ask for?" interjected the doctor in Nuremberg arrogantly.
"Something, anything that makes sense! I've been treated abominably, given promise after promise with nothing to show for them. Now, at this minute, our associates cannot even be reached!"
"They have special arrangements, as befits confidential consultants."
"I used them. The operator said her computers show that the phones were disconnected, manually disconnected. What more do you need, Hans? The .. . our associates have cut us off, cut us all off! Where are they?"
Seconds passed before Traupman spoke.
"If what you say is accurate," he said quietly, "it's most disturbing. I assume you're at the hotel."
41 am."
"Stay there. I'll drive home, reach several others, and call you back. It may take me over an hour."
"It doesn't matter. just call me back."
Nearly two hours passed before the Lutetia phone rang.
"Yes?"
said Kroeger, pouncing on it.
"Something very unusual has happened. What you told me is true .. . more than true, it's catastrophic. The one man in Paris who knows where our associates were -located went over and found the police everywhere."
"Then they have disappeared!"
"Worse than that. At four thirty-seven this morning, their 'bookkeeper' reached our finance department, and with a plausible, if outrageous, story involving women and young boys and drugs and high French officials, requested an enormous sum of money-to be verified later as proper expenditures, of course."
"But there is no later, no verification."
"Obviously. They're cowards and traitors. We'll hunt them to the ends of the earth."
"Your hunting them doesn't help me. My creation has reached the critical period. What do I do? I must find him!"
"We've talked it over. It's not the most favorable course of action, but we think it's the only one you've got. Reach Moreau at the [email protected] Bureau. He knows everything that happens in French intelligence circles."
"How do I reach him?"
"Do you know what he looks like?"
"I've seen photographs, yes."
"It must be done on the outside, no phone calls, no messages, a simple meeting in the street, or a cafe, someplace where no, one would suspect an encounter. Say something short, no more than a sentence or two, in a way that only he can hear. The important thing is for you to use the word brotberbood."
"What then?"
"He may dismiss you, but even as he does so he'll tell you where to meet him. It will be a common place, probably crowded, and the hour late."
"Youtold me before to be suspicious of him."
"We've taken that into consideration, but we have a counterattack should he not be the sympathizer he claims to be. To date, we've paid over twenty million francs into his Swiss account, substantiated by written records. He would be destroyed, sent to prison for years, if those records were anonymously leaked to the French government, not to mention the press. He could not deny them. Use it if you have to."
"I'll head for the [email protected] immediately," said Kroeger.
"Perhaps tomorrow, Harry Latham."
n his office at the [email protected] Bureau, Claude Moreau studied the decoded message from his man in Bonn.
The content was judgmental, not factual, and not terribly enlightening, but there was a substance to it that could be helpful.
In yesterday's session, the Bundestag fully addressed the problem of the spreading Nazi revivals throughout Germany, the parties coalescing, united in their denunciations. However, my inside sources, several of whom dine frequently with the leaders of the left and the right factions report that there is rampant cynicism among both. The liberals don't trust the conservative denouncements, and a small circle of conservatives seem to wink at their own oratory. The leaders of industry, of course, are appalled, fearing the Nazi movement will close markets to them abroad, but are reluctant to support the socialistic ally inclined left, and do not know' whom on the right to trust. Their money flows like spreading inkblots throughout Bonn, without sure direction.
Moreau leaned back in his chair, mentally abstracting the phrase that caught his attention. Not only caught it, but set it on fire. A small circle of conservatives seem to wink at their own oratory.
Who, specifically, were they? What were the names? And why didn't his man in Bonn include them?
He picked up his console phone, the line to his secretary.
"I want to go on absolute scrambler, no intercepts possible." .
"I'll activate the procedure, sit, and you'll know by the five second hum on line three, as usual," said the female voice in the outer office.
"Thank you, Monique, and since my wife expects me for lunch at L'Escargot in a few minutes, she'll undoubtedly