The Secret Pilgrim Part 12

But Toby was too set on enjoying his day in Bavaria to be disturbed by the implications of my words. "Nedike, believe me, those army guys, they're total idiots. Hungarian military intelligence, that's the same as Hungarian military music, know what I mean? They blow it out their a.r.s.es actually."

I continued my recitation. West German Security had a permanent tap running on the Hungarian attaches telephone, I said. A ca.s.sette of Latzi's conversation with Peter was on its way to my office. From what I understood, it offered no surprises except to underline that Peter appeared genuinely unprepared for the call. Peter had neither made nor received further calls last night, I said, nor had there been any burst of diplomatic signals traffic from the roof of the Hungarian Emba.s.sy in Bonn. Peter had, however, complained to the Protocol Department of the West German Foreign Office about telephone hara.s.sment on his home line. This was not, I suggested, the act of a conspirator. Toby was less sure.

"Could be one thing, Ned, could be the other," he said, leaning back in his seat and languidly tilting the flat of his hand both ways. "A man thinks he's been compromised? So maybe it's not so stupid he makes a formal complaint once, brushes over his traces-why not?"

I gave him the rest. I was determined to Latzi's description of the putative diplomat in Vienna tallied with that of one Leo Bakocs, Commercial Secretary and, like Peter, an identified Hungarian Intelligence officer, I said. Cousin Wagner was getting hold of a photograph for us to show to Latzi later in the day.

The name Bakocs brought a fond smile to Toby's lips. "They drag Leo in on this? Listen, Leo's so vain he spies only on d.u.c.h.esses."

He laughed in jolly disbelief. "Leo in some lousy hotel, handing over garottes to a smelly a.s.sa.s.sin? Tell me another, Ned. I mean."

"It isn't me who's telling you," I said. "It's Latzi."

Lastly, I said, I had despatched Jeffrey to the Munich wh.o.r.ehouse to pay Latzi's bill and collect his overnight bag. The only article of interest in his luggage was a set of p.o.r.nographic photographs.

"It's the tension, Ned," Toby explained magnanimously. "In a foreign country, killing somebody you don't know, you need a little private company - know what I mean?"

In return, Toby had brought me nothing whatever, private or otherwise. I had imagined him on the phone all night, and perhaps he had been. But not in support of my enquiries.

"Maybe we have a party tonight," he proposed. "Harry Palfrey of Legal Department is coming over with a couple of guys from the Foreign Office. That's a nice fellow, Harry. Very English."

I was bewildered. "What branch of the Foreign Office?"

I said. "Who? Why Palfrey?"

But as Toby would say, questions are never dangerous until you answer them. We arrived at the lake house to find Arnold cooking eggs and bacon. The Professor and Latzi sat at one end of the table. Helena, a vegetarian, sat at the other, eating a nut bar from her handbag.

Arnold was blond and lank. His hair was done in a knot at the back. "They had a bit of a dingdong, Ned," he confided to me disapprovingly while Toby fell about the Professor's neck. "The Professor and his missus, a real dogfight. I don't know who started it or what it was about, I wouldn't ask."

"Did Latzi join in?"

"He was going to, Ned, but I told him to keep quiet. I don't like a man who comes between husband and wife, I never did."

In retrospect, our discussions that day resemble an intricate minuet, beginning in our humble kitchen and ending in the courts of the Almighty Himself-more precisely in the beflagged conference room of the American Consulate General, where the inspiring features of President Nixon and Vice President Agnew smiled favourably on our endeavours.

For Toby, as I soon realised, far from doing nothing, had laid on an entire programme for himself, which he advanced from stage to stage with the dexterity of a ringmaster. In the kitchen, he listened to the whole story over again from Latzi and the Professor, while Helena chewed her nut bar. I had never seen Toby in full Hungarian flight before and found time to marvel at the transformation. With one sentence he had flung aside the unnatural corset of his Anglo-Saxon restraint and was back among his people. His eyes caught fire. He preened, and his back arched as if he were sitting on a parade horse.

"Ned, they say you have been quite fantastic actually," he called to me down the table in the midst of all this. "A tower of strength, they are saying, completely. I think maybe they will recommend you a n.o.bel prize!"

