Chapter 12

‘DO YOU BELIEVE in ghosts?’ Martins said to me.

‘Do you?’

‘I do now.’

‘I also believe that drunk men see things – sometimes rats, sometimes worse.’

He hadn’t come to me at once with his story – only the danger to Anna Schmidt tossed him back into my office, like something the sea had washed up, tousled, unshaven, haunted by an experience he couldn’t understand. He said, ‘If it had been just the face, I wouldn’t have worried. I’d been thinking about Harry, and I might easily have mistaken a stranger. The light was turned off again at once, you see. I only got one glimpse, and the man made off down the street – if he was a man. There was no turning for a long way, but I was so startled I gave him another thirty yards’ start. He came to one of those advertisement kiosks and for a moment moved out of sight. I ran after him. It only took me ten seconds to reach the kiosk, and he must have heard me running, but the strange thing was he never appeared again. I reached the kiosk. There wasn’t anybody there. The street was empty. He couldn’t have reached a doorway without my seeing him. He simply vanished.’

‘A natural thing for ghosts – or illusions.’

‘But I can’t believe I was as drunk as all that!’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I had to have another drink. My nerves were all in pieces.’

‘Didn’t that bring him back?’

‘No, but it sent me back to Anna’s.’

I think he would have been ashamed to come to me with his absurd story if it had not been for the attempt on Anna Schmidt. My theory, when he did tell me his story, was that there had been a watcher – though it was drink and hysteria that had pasted on the man’s face the features of Harry Lime. The watcher had noted his visit to Anna, and the member of the ring – the penicillin ring – had been warned by telephone. Events that night moved fast. You remember that Kurtz lived in the Russian zone – in the Second Bezirk to be exact, in a wide, empty, desolate street that runs down to the Prater Platz. A man like that had probably obtained his influential contacts. It was ruin for a Russian to be observed on very friendly terms with an American or an Englishman, but the Austrian was a potential ally – and in any case one doesn’t fear the influence of the ruined and defeated.

You must understand that at this period cooperation between the Western Allies and the Russians had practically, though not yet completely, broken down.

The original police agreement in Vienna between the Allies confined the military police (who had to deal with crimes involving allied personnel) to their particular zones, unless permission was given to them to enter the zone of another Power. This agreement worked well enough between the three Western Powers. I only had to get on the phone to my opposite number in the American or French zones before I sent in my men to make an arrest or pursue an investigation. During the first six months of the occupation it had worked reasonably well with the Russians: perhaps forty-eight hours would pass before I received permission, and in practice there are few occasions when it is necessary to work quicker than that. Even at home it is not always possible to obtain a search warrant or permission from one’s superiors to detain a suspect with any greater speed. Then the forty-eight hours turned into a week or a fortnight, and I remember my American colleague suddenly taking a look at his records and discovering that there were forty cases dating back more than three months where not even an acknowledgement of his requests had been received. Then the trouble started. We began to turn down, or not to answer, the Russian requests, and sometimes without permission they would send in police, and there were clashes. … At the date of this story the Western Powers had more or less ceased to put in applications or reply to the Russian ones. This meant that if I wanted to pick up Kurtz it would be as well to catch him outside the Russian zone, though of course it was always possible his activities might offend the Russians and his punishment be more sudden and severe than any we should inflict. Well, the Anna Schmidt case was one of the clashes: when Rollo Martins went drunkenly back at four o’clock in the morning to tell Anna that he had seen the ghost of Harry, he was told by a frightened porter who had not yet gone back to sleep that she had been taken away by the International Patrol.

What happened was this. Russia, you remember, was in the chair as far as the Innere Stadt was concerned, and when Russia was in the chair, you expected certain irregularities. On this occasion, half-way through the patrol, the Russian policeman pulled a fast one on his colleagues and directed the car to the street where Anna Schmidt lived. The British military policeman that night was new to his job: he didn’t realize, till his colleagues told him, that they had entered a British zone. He spoke a little German and no French, and the Frenchman, a cynical hard-bitten Parisian, gave up the attempt to explain to him. The American took on the job. ‘It’s all right by me,’ he said, ‘but is it all right by you?’ The British M.P. tapped the Russian’s shoulder, who turned his Mongol face and launched a flood of incomprehensible Slav at him. The car drove on.

Outside Anna Schmidt’s block the American took a hand in the game and demanded in German what it was all about. The Frenchman leaned against the bonnet and lit a stinking Caporal. France wasn’t concerned, and anything that didn’t concern France had no genuine importance to him. The Russian dug out a few words of German and flourished some papers. As far as they could tell, a Russian national wanted by the Russian police was living there without proper papers. They went upstairs and the Russian tried Anna’s door. It was firmly bolted, but he put his shoulder to it and tore out the bolt without giving the occupant an opportunity of letting him in. Anna was in bed, though I don’t suppose, after Martins’ visit, that she was asleep.

