The Monte Cristo Cover-Up Read online

  All I can do is to go ahead, thought Thomas. It's my only chance.

  "Baron von Wiedel."

  "Never heard of him."

  Thomas suddenly roared: "His Excellency Baron Bodo von Wiedel, ambassador seconded for special duty in the Foreign Office! Do you mean to say you've never heard of him?"

  "I—I—"

  "I should be glad if you'd take that toothpick out of your mouth when you talk to me."

  "But—but what do you want to speak to the baron about?" stammered Haffner. His usual diet was one of scared middle-class citizens. He had not yet got accustomed to prisoners who roared at him and knew the top brass.

  Thomas continued to fume. "The baron is my best friend."

  Thomas had met Wiedel, a much older man, at a non-dueling student's club in 1929. Wiedel had introduced Thomas into aristocratic circles. Thomas had sometimes covered the baron's checks when they bounced. Their intimacy continued to flourish until one day Wiedel joined the Party. Thomas had then, after a violent quarrel, dropped him.

  Our friend was now wondering, as he went on raging at Haffner, whether Wiedel had a good memory. "If you don't get the connection for me this instant, you can start looking for another job tomorrow morning!"

  The switchboard girl had to bear the brunt of Haffner's ill temper. Snatching up the receiver, he began roaring in his turn. "AA Berlin! And jump to it, you clumsy bitch!"

  It's fantastic, it's positively fantastic, Thomas was thinking, when almost immediately afterward he heard the voice of his former fellow member. "Von Wiedel here ..."

  "Bodo, it's Lieven. Thomas Lieven. Do you still remember me?"

  A jovial bellow answered him. "Thomas! Man alive! Well, what a surprise! Last time we met you gave me such a dressing-down for my political views and now you're in the Gestapo yourself!"

  The enormity of this mistake made Thomas screw up his eyes for an instant. The baron's voice roared cheerfully on. 'Too funny! Why, only the other day either Ribbentrop or Schacht told me you were running a bank in England!"

  "So I am. Look here, Bodo—"

  "Ah, service abroad, eh? I understand. Camouflage, what? God, what a joke! Come around to my way of thinking at last, have you?"

  "Bodo—"

  "And how are you getting on in your new job? Ought I to call you Inspector now?"

  "Bodo—"

  "Or Superintendent, is it?"

  "For goodness' sake listen to me, man! I'm not working for the Gestapo! I've been arrested by them!"

  A short silence ensued at the Berlin end.

  Haffner smacked his lips complacently. He kept the other receiver glued to his ear with his shoulder and carried on with the cleaning of his left thumbnail.

  "Bodo! Did you understand what I said?"

  "Yes, I did, unfortunately. What—what are you charged with, then?"

  Thomas told him.

  "H'm, well, that certainly is a nuisance, old boy. It's absolutely impossible for me to interfere. The law of the land has to be respected. If you're really innocent, it's bound to come out. All the best. Heil Hitler!"

  "Your best friend, eh?" grunted Inspector Haflner.

  They took away his suspenders, tie, shoelaces, brief case and beloved repeater. They locked him up in solitary confinement. He remained there for the rest of the day and all that night. His brain worked feverishly. There must, there simply-must be some way out. But he couldn't think of one

  On the morning of the twenty-seventh Thomas Lieven was again brought up for examination. As soon as he entered Haffner's office, he saw an army major standing next to the inspector. The officer looked pale and worried, Haffner furious. They seemed to have had a quarrel.

  "There's your man, Major. As instructed, I'll leave you alone with him," the Gestapo inspector growled ill-temperedly and went out

  The officer shook hands with Thomas. "Major Loos of the Cologne Recruiting Office. Baron von Wiedel called me up to say I was to look after you."

  "Look after me?"

  "Well, you're entirely innocent, of course. Your partner let you in for this. That's quite clear to me."

  Thomas uttered a sigh of relief. "I'm so glad you've arrived at that decision, Major. I suppose I can go now, then?"

  "Go? No. You'll be going to prison."

  Thomas sat down. "But if I'm innocent?"

  "You'll have to explain that to the Gestapo, Herr Lieven. Your partner's scheme was pretty watertight, I'm afraid."