"Tell them to make it an Oscar, I'll accept," I said sourly, and took myself for a walk down to the lakeside to recover my temper.

I returned to the house to find Toby and the Professor closeted in the drawing room, talking volubly. Toby's high respect for the Professor seemed, if anything, to have increased. Latzi was helping Arnold with the was.h.i.+ng-up and they were both sn.i.g.g.e.ring. Latzi had evidently been telling a dirty joke. Helena was nowhere to be seen. Next, it was Latzi's turn to sit alone with Toby, while the Professor and his wife walked uneasily at the lakeside, pausing every few steps to remonstrate with each other, until the Professor turned on his heel and strode back to the house.

Seizing the moment, I slipped out and joined Helena. Her lips were pursed and her face was sickly-white-whether from fear, anger or fatigue, I couldn't tell. When she spoke, she had to stop and begin again before the words would come.

"He is a liar," she said. "It is all lies! Lie, lie! He is a liar!"

"Who is?"

"They are botb liars. From the day of birth, they lie. On their deathbeds, they lie. "

"So what's the truth?" I said.

"Wait is the truth!"

"Wait for what?"

"I have warned him. 'If you do this, I shall tell the English.'

So we wait. If he does it, I shall tell you. If he repents, I shall spare him. I am his wife."

She walked to the house, a stately woman. As she entered it, a black limousine pulled up in the drive and Harry Palfrey, the Circus legal adviser, emerged, accompanied by two other members of the English governing cla.s.ses. I recognised the taller of them as Alan Barnaby, luminary of the Foreign Office's misnomered Information and Research Department, which traded in Communist counter-propaganda at its sleaziest. Toby was shaking him warmly by the hand while with his other he beckoned me to join them. We went indoors and sat down.

At first I smouldered in silence. The players had been sent upstairs. Toby was doing the talking, the others listened to him with the special reverence their kind reserves for paupers or black men. I even found myself feeling a little protective of him-of Toby Esterhase, G.o.d help me, who protected no one but himself! "What we are dealing with here, Alan, without talking out of turn actually, is a completely top source who is now expended," Toby explained. "A great joe, but his day is over."

"You mean the Prof," Barnaby said helpfully.

"They are on to him. They know his value too well. From certain clues I have obtained from Latzi, it's clear the Hungarians have a fat dossier on the Professor's operations. After all, I mean, why would they try to kill a fellow who is no use to us? A Hungarian a.s.sa.s.sination attempt-that's a Good Housekeeping certificate for the target, I would say."

"We can't be responsible for the Professor's safety indefinitely," Palfrey cautioned us with his loser's smile. "We can give him protection for a bit, naturally. But we can't accept a life interest in him. He has to know that. We may have to get him to sign something just to make the point."

The second Foreign Office man was round and s.h.i.+ny with a chain across his waistcoat. I had a childish urge to pull it and see if he squealed.

"Well, I think we may all be talking too much," he said silkily. "If the Americans agree to take the pair of 'em off our hands, the Prof and his missus, we shan't have to worry, shall we? Best keep our heads down and our powder dry, what?"

Palfrey demurred. "He should still sign a release for us, Norman. He has rather been playing us off against the Cousins in the last few years."

Ever the protector of his own, Toby gave a knowing smile. "All the best joes do this, I would say, Harry. One hand washes the other, even at Teodor's level. The question is, now that he is no longer usable, what have we got to lose except trouble actually? I mean, I am not the expert here," he added, with an ingratiating smile at Barnaby.

"What about the a.s.sa.s.sin fellow?" said the man called Norman. "Will he play ball as well? b.l.o.o.d.y dangerous, isn't it, sitting up there like a duck in a tree?"

"Latzi is flexible," said Toby. "He is scared, he is also a complete patriot."

I would not have backed him on either of these points, but I was too sickened to interrupt.

"These apparatcbiks, when they step out of the system, they are in shock. Latzi is coping with it. He agonises over his family, but he is reconciled. If Teodor accepts, Latzi will accept also. With guarantees, naturally."

