dressed up to look like the super-villain of his imaginings.
Melanie, who helped me concoct the texts of the ‘papers’ and who was responsible for some of the juiciest red herrings in them, thinks that we overestimated him. She says that we relied too much on the scholarly scepticism allied to an ability to evaluate misinformation that ought to have been there, but which were not. In other words, we were too clever.
I say that we underestimated his capacity for self-deception. We gave him a kaleidoscope to play with and he used it as if it were a reading glass.
If there must be a picture, let it be a warts-and-all photograph, not a caricature; and if the world, or that small portion of it inhabited by criminologists and policemen, really wants to know about poor old Oberholzer, let it be one of his own many voices that is heard. My account will be full, reasonably accurate and free from Krom’s distortions. It will not, of course, be free from my distortions. I happen to be one of those who believe that the ability to tell the whole truth about anything at all is so rare that anyone who claims it, especially if he does so with hand on heart, should be regarded with the deepest suspicion.
Ican only attempt to be truthful.
I met Carlo Lech for the first time when I almost had to arrest him near Bari. That was in 1943 after our landings on the heel of Italy, when the Eighth Army had moved north to Foggia. I was in the British Field Security Police at the time, and I almost had to arrest him because a corporal in the detachment of which I was in command was an officious bloody idiot.
But what, it may be asked, was an English-Spanish bilingual doing in Field Security in Italy? Was this the British Army once more up to its ancient game of putting square pegs into round holes? No, it was not. During the year after I left school, I learned to speak very good Italian.
Where his children were concerned, my father was generous and, though far from being imaginative, always scrupulously fair. I was the youngest of his three sons, and when, in the summer of 1938, he was notified by my housemaster that my year in the sixth form had ended less disastrously than had been feared, I was offered the same choice of rewards as my brothers before me. I could go to a university before going into the family business; I could spend a year and two thousand dollars travelling in Europe before going into the family business; or I could have the sports car of my choice and go into the family business right away.
My brothers had both taken sports cars. I chose the year in Europe.
In three months I had spent the two thousand dollars - having had a very good time doing so, though - and was flat broke in Cannes. A cable would have brought me a steamer ticket home, a sermon on the value of money, and, of course, immediate entry into the family business. I didn’t send the cable because I didn’t want to go home and didn’t want to go into a boring family business which already had more junior executives than it needed anyway. As any good con-man will tell you, it takes most people a long time to spot the fact that a spender has turned into a sponger, and in places like Cannes it can take even longer for a credit-rating to slip. I gave myself a month to get out of the hole I was in before I ran screaming to Daddy or started doing silly things that could get me into trouble with the police. I made it in three weeks. I got a job as steward on a yacht.
The owner was an Italian banker and some of the reasons for my being hired were simple.
The Munich crisis had led in France to a partial mobilization, and the French steward had been one of those called up. It was not known when he would be released or, since he had insisted that local union rules entitled him to a full month’s wages on leaving, whether, when released, he would trouble to return. At that end of the season it would be hopeless to look for an experienced replacement. The rest
Melanie, who helped me concoct the texts of the ‘papers’ and who was responsible for some of the juiciest red herrings in them, thinks that we overestimated him. She says that we relied too much on the scholarly scepticism allied to an ability to evaluate misinformation that ought to have been there, but which were not. In other words, we were too clever.
I say that we underestimated his capacity for self-deception. We gave him a kaleidoscope to play with and he used it as if it were a reading glass.
If there must be a picture, let it be a warts-and-all photograph, not a caricature; and if the world, or that small portion of it inhabited by criminologists and policemen, really wants to know about poor old Oberholzer, let it be one of his own many voices that is heard. My account will be full, reasonably accurate and free from Krom’s distortions. It will not, of course, be free from my distortions. I happen to be one of those who believe that the ability to tell the whole truth about anything at all is so rare that anyone who claims it, especially if he does so with hand on heart, should be regarded with the deepest suspicion.
Ican only attempt to be truthful.
I met Carlo Lech for the first time when I almost had to arrest him near Bari. That was in 1943 after our landings on the heel of Italy, when the Eighth Army had moved north to Foggia. I was in the British Field Security Police at the time, and I almost had to arrest him because a corporal in the detachment of which I was in command was an officious bloody idiot.
But what, it may be asked, was an English-Spanish bilingual doing in Field Security in Italy? Was this the British Army once more up to its ancient game of putting square pegs into round holes? No, it was not. During the year after I left school, I learned to speak very good Italian.
Where his children were concerned, my father was generous and, though far from being imaginative, always scrupulously fair. I was the youngest of his three sons, and when, in the summer of 1938, he was notified by my housemaster that my year in the sixth form had ended less disastrously than had been feared, I was offered the same choice of rewards as my brothers before me. I could go to a university before going into the family business; I could spend a year and two thousand dollars travelling in Europe before going into the family business; or I could have the sports car of my choice and go into the family business right away.
My brothers had both taken sports cars. I chose the year in Europe.
In three months I had spent the two thousand dollars - having had a very good time doing so, though - and was flat broke in Cannes. A cable would have brought me a steamer ticket home, a sermon on the value of money, and, of course, immediate entry into the family business. I didn’t send the cable because I didn’t want to go home and didn’t want to go into a boring family business which already had more junior executives than it needed anyway. As any good con-man will tell you, it takes most people a long time to spot the fact that a spender has turned into a sponger, and in places like Cannes it can take even longer for a credit-rating to slip. I gave myself a month to get out of the hole I was in before I ran screaming to Daddy or started doing silly things that could get me into trouble with the police. I made it in three weeks. I got a job as steward on a yacht.
The owner was an Italian banker and some of the reasons for my being hired were simple.
The Munich crisis had led in France to a partial mobilization, and the French steward had been one of those called up. It was not known when he would be released or, since he had insisted that local union rules entitled him to a full month’s wages on leaving, whether, when released, he would trouble to return. At that end of the season it would be hopeless to look for an experienced replacement. The rest
Similar Books
