Colin Forbes: The Heights of Zervos

'Then why the devil do you want to see me?'

Dietrich said nothing while he closed and locked the bedroom door to guard against the arrival of an associate of Macomber's. The precaution taken, the Abwehr man leaned against the door as he began his interrogation.

'It has been a long time to this moment, Herr Wolff -I will call you that until you decide to tell me your real name.'

'My real name?' Macomber stared at Dietrich as though he must be mad. 'I am Hermann Wolff…'

'It has been a long time since January 1940,' the Abwehr man continued as though he hadn't heard the Scot. 'A long way, too, from Budapest to this apartment. I almost caught up with you once in Gyor, but I made the mistake of letting my assistant come for you. What happened to him? We never saw him again.'

'As a citizen of the Reich…'

'You demand to be taken to police headquarters?' Dietrich was amused and smiled unpleasantly. 'Do you really think you would enjoy that experience – particularly if I take you to Gestapo headquarters instead?'

'I shall complain direct to Berlin – I know people there,* Macomber growled. 'I am a German businessman sent here by my firm in Munich and I have correspondence with me to prove this…'

'I'm sure you have," Dietrich replied sarcastically. 'I'm also sure that it would stand up to superficial examination – until we checked back with your so-called employers. You nearly had me killed tonight, Herr Wolff – and by my own people. I was inside that Mercedes the Wehrmacht opened fire on and I had to drive like a maniac to stay alive, so I decided it might be interesting to come straight here – in case you escaped^ I have been following you for some time but I lost you this evening on your way to the railyard.'

'I still haven't the least idea what the hell you're talking about,' Macomber told him coolly. He re-crossed his legs and put his hands together in his lap where Dietrich could see them, and at the same time he hooked his right foot round the electric cord attached to the table-lamp plug. Dietrich smiled without humour.

'I was at the railyard tonight, Wolff – when the shooting started. Now do you understand?'

'Which railyard? What am I supposed to understand about this rubbish?'

'That there is no way out, that you have come to the end of the line. That railyard was the end of the line for you – literally.'

'I don't understand one damned thing,' Macomber rasped, 'but if you open the drawer in that other bedside table over there you may grasp what a bloody fool you're making of yourself? Then the Scot waited.

It was a chance, no more, and Macomber knew that within a few minutes he would be dead or free. He scratched at his knee as though it tickled and this covered the slight movement of his leg testing the cord. The cable felt to be looped firmly round his ankle, but he could only test it by feel; if he dropped his eyes for even a second Dietrich would guess that something was wrong. Macomber waited, saying not a word while the Abwehr man wondered about the closed drawer. Everything depended on whether Macomber's offhand tone of voice, his arrogant manner, had half-convinced the German there might be something important in the bedside table. The Scot's expression had changed during the past minute, had become a mixture of boredom and contempt, as though the pistol had no existence, as though he thought the Abwehr man an idiot and had proof of the fact – inside the closed drawer.

The bait was tempting. The little table was close enough for Dietrich to lean forward, to reach out with one hand and open it, to see what was there. And he still had Macomber safely on the far side of the bed, his hands pacificially clasped in his lap, unable to come anywhere near the Abwehr man without standing up and running down the narrow space between wardrobe and bed – with Dietrich holding his pistol.

'What is in this drawer?' the Abwehr man asked waspishly.

Macomber said nothing and the battle of nerves continued as the Scot used the only weapon available – silence. The German watched him a few moments longer and then he nodded again, as much as to say very well, we will have a look at this great revelation. He stood up from the door, took a step towards the table, his pistol aimed point-blank at Macomber's chest, but his prisoner was looking at the door with a bored expression. Dietrich used bis left hand to reach down for the handle, the hand closest to Macomber, who had foreseen his dilemma. With his gun in his right hand while the other reached for the drawer it was physically impossible for him to keep the pistol muzzle trained on the Scot. Macomber was sitting with his hands limply at rest when the telephone beyond the locked door began to ring.

'Who will that be at this hour?' Dietrich demanded.

Macomber shrugged his shoulders, made no reply. The Abwehr man was becoming rattled – the Scot's refusal to speak was getting on his nerves and the muffled ringing of the phone irritated him. And he wanted to see what was inside the drawer before he found out who was calling Wolff, so everything became urgent. He grabbed at the handle, jerked open the drawer, saw a leather-bound book which might have been a diary, and while he stared at the book he wasn't watching the Scot. Still sitting on the bed, Macomber gave his right foot a tremendous jerk. The plug came out of the wall socket, the room went dark, the table lamp fell onto the bed. Macomber lay sprawled on the floor, waiting for the first shot. But the German didn't fire, which showed extraordinary self-control and quick thinking – a shot would reveal his position. To avoid his boots making a sound, Macomber swivelled on his knees, felt up to the coat, scooped the. Luger out of the pocket, then pressed his shoulder against the wardrobe and waited for endless seconds. Had he heard the quietest of noises, a swift slither? He was certain the Abwehr man had changed position, that he had moved along the wall and was now standing with his back to the locked door, facing the other end of the unstable wardrobe. Still on his knees, Macomber heaved massively. The wardrobe toppled, left him, over a hundredweight of solid wood moving through an angle of ninety degrees. It struck something brutally and Macomber heard a muffled cry which cut off suddenly as the wardrobe completed its turn and landed on its side. He used his left hand to locate the coat still attached to the hook, fumbled inside the other pocket and pulled out the torch. The beam showed Dietrich lying under the great weight, the upper half of his body turned to one side, crumpled and motionless, although he still wore his glasses. The left side of his head was oddly misshapen where the wardrobe had crushed his skull.

The phone bell had stopped ringing in the outer room but from its limited duration and the lateness of the hour Macomber guessed who had called him. He had difficulty easing open the door past Dietrich's sprawled body and then he went across the living-room and opened the front door. No sound from below. Locking the door, he went back into the bedroom, turned off the light switch, rescued the table lamp, fixed in the plug and then switched on again. The identity cards were inside the dead man's wallet which he levered from his breast pocket. Two of them, and Dietrich was who he claimed to be. One card – the card tucked away inside a secret pocket – identified him as a high-ranking officer of the Abwehr, but it was the other card which interested Macomber. Dr Richard Dietrich, archaeologist. He had heard of this practice – the carrying of a civilian card for use when the Abwehr wished to conceal its true identity. Amid the shambles of the room, with the body lying under the wardrobe he couldn't move without help, Macomber sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigar while he studied the card for several minutes. Then he went back to the living-room and called a number, puffing at his cigar while he waited for the operator to put him through. Baxter answered sleepily, became alert within a few seconds. 'Hermann here…' Macomber began.