"What sort of guarantees?" said the s.h.i.+ny Foreign Office man, so quickly that not even Harry Palfrey got in ahead of him.

Toby did not falter. "Well, naturally the usual. Latzi and Teodor don't want to be thrown on to the rubbish heap when this one's over, I would say. Nor does Helena. American pa.s.sports, a good bit of money at the end of the road, a.s.sistance and protection - I mean that's basic so to speak."

"The whole thing's a con," I blurted. I had had enough.

Everybody was smiling at me. They would have smiled whatever I had said. They were that sort of crowd. If I had said I was a Hungarian double agent, they would have smiled. If I had said I was Adolf Hitler's reincarnated younger brother, they would have smiled. All but Toby, that is, whose face had acquired the lifelessness of someone who knows that all he can safely be at this moment is n.o.body at all.

"Now why on earth do you say that, Ned?"

Barnaby was asking, awfully interested.

"Latzi's not a trained killer," I said. "I don't know what he is, but he isn't a killer. He was carrying an unloaded gun. No professional in his right mind does that. He's posing as a Bavarian artist, but he's wearing Hungarian clothes and half the junk in his pockets is Hungarian. I was standing over him when he made his phone call to Bonn. Fine, the attaches first name is Peter. It's in the diplomatic list as Peter. Peter wasn't expecting that call in a month of Sundays. Latzi lai4 it on him. Listen to the German tape of their conversation."

"Then what about the chap in Vienna, Ned?" said Barnaby, still determined to patronise me. "The chap who gave him his money and his hardware? Eh? Eh?"

"They never met. We showed Latzi the photograph and he was delighted. 'That's the man,' he said. Oh sure: he'd seen a photograph somewhere else. Ask Helena, she knows. She's not telling at the moment, but if we put pressure on her, I'm sure she will."

Toby came briefly alive. "Pressure, Ned? Helena? Pressure, that's something you use when you know you can squeeze harder than the other fellow. That woman is crazy about her husband. She defends him to the grave actually."

"The Professor's fallen foul of the Americans," I said. "They're rolling up his red carpet. He's desperate. If he didn't set up the a.s.sa.s.sination himself, Latzi did. The whole ploy is a device for him to cut his losses and make a new life."

They waited for me to continue, all of them. It was as if they were waiting for the punchline. Finally Toby spoke. He had rediscovered his form.

"Nedike, how long since you slept actually?" he asked with an indulgent smile. "Tell us, please."

"What's that got to do with it?"

Toby was ostentatiously studying his watch. "I think you have been now thirty hours without sleep, Ned. You took some pretty d.a.m.n big decisions in that time-all good ones, I would say. I don't think we can blame you for having a bit of a reaction."

It was as if I had never spoken. All heads had turned back to Toby.

"Well, l think it's rather important we take a peek at the cast," Barnaby was saying as I headed for the door. "Can we whistle them down, Toby? Question of how they'll shape up under the spotlights."

"I think there's news value in doing this thing straight away, Barnaby," Palfrey was saying, as I headed for the garden and sanity.

"Strike while the iron is hot. With me?"

"With you all the way, Harry. Hundred percent."

I refused to be present for the first audition. I sulked in the kitchen and let Arnold minister to me while I pretended to listen to some story about his mother walking out on the fellow she'd been with for twenty years and shacking up with her childhood sweetheart. I watched Toby skip upstairs to fetch his champions, and scowled when the three men descended some minutes later, Latzi with his black hair slicked into a parting, the Professor with his jacket outside his shoulders, his seer's head struck forward in contemplation and his white mane flowing becomingly.

Then Helena came into the kitchen with tears streaming down her cheeks, so Arnold gave her a hug and fetched a blanket for her, because the spring morning was crisp and she was s.h.i.+vering. Then Arnold made her a camomile tea, and sat with his arm round her till Toby bustled in to say we were all expected at the American Consulate in two hours.

"Russell Sheriton is flying in from London, Pete de May from Bonn. They are mustard for it, Ned. Totally mustard. Was.h.i.+ngton throws its cap in the air, completely."

I do not recall whether Pete de May was grander than Sheriton or less grand. But grand enough.

