Once Departed

Chapter Three

Quint Jones, automatically, had gone into the Kokutsu-dachi layout position, in half squat, his hands forward from his body, palms forward. He straightened now, his expression wry.

It was Jose Garcia Mendez, or Joe Garcia, as he would have it. All five feet eight inches of him, and on this occasion his tight little Spanish mustache was twitching, as he took in the fallen detective, the stance of the American, the second detective clawing for his gun.

He spoke in Spanish so rapidly that Quint Jones could follow hardly a quarter of it. The English speaking representative of Madrid law let his weapon slide back into its shoulder holster and snapped back an answer so staccato fast that the columnist gave up even the attempt to understand.

He watched his opponent of a moment ago who had come to his feet and was straightening his clothes, meanwhile massacring Quint with his eyes, though obviously Garcia’s entry had changed his mind about continuing the fray—if he had any desire to continue it. The karate form of hand to hand combat takes the truculence quickly out of any but the most ardent foe.

Quint looked back at Joe Garcia and interrupted that worthy’s diatribe with a sour, “Look, has it got to the point today where the mobs that go drifting through this apartment while I’m trying to work don’t even bother to knock?”

Garcia left the cop he’d been orally belaboring and turned a surprised face to the American. “But, Quint, old chum, I’ve just been reading this square the riot act. The old rescue in the nick of time routine. I made the scene right…”

“Rescued who?” Quint growled sacastically. “Another minute and I would have finished these two burlesque cops off.”

Garcia’s face lost some of its good humor. “And then what would have happened, pal? These guys are just doing their duty. Their superiors might take a dim view of you practicing your jujitsu, or whatever you call it, on them.” His mouth smiled. “Aren’t you getting tired of being ordered out of countries? What was the last one, Portugal?”

“Touche” Quint growled. “I get the message.” He turned back to the older of the two police. “I’m sorry. In my country, even the police aren’t allowed to search a man’s personal effects without a warrant. I got carried away.”

The detective’s eyes went from the American to Jose Garcia, and then back again. His face worked in irritation. He said, finally, in English, “Senor Jones refuses to divulge the source of his information on the death of the Englishman Brett-Home.”

Joe Garcia turned back to Quint. “What information? Did you know Ronald, Quint?”

“Barely. A friend told me about his being found dead. That’s all I know about it.”

Garcia turned back to the plainclothesman. “Mr. Jones is a friend of Michael Woolman, of World Wide Press, who discovered the body. Undoubtedly that was the source of his information. Am I correct, pal?”

Quint shrugged. There was obviously no point in shielding Mike, if that was the situation. He wondered why Mike hadn’t mentioned the fact. And wondered further about the circumstance which led to his discovering the Englishman’s corpse.

Garcia said to the detective, “I am sure Mr. Jones has given you whatever information he possesses. If there are other questions, you can call upon him again later.”

Of a sudden, all was good temper again.

Quint held out a hand to the younger cop, twisted his face ruefully, turned on his charm. “Sorry,” he said, as though he meant it.

The other shrugged and shook. The two said their goodbyes and left dutifully.

Quint went over to the sideboard and poured himself a double Fundador. “Drink?” he said, without turning. Now that the excitement was over, he felt shaken, as always when physical action had terminated. When in emergency, he acted cool enough, he found, but when the danger point was over reaction hit him hard.

Garcia didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “You know, pal, you’d make a top politician, especially in one of your democratic countries. You can turn it on and off like a tap.”

The American tossed the drink back, stiff wristed, and turned to the other. Garcia had made himself at home on the couch, one neatly trousered leg crossed over the other.

Quint said, “What the devil are you talking about?”

“The old magnetic personality. If that young sap had stuck around another few minutes, you would have had him kissing you.”

“Oh, great,” Quint growled. Something Mike Woolman had said about Garcia came back to him. He said, “I didn’t have to turn on the magnetic personality. All you had to do was tell them to run along, and they ran.”

