The Testament of Caspar Schultz

“That still doesn’t explain how the people who killed Muller knew we were supposed to meet on this train,” Chavasse said. “I can’t see how there could possibly have been another leak from the London end. I don’t think it’s very probable that there’s also a Nazi sympathizer on the board of directors of the firm I’m supposed to be representing.”

Hardt shook his head. “As a matter of fact I’ve got a theory about that. Muller was living in Bremen with a woman called Lilli Pahl. She was pulled out of the Elbe this morning, apparently a suicide case.”

“And you think she was murdered?”

Hardt nodded. “She disappeared from Bremen when Muller did so they’ve probably been living together. My theory is that the other side knew where he was all along, that they were leaving him alone hoping he’d lead them to Caspar Schultz. I think Muller gave them the slip and left Hamburg for Osnabruck last night. That left them with only one person who probably knew where he had gone and why—Lilli Pahl.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Chavasse said. “It sounds reasonable enough. But it still doesn’t explain why they shot him.”

Hardt shrugged. “Muller could have been carrying the manuscript, but I don’t think that’s very likely. I should imagine the shooting was an accident. Muller probably jumped the person who was waiting for him in your compartment and was killed in the struggle.”

Chavasse frowned, considering everything Hardt had told him. After a while he said, “There’s still one thing which puzzles me. Muller is dead and that means I’ve come to a full-stop as regards finding Schultz. I can’t be of any possible use to you, so what made you go to the trouble of saving my skin?”

“You could say I’m sentimental,” Hardt told him. “I have a soft spot for people who are Israeli sympathizers and I happen to know that you are.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Do you recall a man named Joel ben David?” Hardt asked. “He was an Israeli intelligence agent in Cairo in 1956. You saved his life and enabled him to return to Israel with information which was of great service to our army during the Sinai campaign.”

“I remember,” Chavasse said. “But I wish you’d forget about it. It could get me into hot water in certain quarters. I wasn’t supposed to be quite so violently partisan at the time.”

“But we Jews do not forget our friends,” Hardt said quietly.

Chavasse was suddenly uncomfortable and he went on hurriedly. “Why are you so keen to get hold of Schultz? He isn’t another Eichmann, you know. There’s bound to be an outcry for an international trial. Even the Russians would want a hand in it.”

Hardt shook his head. “I don’t think so. In any case, we aren’t too happy about the idea of leaving him in Germany for trial for this reason. There’s a statute of limitations in force under German law. Cases of manslaughter must be tried within fifteen years of the crime—murder, within twenty years.”

Chavasse frowned. “You mean Schultz might not even come to trial?”

Hardt shrugged. “Who knows? Anything might happen.” He got to his feet and paced restlessly across the compartment. “We are not butchers, Chavasse. We don’t intend to lead Schultz to the sacrificial stone with the whole of Jewry shouting Hosanna. We want to try him, for the same reason we have tried Eichmann. So that his monstrous crimes might be revealed to the world. So that people will not forget how men treat their brothers.”

His eyes sparkled with fire and his whole body trembled. He was held in the grip of a fervour that seemed almost religious, something which possessed his heart and soul so that all other things were of no importance to him.

“A dedicated man,” Chavasse said softly. “I thought they’d gone out of fashion.”

Hardt paused, one hand raised in the air and stared at him and then he laughed and colour flooded his face. “I’m sorry, at times I get carried away. But there are worse things for a man to do than something he believes in.”

“How did you come to get mixed up in this sort of thing?” Chavasse asked.

Hardt sat down on the bunk. “My people were German Jews. Luckily my father had the foresight in 1933 to see what was coming. He moved to England with my mother and me, and he prospered. I was never particularly religious—I don’t think I am now. It was a wild, adolescent impulse which made me leave Cambridge in 1947 and journey to Palestine by way of an illegal immigrants’ boat from Marseilles. I joined Haganah and fought in the first Arab war.”

“And that turned you into a Zionist?”

Hardt smiled and shook his head. “It turned me into an Israeli—there’s a difference, you know. I saw young men dying for a belief, I saw girls who should have been in school, sitting behind machine-guns. Until that time my life hadn’t meant a great deal. After that it had a sense of purpose.”

