‘No. Sun was reflecting off the windshield.’
‘And did you have any idea what it contained?’
‘It was sitting low on its shocks. I saw that after it had passed. But the canopy was battened down and I didn’t get a look inside it.’
‘You didn’t wonder what it might have been hauling?’
‘Of course I did,’ said the soldier.’
‘What did you think?’
The man looked at him suspiciously, as if afraid that he was being tricked into saying something that would recoil upon his head. ‘I know what I heard afterwards,’ he said. ‘That it was stolen gasoline.’
‘Did you report it?’
He nodded. ‘To my platoon commander, and he took it directly to the major.’
‘That’s Major Wharton?’
‘Right.’
‘And that truck never came back?’
‘Not this way it didn’t, but these woods are full of trails. It could have come around some other way. I never said it went all the way to Wahlerscheid.’
‘What’s at Wahlerscheid?’ asked Carter. ‘Is that across the border?’
‘It is the border,’ said the man. ‘It’s a little customs house stuck out in the middle of nowhere.’
‘And do you hold it?’
The soldier shook his head. ‘That place is no man’s land. We send patrols out there and so do they. Most of the time, we just avoid each other. But you go a mile or two down that road and you’ll see them sure enough. These woods are crawling with Krauts.’
‘I thought there weren’t supposed to be any.’
One of the other men in line breathed out sharply through his nose. ‘Where’d you hear that?’ he asked. ‘Back in Paris?’
At that moment they heard a clattering roar, far away among the trees.
The men in the line flinched.
For a while, nobody spoke as the sound rose and fell and then died away, swept up in a wind which came hissing through the tops of the trees.
‘What the hell was that?’ asked Carter.
The man smiled faintly. ‘That depends on who you talk to. If you’re listening to the same generals who are saying there’s no German army at the other end of this forest, then that noise is from some kind of giant record player, broadcasting the sound of a German tank engine.’
‘That didn’t sound like any damned record to me,’ said Carter.
‘I would be inclined to agree with you, sir,’ said the soldier, ‘if given the opportunity to do so.’
After the soldiers had gone, Carter climbed back into the jeep. ‘Did you hear all that?’ he asked Riveira.
‘Yes, sir, unless you’d prefer that I hadn’t, in which case I have no idea what you were talking about.’
‘Major Wharton didn’t say anything to me about a truck heading into these woods.’
‘I can’t say I blame him, sir, seeing as this whole mess could come down upon his head if those rumours turn out to be true.’
…
‘He has what?’ Wilby was sitting in a meat locker on the frozen carcass of a pig. More frozen pigs hung all around him, split in two and gaffed upon iron hooks whose metal was tinselled with frost.
The night before, Carter had left a message at the dead drop behind the train station. Choosing from the pre-arranged locations, he had selected the butcher shop on Jennerstrasse, whose owner was paid a regular wage to look the other way whenever strangers appeared out of nowhere in his freezer.
Outside the butcher shop, the cobblestoned street glistened red with blood and the piercing metallic reek of beef and pig carcasses hung over the place like a fog. The meat markets of Jennerstrasse catered to the wholesale trade. It was a crowded, chaotic place, echoing with the guttural sounds of men and women speaking Rhineland dialect, and punctuated with the soft thuds of cleavers hacking through bone. All this, and the fact that it was still early in the morning, the busiest time at the market, made the butcher shop an ideal place to meet.
They had made their way to the meat locker at the back of the shop and there, his breath condensing in that upside down forest of gore, Carter began to tell Wilby about the aeroplane he had seen the day before.
He had only been speaking for a few seconds before Wilby interruped. ‘What kind of plane?’ he demanded.
‘A Canadian C-54,’ said Carter, and he went on to explain how it had been stolen from the Bulltofta airfield in Sweden.
‘Please don’t tell me Dasch has started flying contraband around the country.’
‘Actually,’ said Carter, ‘he’s flying it out of the country.’
Wilby put his face in his hands. ‘Oh my God,’ he muttered.
‘Last night it took off with a cargo of whisky. I’m not sure exactly where it was going, but Dasch told me the buyers are Russian.’
Wilby rose to his feet and began to pace about between the carcasses, which twisted on their iron hooks as if some life was still left in them. ‘Where the hell did he get his hands on all that whisky?’
‘It wasn’t his,’ explained Carter. ‘He’s transporting it for a man named Garlinsky.’
‘And who’s he?’
‘I don’t know. He wasn’t there. I can tell you that Dasch seems very anxious not to get on the wrong side of him.’
‘What did I tell you about Dasch?’ Wilby threw up his hands. ‘The man’s a genius. Hell, I’d apply for a job with his company if all this was even half legal.’
‘You know,’ Carter said uneasily, ‘I’m not sure this guy is everything you say he is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He has a lot of big ideas, for sure, but I’m not seeing signs of any huge operation. He has a few people working for him. His daughter does the books and this man Ritter keeps him safe. But I’ve heard no mention of any diplomats or law enforcement under Dasch’s control and, apart from what they loaded on the plane, which wasn’t even his, I haven’t seen a single piece of contraband since I set foot on his compound.’
‘That doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It has to be. Just look at what he has accomplished. How many black marketeers can you point to who have their own damned air force?’
‘It’s just one plane,’ said Carter.
‘You’re missing the point, son. He has an aeroplane!’ He slumped back down on his dead pig bench. ‘As much as I want to see this guy rot in a prison cell for the rest of his life, I can’t deny I am impressed. But this is also troubling, Carter, deeply troubling. I don’t mind telling you that. So far, it’s just contraband he has been moving, but what if he turns his hand to something else? Something that could cause us even more problems?’
‘I’m afraid he already has,’ said Carter, ‘although he doesn’t even know it.’ As Carter spoke, he removed from his pocket the money he had retrieved from the crate.
Slowly, as if convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him, Wilby reached out and took the stack of roubles from Carter’s hand. The blood drained out of his face. He seemed completely overwhelmed.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ asked Carter. It worried him to see Wilby so rattled by this news.
But the question snapped him out of it. ‘Of course I am!’ he said. ‘What are you talking about?’ He shook the wad of bills at Carter. ‘And what do you mean Dasch doesn’t know about this?’
‘I only found it because one of the whisky crates broke,’ said Carter. ‘Garlinsky didn’t tell Dasch about the money.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Positive. When the crate broke, all he cared about was the whisky. What I don’t understand,’ said Carter, ‘is why Garlinsky would take the risk of hiding all that cash in something that was already illegal.’
‘That’s easy,’ said Wilby. ‘It’s because whisky is the kind of thing Dasch would be expecting. Since he deals in black market goods, it makes perfect sense that someone might approach him for help in transporting stolen or illegal merchandise out of the country. How else would they convince him to get involved? Whoever Garlinsky is, and whoever he’s working for, they’re obviously in a hurry to get that money to its destination, or else they’d never take such a risk.’ Wilby peeled one bill from the stack, held it up to his ear and crumpled it between his fingers. Then he scratched at it and studied the rim of his fingernail.