“The truth,” yelled Luger, punching me hard in the ribs.
I lashed back, catching Luger with a glancing punch on his jaw. Cash stepped in, just managing to hold us apart. Glancing sourly at Cash, Luger said, “Get him out of my sight.”
They drove me back to the Citadel and locked me in a hot stinking cell. I sat down on the solitary wooden bunk and stared into the solitary slops bucket. The bucket was empty but it seemed to be where my life was headed.
Toward the end of the day, I heard the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. His powerful, sonorous voice drifted through the still air of the Citadel. The sound was soothing, something felt as much as heard.
A minute after the muezzin had finished, the cell door opened and I was ordered out. A uniformed policeman marched me upstairs to a large room where Donovan, Reilly, and Agent Rauff were seated around a table. In front of them was the plaintext message I had given to Inspector Luger. I didn’t mention it. I was through volunteering information.
“It seems that the British want to charge you with the murder of your lady friend,” said Donovan.
I poured myself a glass of water from the decanter on the table.
“How about it? Did you kill her?”
“Nope. Someone else killed her. Someone who wanted to conceal that she was a German spy.” I nodded at the table. “I found that message in the radio room.”
“Would this be the radio room without a radio?” Rauff asked.
“Yes. I guess the person who took it away was worried that someone like you was going to shoot it.”
“This German spy you claim killed her,” said Rauff.
“Yes. You know, German spies are not at all unusual in the middle of a war with Germany.”
“Perhaps it just seems that way,” he said, “because you manage to make it sound like there’s a plague of them.”
“Well, we are in Egypt. If there’s going to be a plague of spies anywhere, it would have to be here. Along with lice and flies and boils and Secret Service agents.”
The artery on Rauff’s sweating neck started to throb. It was hot in the room and he had taken off his jacket so that it was impossible to see if he was missing a coat button.
Donovan picked up the plaintext message on the table. He regarded it as I suppose he would have regarded a disputed bill from his local butcher.
“And you say that this is evidence of a plot to kill the Big Three, in Teheran,” he said.
“Not the Big Three. Just Stalin.” I took the paper from Donovan’s thick fingers and translated from the German. “I think Stalin is Wotan,” I explained. “From the opera by Richard Wagner? Only I figured that the British police might be more inclined to pay attention if I told them it was all three Allied leaders, instead of just Marshal Stalin. It’s funny, but most of the people I speak to don’t care very much for Uncle Joe. You included, as I recall.”
Donovan smiled calmly. His blue eyes never left mine.
“It’s a great pity they didn’t find that German radio,” he said. “A radio would have corroborated your story nicely.”
“I imagine the man who killed my friend was of the same opinion, sir.”
“Yes, let’s talk about her for a moment. How exactly is it that you come to be friendly with a woman you say was a German agent?”
“She was beautiful. She was clever. She was rich. I guess I’m just the gullible kind.”
“How long had you known her?”
“We went way back. I knew her in Berlin, before the war.”
“Were you sleeping with her?”
“That’s my business.”
“Quite the swordsman, aren’t you, Willard?” said Rauff. “For a professor.”
“Why, Agent Rauff, you sound jealous.”
“I think it’s a fair question,” said Donovan.
“It didn’t sound like a question at all. Look, gentlemen, I’m not married, so I don’t see that who I sleep with is anyone’s business except me and the lady’s gynecologist.” I smiled at Rauff. “That’s a pussy doctor to you, Agent Rauff.”
“The British are saying that she was a Polish princess,” Reilly said.
“That’s right. She was.”
“Is it true that when you and she were living in Berlin you were both friends of Josef Goebbels?”
“Who told you that?”
“One of her Polish friends. A Captain Skomorowski. Is it true?”
I nodded. It made sense that Elena would have told him. What better way of persuading someone that you could never be a spy than by being hopelessly, charmingly indiscreet?
“I was never a friend of Goebbels. Only an acquaintance.” I nodded at Rauff. “Like me and your colleague.” I took another sip of water. “Besides, this was in 1938. The United States still had an ambassador in Berlin. Hugh Wilson. We used to see each other at Goebbels’s parties. I think I may even have left Germany before he did.”
“Did you mention this information when you joined the service?” asked Donovan.
“I think I told Allen Dulles.”
“Since he’s in Switzerland, it’s going to be hard to corroborate that,” said Donovan.
“Yes. But why would you want to? My short acquaintance with Goebbels hardly makes me unusual in the OSS. In the early days of COI, we had lots of krauts working for us. Still do. Everyone on Campus knows about FDR’s Doctor S project. Then there’s Putzi Hanfstaengl, Hitler’s former foreign press chief. Didn’t you bring him under the COI wing, General? Of course, that was before the FBI decided he ought to remain under house arrest in Bush Hill, monitoring German news broadcasts. And let’s not forget Commander George Earle’s several meetings with von Papen in Ankara. No, General, I hardly think my having met Goebbels is going to trouble anyone.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Donovan.
“Of course. But on Saturday the president is flying to Teheran to meet Stalin. Don’t you think that instead of quizzing me about whether I might have been a friend of the German propaganda minister you would do better to find out who it is among the American delegation that’s planning to assassinate Marshal Stalin?”
“That’s exactly what we were doing,” Rauff said, holding up the plaintext. “After all, this message was found on you.”
“I gave it to Inspector Luger.”
“He’d have found it when he searched you anyway. And let’s not forget that you were the one using the German radio back in Tunis.”
“I wondered what you were doing here, Rauff. I take it your clever theory is that ever since leaving Hampton Roads I’ve been crying wolf because I’m a wolf myself, is that it? Well, you’re certainly consistent, I’ll say that for you. Your stupidity looks chronic.”
I retrieved the Hamilton Hotel matchbook from my empty cigarette packet. I had hidden it inside the lining of my jacket.
“Whoever killed Princess Elena also killed Thornton Cole, back in Washington. I found this matchbook in the wastepaper basket beside that plaintext message from the Abwehr.”
“This is underneath the nonexistent radio, right?” said Rauff.
“It’s a little complicated, Agent Rauff, so I’ll speak slowly and in short words even you can understand. Cole was murdered because he stumbled onto a German spy ring. The Schmidts were murdered to help maintain the fiction that Cole had been cruising for homosexual sex-something that a State Department already nervous about losing presidential confidence in the wake of the Sumner Welles scandal was more than happy to see swept under the rug.
“The same man who killed the Schmidts-let’s call him Brutus-also killed his contact here in Cairo and is trying to frame me for it. My guess is that he hopes to clear the way for an attempt on Stalin’s life in Teheran.”
I thumped the table hard with the flat of my hand, which made Donovan jump. I upped the tone. “Look, you’ve got to listen to me. Someone, an American, is going to try to kill Stalin.”
Mike Reilly stirred in his chair. “Oh, there’s no doubt that there’s an assassination plot,” he said coolly. “In fact, the Russians know all about it. But there’s no American involved, Professor. That’s a fantasy. There was a plot to kill the Big Three. You were right about that. Two teams of German parachutists were dropped into the countryside outside Teheran on Monday. Most of them have already been arrested. And the rest are being picked up as we speak.”