“I am still not prepared, Ian, to look any person in the eyes who knows I was a captain in the Gestapo at Buchenwald. And what is half the world going to say? The blighter betrayed his country to save his neck, and they gave him British nationality for it.”
“Nonsense! Of course they wouldn’t! And what about your Scarlet Pimpernel stuff? There’s no trouble in proving that!”
Perhaps. But then I doubted it. It was true that I had planned escapes — could have planned a lot more of them if the wretched inmates of the camp had been lunatics enough to trust a Gestapo captain. The most spectacular was the rescue of Catherine Dessayes and Olga Coronel from Ravensbrück when they were due for the gas chamber. They knew that Hauptmann von Dennim was responsible but they couldn’t know that he was not just adding corruption to corruption —a Gestapo swine heavily bribed by the enemy.
“I told you at the time you were a fool not to accept your George Cross,” Ian said.
“One does not defile a decoration.”
“Take ‘em a bit seriously, don’t you? And anyway it isn’t fair to your assassin. It would surely make him think twice if he knew you as Graf Karl von Dennim, G.C.”
“Another very good reason why Charles Dennim should handle him gently and deal with him personally, Ian.”
“Oh, my God, you would say that!”
I calmed him down. What I had to propose was really very sensible. I did not want to die in the least — or at least I hadn’t wanted to until all these memories were forced back on me —and I did not believe that month after month any police guard could be effective against a man who was patient and implacable, who had leisure and money and no criminal record.
But if I could recognize him or describe him, the German police would do the rest. I might even be able to reason with him. At the very worst I could kill him, provided self-defense was evident.
“And what I want from you, Ian,” I said, “is to be my secret agent after all the years I was yours, plus a cottage to live in and an excuse for being in it.”
“A neighbor of mine has got two badger setts on his land,” he replied doubtfully. “You could be studying their diet. He says they kill his chickens.”
“Well, you can tell him from me they don’t. If it isn’t a fox — and I suppose he knows — it’s probably a polecat gone wild.”
“Jim Melton turned some of his polecat ferrets loose after myxomatosis killed off the rabbits,” he said. “You could watch the blasted things. Or badgers. The cottage I can manage, though it’s some way from my place. But that is all the better. How are you going to persuade him to follow you?”
“By making it easy. As soon as he sees that the house is shut up he can get my forwarding address from half a dozen different places.”
“That will puzzle him,” Ian objected. “It should be much harder to get your address. If one is going to tie out a fat goat for a tiger, it is essential to let the tiger think he has found it for himself.”
I did not care for the metaphor, though I have since adopted it. But at the first hearing it offended me. It was too typically and heartily English.
“It won’t take him long to decide that I am carrying on my normal life and have no police protection,” I said.
Ian thought it most improbable that his tiger would believe me so unimaginative, especially after the pamphlet with the cross on the officers’ mess. And if he had me under observation, as he presumably did, he must have seen that I had changed my habits and was offering no easy chances. The right move, Ian suggested, was to appear to have bolted from home in a panic and to leave a trail which could be picked up.
“But what about that admirable aunt of yours?”
“I’ve fixed that. She’ll be staying with a dear, old friend of hers who lives near Badminton. All she knows is that I am shortly off on a squirrel-watching expedition.”
“Well, it may work,” he said, showing a first spark of enthusiasm, “though nothing on earth would persuade me to tackle the former Graf von Dennim on ground of his own choosing. All right. First, cottage. Second, a scratch organization to tell you when there is a stranger about and what his movements are. But I reserve the right to call in the police when you are certain of your man — and you’ll be ninety per cent certain if you see a Buchenwald face which you recognize. Is there anything else?”
“An arm. I have only a sixteen-bore. And that’s no good. Nor is a rifle, I must have an automatic.”
“I cannot help there,” he said. “The police require very good reasons before they will issue a certificate. You’ll have to convince them that your life is in danger.”
I impressed it on him again that I was not going to convince the police of anything nor explain to them my past. We argued it all out once more.
At last and rather coldly he declared:
“Very well. I have to admit that this is probably the best way of catching the man. But I can’t be mixed up in it beyond a point. Do you realize that if you are caught with a pistol you will be very heavily fined and there will be exhaustive inquiries where you got it from?”
That seemed to me a comically minor risk. Ian had reverted very thoroughly to civilian legality and probably hoped — by God, I could understand it! — that he would never hear of any of his disquieting wartime friends again. Still, he could have used his influence somewhere to obtain an automatic for me. But did he understand, in spite of his goat and man-eater, how close the parallel really was? Perhaps he didn’t. He was thinking in terms of a police decoy for catching bag-snatchers in the park.
That was all. I left Singleton Court — as a matter of principle —by way of the basement and the dustbins, and came out into Gloucester Road. I felt a little more lonely than when I went in — which was most unfair to Ian but may not have been bad for me. Loneliness was a challenge. It shifted my thinking into a gear remembered but long unused.
The question of an arm. To acquire one illegally was a test of how fit I still was to protect myself. I knew no more of criminal society than any other respectable citizen. The fellows who held up bank cashiers must get their weapons somewhere, but the newspapers did not tell us how.
What to wear. A dirty lounge suit, bought cheap and off the peg just after the war, seemed right. A turtle-necked sweater under it was, at any rate, noncommittal. I could not leave the house in them since Georgina’s curiosity might be aroused. So I carried the clothes in a brown paper parcel and changed in a public lavatory.
My destination was Soho. After wandering around to find a cafe where the customers were neither too young nor too exclusively Italian, I entered a revolting joint just off Wardour Street and sat down, speaking just enough broken English to order a cup of coffee. After ten minutes two scruffy individuals, with a show of heartiness towards the foreigner, got into conversation with me and found that I spoke only German. They cleared off soon and sent me a German-speaking lady of the town. She was a hard-faced rubbery creature of the type to betray her own mother for money. I pretended to be much taken with her and assured her we would have a wonderful time if only I could sell —I swore her to secrecy — if only I could sell a Luger.
The following afternoon I was there again. She introduced me to a large and slimy crook who was an obvious copper’s nark. He may have had a police card in his pocket or merely have been in police pay. I don’t know. And, to be fair, I suppose he might have been entirely convincing to anyone without a sense of smell trained to spot his type. He was living proof that I was wise to undertake my own protection. If I could smell police, so could my enemy. God knew what the tiger’s past had been, but it was safe to assume that he had experience of an underground more deadly than that of London Transport.