Winter by Len Deighton: Decline of a German family

I made several attempts to read Winter back in the 1990s.  To this day I vividly recall early chapters: Peter Winter's experience of a zeppelin raid on London, and Paul Winter's experience in a trench-raiding punishment battalion. I'm glad I was finally able to read it cover-to-cover this week.

Len Deighton's Winter [1987] is a thick wedge of history and a compelling melodrama.  Few novelists of real skill would have the guts to attempt a big canvas of the middle class German experience 1900-1945.

Most novels about the period written in the last few decades have a suffocatingly narrow horizon.  But Deighton, like Herman Wouk before him, revels in a large cast and frequent scenery changes. 

His third person point of view, often skipping among characters in a given scene, is maddening, then astonishing, and finally shattering.

Deighton pays close attention to the political vicissitudes of the Nazi party in 1923-1933, before it came to power. It is unfortunate that none of his characters is in a position to observe the Stalinist and Social Democrat failure to form a united front to defeat the fascists. [The best book on the subject is The Struggle Against Fascism in Germy by Leon Trotsky.]

Deighton has slight curiosity about the German proletariat, expressed in the evolution of secondary character Fritz Esser.  Esser starts out a partisan of Liebknecht, but Deighton leaves us in no doubt he was born to be hung.

Peter and Paul Winter, the two brothers at the heart of the novel, reside in passivity.  Granted their family wealth and position, they are still not men who put their stamp on events.  Events stamp them, pushing them along.  There are no Cain and Abel vendettas or betrayals, just everyday frustrations of deeply unsatisfied men.

The Holocaust is for the most part left off-stage, as it would have been in the experience of most Germans of the Winter brothers social layer.  But in the 1943 chapter two secondary characters confront it head one.  One is a German officer, the other an Austrian Jew.

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[From Chapter: 1943].

....The train lurched to a stop. Colonel Rudolf Freiherr von Kleindorf, who'd been asleep while the train had roared through innumerable stations and rattled over countless crossings, now came awake in his narrow bunk. He turned over, but it was too narrow, and the sides of the bunk trapped his arms. When he put an arm out and hung it over the high wooden side of the bunk, his blood supply was constricted and his hand started to go dead, so he had to move again. He looked at his watch. There was only a very dim red bulb in the ceiling, but eventually he made out the time: two-twenty-five in the morning. Ugh!

He'd been dreaming about Moscow again, about his brief time as a division commander. Suppose he hadn't pulled back? Suppose he'd given the order to fight to the last man, the way the Fuhrer said every unit was to do? Well, in that case he wouldn't have been disciplined and demoted to the adjutant of a rifle regiment until getting this regimental command. No, he would be dead, together with every last man of the division. Perhaps seven months as adjutant of a rifle regiment was a cheap price to pay for the lives of so many fine young men. General Homer thought so -- he'd sent von Kleindorf a letter saying exactly that -- but it didn't entirely make up for commanding a division. He'd give almost anything for that pleasure and privilege. Colonel von Kleindorf, a prematurely aged man in his late thirties, tried to get back to sleep, but he was unable to do so, and the train still didn't move: it remained where it was except to judder and shake. Every time he dozed off, there was some mechanical noise of the sort trains made: the clanking of the coupling link chains or the sudden hiss of air in the brakes. After what seemed like hours but was really a little less than thirty minutes, he swung out of his uncomfortable sleeping space and put his feet on the floor. The floor was cold. This was an army train and its furnishing didn't extend to carpeting, not even for the little sleeping cabinet provided to the officer in charge. And if the floor was cold, the air outside would be freezing. He had on underwear with long sleeves and long legs. Some of the others slept fully dressed -- boots, too, in some cases -- but on a journey like this Rudi von Kleindorf slept in his underwear. It was a compromise. Quite a lot of things in Rudi's life were compromises. Even going into the army had been a compromise, back in 1920.

He put the clear light bulb on. It didn't provide much more illumination: these trains were designed to go right up into the army's railheads, some of them uncomfortably close to the front line. He slipped his elastic braces over his shoulders, buttoned up his flies, and got an arm into his jacket while he was stepping into his high boots. It was all second nature to him. He could dress, and even shave, before becoming fully awake. There was a folding sink in the corner. He splashed water on his face and ran a hand back through his closely cropped hair. He rubbed his face. He needed a shave, but his hair was light and he'd probably not meet anyone who mattered. He was the regimental commander and senior officer on the train.