"Ned, that Teodor's fantastic," Toby a.s.sured me privately.

"Really? In what way?"

"You know what they told him? 'What you are doing is d.a.m.n risky, Professor. Do you think you can handle it?'

You know what he replied? 'Mr. Amba.s.sador, risks are what we all take to protect civilised society.'

He's quiet, he's dignified. Latzi too. Ned, after this you get some sleep, okay? I phone Mabel."

We rode in two cars, Toby with the Hungarians, myself with Palfrey and the Foreign Office. Opening the car door for me, Palfrey touched my arm and offered me some steel-edged advice. "I think from now on, it's all hands pulling together, Ned. Tired is one thing. Talk about con-tricks is something else. Yes? Agreed?"

We must have numbered twenty head. The Consul General presided. He was a pallid mid-Westerner, an ex-lawyer like Palfrey, and kept talking anxiously about "reprocussions."

Milton Wagner was seated between Sheriton and de May. It was clear to me that, whatever their private thoughts, Sheriton and Wagner had orders to keep their scepticism to themselves. Perhaps they too had recognised that there were worse ways of getting rid of useless agents than offloading them onto the U.S. Information Services, who were represented by a quartet of troubled believers whose names I never learned.

Pullach was spoken for, naturally. Though not involved, they had sent their own observer, so we could be confident that our determinations would be the gossip of Potsdam by afternoon. They also insisted on making a voluble complaint about Vienna. It seemed that Pullach had a running battle with the Austrian police about forged pa.s.sports, and suspected them of selling them to the Hungarians. Quite a lot of the meeting was taken up by an Oberst von-und-zu somewhere or other moaning about Austrian duplicity.

The three champions did not, of course, attend our deliberations, but sat in the waiting room. When sandwiches were pa.s.sed round, a generous plate was sent out to them. And when they were finally called in, several of the lay members of the meeting broke into applause, which must have been the first of many times from then on when they heard the roar of the greasepaint.

But it was Helena's tears that stole the show. The Professor said his few words, and his halting dignity worked its predictable magic. Latzi followed him, and a cold chill fell over the room as 'he explained why he had carried the two garottes, which were then pa.s.sed gingerly round the table with the rest of the exhibits. But when Helena stepped forward on the Professor's arm, I felt a lump rise to my throat, and knew that everyone in the room was feeling the same.

"I support my husband," was all the great actress could declaim.

But it was enough to bring the room to its feet.

It was late evening before I managed to speak to her alone. We were washed out by then; even the irrepressible Latzi was exhausted. The captains and the kings had departed, Toby had departed. I was sitting with Arnold in the drawing room of the lake house. An American van, with blackened windows and two plainclothes marines aboard, was waiting in the drive, but our stars were learning to keep their public waiting. The day had been spent preparing afternoon press announcements and signing Palfrey's releases, which he turned out to have brought with him in his briefcase.

She entered hesitantly, as if she expected me to strike her, but the anger had been drained out of me.

"We shall get our pa.s.sports," she said, sitting down. "It is the new world."

Arnold slipped tactfully from the room, closing the door behind him.

"Who's Latzi?" I said.

"He is a friend of Teodor."

"What else is he?"

"He is an actor. A bad, oh a bad actor from Debrecen."

"Did he ever work for the secret police?"

She made a gesture of deprecation. "He had connections. When Teodor needed to arrange himself with the authorities, Latzi was the go-between."

"You mean, when Teodor needed to inform on his students?"

"Yes."

"Did Latzi supply Teodor with his information while you were in Munich?"

"At first only a little. But when none came from other sources, more. Then much more. Latzi prepared the material for Teodor. Teodor sold it to the British and Americans. Otherwise we would have had no money."

"Was Latzi getting help from the secret police to do this?"

"It was private. Things are changing in Hungary. It is no longer prudent to be involved with the authorities."

I unlocked the door and watched her make her exit, head erect.

A few weeks later, back in London, I faced Toby with her story. He was neither surprised nor contrite.

"Women, Ned, that's a criminal cla.s.s actually. Better we eat the soup, not stir it."