Len Deighton - XPD

‘It all fits together neatly,’ said Breslow. ‘They must have got this information from young Billy.’

‘The Englishman was carrying catalogues from Schiff, the well-known Swiss locksmiths, and he actually asked my old friend for some assistance in translating the German language. We know the make, the model and the year.’

‘You are not thinking of raiding the house?’ Breslow asked.

‘A burglar will not have enough time, or the sort of equipment, to open the door of a strong room such as this,’ replied Kleiber.

‘I beg you to reconsider, Willi,’ said Breslow. ‘A burglary is one thing, an armed raid is going too far. You can cut anything open with an oxyacetylene flame, or one of the new thermic lances. Get a really good safe-cracker and let him do the job in the way that professional thieves do it.’

‘Is this what you have learned from your movie scriptwriters?’ Willi Kleiber made a noise of disparagement. ‘You are years out of date, my friend. The oxyacetylene flames and the thermic lances generate too much heat. Thieves find cinders and ashes inside a safe they’ve cut open by those methods. I fit such safes for my clients, Max. I know what can be done to make a door impregnable. There is an inner cube of glass; heat it and a complex of bolts are sprung, and the door locks so solid that even the makers take two or three days to cut it open.’ Willi Kleiber chuckled and rubbed his hands. ‘I don’t even know where I could find a thermic lance expert these days-in retirement in the Italian sunshine perhaps. Safe-crackers are extinct, Max. They’ve been replaced by men who carry shotguns and automatic weapons and take a bank by assault.’

‘How terrible,’ said Max Breslow.

‘Terrible?’ said Kleiber. ‘Wonderful, you mean. How do you think I could have got my security company to its present turnover without the dedicated gunmen? The improvement in safes, which gave the armed bandits their chance, gave me my chance too, Max.’ He laughed.

‘Aren’t you worried in case Colonel Pitman’s safe is wired to alarm the local police station?’

‘Yes, I am, Max. That’s why I must not plan this project in the style of a thief. We have to get into the house and talk to Pitman. We have to convince him that it’s in his interest to open the safe.’

Max Breslow picked up his empty coffee cup in an automatic gesture of alarm and dismay. He knew exactly what methods Willi Kleiber would use to ‘convince’ Colonel Pitman to open the safe. He shuddered.

‘What’s the matter with you, Max?’

‘It was filthy coffee,’ said Breslow.

‘Come along, Max. It will be wonderful. It will be just like old times.’

‘You’re mad, Willi,’ said Breslow, but his voice lacked conviction. ‘You’ll get yourself killed.’

No comment could have been more encouraging to Kleiber. He swelled with pride. ‘I’m not afraid to die,’ he said. ‘We lost some good comrades in the war. It would not be so terrible to join them once again.’

Max Breslow was saddened by the answer but he smiled. It was as much a nervous reaction as anything.

‘Why are you smiling, Max? Have I said something funny?’

‘No, my friend. I am smiling because only last week I heard Stein express the same idea, in virtually the same words.’

‘You’ll have to be in Switzerland too, Max.’

‘There is so much to do here.’

‘This is more important than your film,’ said Kleiber. ‘I want you with me.’ From his pocket he got a recent newspaper cutting. It was a Washington newspaper; the headline said, ‘ US government allocates $2.3 million for Nazi-hunters.’ The piece continued, ‘After six years of lobbying, Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman of New York saw US Justice Department set up an Office of Special Investigation on Nazi war crimes.’ Breslow read it through and returned it folded to Kleiber.

‘You should have changed your name, Max,’ said Kleiber.

Max Breslow shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to meet old friends in Germany and have to explain why my US passport bore a different name.’ He sighed. ‘Surely someone else could go?’

‘Be ready to go early next week, Max. That’s an order from the Trust.’

‘Very well, Willi. I’ll be ready to go.’

‘The Trust has money, Max, and lawyers. The denaturalization and deportation proceedings take place in a civil court. Good lawyers and good advice-and a good word in the right place-can work wonders in this country.’

‘I said I’d go,’ said Max Breslow. He was angry and a little afraid.

Willi Kleiber’s ‘amazing stroke of luck’ had its origins on the afternoon of Friday, July 27, following Sir Sydney Ryden’s difficult meeting with the Prime Minister. The DG went back to his office, poured himself a large gin and tonic and looked again at the tiny black notebook filled with cryptic initials and hieroglyphics which were meaningless to anyone but himself. Sometimes he needed this when answering the Prime Minister’s questions. Never had he needed it more than this afternoon when she had subjected him and his department to some particularly telling criticisms. When he’d finished his drink he went to the window to look at his cactus collection, prodding the dry earth and using his tweezers to manicure the plants. For a moment his hands were still. He stared out of the window to Westminster Bridge, over which came streams of men and women, hurrying through the rain to Waterloo Station and the suburban train services. Soon the streams would become torrents and finally, as the rush hour reached its peak, hordes of these dark-suited figures would be filling the pavements and spilling over into the roadways and clogging the motor traffic.

Suddenly the DG’s hands moved once more, touching the plants with brisk deftness-the sort of displacement activity that often marked the end of a difficult working day. The Prime Minister was right, Sir Sydney regretfully concluded: his department had produced no tangible results since his last report to her. It was no use reminding her that nothing disastrous had occurred, that Stein and Co. had not published the Hitler Minutes and created an international scandal. While Secret Intelligence Services thought that staving off disaster was a considerable feat, politicians always wanted tangible results. Politicans were not interested in the status quo, they wanted results: files closed, fears eliminated and accounts rendered. She had virtually said as much, and Sir Sydney knew that she was right to do so. He touched the most fragile of his new plants. It was tempting to give it just a trace of water but he resisted the temptation-better that it was forced to adjust to its new environment. Too much care and attention could ruin it-it was a characteristic that cacti shared with agents in the field.

‘There has obviously been a leak, Sir Sydney,’ the PM had told him. His first reaction was one of anger, but he had learnt to hide his emotions. He had learnt that during his first few weeks at prep school. The bullies had soon taught him to cry inside without permitting any sign of it to show. Stick it out, his father had written in those letters from Simla in the Indian hills, and Sydney had stuck it out. For years his only visitor at school had been his dear old nanny. It was not her fault that one year she had let him down by weeping when she said goodbye. How cruel children were to each other; the other boys had never permitted him to forget the old woman with the working-class accent who had shamed him with her tears. His only consolation then, as now, was hard work.

‘A leak, obviously.’ The PM’s shrewd deduction could not have been based upon the scanty facts he had provided, so was it that famous intuition of hers? Or was it no more than the natural hostility that all politicians show to the civil service, in order to keep them on the defensive?