‘You have sought me out — found out where I was living — from a former British Intelligence Officer. Then you offer me money for information which is more than thirty years old. You say you are pursuing an ideal — the destruction of an immoral, multinational oil company.’ His fingers fluttered for a moment in the air. ‘I do not question idealists — I was one myself. But you ask me, on such evidence, to trust you? And when I agree to trust you, you question my own sincerity.’ He leant forward with a slight creak of his chair, which might have been the joints of his old bones.
‘I am near the end of my life, Herr Hawn. It is my ambition to die in bed. But I have no ambition to cheat strangers out of a few thousand dollars. You will give me the money, and I guarantee that you receive your information.’
Hawn surrendered. He passed him back the envelope and watched the old man carefully count the sixty notes. Mönch fastidiously folded them into the breast pocket of his open-necked shirt. Hawn stood up.
‘The American Express, then. I shan’t ask for a receipt, Herr Doktor. And if you have trouble with this organization, Jacques, that’s your problem, not mine.’
Doktor Hans Dieter Mönch stood up and this time shook Hawn’s hand; his grip was surprisingly strong. As the servant showed Hawn out, the dog began to bark again. Hawn wondered if it was the only protection that Mönch had.
The key to their room was gone, and there was no one at the reception desk. Hawn went up the two flights of wooden stairs, past the suit of armour on the landing, and along to door number 17.
The room smelled of a perfume that Anna never used. Her eyes were bright and she looked flushed. There was a half-empty bottle of export whisky and three glasses on the table in the centre of the room.
Hawn stepped past her and looked at the figure sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘What are you doing here, Monsieur Pol?’
The Frenchman heaved his massive shoulders contentedly. ‘I think, without too much reminding, that you will know what I am doing. Did you not visit a certain house in the Calle Foncada two nights ago? And again this morning?’
Hawn looked at the smiling, sweating face, like a huge Easter egg with beard and kiss-curl painted on. Pol looked absurd — yet it was this very absurdity that made him impressive. No buffoon or confidence trickster could afford to appear so comical.
Hawn turned to Anna: ‘How long has he been up here?’
‘About half-an-hour. You look in a bad mood.’
‘I’ve just handed over six thousand dollars in exchange for a promise. Without a receipt.’ He looked at Pol: ‘That might interest you, since it was your money. But first — how did you get on to us?’
The fat man drew a big yellow silk bandanna from his pocket and mopped his brow and cheeks. ‘You have not made things difficult for me, mon chèr. Merely a matter of checking with the right authorities as to where you were stopping the night.’
‘And how did you know we were coming to Spain, if that isn’t an indiscreet question?’
Pol tapped a finger to his soft red lips. ‘Mon chèr, in French we have an old proverb — “There are never indiscreet questions, only indiscreet answers.” But I regret — your last question was indiscreet.’
‘But why track us down here? When I am on a job, I like to do it in my own time, in my own way. I was doing well until you turned up. It may be a coincidence, but the old German gentleman who lives in Calle Foncada was all ready to co-operate, until he got wind that you — or at least, some of your Resistance colleagues — had turned up in the area. Now he’s preparing to bolt. What’s more, he’s upped the ante and has only agreed to send me the information in a week.
‘What are you playing at, Pol? Are we investigating the past activities of ABCO, or are we helping to pursue some private vendetta against a senile old man who runs a chicken farm?’
‘The good Doctor Mengele also happens to run a chicken farm — somewhere in Bolivia, I believe. The senile old man who lives up on the Calle Foncada bought that farm with the money of the innocent and the dead. From the systematic proceeds of genocide.’ There was a soft hatred in Pol’s voice which Hawn had not heard before.
He said lamely: ‘I thought he was an administrator with the German Ministry of War Production. I know there was some talk of his being involved with slave labour, but that his real job was just as a run-of-the-mill bureaucrat?’
Pol interrupted him: ‘It was your so-called run-of-the-mill bureaucrats — those grubby little ronds-de-cuir, with their pens and papers and files — who made the war possible. Just as much as did the Generals and street bully-boys. In a way, Mönch and his kind were even more important, more lethal. Just as Hitler and his Wehrmacht drove the Nazi war machine, so the good Doktor Professor Mönch and his friends oiled its wheels — quite literally.’
Hawn said: ‘You’re not here to destroy a major multinational oil company — you’re just using me and
