John Lawton - Riptide

When Cal got back to the hospital Stahl was dressed. Someone had brought him his suit, cleaned and pressed. He sat, jacketless, in a starched white shirt upon the window-sill looking out at the Thames, his image all but bleached out to Cal’s eyes by the searing glare of June light through the open window.

Stahl said, ‘I can read it in your face. You are not happy.’

‘I thought it would be crucial,’ Cal said. ‘I thought this was vital-everything they’ve been chasing these last few weeks.’

‘And?’ said Stahl.

‘And they’re in huddles. They’re cutting me out again. They’re not jumping for joy, they’re not even openly analysing what you said. They’re… goddammit, they’re playing cloak and dagger.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Calvin.’

‘I’m not. I know what my eyes tell me.’

‘I meant-what else could you expect? They’re English, secrecy is their nature. And if it were not, it is, is it not, our trade? To expect anything else from them is stupid.’

‘You’ve just handed them a gem-Jeez, that’s understatement. You’ve given them information that could save thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands of lives.’

Stahl seemed so calm, so unruffled by all this. ‘No it won’t,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

Stahl shrugged.

‘Is there such a thing as a secret? Ruthven-Greene may have feigned surprise at what I knew about him, but he knows just as much about me. I have told the English what they already knew. I doubt it was more than that. The detail, yes, the fine print of battle formation, yes… the fundamental truth, no… I think you have a saying in English, “the world and his wife”?… Let us update it for our time, the world and his ragtag army of camp-following, light-fingered, cut-purse, throat-slitting whores know that Russia is going to be invaded. What, then, have I given the English?’

‘The time, the place, the battle order. Enough for the Red Army to prepare.’

‘And you think that will save a single life? You think you and I can save a single life? Could you save Walter Stilton?’

‘No… but…’

‘No buts-you were not there to save Walter. Calvin, believe me, I have been there and I still could not save a life.’

Cal waited. He did not know what to say to this. He hoped Stahl would go on.

‘It was three years ago-and I tell you not because it is the only time I have seen life slip through my fingers-but because it was the most vivid, the closest. After the Anschluss I went into Austria with Hitler. I was favoured. A fellow Austrian, he wanted me to feel the thrill of the joining together of the two Germanys. It was a privilege. Heydrich told me so himself, the Fuhrer had asked for me personally. I was in a good position. I was alone with him half a dozen times. I could have shot him like a mad dog on any one of a dozen occasions. I did not. It was not my role. My role was to learn all I could and feed it back to you or someone like you. A few days later-March 19 thto be precise, I cannot forget the date-I decided to walk in the old neighbourhood. The SS had Jews on their hands and knees scrubbing the pavements. At first I looked in the crowd to see if I knew any of those onlookers, the passively guilty. I did not. Then one of the Jews looked up. He knew me at once and I him. A school-friend from the twenties. At first I thought the moment would pass like a secret between us, but then he rose up cried “Wolf”. Took a step towards me. And an SS trooper shot him dead. Then the man holstered his gun, turned the body over with the toe of his boot and saluted me. I returned the salute and walked away. I have never been able to walk away from Turli Cantor since. His “Wolf” meant “save me”. I didn’t have the chance, and if I had I would no more have done it than I would have shot Hitler. Now, Calvin, do you understand what I’m saying? Could I save Turli Cantor? Could we either of us save Walter Stilton? Do you really think you will spare the life of a single Russian soldier?’

Cal felt swamped, buried alive in the torrent Stahl had unleashed upon him.

‘I… I…’

‘Would I have been the better man if I had dropped the pretence and stepped in to save the life of Turli Cantor? If I had been for once the man I thought I was, not the man I pretended to be? Are we any of us who we think we are? Or do we become who we pretend to be? Pretence is the dangerous game.’

‘Jeezus… I…’

Cal turned to look into the room. The light from the window was too bright. He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose where they pinched. He pulled his feelings together and looked to Stahl again.

‘Wolf?’

Stahl had vanished. Cal rushed to the window. Stahl was falling without a murmur, eyes wide, looking back at Cal, arms outspread like Christ crucified, falling to earth.

They-whoever they were-Cal was no longer sure whether he was at the beck and call of his own people or the British-they kept him waiting. He passed the time scanning the Herald, The Times and the Manchester Guardian. How did the British manage to keep things so secret? A man jumps to his death from a window smack dab in the middle of London-and no-one records the fact, no newspaper so much as hints at it. Whatever else it was-class-bound, dank, obsessive-Britain was, above all, a secret society-Stahl had been right about that-and that, he thought, had little to do with the war. That was simply the way they were.

He placed a bet with himself that when someone finally shoved the door open it would be Ruthven-Greene, with a bullshitting yarn to spin him. It wasn’t. It was Gelbroaster.

‘Son,’ he said simply. ‘Mind if I pull up a chair?’

They were both on foreign territory.

‘Be their guest,’ said Cal.

The general smiled at this. Lowered himself into the only other chair in the room with an old man’s sigh, rested his hands a moment on his knees, then sat back. Rolled an unlit cigar between his fingers. Thought better of it. Stuck it back in his top pocket.

‘You’ve done a man’s job, my boy. They found pages and pages of notes in Stahl’s room-he’d filled a legal pad. The British are well pleased.’

‘You know, sir,’ said Cal, ‘I can hear the “but” coming.’

‘But… there are one or two chiggers in the shoo-fly pie.’

It was a Stilton moment without Walter. Cal had always half felt that Walter made up some of his English turns of phrase. He was damn sure Gelbroaster had just made up an American one.

‘Such as?’

‘The information you unearthed about the Soviet Union is… prickly.’

‘Prickly?’

‘Spiky as a saguaro in the Arizona desert. How we, how they, use it is going to be a delicate matter. Kind of thing you only pull out with tweezers.’

Gelbroaster was labouring the point. Cal already had the message.

‘You mean they’re not going to tell the Russians.’

Gelbroaster looked faintly surprised at this.

‘Perceptive of you. But yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The decision’s been taken. What you and Reggie found out will be kept a secret. Wasn’t my decision, you understand. But I’m going to go along with it.’

‘Who’s decision was it?’

‘Churchill’s.’

‘Are we bound by what the British do? The Germans have three million men poised to rip all hell out of Russia-and we’re not going to tell them?’

‘If it were up to me I would, but we’re in the army, we take orders. Churchill has spoken to the President. He’s the commander-in-chief, and his orders are we don’t tell ‘em. I’ve never questioned a presidential order. I don’t intend to start now.’

‘And I don’t mean to question your orders either, sir. But they’re going to massacre the Russians and those they don’t massacre they’ll turn into slaves.’