‘Thank you, Willi,’ said Fritz Rau. He was one of the oldest men in the room and thus enjoyed the privilege of addressing his younger colleagues in that informal manner.
Böttger gave a sigh of relief and hastily pressed on to the only other matter. ‘Money is suddenly required in London and we will need some sort of corporate structure to which to send the funds. Obviously we must not attract the attention of English government departments and I wonder if one of us can provide a way to hold half a million Deutschemarks just while we are forming a company there.’
‘No problem,’ said the expert on maritime insurance. ‘But you’ll have to let me have the details about who will have access to the money. Specimen signatures and so on.’
‘Willi will provide those details. I’ll let you have the money in whatever way you want it.’ He looked at the clock, over the door. ‘That will do for this week, gentlemen,’ said Böttger. ‘You will all get a telex in the usual code to tell you where the next meeting will be. Kindly let me have proxies for anyone who cannot attend.’
When the meeting had broken up it was Willi Kleiber who remained for a final word with Dr Böttger. ‘I wondered what old Fritz was going to say for a moment,’ said Kleiber. ‘It is the violence that troubles me,’ Kleiber imitated Fritz Rau’s Saxon accent and the quaver which could sometimes be heard in his voice. It was a cruel parody.
‘He’s getting too old,’ said Böttger. ‘It will happen to all of us eventually, I suppose.’
‘Anyway, it all turned out all right.’
‘For the time being it did,’ said Böttger. ‘But you know as well as I do that it will not be one or two deaths.’
‘It will be messy,’ said Willi Kleiber. ‘It is hard to say how many will eventually have to be removed. I agree with you about that. I thought the explosion in England, when we had to deal with my old comrade Franz Wever, was going to become a big newspaper story.’
‘They were mad to do it like that,’ said Böttger. ‘Have our people there no sense?’
‘The British Secret Intelligence Service already knew Wever,’ explained Willi Kleiber. ‘They were pressing him. We had to do something very quickly indeed.’
‘The British Secret Service. To let them get hold of the Hitler Minutes would be the very worst thing that could happen to us,’ said Böttger. ‘If the newspapers got them, we might be able to buy them off or even frighten them off. Failing that, we can put up a smoke screen. But if they get into the hands of the British Secret Service, anything could happen.’
Willi Kleiber scratched his chin. ‘You mean the British are dangerous to us? Yes, I hadn’t thought of it in that light, Dr Böttger, but I have to agree with you wholeheartedly.’ Böttger looked at him and nodded. He knew that Willi Kleiber had never looked at it any other way.
24
Sir Sydney Ryden had a lunch appointment but he was able to fit Boyd Stuart into a gap between the secretary of the estimates sub-committee on pay and a pre-lunch drink with the coordinator. Boyd Stuart waited in an empty sitting room for half an hour before the DG came in, slumped down into the armchair and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Everything seems to come at once, Stuart. Do you find that?’
‘Yes, sir, I do. I’m awfully sorry to be making a difficult day even worse for you.’
‘Not at all,’ said the DG. ‘It was my own decision to keep close to your investigation. Something come up, has it?’
Boyd Stuart explained the phone call which Paul Bock had made to Stein’s home in Los Angeles. And his visit to the house in north London the day before.
‘Homosexuals are they?’ He nodded as if in answer to his own question.
‘I’ve no reason to think so, Director.’
‘They sound like two delinquents,’ said the DG.
‘They are delinquents,’ agreed Boyd.
‘Quite so, Stuart.’ The DG eyed the drinks cabinet but decided that his lunch was going to be a tricky one. It would be better to remain completely clear headed. ‘Am I to take it that you are treating their information seriously?’
‘For the time being I am, sir.’
‘Isn’t it rather preposterous? Surely you don’t believe that a syndicate of German industrialists is about to start a new Nazi movement?’
‘I’m not yet at the stage where I can start enjoying the luxury of discounting anything,’ said Boyd.
‘Well, it’s your investigation,’ said the DO scratching his head. ‘But the PM is asking for a situation report. I’m not going to relish telling her that my principal field agent thinks it’s all a neo-Nazi plot.’
‘Paul Bock gained access to the bank computer,’ insisted, Boyd Stuart. ‘The other one has worked in electronics and, according to the hasty and superficial inquiries I’ve made this morning, is well qualified to know about retrieving information.’
‘I’m not contesting any of that,’ said the DG testily.
‘Then what could be their motive?’ said Boyd Stuart. ‘Why would they contact Stein to warn him that his life is in danger? Obviously Stein is a stranger to them or they would have recognized me immediately as an impostor. The German boy has confessed a secret to a perfect stranger. If that stranger betrays him, he could face at best dismissal from the bank, perhaps a term of imprisonment. So what motive could they have, other than what they told me?’
‘Perhaps he thinks it’s fun,’ said the DG. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t need to have a job of any land; he might well have a private income. Rich young trouble-makers. The western world is full of such people.’
Only with difficulty did Stuart suppress his irritation at this generalization. ‘I think it’s safer to assume that they work for a living, sir. And I prefer to assume they’re sincere.’
‘You don’t have to read me the riot act, Stuart.’ Boyd Stuart did not reply. The DG looked at his watch. ‘Well, I can see that you want to follow this one up, so I’ll not stand in your way.’ He got to his feet. His knee joint cracked and he massaged it briefly. ‘Don’t mind if I make a few inquiries too, eh?’
‘No, sir,’ said Boyd Stuart in a tone that he hoped conveyed the idea that he dreaded the thought of it.
‘That’s splendid then. Let’s talk again tomorrow before I see the PM.’
Sir Sydney Ryden did not look forward with pleasure to his meetings with the representative of West Germany ’s intelligence organization, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND. Somehow the two men seemed incompatible and what should have been an exchange of helpful information all too often developed into an exchange of complaints which sometimes came close to bickering.
The lunch they shared at Boodle’s on Tuesday, July 17, was no exception. There were differences about training facilities which were not yet ready for use, a request for the return of important dossiers which Sir Sydney secretly knew had got lost somewhere in Whitehall, and an argument about a news story concerning a secret rocket which had been leaked to a German newspaper. As an exercise in European cooperation, the lunch was a failure but, when the two men went downstairs for coffee, and watched the other club members sunk deep into the ancient leather armchairs, the talk turned to gardening.