Joe Garcia flicked his thumbnail along his neat mustache. “Anything for a pal. As a matter of fact, my old man is a personal friend of some of the big Falange mucky-mucks. I wouldn’t want to throw too much weight around, but I can fix a traffic ticket, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” Quint said. He resumed his chair behind the typewriter, and looked at it gloomily. “My agent’s been riding my tail to keep him supplied further in advance with columns. Three’ll get you five, I don’t finish even my regular quota this week.”

Garcia said easily, “I read that piece you did on El Caudillo. Really, chum, do you think it’s good policy to give Franco a working over while living here in Spain?”

Quint looked at him flatly. “The authorities can always kick me out if they don’t like my version of what I see. Like you said, Portugal was the last place. However, if old lard-assed Franco, as Papa Hemingway used to call him, wants to continue this present we’re-all-good-democrats-together skit, and suck up to such outfits as NATO and the Common Market, he’d better take it easy on expelling newspaper columnists syndicated in a few hundred papers throughout the free world.”

Garcia flushed, for once the bonhomie gone from his expression. “Just a suggestion, chum,” he said unhappily. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your business.”

“You couldn’t,” Quint said. “Listen, Garcia, what did you come up here for? These are supposed to be my working hours.”

“I was just passing,” the Spaniard said. He shifted in his chair. “To tell you the truth, I was thinking about the shindig at Ferd and Marty’s last night. And about poor Ronald.” He shifted again. Recrossed his legs. “It wasn’t exactly the sort of blowout you usually turn up for.”

Quint held up a hand. “Please, let’s not try to be subtle. Come right out and say what you want to know is do I have any inside dope on Brett-Home. Everybody else in town has been in here this morning asking me. I’ll give you the same answer. I don’t know a damn thing about him. I didn’t even know he was a British agent…”

Garcia’s eyebrows went up.

“… until Mike Woolman told me this morning.”

The Spaniard came to his feet. “None of my business anyway,” he said. “But from what I’ve heard it was sure a screwy killing.”

Quint said, “Mike mentioned that the guy was all torn up as though a tiger had worked him over.”

“Man, you said it. But that ain’t the worst, chum. The autopsy revealed that the kidneys are missing.”

The American stared at him. “Missing?”

“That’s right, pal. Our homicide people figure they’ve got a real fruitcake on their hands. Maybe a psychopathic cannibal.” Garcia turned to go.

Quint didn’t follow him to the door. When the other got there, and with knob in hand, he turned back as though he’d forgotten something.

“Oh, by the way, old Ronald left a note scribbled on his desk. The flatfeet don’t know if it’s got anything to do with his death or not. What does this mean to you? Why was it necessary to burn H’s body?”

Quint looked at him blankly. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. Why should it?”

“Search me,” Garcia shrugged. “Just thought I’d ask.”

The ragged young man drifted slowly, slowly back into consciousness, almost as though dreading the return to reality. The warm wave of reasoning ebbed and flowed, touched and then retreated.

Even before his eyes opened, he was dimly, dimly aware of a flickering of light. A glaringly bright flickering of light where largely there was gloom.

His lids slitted infinitesimally, so that an observer would have had to bend close to realize that they were parted at all. But though now he could see, it was as though through a dark veil. And then the flickering of light again. Realization came from far and far. The beams of light were coming through a slatted window. Slatted Spanish style to exclude the dazzle and suffocation of the mid-day sun of Iberia, but free to admit whatever faintest breeze.

From seemingly far, far away in both space and time, memory sidled back. Spending his last peseta in a bar for a copa of wine, and the nibble of tapa that came with it, in his case, a bit of cheese on a bit of bread. The despair of knowing it to be the last. The despair of clothes that could no longer be kept neat, and hence an advertisement of his worthiness to be employed. The despair of knowing that this night there was to be no bed, no alternative to roaming the streets, other than a hiding place, away from the Guardia Civil, in some dark doorway.

And then the stranger. The well dressed stranger. The foreigner who still spoke such excellent Castilian. The generous patron. And the food! And the drink!

And then, somewhere, where? the falling away into bottomless sleep.

And now this. The languor. The weakness of body and will, even as he returned to reality. To the consciousness that he lay stretched on some hard, though not uncomfortable, surface. In a darkened room. In a room so lit through the flickering of sun through slatted windows that it could scarce be made out.

