Hammond Innes - The Lonely Skier

‘I will,’ Engles said. And Joe heaved himself out of the room.

I glanced round the room. It all looked quite peaceful now. Mayne had gone over to the piano and was quietly drifting through a piece I did not recognise. Carla was talking excitedly to Valdini. Keramikos was sipping an anisette at the other end of the bar. A chord crashed out from the piano and Mayne switched with a malicious sense of humour into La donna e mobile. ‘The pot is boiling all right,’ Engles said quietly. ‘One more scene like that and there really will be some shooting. Valdini is not the only one who has a gun, I’m pretty certain about that.’

‘What’s all this about four million in gold?’ I asked. Our conversation was masked by the sound of the piano.

‘Remember those cuttings from the Corriere delta Venezia you sent me? One of them has a reference to it. It was the consignment from the bank at Venice. Part of it disappeared en route. The actual spot where it disappeared was the Tre Croci Pass. This bunch of carrion are here because of it. Mayne, Keramikos, the Contessa and Valdini — they all know about it. They all think it’s somewhere up here. The interesting point is — who actually knows where it is?’

‘Do you know?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘No. As far as I am concerned, it was just a hunch, based on the news that Stelben owned Col da Varda. You see, when Stelben was originally arrested, I interrogated him in Milan. It was this story of the missing gold that interested us. I spent a lot of time on the case. I even went to Berlin and saw—’ At that moment Mayne stopped playing. There was a sudden silence. The howl of the wind outside invaded the room. It was a dismal, nerve-racking sound. Beyond the windows, the snowflakes sped by in a never-ending stream. ‘Better go on playing,’ Engles said to Mayne, ‘or everybody will start screaming at each other again.’

Mayne nodded quite cheerfully. He seemed perfectly at ease again. He settled himself on the stool and plunged into Symphonic Fantastique. Keramikos sidled along the bar. ‘Will you please tell me, Mr Engles, what was the cause of the trouble between the Contessa Forelli and Mayne?’ he asked.

Engles gave him a quick resume of what had occurred. When he had finished, Keramikos nodded. ‘Ah! It is the thought of all that gold that made her mad. She will have been called worse things than a prostitute in her life. So she does not know where it is, eh?’ He thrust his head forward suddenly. ‘Do you know where it is, Mr Engles?’

‘If I did, you would hardly expect me to tell you,’ Engles replied.

Keramikos gave a short laugh that was more like a grunt. ‘Of course not, my friend. But we should help each other a little, you and I. These people here’ — and he nodded in the direction of the Contessa and Mayne — ‘they are only interested for themselves. With them it is self-interest. Whereas you and I, we have a mission. We do not work for ourselves.’

‘And who are you working for now, Keramikos?’ Engles asked.

‘For my country,’ he replied. ‘Always for my country.’ He peered more closely at Engles. ‘You remember that we have met before, eh?’

‘Of course I do,’ Engles replied. ‘It was at Piraeus. You had some ELAS guerillas with you and were attempting to mine the harbour at night.’

‘Ah — I thought you had not forgotten. It was cold that night. The harbour water was black and full of oil and dirt. It tasted very unpleasant. I did not enjoy that swim.’ He smiled. ‘And now we drink together. Do you not find that strange?’

‘It’s not always possible to choose one’s drinking company,’ Engles replied blandly.

Keramikos gave a fat chuckle and his little eyes twinkled behind the thick lenses. ‘That is life,’ he said. ‘You serve your Government. I serve mine. Our meetings should be dramatic moments — with pistols, like Valdini. Instead, we drink.’

‘Don’t be absurd, Keramikos,’ Engles said. ‘You have no government left to serve.’

Keramikos sighed. ‘That is true. That is very true. For the moment there is nothing left — just a loose organisation under the ground. But there are many Germans working, like myself, all over the world. We work without direction and without funds. That will change in time. At the moment our energy is wasted in the search for money. That is why I am here. I have an organisation in Greece. It must be paid, if it is to continue. Four million dollars in gold would help. But it will not always be like this. Some day Germany will begin to organise again. And next time — the third time — perhaps we shall not fail. Already you are saying that Germany must be prosperous so that she can take her place in the economic plan of Europe. We have no national debt like you. Each war has been paid for in the ruins of defeat. We starve now, and that means that the old people die. And that again is good for a nation. Our industry is destroyed. That, too, is good. Our industry, when we rebuild it, will be new and up-to-date, not old works adjusted to meet the changing needs, like yours. It will be the same with our armed forces. You will see. Last time it was twenty years. Twenty years is a long time. There will be a new generation then who will not remember that war is horrible.’

‘You’re very frank about it,’ Engles said.

‘And why not? You are a Colonel in the British Intelligence.’

‘Was,’ Engles corrected him. ‘I’m a civilian now.’

Keramikos shrugged his shoulders. ‘What does it matter what you call yourself? I call myself a shipping agent. But you remain of the Intelligence, and you must know that your people are aware that we exist. But what can they do? For example, what can they do about me? I am a Greek national. Greece is a free country. They cannot arrest me. And I shall do nothing foolish here in Italy. I shall get the gold. But I shall be careful. I shall not kill any one — if it can be avoided. Mayne and Valdini are different. They are both gangsters, and dangerous. Mayne is a deserter, as I told Blair.’

‘Yes, I know all about Mayne,’ Engles said. ‘What I am interested in is how you found out about this gold. You couldn’t have learned about it in Greece.’

‘I could not, eh?’ He seemed amused. ‘Yet this is the first time I have been out of Greece since I went to Alexandria. And that was a long time ago — just before the Greek mutiny. No, I heard about it in Greece. It was luck. The one man who escaped out of the wretched guard that brought the gold up from Venice sought the help of my people in Salonika. They asked him to account for himself. And he broke down under questioning. But you know the story of how Stelben got that gold, eh?’

‘Only by deduction,’ Engles replied. ‘Not from evidence. Stelben kept his mouth shut. And I certainly didn’t know any of the guard escaped. He even murdered his personal servant who had been with him for nearly six years. I’d like to know what your man had to tell. And Blair here knows nothing of the story as yet.’

‘Ah! Then you shall read the statement of the Korporal who escaped. And we will have a drink to fortify ourselves, eh?’ He ordered the drinks and I leaned closer, for Mayne had gone into something loud and sonorous, which, with the noise of the wind outside, made it difficult to hear.

When Aldo had put the drinks in front of us, Keramikos said, ‘This does not reflect well on the Gestapo. But all organisations, you understand, have their bad servants. You must remember it was near the end. And Stelben had killed many people before he shot down those nine soldiers. The gold was at a bank in Venice. It was the property of one of the Rome banking houses and had been transported to Venice for greater safety after your troops landed at Anzio. When we fell back to the line of the Po River, Heinrich Stelben was instructed to convey the gold to the Reichsbank at Munich. He was to take it by road, for you were bombarding the railways from the air, and the route chosen was through Cortina and Bolzano to Innsbruck. You must picture to yourselves that little convoy. There was the truck containing the gold. It was closed and sealed. And two Volkswagens. And there were seven honest German soldaten and Stelben — and gold to the value of over eight million dollars.’