He was reaching for the handle on the door when a knock came. It was the duty officer: Leutnant Uhl. The young officer was surprised to find von Kleindorf fully dressed. 'Herr Oberst!

How did you know?'

'Commanders know everything,' said von Kleindorf. It was what Horner used to say to him in the old days. He wondered how often he'd credited Horner with such prescience in similar circumstances.

Leutnant Uhl -- a spindly young man with eyeglasses -- said, 'There's some obstruction on the line. I have put out pickets, in case it's a guerrilla ambush. The train commander has gone back to find a signal box to telephone and find out what's wrong.'

'A signal box to telephone?' said von Kleindorf with a grim laugh. 'Does he think he's on the S-Bahn to Wannsee?'

'He thinks he'll find one,' said Uhl.

'Where are we, Uhl?'

'I don't know, Herr Oberst. Poland, I suppose, by now.'

'Not many signal boxes and telephones in Poland, Uhl. You might make a note of that for future reference.'

'I will, Herr Oberst.' Von Kleindorf liked the kid. He was not much more than twenty years old. He'd got into medical school at some absurdly young age and then, within a year of graduating, thrown it in to join the army. What a fool.

'And no partisans this close to home. But you did the right thing, Uhl. It's good practice, and I want to keep the men alert and ready. Let the guards stay there. Men on the roof?'

'Yes, Herr Oberst. A machine-gun team, too.'

'Let's go and see what the holdup is, Uhl.' Von Kleindorf put on his heavy winter overcoat and turned up the fur collar.

Cautiously the two officers climbed down from the train and moved forward in the darkness. No moon tonight: such a night would be entirely suited to an ambush. But surely it couldn't happen this far in the rear areas. On the other hand, there were such curious stories. In the rear areas SS-Einsatzgruppen did nothing except summarily execute partisans and irregulars who threatened the lines of supply, and according to what he'd heard they were slaughtering people by the thousand, so it must be dangerous. Men didn't execute suspects without good reason, did they?

There was a cold wind, especially biting up here on the railway embankment. On each side of them the land was flat as far as they could see, which was not far on this dark night. As they walked past the locomotive, they felt the warmth from its boilers and looked up at the footplate, where the driver and firemen were rimmed by the orange light of the fire. Lucky devils: they'd be the only ones warm this freezing-cold night. 'They've done nothing about finding out what's wrong,' complained Leutnant Uhl.

'Standing orders, Uhl. Drivers and firemen have to remain on the footplate while a train is stopped. There were too many cases of loco crews being lured away and killed. Then the whole train is at the mercy of attackers.'

'That's clear, Herr Oberst.'

'A foul smell in the air,' said von Kleindorf.

'The fields perhaps, Herr Oberst. Human fertilizer.'

'At this time of year? You must be a town boy, Leutnant Uhl.'

'I am, Herr Oberst.'

'What a stench! It's like a battlefield.'

They continued walking. The train track was roughly fashioned. By the light of his torch he could see the sleepers: rough balks of timber with patterns of holes to show that they'd been shifted and reused many times; crude wedges to hold the rails, and a total absence of the gravel fettling that ensured that wooden sleepers could be nicely adjusted for height. These were not like the railway tracks in Germany, so elaborate and well made. This was the East. Blocking the way ahead of them was another train. A long train, perhaps a hundred freight wagons. Painted dark green and marked with the eagle insignia of the Reichsbahn.

'What's wrong?' called von Kleindorf.

'The bloody axle, that's what's wrong!' It was the voice of an ill-tempered man dragged out of bed in the middle of the cold night.

As the two officers got closer to the men, the speaker said, 'Oh, I'm sorry, Herr Oberst.' He was a hoarse-voiced man with a Silesian accent.

'You'll have to get it moving,' said von Kleindorf. 'There are other trains close behind us.' The stench from the boxcar was almost overwhelming. He wondered if the whole train was like this. A bearded man who seemed to be in charge consulted his clipboard, flashing a light upon it to see the typed sheet. 'You're the HZ 1489? Advance party, Regimental HQ of the Panzer Division, Herr Oberst?' His voice was softer and authoritative.

'Yes: seventy-two trains close behind us,' said von Kleindorf, although he had no doubt that the railway workers knew how many trains it needed to move an armoured division.

'Can you tell me where the armour is loaded, Herr Oberst?' said the man, who then cupped his hands together and blew into them to warm them.