Chavasse sighed and offered him a cigarette. “You know, in some ways I think I envy you.”

Hardt looked surprised. “But surely you believe in what you are doing? In your work, your country, its political aims?”

“Do I?” Chavasse shook his head. “I’m not so sure. There are men like me working for every Great Power in the world. I’ve got more in common with my opposite number in Smersh than I have with any normal citizen of my own country. If I’m told to do a thing, I get it done. I don’t ask questions. Men like me live by one code only—the job must come before anything else.” He laughed harshly. “If I’d been born a few years earlier and a German, I’d probably have worked for the Gestapo.”

“Then why did you help Joel ben David in Cairo?” Hardt said. “It hardly fits into the pattern you describe.”

Chavasse shrugged and said carelessly, “That’s my one weakness, I get to like people and sometimes it makes me act unwisely.” Before Hardt could reply he went on, “By the way, I searched Muller before Steiner arrived on the scene. There were some letters in his inside pocket from this Lilli Pahl you mentioned. The address was a hotel in Gluckstrasse, Hamburg.”

Hardt frowned. “That’s strange. I should have thought he’d have used another name. Did you find anything else?”

“An old photo,” Chavasse said. “Must have been taken during the war. He was wearing Luftwaffe uniform and standing with his arm around a young girl.”

Hardt looked up sharply. “Are you sure about that—that it was a Luftwaffe uniform he was wearing?”

Chavasse nodded. “Quite sure. Why do you ask?”

Hardt shrugged. “It probably isn’t important. I understood he was in the army, that’s all. My information must have been incorrect.” After a moment of silence he went on, “This hotel in Gluckstrasse might be worth investigating.”

Chavasse shook his head. “Too dangerous. Don’t forget Steiner knows about the place. I should imagine he’ll have it checked.”

“But not straightaway,” Hardt said. “If I go there as soon as we reach Hamburg, I should be well ahead of the police. After all, there’s no particular urgency from their point of view.”

Chavasse nodded. “I think you’ve got something there.”

“Then there remains only one thing to decide,” Hardt said, “and that is what you are going to do.”

“I know what I’d like to do,” Chavasse said. “Have five minutes alone with Schmidt—the sleeping-car attendant who served me that coffee. I’d like to know who he’s working for.”

“I think you’d better leave me to handle that for the moment,” Hardt said. “I can get his address and we’ll visit him later. It wouldn’t do for you to hang about the Hauptbahnhof too long when we reach Hamburg.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

Hardt seemed to be thinking hard. After a while he appeared to come to a decision. “Before I say anything more I want to know if you are prepared to work with me on this thing.”

Chavasse immediately saw the difficulty and stated it. “What happens if we find the manuscript? Who gets it?”

Hardt shrugged. “Simple—we can easily make a copy.”

“And Schultz? We can’t copy him.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Chavasse shook his head. “I don’t think my Chief would see things your way.”

Hardt smiled coolly. “The choice is yours. Without my help you’ll get nowhere. You see I have an ace up my sleeve. Something which will probably prove to be the key to the whole affair.”

“Then what do you need me for?” Chavasse said.

Hardt shrugged. “I told you before, I’m sentimental.” He grinned. “Okay, I’ll be honest. Things are moving faster than I thought they would and at the moment I haven’t got another man in Hamburg. I could use you.”

The advantages to be obtained from working with Hardt were obvious and Chavasse came to a quick decision. He held out his hand. “All right. I’m your man. We’ll discuss the division of the spoils if and when we get that far.”

“Good man!” Hardt said, and there was real pleasure in his voice. “Listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. Muller had a sister. Now we know it, but I don’t think the other side do. He always thought she was killed in the incendiary raids during July 1943. They only got together again recently. She’s working as a showgirl at a club on the Reeperbahn called the Taj Mahal. Calls herself Katie Holdt. I’ve had an agent working there for the past week. She’s been trying to get friendly with the girl hoping she might lead us to Muller.”

Chavasse raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Is your agent a German girl?”

