There was a responsive laugh. It seemed unlikely that the cover which Gehlen had used for mounting intelligence operations against Russia was ever very convincing; by today’s standard, it was nothing less than childish. ‘When Gehlen set up his cover organizations-and made money-in everything from wholesaling wine to public relations, Kleiber set up a security company for them. In 1958, Kleiber was pensioned off and allowed to buy the security company at a bargain price.’
‘Poor old US taxpayer,’ said Kalkhoven.
‘Right,’ said Sam Seymour ‘It was that kind of deal. The security company was his ‘pension’ from Gehlen, but the bottom line was that we picked up the tab. He was, in effect, working for us.’ He took off his spectacles. ‘But it still wasn’t good enough for Kleiber, He got into financial difficulties two or three times in the middle sixties. But he always seemed to survive.’
‘ Moscow got to him?’ said Kalkhoven, who hated Seymour ’s sort of double-talk. ‘Is that what you are implying?’
‘It’s what I’m trying to avoid saying,’ said Seymour, raising his hands in surrender to Kalkhoven’s critical tone. ‘It’s taken us a long time to get the message. But let’s not go jumping to conclusions until we’ve got the evidence. And let me make it clear Kleiber was taken off the agency payroll in 1969.’
‘Don’t push, Melvin,’ the project chairman told Kalkhoven, ‘Sam here is a very cautious individual, you know that. But let me be the fool who rushes in where Seymours fear to tread. Sure, Kleiber was turned for money; it’s as clear as daylight. No evidence anywhere, but I’m telling you, that’s what happened. Kleiber is a Moscow Centre agent, and a damned dangerous one. There’s good indication that Kleiber was the hit man who helped Parker knock off Lustig in Los Angeles last May It’s likely the Brits are right in thinking that Kleiber did the double killing in London last week.’
He nodded to Sam Seymour, who took up the story again. ‘We have something on him for the Los Angeles murder. We know he went through Los Angeles International two days before the killing and left on an intercontinental flight a mere three days after. A ground hostess and a flight purser recognized him as a passenger on the Frankfurt flight. He left his reading spectacles in the first-class lounge A pretty dumb thing to do if you’re a KGB hit man, but people are like that, as we well know.’
‘And thank the Lord,’ said the project chairman.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Sam Seymour. He looked again at his papers. ‘We’ve only had this material since Wednesday, so we’ve got a long way to go. TWA are checking the tickets for that flight, so we might get lucky. But what we have so far is enough to link Grechko, through the mysterious Mr Parker, with Kleiber and three killings.’ He rustled his papers on the table. ‘We’ve pink-starred Kleiber with customs and immigration. If he continues travelling on the same passport, we could nail him.’ He looked round the room to see the reaction. ‘He seems to travel everywhere alone.’
‘ “Woe unto him who is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him,” ’ said Kalkhoven, whose father had been a lay preacher.
‘We think Parker might be the illegal,’ said the project chairman. ‘The resident illegal,’ he added in case there was any misunderstanding.
There were murmurs of surprise and congratulation round the table. The chairman smiled. ‘But we want something better out of this than swapping Parker for some American kid who got caught buying black-market bubble gum on Red Square. And I want something better than Grechko going PNG and winging his way home with a medal. Persona non grata means nothing any more. I want Grechko caught with his pants down. I want solid evidence to show that these decapitation killings were planned here in the goddamned Russian embassy. I want to see it spread good and big across the headlines. The Brits have given us Kleiber but the important targets are Grechko and Parker. Now don’t forget it.’
‘What do the Brits want out of it?’ asked Ben Krupnic, the FBI representative at the far end of the table.
‘Their SIS people are interested in a guy on the coast named Stein and a German-born US citizen named Max Breslow. We’ve had to give them a hands-off undertaking for both. They’ve given us a hands-off undertaking on Kleiber.’
‘Sounds like a fair deal,’ said Krupnic.
‘Yeah,’ said the project chairman. ‘Sounds like a fair bargain. Let’s see if anyone sticks to it.’
The FBI man smiled. He wondered whether that caustic aside was directed at his own bureau.
31
Westlake Village was a habitat that exactly suited Max Breslow. It was far enough from the smog and noise of Los Angeles, and yet not so far that he could not be in Beverly Hills inside the hour. There was the lake and its sailing dinghies and the heated swimming pool which he shared with a few of his immediate neighbours. And if there was also a measure of pretension and pettiness, then it was no worse than he had known in such small towns in other parts of the world. And here there was the sunshine to compensate for everything.
Max Breslow sat by the pool, watching his daughter swim twenty lengths. She had the same sort of determination that he had found in himself at her age. Sometimes it frightened him to recognize that fixed expression on her face; he could see it now as she touched the edge of the pool and twisted back through the water with hardly a splash or a ripple to mark the place. She swam underwater for a long time. Max could do that when he was young; he remembered the discipline at Bad Tölz. The big new SS training establishment had only been open a few months. He remembered still the sour smell of damp cement mingled with that of the new paint. Day after day of boxing, rowing, running, jumping and swimming. Long days too; awake at four a.m. and falling into bed exhausted. It had been all right for the others-farm boys for the most part, who hardly dared believe that at the end of all this they were going to be able to return to their families and friends wearing the uniform of a German officer. Max sometimes wondered what had happened to them all; dead long since, he supposed. He remembered reading in one of the old comrades’ magazines that none of the men commissioned at the Junkerschule Bad Tölz in 1934 survived through 1942. Did anyone, Max wondered, really and truly regret the passing of the Third Reich? As much as he deplored the stupid self-indulgence of the young, he would not want to expose any of them to what he had gone through. Not even Billy Stein. Max Breslow paused for a moment-perhaps it was going too far to say not even Billy Stein; a few weeks at Bad Tölz might work wonders for that fellow.
‘Wake up, Papa!’
Breslow flinched as the cold water dropped on him, and he felt his daughter’s wet face and wet hair as she bent close and kissed him. ‘The water’s wonderful. How can you not swim?’
Breslow smiled and shook his head. He had left some toes behind in the snowy wastes outside Kharkov. It was ridiculous, but he was self-conscious about the deformity even in front of his own daughter. ‘They are building the sets in the workshops. I’m going downtown to inspect them at three p.m.’
‘I’m going to inspect them at three p.m.,’ she repeated in a funny nasal voice. ‘That all sounds very Teutonic, Papa.’
‘I have to maintain a schedule,’ he said, trying not to sound irritated, although in fact he was. ‘The cost of the workshop space is nothing compared with what we will be paying for studio time once the sets are erected there. I have to make sure they are exactly right.’