He seemed to be coming from a sleep that had lasted eons but left him limp and resistless. Weak and not caring. Doubtful of the necessity for tomorrow. Doubtful of all necessity.

And then from the far distances across the room there was a new gleaming, a new reflection, pin points of gleam flickering but occasionally, but nearing, nearing…

… nearing, nearing. Two pin points of gleam, reflecting the sun through the shutters, depending on their gleam for the sun through the slats of the shutters. Nearing, nearing, now descending toward. Toward where ?

Deep, deep, impossibly, uselessly deep within his feeble consciousness came up the cry of terror. The cry to resist, to survive, to live, to live, to live. Nothing could matter but life. To live, to live. But so faint, so far.

Barely he could feel the prick of the dual points of gleam upon his throat. No pain. Only the knowledge of penetration of his life.

And then the feel of drain. Of slow gentle drain of the juice of existence. The red warm juice of existence.

Away, away. And far away the realization that there was no more poverty to be. No more a last desperate peseta. No more the employment that would never come. No more the nights without the warmness of bed. No more. For the warm juice of life was draining away…

… away, away…

Quentin Jones parked his Renault 4L on Calle de Alcala, one block up from the Plaza de la Cibeles, and hoofed it from there in the direction of the Puerta del Sol. It was pushing two o’clock and the streets were pedestrian packed as streets can be packed only in a modern city where the institution of the automobile is unknown to nine persons out of ten. In a matter of minutes the stores were going to close, and the present bustle would melt astonishingly, and remain melted until the siesta period ended and business resumed, somewhere between four and five o’clock—all according to how the individual businessman was reacting to the government’s attempt to cut short the three or four hour lunch period.

He cut across Alcala and up the side street Calle Marques de Cubas for one block, turned right for another block to emerge on Calle Jovellanos. The Edelweiss was up at the end of the street. Inwardly, Quint shrugged. The man had been in Madrid for only a couple of weeks, no more. And here he was eating in a German restaurant two meals out of three.

Quint had a sneaking suspicion that if the other were to move to Germany for a time, he’d seek out a Spanish type establishment for his meals. Maybe it was travel snobbery, he decided wryly, but Quentin Jones ate Italian food in Italy, French in France, Spanish in Spain. And in the States, steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs and other American specialties, which if ordered abroad meant disaster. He had never had an edible hamburger outside the borders of the United States and had long since given up the project.

The Edelweiss even managed a Teutonic air. A breath of Germany exported to Castile. There was a heavy richness in the decor; a feeling that the businessmen bellied up to the bar, drinking their dark dunkles beer, averaged a good twenty or thirty pounds more than would the clients of a more typical Madrid establishment; an absence of the ever present odor of olive oil without which a Spanish restaurant is just not Spanish.

Quentin Jones let his eyes drift around the room, as though looking for a table. Tables were scarce this time of day.

Somebody waved to him, “Hey, Quint.”

He waved back. Twisted his mouth as though in consideration, then made his way through the tables to the other, who had one all to himself.

Quint said, “Hi, Bart. Mind if I join you? Privacy, you might prefer, but if I know the Edelweiss, in about yea many minutes the waiter is going to unload a couple of tourists on you. Tables are shared here.”

Bart Digby had half come to his feet. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Have a seat. Glad to have somebody to talk to.” He grinned his boyish grin. “Wow, was that a party last night. You wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Dave Shepherd, would you? Well, there was this girl Joanne something-or-other, and she went looking for the bathroom and opened the wrong door and…”

Quint grimaced. “I heard about it,” he said. “By this time, evidently all Madrid has heard about it.”

“Oh,” Digby said.

The waiter came around. Digby was already into his liver dumpling soup, but Quint ordered Hose im Topf, a rabbit pate that was good in the German restaurant, and Weisswurst, a white sausage made of veal, calves’ brains and spleen which he considered the best single dish ever dreamed up by the herrenvolk. To wash it down he asked for a half bottle of Niersteiner.

