Сэм Истлэнд - The Elegant Lie

‘It will do for a start,’ replied Carter, ‘and next maybe you can explain why Dasch had me standing in front of him within an hour of my getting out of Langsdorf.’

‘I admit, there is plenty that we still need to learn about him.’

‘Including un-learning some of what you thought you knew.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Wilby.

‘You told me he wasn’t violent.’

‘Dasch? He isn’t, at least according to his profile.’

‘Well, this morning, while he was giving me his version of a job interview, I had a gun stuck in my face by the gorilla that follows him around. He said his name was Ritter.’

‘What did this man look like?’

‘Medium height. Thinning hair. Wearing a suit. He had a military bearing. Looked like he could take a lot of punishment.’

‘That’s Ritter, all right. Anton Ritter. He spent a couple of years on the Russian front. Stay clear of him if you can, and from Dasch’s daughter, as well.’

‘Teresa?’

‘So you’ve met.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She’s smarter than her father. Things that Dasch himself might put up with from you simply because you’re an American are not going to fly with Teresa.’

‘She made that perfectly clear,’ said Carter, ‘and Dasch himself was pretty clear that he would have ordered me killed if I had failed his little interview.’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have gone through with it,’ said Wilby. ‘You’re still here, after all.’

‘Listen to the words you are saying,’ Carter murmured through clenched teeth. ‘I didn’t spend the last year of my life in prison for a crime that I not only did not commit, but that never even happened in the first place, just so I could get my brains blown out on the first day I get out of my cage, and all because you got your profile on him wrong.’

‘There are always risks,’ said Wilby. ‘You knew that going into this.’

‘But there are different kinds of risk,’ said Carter. ‘There are the risks you take, and then there are the risks I take. You and I both know those risks are not the same.’

‘You have every right to be concerned,’ Wilby tried to reassure him, ‘but don’t lose sight of how much is at stake here. If you succeed, we will have brought down one of the most profitable black market operations in this country.’

Dasch’s success had been astonishing, especially since he seemed to have begun with almost nothing, appearing out of nowhere just after the end of the war, driving a truck with which he began delivering goods around the city of Cologne. But not just any goods. From sources no one had ever been able to trace, Dasch had access to wine, champagne, cigars, canned fruits, vegetables and meat, as well as jams and chocolate. No one had seen anything like this in years. Even when such luxuries had been available, the prices were so astronomical that almost nobody could afford them, but Dasch had immediately grasped exactly what the market could bear. He began selling them off to restaurants, private clubs and a selection of diplomats, high-ranking officers and the wealthiest of them all◦– civilians who had secured contracts for the rebuilding of German railways, sewage plants, electrical power grids and telephone networks. The fact that almost all of his customers were either members of the Allied nations or those who catered to them meant that all attempts to investigate him somehow faltered when important documents were lost, or when Dasch would be tipped off about a raid. Added to this was the foregone conclusion that, in the years immediately after the war, when corruption in both civilian and military circles had reached epidemic proportions, any goods confiscated during one of these raids would wind up being consumed, and possible resold, by the same people who had ordered the investigation. The result of this was that no one seemed in a hurry to track down the source of Dasch’s wealth, especially since, by keeping prices down, he was making them available to those who had never been able to buy them in the past, war or no war.

If Dasch had been dealing in guns or stolen works of art, all bets would have been off, but he kept his inventory limited to those things that might be overlooked from time to time, even by those for whom austerity had become like a second religion.

Roughly 60 per cent of Dasch’s business was entirely above board: delivering construction supplies for the rebuilding of Cologne, transporting drinking water to areas of the city where plumbing had not yet been restored, even shuttling children to school. It was that remaining 40 per cent which fuelled Wilby’s obsession with Dasch.

And Wilby was not just a man. He was a sign of changing times. As the time drew closer when the zones of occupation would be dissolved and Germany◦– the western part of it anyway◦– would be allowed once more to govern itself, the Allied governments began to crack down on the kinds of crimes that might previously have been ignored. The reason for this was that most of those crimes, specifically prostitution, gambling and the selling of black market goods, had served as pressure valves for occupation troops. With those days coming to an end, the French, British and Americans became concerned that the fledgling German government would not be able to cope with such levels of crime and might collapse as a result, even before it had been able to prove the worth of its existence.

Even more troubling to men like Wilby was the chance that Russia might find ways to exploit this marketplace of necessary evils in the western zones of occupation, as they had already done with medical supplies such as morphine and penicillin. Wilby knew how real a threat that was, because his own side had been doing it for years inside the Russian zone. For that reason, more than any other, war had been declared on Hanno Dasch.

‘Do you know any more about him than you did before I went away?’ asked Carter.

‘Only that he’s still in business, which is close to miraculous. Almost every other player has been rounded up, or fled the country or got themselves killed in some internal dispute. But Dasch is still out there, which tells me he’s got contacts at very high levels. Customs. Law enforcement. Transport. Border police. Diplomats. He has to contend with all of these in order to maintain his supply chain, and yet we can’t find anyone in any of those circles who knows how he operates, at least anyone who will talk. Usually, the way we break into these organisations is by chipping away around the edges. We get hold of one low-level contact and persuade him to give us what little he knows. Then we move on to the next one, moving up the chain until we can finally break into the inner circles where the real business is getting done. But none of that has worked. The only way we’re going to make any progress with this guy is by going straight to the source. If you ask me, Dasch is the most accomplished criminal to appear since the end of the war, and there has been no shortage of contenders. If he was working for us, he’d probably be my boss right now.’

‘So what exactly do you want from me?’ asked Carter.

‘Specifically, we have got to know how he is moving his black market products from one place to another, where he’s storing them and who is supplying him. If you can get him to trust you, sooner or later you’re going to start seeing some clues as to how he operates. There’s no way he can keep that big a secret to himself. Judging from what he sells, he has contacts all over the continent◦– wine from France, chocolate from Belgium, cans of meat from Denmark, jars of fruit from Italy, Turkish cigarettes◦– and it’s all best quality stuff. If you can just find us one piece of that puzzle, we can begin putting the whole picture together; but right now, in spite of all the times the British occupation police have raided his premises or searched his vehicles for contraband, we have come up with nothing at all. We’re all relying on you,’ said Wilby. ‘Frankly, I don’t think there is anyone else who could pull this off. For that, you have my utmost respect.’