There is a lot of comedy in these situations if you are not directly concerned. You need a background of Central European terror, of a father who belonged to a losing side, of house-searches and disappearances, before the fear outweighs the comedy. The Russian, you see, refused to leave the room while Anna dressed: the Englishman refused to remain in the room: the American wouldn’t leave a girl unprotected with a Russian soldier, and the Frenchman – well, I think the Frenchman must have thought it was fun. Can’t you imagine the scene? The Russian was just doing his duty and watched the girl all the time, without a flicker of sexual interest; the American stood with his back chivalrously turned, but aware, I am sure, of every movement; the Frenchman smoked his cigarette and watched with detached amusement the reflection of the girl dressing in the mirror of the wardrobe; and the Englishman stood in the passage wondering what to do next.

I don’t want you to think the English policeman came too badly out of the affair. In the passage, undistracted by chivalry, he had time to think, and his thoughts led him to the telephone in the next flat. He got straight through to me at my flat and woke me out of that deepest middle sleep. That was why when Martins rang up an hour later I already knew what was exciting him; it gave him an undeserved but very useful belief in my efficiency. I never heard another crack from him about policemen or sheriffs after that night.

I must explain another point of police procedure. If the International Patrol made an arrest, they had to lodge their prisoner for twenty-four hours at the International Headquarters. During that period it would be determined which Power could justifiably claim the prisoner. It was this rule that the Russians were most ready to break. Because so few of us can speak Russian and the Russian is almost debarred from explaining his point of view (try and explain your own point of view on any subject in a language you don’t know well – it’s not as easy as ordering a meal), we are apt to regard any breach of an agreement by the Russians as deliberate and malign. I think it quite possible that they understood this agreement as referring only to prisoners about whom there was a dispute. It’s true that there was a dispute about nearly every prisoner they took, but there was no dispute in their own minds, and no one has a greater sense of self-righteousness than a Russian. Even in his confessions a Russian is self-righteous – he pours out his revelations, but he doesn’t excuse himself, he needs no excuse. All this had to form the background of one’s decision. I gave my instructions to Corporal Starling.

When he came back to Anna’s room a dispute was raging. Anna had told the American that she had Austrian papers (which was true) and that they were quite in order (which was rather stretching the truth). The American told the Russian in bad German that they had no right to arrest an Austrian citizen. He asked Anna for her papers and when she produced them, the Russian snatched them from her hand.

‘Hungarian,’ he said, pointing at Anna. ‘Hungarian,’ and then, flourishing the papers, ‘bad, bad.’

The American, whose name was O’Brien, said, ‘Give the goil back her papers,’ which the Russian naturally didn’t understand. The American put his hand on his gun, and Corporal Starling said gently, ‘Let it go, Pat.’

‘If those papers ain’t in order we got a right to look.’

‘Just let it go. We’ll see the papers at H.Q.’

‘If we get to H.Q. You can’t trust these Russian drivers. As like as not he’ll drive straight through to his zone.’

‘We’ll see,’ Starling said.

‘The trouble about you British is you never know when to make a stand.’

‘Oh, well,’ Starling said; he had been at Dunkirk, but he knew when to be quiet.

They got back into the car with Anna, who sat in the front between the two Russians dumb with fear. After they had gone a little way the American touched the Russian on the shoulder, ‘Wrong way,’ he said. ‘H.Q. that way.’ The Russian chattered back in his own tongue making a conciliatory gesture, while they drove on. ‘It’s what I said,’ O’Brien told Starling. ‘They are taking her to the Russian zone.’ Anna stared out with terror through the windscreen. ‘Don’t worry, little goil,’ O’Brien said, ‘I’ll fix them all right.’ His hand was fidgeting round his gun again. Starling said, ‘Look here, Pat, this is a British case. You don’t have to get involved.’

‘You are new to this game. You don’t know these bastards.’

‘It’s not worth making an incident about.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ O’Brien said, ‘not worth … that little goil’s got to have protection.’ American chivalry is always, it seems to me, carefully canalized – one still awaits the American saint who will kiss a leper’s sores.

The driver put on his brakes suddenly: there was a road block. You see, I knew they would have to pass this military post if they did not make their way to the International H.Q. in the Inner City. I put my head in at the window and said to the Russian haltingly, in his own tongue, ‘What are you doing in the British zone?’

He grumbled that it was ‘orders’.

‘Whose orders? Let me see them.’ I noted the signature – it was useful information. I said, ‘This tells you to pick up a certain Hungarian national and war criminal who is living with faulty papers in the British zone. Let me see the papers.’

He started on a long explanation, but I saw the papers sticking in his pocket and I pulled them out. He made a grab at his gun, and I punched his face – I felt really mean at doing so, but it’s the conduct they expect from an angry officer and it brought him to reason – that and seeing three British soldiers approaching his headlights. I said, ‘These papers look to me quite in order, but I’ll investigate them and send a report of the result to your colonel. He can, of course, ask for the extradition of this lady at any time. All we want is proof of her criminal activities. I’m afraid we don’t regard Hungarian as Russian nationality.’ He goggled at me (my Russian was probably half incomprehensible) and I said to Anna, ‘Get out of the car.’ She couldn’t get by the Russian, so I had to pull him out first. Then I put a packet of cigarettes in his hand, said ‘Have a good smoke’, waved my hand to the others, gave a sigh of relief, and that incident was closed.