There was a watchful something in Digby’s manner. Knowing the man’s background, Quint Jones wondered how he could have ever been taken in by the other’s camouflage as a more average than average young American businessman on the make. Crew cut and overly aggressive voice to the contrary, Bart Digby had obviously, now that Quint really looked at him, got more of his education from Hard Knocks University than he had from such as Harvard Business School.

Quint said idly, “I suppose you heard the other news too. About your friend.”

Digby looked at him for a long moment. “I’d heard about it,” he said evenly, “but I’m surprised that you have.”

“Newspaper folk have special sources,” Quint said. The wine had arrived, and he watched as the cork was pulled and a small amount poured for his approval. He sipped it and nodded, and the waiter half filled the wineglass.

Quint looked up at his companion. “But, so have folk connected with the U.S. Embassy. So I suppose that’s how you found out about Brett-Home’s being killed. The police are evidently trying to hush the whole thing up. Bad for the tourist trade.”

Digby said, “I have no connections with the American Embassy. Not any longer.”

Quint said nothing, very politely.

Bart Digby scowled at him, but dropped the point. He said, “What’s your interest?”

But the waiter was approaching with Quint’s food, and for the moment, both of them held silence.

When he had gone, Quint shrugged. “You know the business I’m in. I get paid for being curious about things and then commenting on them if they’re interesting enough.” He took a bite of his sausage. “This has all the earmarks of being very interesting indeed.”

Bart Digby thought about it for awhile. “I wouldn’t rush into print on this thing, Quint.”

“So who’s rushing? All morning my work’s been interrupted by characters digging into my relationship with Brett-Home.”

“Oh?” The other’s eyes narrowed again. “Just what was your relationship? You told me last night you knew him.”

“I knew him vaguely. Which brings to mind, what was your own relationship?”

Digby pursed his lips. His answer came too pat. “We ran into each other once, in a while on various assignments when I was still with the C.I.A. So when I got here to Madrid and ran into him, we got together to have a few drinks. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” Quint said.

“What does that supposed to mean?”

“It means that something big was supposed to happen at the Dempsey party. And you probably knew what it was. Ronald Brett-Home getting himself killed evidently threw a wrench into the works.” Quint finished off his sausage. “You know, the next time the Spanish police start pestering me about it, I might drop them a few hints about you just to get them off my own back.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re an American. Damn it, Jones, you’ve got some responsibilities to your country.”

The columnist hid his satisfaction. He was getting near to pay dirt. “How do I know that going along with you is to my country’s advantage? For all I know, you’ve sold out to the Russians. Remember? You’re supposed to be an ex-C.I.A. man. Who are you to tell me what my responsibilities are?” He let his voice go slightly heated.

Digby’s face worked angrily for a moment, then he suddenly changed attitude. “Look here, Quentin Jones, I mentioned last night, I admired your articles. I’m going to tell you some things off the record.”

Quint leaned back in his chair. They were in a corner where eavesdropping would have been impractical. “All right.”

The former operative squirmed in his chair. Finally he said, “What do you know about Martin Bormann? Or, for that matter, Heinrich Mueller, or Doktor Stahlecker?”

“Bormann? Hitler’s right hand man, in the final days. Hitler’s secretary for years, and the executor of his final will and testament. Toward the last they made him the Party Minister, the head of the Nazi Party. There was supposed to be some kind of mystery about his death, after Hitler committed suicide and the Red Army stormed Berlin. They never found his body but Arthus Axman, the Hitler Youth leader, claimed he saw it lying under the bridge where the Invalidenstrasse crosses the railroad tracks.” Quint thought. “Heinrich Mueller? He was the head of the Gestapo. There was some stuff about him in the papers not so long ago. When they investigated his grave, it was found to contain the bones of parts of three skeletons—none of which could have been his. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Doktor whoever-you-said.”

“You’ve got a good memory,” Bart Digby grudged. “The fact of the matter is, it’s never been proven that Bormann, Mueller and Doktor Stahlecker ever died. They were three of the Fuhrer’s most rabid adherents. Had they been tried at Nurenberg, all three would have gotten the noose. It couldn’t have happened to nicer people. All three were with Hitler and Goebbels right to the very end. And after Adolf Hitler killed himself they tried to escape. Okay. Stick a pin there.”

