The Elegant Lie

…

One hour later, Carter arrived at Dasch’s compound. He found the front gate open. The guard was gone, and so were the mechanics in the workshop. The whole place was silent and seemed empty.

He walked into the office, whose broken window had been patched with sections of plywood.

Ritter was there, although at first Carter barely recognised him. He was sitting at Dasch’s desk, stripped to the waist and clutching a bottle of brandy, most of which he appeared to have drunk by himself. In his other hand, he held the Mauser pistol that he always carried with him.

He was plastered with grey dust and mud, which had caked in his hair so that it stood up by itself in chalky clumps.

‘What happened to you?’ asked Carter.

‘Mr Dasch is dead,’ said Ritter, his voice heavy and slow from the dust and alcohol.

An image of Dasch burst behind Carter’s eyes. They were back at the train station, just before he and Teresa departed for Vienna. Dasch had his arms spread wide, his hands resting lightly on their shoulders. He was telling them that they were a beautiful couple. And it seemed impossible to Carter that Ritter was telling the truth. Some people walked around with doom painted on them like a bull’s eye. Others had a hold on life so frail and tenuous that no matter how big or strong they were, the part of them that clung to their existence appeared as fragile as a candle flame. And there were some, like Dasch, who seemed to own a kind of armour, protecting them from all the randomness of death. Carter had seen this with his own eyes, and he had learned to trust it, even though he never spoke of it or put it into words. But for Dasch to be gone… he simply refused to believe it. ‘How?’ he whispered.

‘He had been trying to open that door,’ said Ritter, ‘the one down in the storeroom, with crowbars and hammers and ropes. He was convinced that a fortune lay on just the other side. I think he must finally have succeeded, and then the whole ceiling gave way. I heard it. I thought it was thunder, at first. When I realised what had happened, I ran to the entrance and the entire place was blocked. The ground above where the storeroom had been located had sunk into the earth, the way a grave collapses on a coffin when the wood has rotted away. I tried to dig my way in, thinking that perhaps a passageway existed. But it might as well have been solid rock. It was useless. I had to give up.’

‘Does Teresa know?’

‘She was with me,’ answered Ritter. ‘She heard it, too, when the roof gave way. We both tried to dig our way in. She knew before I did that there was nothing we could do.’

‘Where is she now?’

Ritter jerked his chin in the direction of the narrow corridor that led towards the dining room. ‘In there,’ he said.

‘How is she?’

Ritter blinked, his dust-covered eyelashes like slivers of ivory. ‘About the same as me, I think, except without the brandy.’

‘How about you put that gun away?’

Ritter ignored the request. ‘It’s over, you know.’ He looked around the room. ‘All this.’

‘That’s why you need to leave.’

‘And where would I go?’ he asked.

‘That’s up to you, but I would make it somewhere far away.’

Ritter shook his head. ‘It would make no difference where I went. What I am running from is here.’ He tapped one grimy fingernail against his forehead.

‘There must be something you still believe in, out there in the world.’

‘I’m not so sure of that. There are only so many causes one man can fight for in a lifetime.’

‘Then don’t fight for any of them. Just start again.’

Ritter smiled beneath his mask of dust. ‘It’s a little bit late for that now.’

Carter nodded at the pistol. ‘Are you planning on shooting me?’

‘I was thinking about it,’ he admitted. ‘You, and everyone else.’

‘And now?’

Ritter set the gun on the desk. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I think you and Teresa should depart while you still can. And take this with you.’ As he spoke, he reached below the desk and lifted up the same grey canvas bag in which they had carried the money for the deal with Sergeant Galton. The bag was still full.

Carter found Teresa sitting at one of the tables in the dining room. She was staring at the bare, stained wood with a confused look on her face, as if she couldn’t figure out how she had got there. When Carter walked into the room, she looked up but did not smile.

‘I didn’t think I would see you again,’ she said. ‘The whole ride back, I had it in my head that you would vanish the first chance you got.’

‘It’s not the first time you’ve been wrong about me.’

She sighed. ‘Did Ritter tell you about my father?’

‘Yes.’

She set one hand upon the table and traced her finger along the grain of the wood. ‘From the first day he walked into that room, I think he always knew that it would be the end of him. But he had to try. Not much hope for an unemployed chef in a country without any food.’

‘We need to go,’ said Carter.

‘Where?’

‘It doesn’t matter. There’s no reason to stay, and plenty of reasons to leave.’

‘They’ll be looking for me. For both of us. How far do you think we would get?’

‘You’ll just have to trust me on that,’ said Carter.

At that moment, they heard a popping noise, which at first Carter thought was a light bulb exploding. It took another second before he realised what it was. He dashed out into the hallway.

Ritter lay slumped in the chair, his head tilted back so that the tendons in his neck were stretched like wires beneath the skin. The pistol lay on the floor and the wall behind him was splashed with red.

Teresa came up behind Carter. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

Carter turned and gently pushed her back into the room. ‘Ritter,’ he said. He led her out of the back door of the dining room, emerging behind the mechanic shop. They came around the building and down towards the gate at the entrance of the compound. There, he stopped. ‘When I woke up next to you at the hotel in Karlovy Vary, I thought to myself that you had either killed me or saved me. I just didn’t have any idea which one it was.’

She reached up and brushed a hand across his face. ‘And now you think you know?’ she asked.

‘I do,’ said Carter, ‘and that’s why I’m standing here.’