Von Kleindorf hesitated. The disposition of the tanks and tracked artillery on their flatbed cars was not something to be revealed to the first person who asked. These men were undoubtedly Germans, despite their thick Silesian accents, but why would they want to know?

As if reading his mind, the man explained in more detail: 'I can work ordinary freight cars, or passenger coaches, past this broken box-wagon. But your tanks will overhang their flatbeds. In the old days the smaller tanks permitted two-line working, but I can't work your large modern armour through without both up and down lines clear.'

'There is armour right behind us,' said von Kleindorf. There was a sound from inside the car --

animals, he guessed, horses or cattle.

'And we've got more armour on the train in the siding, so I can't shunt it over there,' said the bearded man and sucked his teeth reflectively. 'Then we'll have to get rid of this broken wagon,'

he said. He turned to his loud-voiced companion. 'Any ideas, Andi?'

'The nearest crane is in the yards, but if you don't mind about salvaging it, we might bring up a winch and topple it off the track and down the slope there.'

'I've got two hospital trains due,' said the bearded man. He'd taken his gloves off to write. Now he put them on again. That's the first one coming now, if I'm not mistaken. Battle casualties. That one should get priority.' The sound of a train could be heard very faintly. The man's hearing was tuned to such sounds.

'We can't wait for cranes or winches,' said von Kleindorf. 'I'll bring up one of my combat pioneer officers and we'll put a couple of sticks of dynamite under it.'

'Without damaging the track, Herr Oberst?'

'My Pioniere can crack an egg without breaking the yolk,' said von Kleindorf. 'But you'll have to empty it first. Your boxcar will be no more than matchwood. What are its contents?

Livestock?'

The two railway workers exchanged glances. What an odd question. Did these army officers really not know? Couldn't they smell the whole train? Didn't they know that Reichsbahn trains like this were a major part of the rail traffic eastwards nowadays, and that they returned empty?

'Jews, Herr Oberst.'

'Jews?'

'For resettlement in the East.' He shone his torch at the Reichsbahn docket clipped to the wooden side of the boxcar. Upon it was printed 'To Auschwitz-Birkenau' in large black letters. Von Kleindorf could hear them now. What he'd thought was animals was the restless movement of people, humans who must be packed together so tight that some of them could not breathe.

'Get your saw and take the locks off,' said the bearded man.

'What will we do with them?'

'Can you provide us with an army sentry, Herr Oberst?'

'I can't leave him behind, if that's what you mean,' said von Kleindorf. 'Better you get a local man.'

'We don't need a sentry,' said the man called Andi. They'll give us no trouble. They can go into the empty boxcar on the sidings.'

It was only a two-minute job to saw through the locking bolt. But it needed the strength of both railway workers to heave the door open. And then the people spewed out, to crash onto the hard, cold ground with sickening thumps.

The sudden stench of urine, excrement and death came like a blow. 'Good God!' said Leutnant Uhl, and jumped back in alarm. Even the battle-hardened von Kleindorf gasped at the sight. Women, children, old men, young women clutching babies, all tumbled out stiff, like dressmakers' dummies, with the cold. One tall fellow in a black suit hit the ground with such force that he folded up and rolled down the embankment into the ditch. And yet these wretched creatures nearest the door were the strongest ones. They were the men and women who'd fought and elbowed their way, or pushed their children, to where there was sometimes a crack of daylight and a thin draught of air.

'Raus! Raus!' shouted the bearded man. He shone his flashlight into the dark confines of the boxcar, and there was the glint of frightened eyes. More people were there, dozens of them. 'Out!

Out! Out!' But some of them couldn't get out. Some of the old people were dead. Children, too, of course. Men and women had slipped down in the crush of bodies and suffocated there. Others had fainted and gone all the way to the floor of the car, trampled underfoot until they were unrecognizable as anything but sticky, bloody bundles of old rags. Von Kleindorf felt physically sick. He turned on his heel and marched away. The young subaltern followed him. So that was the sort of resettlement the regime was offering the Jews. He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket. Anything to get rid of the sight and the smell. But the memory was a thing he'd never escape.

