The Secret Lovers by Charles McCarry

Author:Charles McCarry [McCarry, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780715645567
Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co

TWELVE

1

Wilson had been to Zurich, and he carried the data he had gathered there on an index card in an inside pocket. Christopher noticed changes in the Security man; he spoke more gently, he had begun to look Christopher in the eye. As he collected information, he abandoned mannerisms. He believed now that he was close to the truth.

“The dates fit,” he said. “The phony passport Bülow had on him when he died could have been made in Zurich. There’s a fellow there, a former Abwehr forger, who does similar work.”

“What about the airlines, the hotel, car rentals?”

“Zero. I’d have used phony paper, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but the hotel clerk might have remembered a night’s absence.”

Wilson shook his head in bewilderment. “It’s hard. We have this liaison thing with the Swiss, that we won’t operate on their territory. Bern takes it seriously. They wouldn’t let me talk to the hotel fellow without informing the Swiss. I wanted to send him some money in an envelope and have him meet me in Germany. Bern said that that would transgress the parameters of liaison proprieties.”

“What about the money? It went from Zurich to Berlin.”

Christopher had no hope that Wilson or anyone else could breach the security of the Swiss banking system. But Wilson smiled in triumph. Years before, he said, when he was in the FBI, he had found an embezzler that the Swiss had wanted, and the man had been brought back to Zurich, money and all, in the most discreet possible way.

“Embezzlement, to the Swiss, is what arson is to the Japanese,” Wilson said. “Cops have a kind of freemasonry—catch a crook, make a friend. The embezzler I caught made me a true friend of one particular Swiss cop. I had supper with my friend. He was able to help, because there is nothing in Switzerland that the Swiss police don’t know. It makes you envious. The money, Paul, went to Berlin from a numbered account in the Swiss Credit Bank. This is a photo of the transfer order, with one of the authorized signatures. It’s a funny name, of course, but do you know the handwriting?”

Christopher looked at the card. He felt no anger, no surprise. It was what he had expected. His talent, the gift of the operative, was to separate from years of talk the one phrase that betrayed the truth, and from miles of action the single deed that revealed the person.

“Yes,” he said, “I know the handwriting.”

Wilson took the photocopy back. He looked at Christopher with undisguised sympathy. When he spoke there was tenderness, almost a caress, in his hoarse voice.

“What now?” he asked.

“You’ll have to put it in the mill. But knowing who had Bülow killed is no good to us. Why? I’d want to know that before I swept them up.”

“So would I. I think we ought to let it run. Maybe even make something happen.”

“I want to talk to Patchen.”

Wilson took a cable out of his briefcase and handed it to Christopher.

“He wants to talk to you,” Wilson said.

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