The self professed former C.I.A. man took a deep gulp of his dark beer. “Have you heard of General Reinhard Gehlen?”

The columnist was scowling, wondering where all this historic grubbing was getting them. But he said, “One of Hitler’s former intelligence chiefs. Now head of west German intelligence.”

“That’s right. Look, the usual story is that the Americans and Russians were all buddy-buddy after they defeated the Nazis. And that it came as a great shock to Truman and other American leaders when the commies started pulling tricks. The fact is that both sides began pulling tricks before the war really ended. Tricks against each other. Preparing for the Cold War to come. Our people dashed in like a shot to corral Von Braun and other rocket experts, before the Soviets could get them. We also dashed in and cornered General Gehlen and his organization and put them to work for us—at the same work they had been doing for Hitler, spying on the Russians. After West Germany became a sovereign state in 1955, Gehlen stopped working for Uncle Sam and became head of the German Federal Intelligence Service.”

“What in the devil is all this building up to?” Quint said in irritation.

Bart Digby leaned forward, as though coming to his point. “Quint, world politics are in a delicate balance. One day a new country drops into the Soviet orbit, lines up with the Russkies. Cuba is an example. Another day, one of the other formerly neutral countries lines up with the west. Say, Iran, or Morocco, or wherever. But one hell of a lot of them remain still on the fence. Listening to our propaganda but perhaps not buying it; listening to their propaganda, and not quite buying that either. It’s nip and tuck, Quint.”

Quint Jones said dryly, “This isn’t exactly news to me. I make my living commenting on such things as world affairs.”

The other nodded and his voice was bitter. “I know,” he said. “That’s why you worry me. One of your typical snide columns, dropped into the mess that’s brewing now, could cause all sorts of stink.”

Quint poured the balance of his wine into his glass and sipped it, waiting for the other to finish.

“All right,” Digby said. “One of the current commie propaganda blasts is that the West is encouraging the reemergence of Hitlerism. That West Germany’s government is full of former Nazis such as General Gehlen. That more and more of the old Hitler team are out from cover and slipping into prominent positions. If they could sell the world on this, they’d have made a strong point with liberals and progressives everywhere, and one hell of a lot of liberals are coming to power in these new Asian and African countries, not to speak of Latin America.”

“Okay,” Quint said. “Drop the other shoe.”

Digby looked into his eyes. “Quint, if the commies found Martin Bormann, Hitler’s former right hand man, and put over the story that Bormann was trying to set up a new neo-Nazi group, and that the West Germans—and behind them the United States—were supporting him, the fat would be in the fire.”

Quint chuckled. “That’s quite an if.”

Bart Digby dropped his bomb. “The evidence is that Martin Bormann, and probably Doktor Stahlecker, are somewhere here in Spain.”

Quint stared at him.

The other said emptily, “If so, we’ve got to get to him first. We’ve got to get him and either retry him, or, better still, execute the sentence he was given in absentia. It’s the only way to prove we hate the Nazi dream just as much as anyone else.”

After Bart Digby had left, Quint sat for awhile over Fundador and a cup of black coffee. The other had painted an interesting picture, and the American columnist wondered just how much of it was to be completely believed. He couldn’t quite swallow Digby’s contention that he had resigned from the C.I.A. On the face of it, the man was vitally interested in this possibility of Martin Bormann being in hiding in Spain. And a man without a job doesn’t usually involve himself in such poorly remunerative matters.

Of course, there was also the possibility that Bart Digby had resigned—or been fired, as Mike Woolman had it—from the C.I.A. and was not peddling his services elsewhere. Nobody as yet had mentioned why the Central Intelligence Agency and Bartholomew Digby had parted ways. Was it because his superiors had caught him delving into matters of which they didn’t approve?

