End of Spies by Alex Gerlis (popular ebook readers .txt) 📕

‘This is definitely your briefcase?’

Falmer said it was and he was terribly grateful, and it was only then that he noticed that the American – an officer – was looking at him suspiciously as he angled the briefcase for him to peer into. The parcel had been torn open and the case was full of American dollar bills and pound notes. He was so shocked that when the officer said you’d better come with me, Charles Falmer said yes, of course.

Frankfurt hadn’t started well for Hanne and Prince. The Americans had taken over the IG Farben building off Fürstenbergerstrasse as their headquarters – it was one of the few large buildings left standing, and the rumour was that the Allied air forces had avoided hitting it so they’d have somewhere to use as a base.

Hanne and Prince went from office to office, from department to department and from floor to floor looking for someone who’d help. But no one had heard of a Friedrich Steiner, nor of der Fluchtweg Falke or anything to do with kestrels or any other bird, or of Nazi escape lines for that matter.

After two days they were inclined to give up, and telephoned Gilbey, who told them he was confident they’d get Steiner sooner or later and felt they’d done their best so should return to England. When they managed to telephone Henry that evening, he sounded upset, worried that his father wouldn’t be coming home. They found the British liaison office in the building and arranged to get on a flight that was leaving in two days from RAF Wahn, just outside Cologne. The liaison officer – he’d introduced himself as Gibson – couldn’t have been more helpful. They told him about their mission and how they’d hit a dead end in Frankfurt and couldn’t find anyone to help them. He walked to the window, looking over the ruined landscape, then turned and spoke quietly.

‘Something you said just then…’

‘About the German – Steiner?’

‘No, about Nazi escape lines: what was it?’

‘We think Friedrich Steiner could have a possible connection to something called der Fluchtweg Falke – the Kestrel escape line.’

‘This could be a total coincidence, of course, but a couple of days ago, the Americans arrested an Englishman found in a bar with a briefcase containing nearly one thousand dollars and five hundred British pounds.’

‘That’s an awful lot of money,’ said Prince, ‘but I’m not sure I see the connection with what we’ve been asking about.’

‘His name is Charles Falmer and he’s a clerk with the British Army in Cologne. As far as I can tell from our chaps there, he’s not very important and wouldn’t be earning much – probably no more than a hundred pounds a year. The only explanation he offered was that he was in Frankfurt for a weekend off and this was his spending money, which as explanations go was about as unconvincing as you can get. You’ve seen this place – who’d come to a bombsite like this to relax? With that amount of money he could have bought half the city. They asked us to have a word with him. According to the Americans, he was caught in one of those bars where men go to meet other men, and at first I thought that was why he was so reluctant to tell us anything, but it still didn’t explain the money.

‘The Americans were minded to charge him with currency violation – they’re very anxious about their zone being flooded with dollars from the black market – and once I explained to him that this was a serious crime, he changed his tune and came up with a complicated story about how his uncle is an important art dealer in London and had given him the money to buy a painting from a man in Frankfurt. He said he was to meet the man in a small square called Elsa-Brändström-Platz, on Guiollettstrasse, where they have a flea market.’

Hanne and Prince looked at each other, still unsure of the point of the story.

‘Frankly, his tale sounded ridiculous, like some cheap detective thriller: he said he was to meet a one-armed man who’d answer to the name “Kestrel”. To be honest with you, I assumed he’d made it up. My commanding officer said we were wasting our time with him and we should allow the Americans to confiscate the dollars and then send him back to Cologne and let our chaps there deal with him. But when you mentioned Kestrel, I put two and two together, though I could be wrong, of course, it could just be a coincidence.’

Prince had been making notes in his little black book. ‘Remind me of his name?’

‘Charles Falmer, last name spelt with an “l”.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘He’s in the American cells in the basement: would you like to meet him?’

Before they were due to meet Falmer, Hanne and Prince had a row. She felt their investigation was too chaotic and Prince asked her what on earth she meant.

‘In Berlin, I think we relied too much on the goodwill of the Russians.’

‘But they’re our allies, Hanne. I trust Gurevich; if it wasn’t for him, you—’

‘That’s the point – you trust him too much, you see him as your friend. I agree he’s very charming and I realise that if wasn’t for him I’d probably be dead, but the fact is, we’re not on the same side as them any longer, are we? I think we ought to have made more effort at the prison – we should have insisted on interrogating Alphonse Schweitzer once he’d given Rauter the Ferret’s real name, and then we should have asked the Russians not to shoot the man who killed Rauter.’

‘Klaus Böhme?’

‘Yes, they shot him the same day: surely he ought to have been interrogated? Maybe he could have told us something. I think we need to stop wandering around Europe being grateful for the opportunity to ask a few questions here and a few