  "H'm." Thomas stared hard at the major, thinking. He's got something else to say.

  He had. It came out at once. "Look here, Herr Lieven. There is, of course, one way for you to get out of this mess. You're a German citizen. You know the world. You're an enlightened man. You speak fluent English and French. Such people are in demand these days."

  "In demand by whom?"

  "By us. By me. I'm an Intelligence officer, Herr Lieven. I can only dig you out of here if you undertake to work for Military Intelligence. Incidentally, the pay's quite good ..."

  Major Fritz Loos was the first secret service officer Thomas Lieven had ever met. He was to meet countless others, British, French, Polish, Spanish, American and Russian.

  Eighteen years after this first encounter Thomas Lieven was thinking, on May 18, 1957, in the nocturnal silence of a luxury suite in a hotel at Cannes, that at bottom all those people

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  were monotonously alike. They all seemed melancholy, embittered, disappointed. Probably they had all been expelled from their chosen careers. They all looked ill. They were all rather shy and consequently put up an endless show of the absurd attributes of their power, their secret activities and the terror they could inspire. They were all perpetually on the stage and they all suffered from a deep inferiority complex. . . .

  On that beautiful night of May 1957 Thomas Lieven was well aware of all that. But on May 27, 1939, he still did not know it. So he was simply delighted with Major Loos's suggestion that he might work for German Military Intelligence. In that way I can at last free myself from this ghastly muck heap, he thought. He had no idea how deep he was already stuck in it....

  [4]

  As the Lufthansa machine dropped down through the low-lying clouds over London, the passenger in Seat 17 uttered a peculiar sound.

  The stewardess hurried along to him. "Not feeling so well, sir?" she asked him sympathetically. Then she noticed that he was laughing.

  "I'm feeling first-rate, thanks," said Thomas Lieven. "Sorry, I must just have been thinking of something funny."

  He hadn't been able to help remembering the disappointed expression of the warder at the Gestapo headquarters in Cologne when the man returned him his property. The fellow could hardly bear to part with that gold repeater.

  Thomas extracted his beloved possession and fondly stroked its decorative lid. In so doing he noticed that there were still traces of printers' ink under the nail of his forefinger. He couldn't help laughing again as he remembered that his fingerprints were now preserved in a secret card index and his photograph in a file of other particulars about him.

  A gentleman named John Smythe (y and the essential) would call upon him the day after tomorrow to inspect the gas meter in the bathroom. Herr Smythe's orders were to be obeyed to the letter, Major Loos had been most careful to emphasize.

  Herr Smythe was in for a surprise, thought Thomas. If he really does turn up, I shall soon send him packing. The aircraft was losing height. It was heading southwest of the Thames for the airport at Croydon.

  Thomas pocketed his watch and rubbed his hands together for a moment. He stretched himself contentedly. Aha, England again! Freedom! Security! The Bentley and a hot bath, then a whisky, a pipe, friends at the club and the great yam he was going to tell them ...

  Ah, yes, and then of course there would be Marlock.

  But Thomas Lieven was so intensely happy over his return home that half his anger at Marlock's treachery had already subsided. Would he really have to part from Marlock? There might be some
explanation which one could reasonably accept. Marlock might have been in a jam. Anyway, one would first have to hear what he had to say ...

  Seven minutes after these reflections our friend was speeding gaily down the gangway from the aircraft to the rain-wet tarmac in front of the four-storied airport building. He strode whistling, under his umbrella, up to the entrance hall. Here two avenues, cordoned off by ropes, were marked, to the right, British subjects and to the left, foreigners.

  Still whistling, Thomas took the left-hand direction and marched up to the high desk where the immigration officer stood.

  The latter, an elderly man with a walrus mustache stained by nicotine, took the German passport which Thomas handed to him with a friendly smile. After glancing through it, he looked up. "I'm sorry, sir. But you won't be permitted to return to this country."

  "What on earth do you mean?"

  "You were sentenced to deportation today, Mr. Lieven. Please follow me. There are two gentlemen waiting to see you." He was already walking away ...

  The two gentlemen rose as Thomas entered the small office to which the immigration officer had led him. They both looked like overworked civil servants suffering from ulcers and lack of sleep.

  "Morris," announced one of them.

