World War 2 Thriller Collection by Len Deighton

Author:Len Deighton [Len Deighton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-11-22T05:00:00+00:00

2

I could see my report about Champion on Schlegel’s desk. Schlegel picked it up. He shook it gently, as if hoping that some new information might drop out of it. ‘No,’ said Schlegel. ‘No. No. No.’

I said nothing. Colonel Schlegel, US Marine Corps (Air Wing), Retired, cut a dapper figure in a lightweight houndstooth three-piece, fake club-tie and button-down cotton shirt. It was the kind of outfit they sell in those Los Angeles shops that have bow windows and plastic Tudor beams. He tapped my report. ‘Maybe you can shaft the rest of them with your inscrutable sarcasm and innocent questions, but me no likee – got it?’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Champion was just seeing his kid, and buying stamps – there’s no other angle. He’s a rich man now: he’s not playing secret agents. Believe me, Colonel. There’s nothing there.’

Schlegel leaned forward to get a small cigar from a box decorated with an eagle trying to eat a scroll marked Semper Fidelis. He pushed the box to me, but I’m trying to give them up.

‘He’s in deep,’ said Schlegel. Puckered scar tissue made it difficult to distinguish his smiles from his scowls. He was a short muscular man with an enviable measure of self-confidence; the kind of personality that you hire to MC an Elks Club stag night.

I waited. The ‘need-to-know’ basis, upon which the department worked, meant that I’d been told only a part of it. Schlegel took his time getting his cigar well alight.

I said, ‘The story about the machineguns fits with everything I’ve been told. The whole story – the stuff about the uncut diamonds providing the money to start the mine, and then the fruit and vegetable imports – that’s all on non-classified file.’

‘Not all of it,’ said Schlegel. ‘Long after the file closes, Champion was still reporting back to this department.’

‘Was he!’

‘Long before my time, of course,’ said Schlegel, to emphasize that this was a British cock-up, less likely to happen now that we had him with us on secondment from Washington. ‘Yes,’ said Schlegel, ‘those machineguns were shipped to Accra on orders from this office. It was all part of the plan to buy Champion into control of the Tix set-up. Champion was our man.’

I remembered all those years when I’d been drinking and dining with the Champions, never suspecting that he was employed by this office.

Perhaps Schlegel mistook my silence for disbelief. ‘It was a good thing while it lasted,’ he said. ‘Champion was in and out of Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, arguing about his melons, carrots and potatoes, keeping his eyes open and dropping a few words to the right people, doing us all a power of good. And the way that Champion had scored – selling cannons to some freaky little terrorist outfit – all helped.’

‘So what was the fadeout?’

Schlegel blew a piece of tobacco off his lip, with enough force to make the bookcase rattle. ‘The feedback of information began to sag. Champion said the French were starting to lean on him, and it was getting too dangerous.

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