34

The secluded gabled resort hotel lay twenty-three miles down the coast road. Five cars and a lorry on blocks stood in the parking area. The ancient desk clerk slept behind the desk. Spangler glanced around the fake Tudor lobby. Two sets of curtained glass doors opened off it. A string quartet was playing Ivor Novello from behind the first. Spangler pushed through the second. The dining room was oaken, low-beamed and gas-lit. A young couple leaned face to face against the bar in the near corner. Julian was seated across the room at a table overlooking the ocean.

“I thought you were in Washington,” Spangler said, pulling up a chair.

“Good! That’s what I wanted everybody to think. Actually, Erik, I’m not in Washington. Actually, Erik, I got no farther than here. Felt I needed a few days of rest and meditation—and, come to think of it, drink. I am intoxicated, Erik. Smashed. Polluted. Zonked. But lucid, Erik; always lucid. Just can’t walk too well, that’s all. Care for a bite? The fish is almost edible.”

“I don’t have the time.”

“No English accent, Erik? How disappointing. That means you’re in low spirits. Pity.”

“This meeting was your idea, not mine. If you want to talk, talk. If not, I’m going.”

“Erik, Erik, Erik, I’m ashamed of you. You know how I am. Never have been able to get directly to the point. Love to thrash around a bit first. It’s my ritual, Erik. It’s like your symptoms. Erik, it’s extremely nice of you to drop by.” Julian flashed a sad smile and pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “Now tell me, how is it all going at Westerly? Everyone still jumping out of airplanes?”

“More or less.”

“And the little calamity, Erik—how has it affected events?”

“What calamity?”

“You know, Erik, all those silly men coming down into the poplars and the oaks. Something about misplaced flares?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Stop looking at me with that expression, Erik. You know that my patterns of intrigue and deception are always mundane and predictable. Why, when was the last time I came up with such a complicated idea as misdirecting an air drop? I expect last night’s little bloodletting will hold things up for a bit, won’t it?”

“Replacements are on the way. Cogan has a broken ankle.”

Julian frowned, lifted his glass and sipped. “In that case, Erik, he must be stopped.”

“Who?”

“Kittermaster. Yes, Erik, he must be stopped. He’s quite mad, you know. Thinks he’s Busby Berkeley. Obsessed with staging an extravaganza—a great big extravaganza for a grandstand of five or six Washington potbellies, and the price be damned. What do you think the price will be, Erik—one thousand, two thousand, five thousand men?”

“He might not lose that many.”

“That coming from you? Erik, which one of us has been doing the drinking? Can you really sit there in full sobriety and tell me that those released concentration-camp prisoners and those pathetic would-be marauders draped in American uniforms won’t be slaughtered like swine?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know precisely what I’m talking about: Kittermaster’s latest scheme. He plans to dress the camp prisoners in the discarded American uniforms, arm them and send them around the countryside to sabotage and create diversion—to give the paratroopers a better chance of getting out unnoticed.”

“If you’re so damned concerned about the prisoners, why didn’t you do something about the camps before?”

“I tried, Erik, I tried—as you know better than anyone. But Washington’s a little vague on the subject. After all, if our government has still not officially recognized their existence, what can one insignificant major do? But perhaps this is our opportunity, eh? Perhaps now we can do something to save them.”

“No one has to save them in this situation, because nothing’s going to happen to them.”

“Does God plan to intervene?”

“C.-c. prisoners are conditioned to passivity. The outside world doesn’t exist for them. It’s beyond their comprehension. It has to be if they hope to survive. No more than a handful would ever leave even if the gates were thrown wide open. And those few who would go out could hardly stand, let alone carry a gun and fight.”

“I see your point, Erik, and I will take your word on their physiological and psychological condition. But, Erik, isn’t the safe retreat of the American soldiers based on the prisoners’ acting as a decoy? What will happen if there is no decoy?”

“They have a chance to make it through.”

“How much of a chance?”

“That depends on their luck.”

“What a curious word for you to be using, Erik. You and I aren’t the type to put much stock in luck. We wouldn’t be alive today if we were. Let’s not dwell on luck, Erik; it makes me feel as if someone has trodden on my grave. Let’s deal with something else—with premeditation and skill. Erik, do you believe that if the air drop is launched in Poland the paratroopers can overrun the camps, locate Jean-Claude and Tolan and get them into the escape plane?”

“Maybe.”

Julian pondered. “Erik, are you counting on thirty-two hundred Americans to bring out Jean-Claude regardless of how few of them survive? Are you subscribing to the Kittermaster credo: Get me what I want and damn the corpses left behind?”

“We don’t know if Jean-Claude is in there.”

“He’s been missing for three weeks now, Erik. Where else would you expect him to be?”

“Maybe he’s lost. He’s a child, children can get lost. Or maybe he was captured and taken somewhere else.”

“Erik, isn’t the reason you’ve remained at Westerly quite simply based on one belief—that Jean-Claude is at Auschwitz or Birkenau?”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“I think you think he’s at Auschwitz or Birkenau, Erik. Why waste time? Why don’t you go in and find out for yourself?”

“You know I can’t. I’m set up for Germany and the West. I have no contacts in Poland—you know I work through contacts.”

“Only recently, Erik. In the old days you had a way of not relying on anyone. Those were the good days, Erik. Those were your golden days. Perhaps you can do it again?”

“Look, if you want to steal Kittermaster’s thunder, do it anyway you like, but just keep me out of it. I’m finished with the camps. Through. I shouldn’t have gone in the last time. I’ll never go in again.”

“And your apparatus, Erik? All your little devices and techniques, are you just going to let them sit and rot?”

“Yes.”

“Erik, I’ve always meant to ask you this. Just what is your relationship with Jean-Claude? Is it that he’s the last human being on this earth you feel an obligation for?”

Spangler rose. “I’ve had enough of you—enough to last a lifetime.”

He walked quickly from the dining room, stopped at the desk, woke the clerk and bought a roll of throat lozenges. He bit off the top of the wrapper and sucked two into his mouth.

“What the hell are you doing now, boy, following me?” Kittermaster’s voice blasted out. “Never figured you for the poor sport. After all, you had your shot at her and muffed.”

Kittermaster was grinning down at him from the staircase, holding a small valise. Hilka had stopped two steps above. She gazed at Spangler, turned sharply and continued climbing.

“You were her first choice, boy,” Kittermaster said evenly. “No doubt about it. You were number one, but you just weren’t up to it—just couldn’t cut the mustard. So why ruin another fellah’s good time, eh? Why should we have any hard feelings over a dizzy Kraut cunt? Just you stay off my turf and I’ll keep clear of yours, okay?”

Julian swayed half hidden just inside the dining-room doors. He watched Spangler stare blankly up after the ascending colonel, turn away slowly, check the time and half run from the hotel.

Julian made his way down the hall, pulled open the door on his third try and squeezed into the telephone box. He hiccupped, placed a long-distance call and finally managed to deposit the required coins.

“Yes,” a voice answered in a clipped British accent.

“This is Peppermint,” Julian said thickly. “You remember Peppermint, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know if Freddy was still in town, would you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, Freddy is in town.”

“Then put the silly bastard on.”

“Freddy isn’t here. Could you leave a message?”

Julian paused, sighed and closed his eyes. “You tell Freddy I’ve changed my mind. You tell him I’m willing to sell the merchandise he wants. Tell him the object he wants is definitely for sale. But tell him he has to bring his own tobacco—I haven’t any. He knows where to contact me. And you tell him he’d better make contact bloody damned fast—or I might change my mind again.”

Julian hung up, leaned forward and rested his forehead against the coin box.