  "Lovejoy," announced the other.

  Now just whom do those two remind me of, Thomas wondered. But he couldn't think who it could be. He was now in a really towering passion. But he managed to control himself so far as to inquire, with the bare minimum of courtesy: "Gentlemen, what does all this mean? I've been living in this country for seven years now. And I've never done anything wrong."

  The man called Lovejoy showed him a newspaper, pointing to a headline that covered three columns.

  LONDON BANKER ARRESTED IN COLOGNE

  "So what? That was the day before yesterday. Today I'm here. The German police discharged me!"

  "And I wonder why," Morris remarked. "Why did the Gestapo discharge a man they had only just arrested?"

  "Because my innocence was proved."

  "Aha," said Lovejoy.

  "Aha," said Morris. They exchanged significant glances. Then Morris announced with characteristic pomposity: "We are from the secret service, Mr. Lieven. We have information from Cologne. There is no point whatever in your trying to mislead us."

  Now I know whom you two remind me of, Thomas thought suddenly. That sickly-looking Major Loos! They've all three got the same melodramatic way of talking and behaving! Aloud he said wrathfully: "It's all the better if you are from the secret service, gentlemen. For in that case you'll certainly be interested when I tell you that the Gestapo only let me go because I undertook to work for German Intelligence."

  "Mr. Lieven, just how simple-minded do you really think we are?"

  Thomas grew impatient. "I'm telling you the plain truth. The German Intelligence people blackmailed me. I feel no obligation whatever to keep my promise to them. I want to live here in peace and quiet."

  "Surely you can't believe yourself that we shall let you enter this country after such a confession? You are officially under sentence of deportation, simply because every foreigner who comes into conflict with the law is deported."

  "But, damn it, I'm absolutely innocent! My partner cheated me! You might at least put me in touch with him! Then you'd soon see I'm telling the truth."

  Morris and Lovejoy again exchanged significant glances.

  "Why are you exchanging significant glances, gentlemen?"

  Lovejoy said: "I'm afraid you can't talk to your partner, Mr. Lieven."

  "And why not?"

  "Because your partner has left London for six weeks," Morris said.

  "Lo—London?" Thomas turned pale. "Lo—left?"

  "Yes. He's said to have gone to Scotland. But nobody knows exactly where he's gone."

  "Confound it! Well, what am I to do then?"

  "You better go back to your own country."

  "And be locked up there? Haven't I told you that I was only released in order to go spying in England?"

  The two gentlemen again exchanged glances. Thomas knew they had something else to say. They had. It came out at once.

  Morris observed in a cool, impartial tone: "So far as I can see, there is positively only one chance for you now, Mr. Lieven. Work for us!"

  Good God in heaven, thought Thomas Lieven, what a story for the club! But nobody will believe it.

  "Play for our side against the Germans and we'll let you into England and help you to run down Marlock. We'll protect you."

  "Who will protect me?"

  "The secret service."

  Thomas was shaken by a slight spasm of laughter. Then he grew serious. He pulled down his waistcoat, set his tie straight and drew himself up to his full height.

  His momentary mood of perplexity and depression had passed. He knew now that he had mistaken something for a terrific spree which was probably nothing of the kind. He realized that he was in for a fight now. And he was fond of fighting. No man just lets himself be ruined without a struggle.

  Said Thomas Lieven: "I decline your offer, gentlemen. I am going to Paris. There I shall engage the best lawyer in France to bring a suit against my partner and against the British Government."

  "I shouldn't do that, Mr. Lieven."

  "But I'm going to do it just the same."

  "You'll get into trouble."

  "Well see about that. I refuse to believe that the whole world's a madhouse!" said Thomas Lieven.

  A year later he had changed his mind.

  And eighteen years later, as he sat in a luxury hotel at Cannes and thought over his past he was absolutely convinced that he had been wrong the first time. ' That the whole world was a madhouse seemed to him the only profound truth a man could and ought to be sure of in this crazy century.

  On May 28, 1939, shortly after midnight, an elegant young gentleman was ordering a meal in a restaurant well know to connoisseurs, Chez Pierre of the Place Graillon, Paris. "Well take a little hors d'oeuvre, Emile, then crayfish soup, followed by loin fillets with mushrooms. And for dessert, what about a Coupe Jacques?"

