XPD by Len Deighton Page A

Stein. He reached for the broad-brimmed, floppy hat and plonked it on his head.
    Max Breslow watched the street through the slatted blinds. He saw Charles Stein go to the Buick Riviera with the vinyl top which he’d left in the empty dirt lot behind the liquor store, and waited until he saw the car bump its way over the pavement edge and join the east-bound traffic. Only then did Breslow unlock and go through a door into the adjoining room.
    It was as bleak and impersonal as its neighbour: plastic woven to look like carpet, plastic coloured to look like metal, and plastic veneered with wafers of richly coloured woods.
    Sitting at a side table, in front of a small sophisticated cassette recorder and a pair of discarded headphones, a broad-shouldered man was waiting patiently. Willi Kleiber had close-cropped hair and a blunt moustache of the sort that British army officers used to favour, but no one would have mistaken Willi Kleiber for such. He had the wide head and high cheekbones that are so often the characteristics of Germanic people from the far side of the River Vistula. His nose was large, like the cutting edge of a broken hatchet, and his body was heavy and muscular. He had taken off his khaki golfing jacket and loosened his tie. His legs were stretched out so that his shiny, black high boots could be seen below his trousers.
    ‘What do you think, Willi?’ Max Breslow asked him.
    Willi Kleiber pulled a face. ‘You did all right, Max,’ he said grudgingly.
    ‘What will happen next?’
    Kleiber held the headphones together and wound the wires round them carefully as he considered his reply. ‘We’ve got rid of Lustig. You’ve let Stein know we can pay a lot of money for the documents, and soon he will discover that he’s lost a great deal of money. Then he will come back to us.’
    ‘How did you get Stein’s money?’
    ‘Not me; the Trust. When you have the active assistance of some of the most successful bankers in Germany, such swindles are easy to arrange.’
    ‘What did you mean … We’ve got rid of Lustig? You said you’d given him money for a vacation in Europe.’
    Kleiber grinned. ‘You leave that side of things to me, Max. Don’t give Bernard Lustig another thought; the less you know about him, the better.’ He zipped up the front of his jacket to make a sudden noise.
    ‘I wish I’d never got into this,’ said Breslow. He could not muster the enthusiasm and energy that Kleiber brought to these crazy adventures, and wished he’d been able to stay out of this madness. Listening to Kleiber talking of such antics over coffee and cognac was amusing; but now he was involved, and he was frightened.
    ‘The Trust needed you,’ said Kleiber.
    Breslow looked at him and nodded. Kleiber was simplistic, if not to say simple. Orders were orders and obeying them was an honoured role. Breslow had been the same when he was a young man. All that wonderful idealism, and the sense of purpose that is known only to the young, all squandered to the whims of Hitler and his fellow gangsters. What a tragic waste.
    ‘You were a Nazi, Max. Don’t ever forget it. And don’t count on anyone else forgetting it.’
    ‘That was a lifetime ago, Willi,’ said Breslow wearily.
    Kleiber closed the lid of the tape recorder with a sound that was intentionally loud. ‘Remember last year, when the old woman recognized you in that coffee shop in Boston? She shouted “SS murderer” at you, didn’t she? She won’t forget, Max. You need the Trust. They’re not Nazis, either, Max, but they will help.’
    ‘That old woman in the coffee shop was mad,’ said Breslow.
    ‘You left your breakfast and rushed into the street, Max. You told me so yourself.’
    Billy Stein was waiting in the shiny new Buick Riviera parked alongside the liquor store. He leaned across the passenger seat to open the door for his father, and had the engine started by the time his father climbed into the car. The warning buzzer sounded. ‘Can’t