing slave-labour. The Americans wanted him as a war criminal, and the British — on account of his British passport — wanted him for treason. Quite a combination. There were plenty of war criminals around, and quite a few traitors. But there weren’t many people who qualified for both, in the first degree. Alan Rice, alias Reiss, must have been practically unique.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Vanished into thin air. I’ve heard a lot of rumours — that he went East, where his professional skills would have been well appreciated. He was a master of espionage, as well as a top scientist, remember. But there was also talk that ABCO had been using their muscle — that for some reason they weren’t over-anxious to have Rice brought to trial. There were even strong suggestions that they’d had him knocked off.’
‘Why?’
‘If I knew that, it would be worth a lot more than five hundred pounds.’
‘Not if Rice disappeared over thirty years ago. Not unless you can tie him in with someone who’s around today — alive and well and working for ABCO.’
French looked up at him with a simpering smile. ‘Would Toby Shanklin do?’
‘He might. What was his tie-up with Rice?’
‘They were in the same department — even shared the same office for a time.’
‘How do you know all this, Norman?’
‘I peeked at the files. I’m rather keen on files. All that dead paper, then you light on something really interesting.’
For a gruesome moment Hawn compared French’s enthusiasm with that of Anna, and hastily put it out of mind. ‘Presumably you thought that some of the dirt on Rice would have rubbed off on to Shanklin? But sharing the same department, the same office, with a traitor, doesn’t necessarily make you a traitor yourself. Christ, I know dozens of journalists who shared offices with Philby when he worked in Fleet Street — I even know one who used to lend him a typewriter.’
‘You say Shanklin had made a lot of money by the end of the war. There were lots of ways of making money in Central America in those days. One of them was selling secrets to the enemy.’
‘That’s speculation. I need facts. I need something definite to link Shanklin to Rice — more than just an office desk.’
Norman French took his time answering. He ordered coffee and a cigar. ‘There was one incident. Or rather, a memo I spotted that caught my fancy. In late 1943 Shanklin and Rice killed the Vice-Consul in Vera Cruz.’
‘Killed?’
‘In a car accident. At night, just outside the city. Rice and Shanklin were in the car — it didn’t say who was driving — and the Vice-Consul was knocked down and fatally injured on an empty bit of road. Funny business, really. There was talk of an inquiry, but it was hushed up. The Vice-Consul was a young chap with a posh name — de Vere Frisby, I think it was — and he hadn’t been in Mexico long. But the fact that he wasn’t in the Services, and the minor role of vice-consul in a strategic port like Vera Cruz, suggests that he was Intelligence.’
‘And he’d found something out that Rice, or Shanklin, or both of them, didn’t like? Was that all that was in the file?’
‘For five hundred pounds it is. If I stretch my memory back, I might come up with something later.’
Hawn took out his cheque book and pen. Without looking at Norman French, he said, ‘I’d like more details about Rice. Where he was born, date of birth, father’s name, previous jobs, universities, etc.’
French watched as he wrote; he said, as though afraid that Hawn might change his mind before signing: ‘I think he was born in Wales and may have studied at Heidelberg. And I’ve heard that he was extremely tall, with a hunchback.’
‘Christ, he and Shanklin must have made a handsome pair.’ Hawn signed the cheque and pushed it across to French. ‘Thanks, Norman. That ought to make your landlady happy. And if you get anything else, ring me.’
CHAPTER 7
The entrance hall of the Public Record Office resembles the foyer of a cheap modern hotel. A uniformed porter checked Hawn in, gave him an identification card, and showed him across to the reception desk. Here a girl handed him a form in duplicate and he filled out the details and dates which he required to check. She directed him up some shallow steps to a long corridor lined with steel drawers, like the receiving end of a crematorium.
A second girl took his names and dates, stamped them out on a card and slotted them into a computer. He was told to wait at a desk at the far end. A few minutes later a number of plastic-covered