  The old white-haired headwaiter Emile smiled with great cordiality at his customer. He had known Thomas Lieven for many years.

  Next to the young gentleman sat a pretty girl with glossy black hair, gay, rather prominent eyes and an oval face like a doll's. Her name was Mimi Chambert.

  "We're hungry, Emile! We've been to the theater to see Jean-Louis Barrault in Shakespeare."

  "Then instead of cold hors d'oeuvre I'd recommend hot salmon canapes, monsieur. Shakespeare takes it out of one."

  They all laughed. The old maitre d^otel disappeared into the kitchen.

  The restaurant was a long dark room of old-fashioned aspect, but extremely comfortable. The young lady was very much less on the old-fashioned side.

  She wore a very low-cut gown of white silk, tightly gathered up on one side. The young actress with the dainty little figure always looked well, even in the morning, directly after waking up.

  Thomas had known her for two years. He smiled at Mimi, heaving a deep sigh. "Ah, Paris! The only city in which one can still live, mon petit chou. We're going to have a few glorious weeks together ..."

  "I'm so glad you're enjoying yourself again, cheri! You were so restless last night ... You were chattering away in three languages, but I could only understand the French ... Was there something wrong with your passport?"

  "Why do you say that?"

  "You kept talking about deportation orders and residential permits ... and there are so many Germans in Paris just now who have trouble with their passports .. ."

  He kissed the tips of her fingers tenderly. "Don't worry. A stupid thing just happened, that's all. Nothing really disagreeable." He spoke with calm conviction, really believing what he said. "Someone played a dirty trick on me, you know, my dear. I was cheated. Sometimes an injury like that lasts a long

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  time. But it's never permanent. I've got
a first-rate lawyer now. It'll only be a short time before they come and apologize. And I'm going to spend the interval of waiting with you "

  The waiter returned. "M. Lieven, two gentlemen would like to speak to you."

  Thomas looked up unsuspectingly. Two men in not over-clean trench coats were standing at the entrance to the restaurant, bowing to him in some embarrassment.

  Thomas stood up. "I'll be back in a moment, ma petite' 9

  He walked to the entrance. "Gentlemen what can I do for you?"

  The two men in crumpled mackintoshes bent their heads obsequiously. Then one of them said: "Monsieur, we have just paid a visit to Mile. Chambert's flat. We are detectives. I'm sorry, but we have to arrest you."

  "What have I done?" asked Thomas quietly. He really felt more like laughing.

  "You'll hear all about that later."

  So the nightmare continues, thought Thomas. He said amiably: "Gentlemen, you are French. You know what a sin it is to interrupt a good meal. May I ask you to postpone my arrest until after I have eaten?"

  The two detectives hesitated.

  "Can we ring up our chief first?" one of them asked.

  Thomas gave him permission to do so. The man disappeared into a telephone booth and returned almost immediately afterward. "That's all right, monsieur. The boss had only one request to make."

  "What was that?"

  "He wondered whether he might come along and join you. He said that things are always more easily discussed over a good meal."

  "Very good, that's all right with me. But who, may I ask, is your boss?"

  The two detectives told him.

  Thomas went back to his table and beckoned to the old waiter. "Emile, I'm expecting another guest. Please lay a third place."

  "Who's coming then?" asked Mimi with a smile.

  "A certain Colonel Simeon."

  "Oh," said Mimi. And quite contrary to her usual custom that was all she did say.

  MENU

  Crayfish Soup

  Hot Salmon Canapes

  Loin Fillets with oJWushrooms

  Pommes Frites

  Coupe Jacques

  28 May 1939 During this meal Thomas Lieven became a secret agent.

  Crayfish Soup

  For four persons cook a dozen crayfish in boiling water for fifteen minutes. Next detach the meat from pincers and tails, pound all the shells to a not too fine powder and stir with a quarter of a pound of butter over a fire till the mixture begins to rise and turn red. A tablespoon of flour is then added, together with a quart of stock, and the mixture strained through a muslin-covered hair-sieve. Shortly before dishing up the soup bring it to a boil again and add the crayfish meat. The soup must not be too thick, a fault always to be avoided in soups served at banquets.