If the story he had told about Martin Bormann was correct, there was still another angle. It wasn’t exactly a new idea. In fact, it was sometimes told about Hitler himself. That Hitler had lived, that he had been smuggled out of collapsing Berlin, and by submarine been taken to the Argentine, or some such, where he remained in hiding waiting his chance to regain power. The trouble with that particular bit of fantasy was that immediately before his suicide, Hitler, a badly wounded, mentally shaken man who dragged one foot as he walked, had celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. Persons who had been present described him as senile, his head and hands shaking continually. Had he escaped, even in this condition, how old would he be in 1968? Seventy-nine years of age. Not exactly the time of life to start regaining an empire. The same applied to Bormann who had probably been somewhere in his forties at the time of his disappearance. He wouldn’t be exactly a young man twenty-five years after.

Quint grimaced and finished his double shot of cognac. He considered another. No, foul it! If he was ever going to get any work done, he’d have to get back to the apartment. He hated to work in the afternoon, particularly after he’d had a few drinks, but he had to get cracking.

He paid his bill, and started back to the car. Traffic was lighter, but already beginning to resume volume. He darted a look at his watch. He’d been in the German restaurant talking to Bart Digby for longer than he had thought. He’d have to get a move on, or the whole day would be shot.

It wasn’t in the cards. When he got back to the parked Renault, it was to find Mike Woolman leaning against it, obviously waiting for him.

Quint said, “Gangway, Buster. I haven’t any time for the likes of you. This downtrodden proletarian has to get back to the sweatshop and get exploited by the bloodsucking capitalists.”

“Put a good title on that,” Mike said, “and think up a snappy ending, and you could sell it. What’d you find out?”

Quint looked at him warily. “What’d I find out about what?”

Mike sighed. He pulled the morning edition of the Madrid Pueblo from his jacket pocket and slapped it smartly against his knee. “Look,” he said, “come on up to Chicote’s, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Never touch the stuff,” Quint told him. “I’ve got to get back and do some work.”

“I’ll tell you what I know, if you tell me what you know,” Mike said.

Quint looked at him sourly. “If my poor sainted mother knew I hung around with bad influences like you… okay, let’s go.”

Chicote’s, one of the half dozen most famed bars in the world, is located at No. 12, Jose Antonio, about a hundred yards up the street from where Quint had parked. They made their way in that direction.

Something there is about a score or so saloons throughout the world that gives them a soul, the very soul of the city in which they dispense the beverage that sooths. Sloppy Joe’s in Havana, Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans, Harry’s in Venice, the Raffles Bar in Singapore, the Crystal in Tombstone, McSorley’s in New York. Each of these are the cities in which they exist. Pat O’Brien’s is New Orleans; Harry’s New York Bar, in Paris, is the Paris of the expatriate American. Just as Dean’s in Tangier, was Tangier, and the city and Dean’s died together, it was never the same after the old bartender passed away.

So it is that Chicote’s is Madrid’s bar. Internationally famed, wherever the drinking set bend elbows. And what made it so? The endless publicity given gratis by such as Papa Hemingway in his stories? The personality of the original Chicote himself? The fact that the place is the hangout of the most beautiful whores in Spain? The fabulous liquor museum in the basement—the largest collection of alcoholic drinks in the world? Perhaps all of these things.

Be that as it may, when Quint Jones and Mike Woolman pushed their way through the door, emerging from the white glare of the afternoon sun of Spain into the dim cool of the large bar, it wasn’t in search of any of the establishment’s claims to fame other than its liquor. Spanish laws are lax, if not non-existent, when it comes to beverages, but there is no record of a customer ever complaining of cut whisky, or a phonied up vintage date on his wine bottle in Chicote’s.

Mike darted a nervous glance around the Spanish equivalent of a cocktail lounge, which made up the first large room as you entered from the street. The long bar was beyond. Aside from half a dozen lackadaisical tarts, sitting alone at their tables, empty coffee cups before them and awaiting a trade that seldom developed this time of day, the lounge was empty.

Mike banged himself with his paper and said, “Let’s get in a corner here. Some of the bartenders speak English.”

They found a table, Quint ordered Fundador and Mike, Veterano cognac.

Quint grunted at the other’s choice of brandy. “That stuff’s too sweet,” he said, as the waiter poured the double shot.

