man smiled and slipped the gun into his pocket. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react when I dragged you in here.” He extracted a leather and gold cigarette case from his inside pocket and flicked it open. Chavasse took one and leaned across for the proffered light.
He hadn’t been working for the Chief for five years without being able to tell a professional when he saw one. People in his line of business carried a special aura around with them, indefinable and yet sensed at once by the trained agent: One could even work out the nationality by attitude, methods employed and other trademarks; but in this case he was puzzled.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Hardt’s the name, Mr Chavasse,” the man told him. “Mark Hardt.”
Chavasse frowned. “A German name and yet you’re not a German.”
“Israeli.” Hardt grinned. “A slightly bastardized form by Winchester out of Emmanuel College.”
The picture was beginning to take shape. “Israeli Intelligence?” Chavasse asked.
Hardt shook his head. “Once upon a time, but now nothing so official. Let’s say I’m a member of an organization which by the very nature of its ends is compelled to work underground.”
“I see,” Chavasse said softly. “And what exactly are your aims at the moment?”
“The same as yours,” Hardt said calmly. “I want that manuscript, but even more than that I want Caspar Schultz.” Before Chavasse could reply, he got to his feet and moved to the door. “I think I’d better go into the corridor and see what’s going on.”
The door closed softly behind him and Chavasse sat on the edge of the bunk, a slight frown on his face, as he considered the implications of what Hardt had said. It was well known that there was at least one strong Jewish underground unit which had been working ceaselessly since the end of the war in all parts of the world, tracking down Nazi war criminals who had evaded the Allied net in 1945. He had heard that its members were fanatically devoted to their task, brave people who had dedicated their lives to bringing some of the inhuman monsters responsible for Belsen, Auschwitz and other hell-holes, to justice.
On several occasions during his career with the Bureau he had found himself competing with the agents of other Powers towards the same end, but this was different—this was very different.
The train started to move, the door opened and Hardt slipped in. He grinned. “I just saw Steiner. He’s been raging like a lion up and down the track. It was finally pointed out to him that you were probably several miles away by now and he was persuaded to come back on board. I don’t fancy your chances if he ever manages to get his hands on you.”
“I’ll try to see that he doesn’t.” Chavasse nodded towards the American uniform. “A neat touch, your disguise. After the crime, the criminal simply ceases to exist, eh?”
Hardt nodded. “It’s proved its worth on several occasions, although the spectacles can be a bit of a nuisance. I can’t see a damned thing in them.”
He locked the door, pulled a stool from beneath the bunk and sat on it, his shoulders resting comfortably against the wall. “Don’t you think it’s time we got down to business?”
Chavasse nodded. “All right, but you first. How much do you know about this affair?”
“Before I start just tell me one thing,” Hardt said. “It is Muller who is dead, isn’t it? I heard one of the other passengers say something about a shooting and then Steiner marched you along the corridor.”
Chavasse nodded. “I had a cup of coffee just before Osnabruck. Whatever was in it put me out for a good half hour. When I came round, Muller was lying in the corner, shot through the heart.”
“A neat frame on somebody’s part.”
“As a matter of fact I thought it was your handiwork,” Chavasse told him. “What exactly were you looking for in my compartment?”
“Anything I could find,” Hardt said. “I knew Muller was supposed to meet you at Osnabruck. I didn’t expect him to be carrying the manuscript, but I thought he might take you to it, even to Schultz.”
“And you intended to follow us?” Chavasse said.
“Naturally,” Hardt told him.
Chavasse lit another cigarette. “Just tell me one thing. How the hell do you know so much?”
Hardt smiled. “We first came across Muller a fortnight ago when he approached a certain German publisher and offered him Schultz’s manuscript.”
“How did you manage to find out about that?”
“This particular publisher is a man we’ve been after for three years now. We had a girl planted in his office. She tipped us off about Muller.”
“Did you actually meet him?”
Hardt shook his head. “Unfortunately the publisher got some of his Nazi friends on the job. Muller was living in Bremen at the time. He left one jump ahead of them and us.”
“And you lost track of him, I presume?”
Hardt nodded. “Until we heard about you.”
“I’d like to hear how you managed that,” Chavasse said. “It should be most interesting.”
Hardt grinned. “An organization like ours has friends everywhere. When Muller approached the firm of publishers you’re supposed to be representing, the directors had a word with Sir George Harvey, one of their biggest shareholders. He got in touch with the Foreign Secretary who put the matter in the hands of the Bureau.”
Chavasse frowned. “What do you know about the Bureau?”
“I know it’s a special organization formed to handle the dirtier and more complicated jobs,” Hardt said. “The sort of things M.I.5 and the Secret Service don’t want to touch.”
“But how did you know I was travelling on this train to meet Muller?” Chavasse said.
“Remember that the arrangement with Muller, by which he was supposed to contact you at Osnabruck, was made through the managing director of the publishing firm. He was naturally supposed to keep the details to himself.”
“Presumably he didn’t?”
Hardt nodded. “I suppose it was too good a tale to keep from his fellow directors and he told them everything over dinner that same evening. Luckily one of them happens to be sympathetic to our work and thought we might be interested. He got in touch with our man in London who passed the information over to me at once. As I was in Hamburg, it was rather short notice, but I managed to get on a mid-morning flight to Rotterdam and joined the train there.”
“That still doesn’t explain how the people who killed Muller knew we were supposed to meet on this train,” Chavasse said. “I can’t see how there could possibly have been another leak from the London end. I don’t think it’s very probable that there’s also a Nazi sympathizer on the board of directors of the firm I’m supposed to be representing.”
Hardt