Boris Somlo was just losing consciousness as they began to saw through the locking bolt from the door. He was pinned in the corner of the car. He'd always hated crowds; even when his mother had taken him to the big Vienna department stores, he'd hated being crushed close to other people. But this was hell. For a long time he'd tried to hold a small boy up, too, but that was many days ago. It was before the day they gave them water and bits of bread. That was before the first time he'd lost consciousness. Where was the child now? He could have been no more than five or six years old, a solemn little fellow who had never replied to anything. Boris rubbed his face and tried to judge from his beard how many days they'd spent locked up in the cold, dark boxcar. But his beard had never been very heavy and he couldn't guess. Boris heard the railway workers' voices, too, but he couldn't make out what they were saying, and he didn't much care. He was so weak that even his hunger had abated. Nothing mattered any more. Nothing. So -- like the rest of them -- he was totally unprepared for the opening of the door.

As the door crashed open, everyone in the wagon moved, and Boris suddenly found himself swept to the doorway, watching people on each side fall into the darkness. He breathed the air, so cold it hurt his lungs, and then someone pushed from behind and he, too, was falling into the bottomless black space.

He hit the ground with a thump that took all the breath from him, but the force of landing sent him rolling down the dark embankment. At the bottom of the slope was a shallow ditch of stagnant water, its top frozen into a thin layer of ice that broke like sugar icing as he rolled over in the cold water.

Suddenly he was fully conscious, but he had very little strength left, and no determination except to scramble out of the water into the field beyond it. The warmth of the packed bodies had been keeping them all alive, and now the effect of the cold wind upon his wet clothes chilled him enough to make him gasp. He stifled a cough with his hand and crawled on. He looked back up the railway embankment to where the men with torches were shouting into the half-empty boxcar. He got to his feet and walked very slowly away into the darkness. Boris dragged one foot after the other until he'd walked the whole length of the 'resettlement transport', his body aching with cold. Beyond it there was another train. It would be sensible to get away from the railway, and into the open country. The lines of communication were always heavily guarded -- you didn't have to be a soldier to know that. But Boris could not face the open countryside in his wet clothing. He was hungry, thirsty, tired and very weak. He knew that he couldn't survive more than another half-hour or so in this weather. He stumbled along, without thinking of what he was doing or where he was going. He got to the second train without knowing why he was heading towards it, except that he could see its twinkling lights and it looked warm and inviting. It was an army train, and on the side of it there were big Red Cross signs. He approached it carefully. He'd learned now the danger that sentries represented, but there were no sentries except for two armed men on the roofs of the carriages. He supposed that hospital trains did not have manpower enough to supply sentries every time the train came to a stop.

Some of the windows had open blinds and he could see soldiers inside. The train was jammed full of men; grey-clad men were strewn everywhere, like broken soldiers thrown into a toybox. Many of them were bandaged; most of them were sleeping. There was no movement anywhere. He walked along, staying away from the locomotive. The locomotive would have men who were on duty and awake. The next carriage was fitted with bunk beds for casualties who couldn't walk. This was as crowded as the previous one, with soldiers packed together as close as possible. All the men were wrapped in grey blankets and crammed into the bunks together, looking curiously like tinned sardines.

The door of the third carriage was open, and the light spilled out. Two medical orderlies were seated on the steps, both smoking with the dedication that comes after lengthy denial. In the doorway behind the orderlies, Boris could see an open cupboard, its shelves filled with army blankets. He coveted one of those thick, warm blankets more than anything he could think of in the world.

He waited for a long time, the icy wind cutting through him like a thousand knives. Eventually the orderlies finished their cigarettes and went back into the train. He could see them through the windows, moving along the train. This was his chance, and he got up on the steps and tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened it carefully and stepped inside and up the steps. To his right was a toilet, and behind him the communicating doors to the next carriage. From here he could see right down into the train. He felt the warmth of the heating and heard the snoring, soft moans and restless movements of the injured men. No one was looking this way. He stepped into the soft yellow light and opened the cupboard. He pulled a blanket out slowly, holding the others back with his free hand. It fell out and opened. He dragged it back into the space provided by the doorway. But as he did so the train gave a jolt. From the floor nearby he heard the couplings clatter and there was a hiss of steam from the locomotive as the train jolted twice and started to move.

'Orderly! Orderly! This man needs help! He's bleeding again.' It was a shrill voice, the frightened voice of a young man.

'I'm coming, I'm coming!' An orderly had opened the communicating door from the next carriage. He stood there for a moment, and Boris could recognize him as one of the men who'd been smoking outside. The train groaned and rolled forward, clattering over the steel rails of a junction. Boris stepped back into the shadow and pulled the blanket round him to completely cover his black suit, stinking now and soiled with vomit and excrement, his and other people's. The orderly passed Boris with scarcely a glance at him. Even his disgusting smell attracted no attention here, amongst the sick and injured.