Hardt shook his head. “Israeli—born of German parents. Her name is Anna Hartmann.” He pulled a large silver ring from the middle finger of his left hand. “Show her this and tell her who you are. She knows all about you. Ask her to take you back to her flat after the last show. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

Chavasse slipped the ring on to a finger. “That seems to settle everything. What time do we get into Hamburg?”

Hardt glanced at his watch. “About two hours. Why?”

Chavasse grinned. “Because I’ve been missing a hell of a lot of sleep lately and if it’s all right with you, I’m going to make use of this top bunk.”

A smile appeared on Hardt’s face and he got to his feet and pushed the mounting ladder into position. “You know, I like your attitude. We’re going to get on famously.”

“I think we can say that’s mutual,” Chavasse said.

He hung his jacket behind the door and then climbed the ladder and lay full length on the top bunk, allowing every muscle to relax in turn. It was an old trick and one that could only be used when he felt easy in his mind about things.

Because of that special extra sense that was a product of his training and experience, he knew that for the moment at any rate, the affair was moving very nicely. Very nicely indeed. He turned his face into the pillow and went to sleep at once as peacefully as a child.

4

Chavasse looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was wearing a white Continental raincoat and green hat, both of which belonged to Hardt. He pulled the brim of the hat down over his eyes and grinned. “How do I look?”

Hardt slapped him on the shoulder. “Fine, just fine. There should be a lot of people leaving the train. If you do as I suggest you’ll be outside the station in two minutes. You can get a taxi.”

Chavasse shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. It’s a long time since I’ve been to Hamburg, but I can still find my way to the Reeperbahn.”

“I’ll see you later then.” Hardt opened the door and looked out and then he stood to one side. “All clear.”

Chavasse squeezed past him and hurried along the deserted corridor. The train was coming slowly into the Hauptbahnhof and already the platform seemed to be moving past him. He passed through one coach after another, pushing past the people who were beginning to emerge from their compartments, until he reached the far end of the train. As it stopped he opened a door and stepped on to the platform.

He was first through the ticket barrier and a moment later he was walking out of the main entrance. It was two-thirty and at that time in the morning the S-Bahn wasn’t running. It was raining slightly, a warm drizzle redolent of autumn, and obeying a sudden impulse he decided to walk. He turned up his coat collar and walked along Monckebergstrasse towards St Pauli, the notorious night-club district of Hamburg.

The streets were quiet and deserted and as he walked past the magnificent buildings he remembered what Hamburg had been at the end of the war. Not a city, but a shambles. It seemed incredible that this was a place in which nearly seventy thousand people had been killed in ten days during the great incendiary raids of the summer of 1943. Germany had certainly risen again like a phoenix from her ashes.

The Reeperbahn was as he remembered it, noisy and colourful and incredibly alive, even at that time in the morning. As he walked amongst the jostling, cheerful people he compared it with London at almost three in the morning and a smile touched the corners of his mouth. What was it they called the heart of St Pauli—Die Grosse Freiheit—The Great Freedom? It was an apt title.

He walked on past the garish, neon-lighted fronts of the night-clubs, ignoring the touts who clutched at his sleeve, and passed the Davidstrasse where young girls could be found in the windows, displaying their charms to the prospective customers. He found the Taj Mahal, after enquiring the way, in an alley off Talstrasse.

The entrance had been designed to represent an Indian temple and the doorman wore ornate robes and a turban. Chavasse passed in between potted palms and a young woman in a transparent sari relieved him of his hat and coat.

The interior of the club was on the same lines—fake pillars along each side of the long room and more potted palms. The waiter who led him to a table was magnificently attired in gold brocade and a red turban although the effect was spoiled by his rimless spectacles and Westphalen accent. Chavasse ordered a brandy and looked about him.

The place was only half-full and everyone seemed a little jaded as if the party had been going on for too long. On a small stage a dozen girls posed in a tableau that was meant to represent bath time in the harem. In their midst, a voluptuous redhead was attempting the Dance of the Seven Veils with a complete lack of artistry. The last veil was removed, there was a little tired clapping from the audience and the lights went out. When they came on again, the girls had disappeared.

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