The Lights of Alborada

‘Our agent, Dieffe, maintains that Lieutenant Commander Hans von Luck is heading for the Atlantic coast …’ Cheever was still reading, and Cafard mockingly questioned the colonel. ‘How can your agents, locked away in a camp, tail a fugitive many miles away?’

‘Don't underestimate the Nazis, Major. They have undercover radios, they use secret codes.’

‘The Italians have a radio that we haven't managed to confiscate. I'd never heard that the Germans had one, too.’

‘They can prepare any kind of fake document. Look.’

Downing, irritated by Cafard's incredulous tone, opened the box and took out half a withered potato. He handed it to Cheever by way of reply: carved into the tuber was the security stamp of the American Military Command, the precious mark that guaranteed members of the armed forces free transit across the United States.

‘You want a hunting licence? A passport? A few fresh potatoes and they can reproduce the whole fucking Washington bureaucracy, you bet they can.’

‘Can we interrogate this …’ Cafard tried to find the right phrase for a moment, feigning uncertainty, and Downing wondered, ‘Is this bastard having me on?’

‘… this agent of ours?’

Cheever, disciplined and embarrassed, handed him the perforated sheet of paper, which Cafard stuffed into his pocket.

‘Ah, no, that's out of the question. Are you kidding me?’ Downing saw himself regaining his advantage, and used it skilfully. ‘What did you have in mind? Call him into the main barracks and expose him in front of his comrades? Within a few hours the Gestapo inside the camp would have him in the blanket. I hope you know what I mean by the blanket?’

Colonel Downing smiled grimly: tough cops from the spy department, you talk and talk, and then all of a sudden you drop the psychological warfare in favour of actual violence.