'Bleeding?' said the orderly when he got to the frightened young man. 'Where is he bleeding?'

The train was picking up speed now. It would soon be going too fast for him to jump without the possibility of a damaged leg or foot. He looked out the window. They were passing another train: a troop train filled with soldiers. They stared at him, as they stared at all the wounded, wondering if this was the way they would come back.

Blood had come from the bunk above and made a spotty pattern on the young soldier's face and the blanket. 'That's nothing,' the medical orderly said. 'I'll change his dressing in the morning.'

'I want to move,' said the frightened boy.

'If you can find a place, move,' said the orderly. He smoothed the blankets in the fussy little movements that come automatically to trained nurses.

'You've shit yourself again, haven't you?' said the orderly.

'I couldn't help it,' said the frightened boy.

'You'd better get yourself fresh pyjamas. But this is the last change you get, understand?'

'Yes,' said the boy.

The orderly came back past Boris, but before he opened the communicating door he paused to look at him. Boris met the orderly's eyes and his stomach churned in fear. 'I know your damned tricks,' the orderly said angrily. 'You're not allowed to smoke there. Get back to your bed or your compartment or wherever you're from. You know the regulations.'

Boris nodded.

The orderly slammed the heavy connecting door and disappeared into the next carriage. Boris watched the boy getting out of the bunk to get fresh pyjamas. If Boris could get army pyjamas, and hide his black suit, perhaps they'd feed him along with the rest of them. If he could get something to eat, he'd be able to think more clearly.

He looked out the window. There was another army train waiting on a siding. This one consisted of tanks chained down upon flatbed wagons. His train rumbled past them slowly, hundreds of them. It was as if the whole world were nothing but tanks....

Deighton's obsession in Winter is not with spies or bureaucratic infighting, though the novel features plenty of both.  His fascination is with Germany's social fabric, and the way repeated historical catastrophes shaped and warped it.  In the end, Deighton suggests starkly that middle class Germans on both sides of the Nazi divide could not out-run its nemesis.

Jay

4 January 2018

A long way out on a thin plank over a deep sea: Horse Under Water by Len Deighton.

….I stepped on to the balcony. The stone floor was hot underfoot, and on the grey wooden chairs sat Buddha-like cats squinting into the sunlight. Charly was fixing coffee and toast in the kitchen, holding the front of her silk housecoat closed. I am pleased to tell you that a lot of the coffee-making was a two-handed job….

Horse Under Water (1963) is the first Len Deighton novel I have read. In winter 1991 I made several valiant attempts to summit the novel Winter, but I was too easily distracted.

Horse Under Water starts with our narrator Harry Palmer diving on a sunken World War Two-era German submarine on the coast of the Algarve in Portugal. The sub contains more than meets the eye. Counterfeit currency? A secret log? A weapon hitherto unknown to science? It's up to Palmer to sift the clues and outwit opponents.

(Being a longtime reader of Jack Higgins, I'm familiar with the dangers of sunken Nazi subs making a present-day reappearance. The dangers they pose are not just to divers. They usually contain secrets that will rock today's power-brokers.)

Palmer's biggest opponent as concerns the sub's ramifications seems to be plutocrat cabinet minister Henry Smith. Palmer has an audience with him halfway through the novel, and their conflict is lovingly adumbrated, acid-etched. Palmer leaves none of the fine furnishings of his nemesis unnoted

Excerpt:


....The butler led me along soft corridors, men in red coats and tight trousers looked quietly down from the dark paintings lost in a penumbra of coach varnish. Mr Smith was seated behind a table polished like a guardsman's boot.

A slim eighteenth-century clock with frail marquetry panels paced out the silence, and from the Adam fireplace a coal fire ran pink fingers across the moulded ceiling. On Smith's table a lampshade marshalled the light on to heaps of papers and newspaper clippings. Only the crown of his head was visible. He spared me the embarrassment of interrupting his private study. The butler motioned me to a hostile Sheraton chair.

Smith ran a finger across the open book and scribbled in the margin of one of the typewritten sheets with a gold fountain pen. He turned up a corner of the page, ran a finger-nail along the crease and closed the leather cover.

