Read Online A Small Death in lisbon by Robert Wilson - Free Book Online

night.'
    'The SS as an economic power in the new Germanic Reich, spreading from the North Cape of Scandinavia to the Pyrenees and the tip of the Brest Peninsula to Lublin.'
    'Don't leave out Great Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, the Ukraine, the Black Sea states and on and on and on,' said Lehrer. 'The big picture, remember.'
    'I'll settle for a thumbnail sketch for the moment. It's the peasant brain, sir.'
    'You probably know the SS runs various businesses.'
    'I've only supplied couplings to the railways which are heavily used by the SS, but I don't know much about their other business interests.'
    'We have brickworks, quarries, potteries, cement factories, building material plants, soft drinks factories, meat processing plants, bakeries and, of course, military armaments and munitions factories. There are a lot of other enterprises, but that gives you the idea.'
    'I don't see where my expertise fits in, sir.'
    'Let's talk about munitions. What's the difference between this war and the last one?'
    'It's an aerial war, an aerial bombardment war.'
    'All Berliners think about is air raids,' Lehrer sighed. 'I'm talking about the war. The offensive.'
    'There are no static fronts. It's a mobile war.
Blitzkrieg.
"
    'Exactly. It's a mobile war. It requires machinery, machine tools, artillery. It's also a tank war. Tanks have armour. To stop a tank you have to penetrate the hardened steel of its armour and that requires what is known as solid-core ammunition.'
    'The shell heads are hardened with an alloy—tungsten, I believe ... so are the machine tools, the gun barrels and tank armour.'
    'Otherwise known as wolfram or wolframite,' said Lehrer. 'Do you know where that comes from?'
    'China ... most of it, and Russia. Sweden has some, not much, even though they invented the word tungsten, and...' Felsen slowed as the cogs clicked, '...the Iberian Peninsula.'
    'You know your stuff.'
    'I learnt a lot from Wencdt.'
    'Wencdt?'
    'My General Manager, he's a metallurgist,' said Felsen. 'You mentioned the Ukraine and the Black Sea states earlier.'
    'Ah...' said Lehrer leaning back, steepling his fingers, savouring his own lips, 'the bigger picture.'
    'I was under the impression that we had signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1939. I'm not expecting you to confirm that that pact will be broken, but it hasn't escaped the Berliners' attention that factories are churning out massive amounts of material and it's all heading in one direction.'
    'Let's hope Stalin's not as perspicacious as the Berliners.'
    'All he'd have to do is hang around the
Bierstuben
and
Kneipen
of Kreuzberg and Neukölln and offer to buy a few beers and he'd get all the military intelligence he needs.'
    'A worrying thought,' said Lehrer, totally unconcerned. 'Keep talking, Herr Hauptsturmführer, you're doing very well.'
    'The wolfram we're getting from China ... does it come via Russia?'
    'Correct.'
    'And when we break the non-aggression pact we'll be cutting ourselves off from the biggest wolfram suppliers in the world.'
    'Now you understand why I wanted you in uniform before I told you about the job.'
    'Susana Lopes,' said Felsen, nodding at Lehrer. 'You want me to use my lover's Portuguese to buy wolfram.'
    'Portugal has the largest reserves in Europe and you didn't get the job just because you speak Portuguese.'
    'What was wrong with Koch?'
    Lehrer fanned the name away like a nasty fart.
    'Not subtle enough,' he said. This job requires finesse, an understanding of people, a sort of games-playing skill, you know, a genius for bluff, a talent for dissimulation, that kind of thing. Skills of yours we have already seen in action. And anyway, he wasn't what Susana would call
simpatico
was he?'
    'Am I buying this wolfram for the SS?'
    'No, no, you're buying it for Germany, but the Supply Department is headed by Dr Walter Scheiber who, apart from being a great chemist, is an old Party member and a true SS man. In this way, the Reichsführer Himmler wants to make sure