Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

"Because you know what was on the certificate. But at Dornhausen they do not knowyet, after"more than thirty-five years, what is on that certificate. Why should they know? -people do not go looking up death certificates unless there issomething they have to prove for a lawyer. Have you ever looked one up? No. And perhaps it would have been much more difficult to say she died in the hospital here, where the American doctors are making up records and signing things for all the others who die, but not for her because she isnot dead."

"Yes…"

"Now, it would be perfect if the Karls Hospital still had the records to show that Frau Schickertwas treated for a neck injury and was cured after two days."

"That's pretty hopeful, finding the records of an American Army surgical unit after these many years."

Sims's smile widened. "I know: I am dreaming. But some proof, I would likesome proof. "

"A whisper won't do?"

On top of the stone monument there perched a bronze eagle, blackened and streaked with green oxidisation. It looked sullen and hunched, with its wings half spread as if to dry. To look at it, Sims had his head well back, showing that his light tan was completely even right under his chin and down his throat.

"In the end," he said slowly, "we are looking for what Eismark will believe is proof. We do not want to destroy him, only to control him by the threat to destroy him."

"Blackmail."

Sims brought his head down to a cocked, quizzical position, and for once his smile looked as if it went deep back inside. "Do you disapprove?"

"There's a war on. "

"At first it is blackmail. It does not go on that way. It becomes a secret that the two people share, something that brings them more and more together, something that pushes the world further away, outside. You can be closer to a man than his own wife, because she does not share the secret. And that man can come to love you, because every day is another day when you did not destroy him, one more day you have given him. And when at last they catch him, when he goes to confessional with the Electric Priest, you feel that a good friend has died. "

He sighed rather melodramatically and looked at his watch. "Do you want to take your car back to Paderborn?"

"I suppose so. If you can take me on to Osnabrück."

North of Sennestadt, Simsskimmed the Audi in and out of a wide-spaced convoy of Army trucks, their headlights glowing feebly against the late afternoon sun. Soldiers with shining patches of sweat betraying the camouflage cream on their faces stared down at them with dead eyes.

"There's a load of instant pacifists," Maxim remarked.

"Not a good day for a war," Sims agreed.

"It's usually too hot or too cold, or too wet."

"Do you ever think you are getting too old for it?"

"It has to happen." And when it does, the Army politely pulls out the chair for you, the way it taught you to do for the lady on your left at a dinner party, and leaves you sitting down for the rest of your career. For Maxim, that was nearly another twenty years: the Army had promised him a career until he was fifty-five – but it had never promised he would rise above major. Majors aged fifty-five are seated a long long way from where the action is.

"Are you offering me a job?" he asked.

"You know I cannot. But I think you would get it. "

It happened, Maxim knew. The Intelligence Service did recruit occasional officers in their thirties. It could always use a new face that was trained in military matters, security-minded and presumably a patriot, though the face was probably most important of all.

"Yes, I can just see Guy Husband laying out the red carpet for me."

"Guy is not the whole service, Major. He is not the most loved man in the service. And he will not always be head of the Sovbloc section."

Maxim glanced at Sims, who shook his head. "No, it will never be me, Major. The service has some rules it does not break. My work will always be with my unit, my own people. No promotion. So I have to care, perhaps more than most, about who is to be promoted. "

Maxim wondered how much Sims knew about his ownpromotion chances, and despite himself couldn't help feeling slightly pleased that somebody thought he could get, and do, a different job. No matter what that person's motives were in mentioning it.

He eased the seat-belt that was pressing his sweat-soaked shirt against his chest and changed the subject. "How long had Mrs Howard been working on this?"

"Some time. There was no reason to hurry. Not until the shooting."

"Why had she only just got round to getting hold of the death certificate? I should have thought that would be the first thing – once she knew it was there. And she'd know that once she knew about The Bomber at Dornhausen."

"It would take time, to know the Standesbeamte, to be sure he will take money. You cannot just walk in and say Hello, I wish to bribe you. "

No, Maxim supposed you couldn't. "Well, what happens now?"

Sims patted his hands on the wheel. "I think I might like to talk to this Bruno. About the photographs… Mrs Howard was not a fool. To be carrying photographs that mean nothing…"

"He's a tricky bastard. Or tries to be. He's got an old Luger."

"Do you have a pistol?"

"No."

"I have one… but we will wait "until it is dark."

Maxim seemed to have been recruited again. There must have been something about the quality of his silence, because Sims glanced across and asked: "Or would you want to ring Mr Harbinger again?"

But Maxim had trouble enough without that.

He stopped off at the barracks to change, especially his shirt, and pick up any messages. There was nothing from London, but Captain Apgood had left a large envelope. Maxim opened it in the privacy of his room. Along with a nine-year-old copyof Focus on Germany there was a note: I tried ringing you. Herewith the magazine. Page 12 looks like your meat. Bad Schwärzendemhas not been microfilmed yet, but due to start next month. Anything missing will be noticed then, so you have been warned.

The magazine was a thin, staid but professionally produced affair intended to interest the American and British forces in aspects of Germany outside their normal military round, but not too far out. It gave their wives recipes for German cooking, news of cycle clubs and stamp collecting, articles on places with vague military connections. This one featured Dornhausen, recalling the first days of the occupation in 1945, and spread across the width of the page was a photograph of all the inhabitants in front of the unbombed church.

"It's very much an Army way of doing it," Maxim explained. "Line everybody up and photograph them, put a caption underneath and just hang it in your office -jpr under glass on your desk – and look at it. You know what armies are like about Must Know Your Men's Names. ' He assumed Sims had been in some army, most likely the East German NVA."Then after The Bomber the American Civil Affairs people just crossed out the ones that had got killed. That's explained in the text."

"It says also that this picture is hanging in the Wirtshausat Dornhausen."

"Not in the main room. And nobody mentioned it. That's nine years old." It didn't much matter what he said: he still knew who would be going back to have a look the next morning.

Sims had his jeweller's eyeglass out again. But there were around fifty people in the picture, which was reproduced hardly bigger than a postcard, and no glass could see through the Civil Affairs' officer's bold wax-pencil strokes. "That is him, is Gustav." But that wasn't difficult to guess, because he and a Goliath who must be Field Engineer Scholz were the only two young men in the scene. Next to Gustavand crossed out they could just make out a blonde woman, a few inches shorter, who held a baby.