'Smoke.' There was no trace of query in his voice. He pushed the box across the table with the back of his hand, recapped the pen and clipped it into his waistcoat pocket. He picked up his cigarette, put it into his mouth, drew on it without releasing his grasp on its battered tarnished shape, mashed it into the ashtray with controlled violence, disembowelling the shreds of tobacco from the lacerated paper with his long pink nails. He thumped the ash from his waistcoat.

'You wanted to see me?' he said.

I produced a bent blue packet of Gauloises. I lit one with a flick of the thumb-nail against a Swan match. I tossed the dead match towards the ashtray, allowing the trajectory to carry it on to Smith's pristine paperwork. He carefully picked it up and placed it in the ashtray. I drew on the harsh tobacco. 'No,' I said, denuding my voice of interest, 'not much.'

'You are discreet - that's good.' He picked up a battered filing card, held it under the light and quietly read from it a potted description of my career hi Intelligence.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' I said.

'Good, good,' said Smith, not at all discouraged. 'The report goes on, "inclined to pursue developments beyond requirements out of curiosity. He must be made to understand that curiosity is a dangerous failing in an agent."'

'Is that what you wanted to do,' I asked, 'to tell me about curiosity being dangerous?'

'Not "dangerous",' said Smith. He leaned forward to select a new victim from his ivory cigarette box. The light fell momentarily across his face. It was a hard bony face, and it shone in the electric light like the expressionless busts of Roman emperors in the British Museum. Lips, eyebrows, and the hair on his temples were all colourless. He looked up. 'Fatal.' He took a white cigarette and put it into his white face. He lit the cigarette.

'In wartime soldiers are shot for refusing to obey even the smallest commands,' said Smith in his most gritty voice.

'They shouldn't be.'

'Why not?' His drawl had gone.

'Oppenheim's International Law, sixth edition: only lawful commands need be obeyed.'

It was not the reply that Smith was expecting and he flushed with anger. 'You are demanding that an investigation in Portugal be continued. The Cabinet have instructed that it be closed. We should never have sanctioned such an operation hi the first place. Your refusal is impertinence and unless you change your attitude I shall recommend that severe measures be taken against you.'

He pronounced the personal pronoun with discreet reverence.

'No one owns a spy, mister,' I told him, 'they just pay his salary. I work for the government because I think this is a good place to live, but that doesn't mean that I'll be used as a serf by a self-centred millionaire. What's more,' I said, 'don't give me that "fatal" stuff because I've taken a postgraduate course hi fatality.'

Smith blinked and leaned back into the Louis Quatorze chair. 'So,' he said, finally, 'that's it, is it? The truth is that you think you should be as powerful as a Cabinet Minister?' He rearranged his pen set.

'Power is like a fried egg,' I told him, 'no matter how equally you try to divide it someone is sure to get most.'

Smith leaned forward and said, 'You think that because I hold a controlling interest in companies that make jet engines and automatic weapons it precludes me from having a say in the control of my country.' He held up a hand in an admonishing attitude. 'No, it is now my turn to lecture you. You are a spy; I do not impugn your motives as a spy but you feel free to impugn mine as a manufacturer. You say that you work for the government. What is the government you speak of? You mean as each political party is elected to power all the intelligence groups are disbanded and new ones formed? No, you don't mean that, you mean that you work for the country, for its prosperity, for its power, for its prestige, for its standard of living, for its health scheme, for its high rate of employment. You work for all those things, to keep them and to improve them, just as the motor-car manufacturer does. If there is a way for me to sell, for instance, an extra fifteen thousand vehicles next year, my duty is to do so.

'You might say: it's my duty to increase the prosperity of every Englishman living. That is why it is your duty to do as I say in these matters. Your orders come to you through the legitimate line of command because all your superiors understand these things. If, in order to sell my fifteen thousand vehicles I need your help, you will provide it ...' He paused for a moment before adding, 'without questions.

'Your job is an extension of mine. Your job is to provide success at any price. By means of bribes, by means of theft or by means of murder itself. Men like you are in the dark, subconscious recesses of the nation's brain. You do things that are done and forgotten quickly. The things I've mentioned are the realities of this world. No one deliberately chooses that this should be so. No historian is asked to account for the evil of the world. No man who writes a medical encyclopedia is responsible for the diseases he catalogues. And so it is with you. You are a cipher - you are no more than the ink with which History is written.'

'I'm a stoker in the ship of state?' I asked humbly.

