'I'm almost out of time with that. He goes to trial at the beginning of next week.'
Belinsky looked thoughtful. 'Maybe I could help you to cut a few corners with your new colleagues. If I were to provide you with some high-grade Soviet intelligence it could put you well in with the Org. Of course it would have to be stuff that my people had seen already, but the boys in the Org wouldn't know that. If I dressed it up with the right kind of provenance, that would make you look like a pretty good spy. How does that sound?'
'Good. While you're in such an inspired mood you can help me out of another fix.
After K/nig had got through instructing me in the use of the dead-letter box, he gave me my first assignment.'
'He did? Good. What was it?'
'They want me to kill Becker's girlfriend, Traudl.'
'That pretty little nurse?' He sounded quite outraged. 'The one at the General Hospital? Did they say why?'
'She came into the Casino Oriental to oversee me losing her boyfriend's money. I warned her about it, but she wouldn't listen. I guess it must have made them nervous or something.'
But this wasn't the reason that K/nig had given me.
'A bit of wet-work is often used as an early test of loyalty,' Belinsky explained. 'Did they say how to do it?'
'I'm to make it look like an accident,' I said. 'So naturally I'll need to get her out of Vienna as quickly as possible. And that's where you come in. Can you organize a travel warrant and a rail ticket for her?'
'Sure,' he said, 'but try and persuade her to leave as much behind as possible.
We'll drive her across the zone and get her on a train at Salzburg. That way we can make it look as if she's disappeared, maybe dead. Which would help you, right?'
'Let's just make sure that she gets safely out of Vienna,' I told him. 'If anyone has to take risks I'd rather it was me than her.'
'Leave it to me, kraut. It'll take a few hours to arrange, but the little lady is as good as out of here. I suggest that you go back to your hotel and wait for me to bring her papers. Then we'll go and pick her up. In which case, perhaps it would be better if you didn't speak to her before then. She might not want to leave your friend Becker to face the music on his own. It would be better if we could just pick her up and drive out of here. That way if she decides to protest about it there won't be much that she can do.'
After Belinsky had left to make the necessary arrangements, I wondered if he would have been so willing to help get Traudl safely out of Vienna if he had seen the photograph which K/nig had given to me. He had told me that Traudl Braunsteiner was an MVD agent. Knowing the girl as I did it seemed utterly absurd. But for anyone else most of all a member of CIC looking at the photograph that had been taken in a Vienna restaurant, in which Traudl was evidently enjoying the company of a Russian colonel of MVD, whose name was Poroshin, things might have seemed rather less than clear-cut.
Chapter 26
There was a letter from my wife waiting for me when I returned to the Pension Caspian. Recognizing the tight, almost child-like writing on the cheap manilla envelope, crushed and grimy from a couple of weeks at the mercy of a haphazard postal service, I balanced it on the mantelpiece in my sitting-room and stared at it for a while, recollecting the letter to her that I had positioned similarly on our own mantelpiece at home in Berlin, and regretting its peremptory tone.
Since then I had sent her only two telegrams: one to say that I had arrived safely in Vienna and giving my address; and the other telling her that the case might take a little longer than I had first anticipated.
I dare say a graphologist could easily have analysed Kirsten's hand and made a pretty good job of convincing me that it indicated the letter inside had been written by an adulterous woman who was in the frame of mind to tell her inattentive husband that despite his having left her $2,000 in gold she nevertheless intended divorcing him and using the money to emigrate to the United States with her handsome American schStzi.
I was still looking at the unopened envelope with some trepidation when the telephone rang. It was Shields.
'And how are we doing today?' he asked in his over-precise German.
'I am doing very well, thank you,' I said, mocking his way of speaking, but he didn't seem to notice. 'Exactly how may I be of service to you, Herr Shields?'
'Well, with your friend Becker about to go to trial, frankly I wondered what kind of detective you were. I was asking myself whether you had come up with anything pertinent to the case: if your client was going to get his $5,000 worth?'
He paused, waiting for me to reply, and when I said nothing he continued, rather more impatiently.
'So? What's the answer? Have you found the vital piece of evidence that will save Becker from the hangman's noose? Or does he take the drop?'
'I've found Becker's witness, if that's what you mean, Shields. Only I haven't got anything that connects him with Linden. Not yet anyway.'
'Well, you had better work fast, Gunther. When trials commence in this city they're apt to be a mite quick. I'd hate to see you get round to proving a dead man innocent. That looks bad all round, I'm sure you would agree. Bad for you, bad for us, but worst of all for the man on the rope.'
'Suppose I could set this other fellow up for you to arrest him as a material witness.' It was an almost desperate suggestion, but I thought it worth a try.
'There's no other way he'd show up in court?'
'No. At least it would give Becker someone to point the finger at.'
'You're asking me to make a dirty mark on a shiny floor.' Shields sighed. 'I hate not to give the other side a chance, you know. So I tell you what I'm going to do. I'll have a word with my Executive Officer, Major Wimberley, and see what he recommends. But I can't promise anything. Chances are, the major will tell me to go balls out and get a conviction, and to hell with your man's witness.
There's a lot of pressure on us to get a quick result here, you know. The Brig doesn't like it when American officers are murdered in his city. That's Brigadier-General Alexander O. Gorder, commanding the 796th. One tough son-of-a-bitch. I'll be in touch.'
'Thanks, Shields. I appreciate it.'
'Don't thank me yet, mister, he said.
I replaced the receiver and picked up my letter. After I'd fanned myself with it, and used it to clean my fingernails, I tore it open.
Kirsten was never much of a letter-writer. She was more one for a postcard, only a postcard from Berlin was no longer likely to inspire much in the way of wishful thinking. A view of the ruined Kaiser-Wilhelm church? Or one of the bombed-out Opera House? The execution shed at Plotzensee? I thought that it would be a good long while before there were any postcards sent from Berlin. I unfolded the paper and started to read:
Dear Bernie, I hope this letter reaches you, but things are so difficult here that it may not, in which case I may also try to send you a telegram, if only to tell you that everything is all right. Sokolovsky has demanded that the Soviet military police should control all traffic from Berlin to the West, and this may mean that the mail does not get through.
The real fear here is that this will all turn into a full-scale siege of the city in an effort to push the Americans, the British and the French out of Berlin although I don't suppose anyone would mind if we saw the back of the French. Nobody objects to the Amis and the Tommies bossing us around at least they fought and beat us. But Franz? They are such hypocrites. The fiction of a victorious French army is almost too much for a German to bear.