“Thank God you don’t have to drink it,” Mike said.

When the waiter was gone, Quint sipped his drink and said, “Okay. You tell yours first.”

The newsman said, “Nothing startling but it backs some of the possibilities I brought up this morning. You know Albrecht Stroehlein, the plump, weepy eyed ex-Gestapo lad who claims he used to be buddy-buddy with Hitler back in the old beerhall days.”

“So?”

“So, I’ve been checking on him. Up until a couple of months ago he was on his uppers. Worked for a while as a waiter on the Costa del Sol, begged handouts from more prosperous Nazi refugees, that sort of thing. But then he went up to Berlin.”

“Berlin!” Quint said. “I thought he was wanted for war crimes.”

“Evidently, somebody’s had a change of mind. When he returned, he got himself nicely outfitted, rented a swank apartment, started eating in Horcher’s. That sort of thing.”

Quint said, “West Berlin, or East Berlin?”

Mike thought about that, rubbing the bottom of his chin nervously. “I wouldn’t know. Maybe I can find out. Actually, Berlin is the big clearing house for European espionage these days.”

Quint said, “Listen, is it possible that Stroehlein knew personally such bigwigs as Martin Bormann, Heinrich Mueller, Doktor Stahlecker? Knew them well enough so that if he saw one of them today, he’d recognize him?”

Mike Woolman’s eyes went empty. He picked up his drink and tossed it back. “Uh huh,” he said. “It’s most likely. Start talking, friend.”

“I can’t. I promised it was off the record. But I can tell you this. Ronald Brett-Home talked Marty and Ferd Dempsey into throwing that party with Ferencsik as guest of honor. He also got them to spread the word that it was open house—everybody welcome. But none of those secret agents you mentioned this morning were invited. They all crashed. They all took advantage of the open house deal.”

Quint finished his own drink and made circular motions over his glass to the waiter, in the way of ordering a couple more of the same. He went on, “Another thing. You’re possibly right about our sneaky friend Joe Garcia. He came up to the place not long after you left, and hinted around that it would be best if I watched myself. That if I didn’t keep my nose clean I might be bounced out of Spain.”

“Uh huh,” Mike said. “But back to this Martin Bormann and the other missing Nazis.”

“Can’t. Off the record.”

“Look here, Quint, damn it, what did Bartholomew Digby tell you at lunch?”

“How’d you know I had lunch with Digby?”

Mike Woolman grinned nastily at him, while the waiter filled up their glasses. When that worthy was gone, he said, “I located your leak at the Embassy.”

“What are you talking about?” Quint growled.

“You know what I’m talking about: Ester. You bewitched the poor girl with your cheap gigolo charm and whenever you want some inside information, like where does C.I.A. man Bartholomew Digby usually eat his lunch, she finds out for you.” Mike Woolman shook his finger. “Very sneaky, my friend. And very un-American.”

Quint grunted. “Evidently, Ester is springing leaks in all directions these days, if you’ve got to her too. Anyway, Digby made me promise to keep our discussion under the hat.”

“And you agreed,” Mike said disgustedly. “You bastard, I think you did it on purpose. You’re in no hurry for your material. You can let it accumulate for months before you use it. But I’ve got to be in a continual hurry, trying to get a beat before one of the other agencies gets it first.”

Quint grinned at him. “I gave you all I have that I’m not honor bound to keep secret. What else have you got?”

Mike came to his feet, disgusted. “I ought to tell you to get lost, but there’s one other item. Remember I said the local police seemed to be holding the lid on something? Something the Brett-Home murder seemed to be connected with?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it seems the tourist bureau is on their necks. Tourism is currently Spam’s biggest source of hard currency. If anything happened to keep the hordes of visitors out of the country, Franco’s new economic plans would fall flat as the Big Leap Forward in China. They simply can’t let anything get into the news that would scare tourists away.”

“Come on, come on. Drop the other shoe.”

Mike said, “There’s been a wave of Jack the Ripper type murders in Madrid for the past six months and more. Probably quite a bit more. Some monster is loose.”