Smith gave a cold smile. 'You are worth less than a substantial foreign contract for Clydeside. You sit here talking of ethics as though you were employed to make ethical decisions. You are nothing in the scheme. You will complete your tasks as ordered: no more, no less. You will be paid a just amount. There is nothing to discuss.' He leaned back in his chair again. It creaked with the shift of weight. His bony hand clamped around the red silk rope that hung beside the curtain.

In my pocket with my keys and some parking-meter sixpences I could feel a smooth polished surface. My fingers closed around it as the butler opened the big panelled doors.

'Show the gentleman out, Laker,' said Smith. I made no move except to put the gleaming silver-coloured metal on his mahogany table. Smith watched it, puzzled and fascinated. I bunched my fingers and flipped it. It scampered across the mahogany surface, clattering against its own bright reflection.

'What's the meaning of this?' said Smith.

'It's a gift for the man who has everything,' I said. I watched Smith's face. 'It's a die for making gold sovereigns.' I watched the butler out of the corner of my eye; he was hanging on to every word. Perhaps he was planning his memoirs for the Sunday papers.

Smith flicked a tongue across his drying lips like a hungry python. 'Wait downstairs, Laker,' he said, 'I'll ring again.' The butler had withdrawn to his notebook before Smith spoke again. 'What has this to do with me?' he said.

'I'll tell you,' I said, and lit another Gauloise while Smith fidgeted with his guilt feelings. This time he left the dead match where it had landed.

'I know of some gear for wolfram-mining that goes to India in regular consignments. I'll tell you, those people in India must be inefficient because they have received tons of it and yet there is no wolfram in the whole Indian subcontinent] You can hardly blame them when they try to resell to - someone just a few miles north.'

Smith's cigarette lay inert in the ashtray and quietly turned to ash.

'There are people in Chungking who will take as much as the Indians send. Of course, it wouldn't be kosher if an English company sold strategic goods to Red China, and the Americans would blacklist them, but what with all this muddle in India everyone ends up happy.' I paused. The clock ticked on like a mechanical heart.

'As a way of moving gold there's nothing to beat...'

'You are just guessing,' said Smith.

I thought of the diary that Smith's confidant Butcher had made available to me and how easy it had made my subsequent guesses, 'I am just guessing,' I agreed.

'Very well,' said Smith in a resigned but businesslike voice, 'how much?'

'I've not come to blackmail you,' I said, 'I just want to press on with my job of stoking without interference from the bridge. I'm not pursuing you. I'm not interested in doing anything beyond my job. But I want you to remember this: 7 am the responsible person in this investigation, not my boss or anyone else in the department. I'll be responsible for what happens to you, whether it's good or bad. Now ring your bell for Laker, I'm leaving before I vomit over your beautiful Kashan carpet.'

Jay

31 December 2017

....'So this is the lot,' Dawlish said. He sniffed contemplatively.

'Yes,' I said. 'I'd guess that most of these people have donated money to the "Young Europe Movement" at one time or another.'

'Jolly good,' said Dawlish, 'I knew you would manage.'

'Oh sure,' I said, 'especially when you wanted to cancel the whole operation.'

Dawlish looked at me over his spectacles, which can get to be very irritating.

'Furthermore,' I said, 'you knew that that girl was employed by the American Narcotics Bureau, and you didn't tell me.'

'Yes,' said Dawlish blandly, 'but she was a very low-echelon employee and I had no wish to inhibit intercourse among the group.' We looked blankly at each other for two or three minutes.

'Social,' Dawlish amended.

'Of course,' I agreed. Dawlish disembowelled his pipe with a penknife.

'When will Smith be arrested?' I asked.

'Arrested?' said Dawlish. 'What an extraordinary question; why would he be arrested?'

'Because he is a corner-stone of an international Fascist movement dedicated to the overthrow of democratic government.' I said it patiently, even though I knew that Dawlish was deliberately leading me on.

Dawlish said, 'You surely don't imagine that they can put everyone who answers that description in jail. Where would we find room for them, and besides, where would the Bonn government get another Civil Service?' He gave a sardonic smile and tapped the pile of documents. 'Our friends here are much more useful where they are - as long as they know that H.M. Government have this little pile hi Kevin Cassel's cellar.'

He opened the drawer of his desk and produced an even more enormous file of documents. Across the front it said 'Young Europe Movement' in Alice's fuse-wire handwriting, and was bulging with months of work that Dawlish had never even told me about.

'You didn't understand your role, my boy,' he said in his smug voice; 'we didn't want you to discover anything. Somehow we knew that you would make them do something indiscreet.'