The Bormann Testament (The Testament of Caspar Schultz)

CHAPTER 11

“He’s quite a man,” Chavasse said out of the silence.

Anna nodded. “I found that out a long time ago. Where do we go from here?”

“Back to the inn,” he said. “There’s always the Volkswagen. With any luck, we can be on the way back to Hamburg in fifteen minutes.”

She shook her head gravely. “I’m afraid not, Paul. Fassbender drove the car to the castle. I saw it in the courtyard when they took me in.”

He frowned for a moment as he considered possibilities, and then he came to a decision. “We’ll still go back to the inn. There’s a chance Fassbender is with the search party and they’re going in the opposite direction, but we’ll have to hurry.”

He led the way outside and they plunged into the wood. After a few moments, they came to the path that they had originally followed to the lake, and Chavasse took Anna by the hand and started to run.

There was no sign of movement from the inn, and only the thin spiral of blue smoke from one chimney indicated life. They paused in the fringe of fir trees at the edge of the yard, and then Chavasse squeezed her hand and ran across to the back door, half-crouching. He opened the door quickly, pushed Anna through, and followed her, closing it behind him.

They were standing in a large, stone-flagged kitchen. The old woman was bending over the sink, scrubbing out a pan, and she turned and looked at them vacantly. “You didn’t come in for lunch,” she said.

Chavasse smiled gently. “No, we went boating on the lake and had an accident, as you can see. Is Herr Fassbender about?”

She shook her head. “He went to the castle. He said he wouldn’t be back until nightfall.”

“Is anyone else here?”

She looked bewildered. “But why would there be anyone else here, mein Herr?” She turned back to the sink and her pans, muttering to herself and shaking her head.

Chavasse opened the far door and pushed Anna through into the stone-flagged passage. “A good thing for us the old girl’s a simpleton.”

Anna nodded. “What do we do now?”

“You can go straight upstairs and change into some dry clothes,” he said. “Be as quick as you can and then look for Fassbender’s room and see if you can find me something suitable. We’re about the same size.”

“What about you?” she said.

“I’ve got some telephoning to do.” He smiled and pushed her gently toward the stairs. “Hurry it up, angel. We’ve got to get out of here as fast as we damned well can.”

When she had gone, he went behind the reception desk and put a call through to London. The operator promised to ring him back and he replaced the receiver and went into the bar, where he helped himself to a double brandy and a packet of cigarettes.

He shivered with pleasure as the brandy spread through his body in a warm tide. He decided to have another one, and was just finishing it when the phone rang.

He lifted the receiver and waited, and after a while Jean Frazer’s voice crackled over the wire. “Brown amp; Company here. Can I help you?”

“This is Cunningham speaking,” Chavasse told her. “I’d like a word with Mr. Taylor if he’s available.”

“Just a moment, please, Mr. Cunningham,” she said calmly.

A moment later, the Chief ’s voice sounded in his ear. “ Taylor here – is that you, Cunningham? How’s business?”

“Booming!” Chavasse said. “In fact, I could use some help. Can you do anything? It’s rather urgent.”

“It’s nice to know things are going so well,” the Chief said, “and I’ll certainly do what I can. Where can you be reached?”

“I’ll be at the Atlantic with Sir George,” Chavasse said. “I’ll try and hang on there until eight, but I can’t make it any later than that, I’m afraid.”

“That should be fine,” the Chief said. “We’ve a very good local contact, name of von Kraul. I’ll see if he’s available.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing him,” Chavasse said. “Now I’m afraid I’ll have to go. Things are moving pretty fast at the moment.”

The Chief ’s voice didn’t change. “Well, that’s nice to know, Cunningham. We’ll have to see about a bonus for you when you come home. I’ll be looking forward to seeing you.”

There was a click at the other end of the line and Chavasse grinned and replaced his own receiver. He felt a lot happier. One thing about the Chief – he was completely reliable. If he said he’d see to something, it got done.

He looked up the number of the Atlantic Hotel in the telephone directory and asked for Sir George Harvey. It took them ten minutes to find him, and they finally located him in the famous Long Bar.

He sounded a little irritated at being dragged away from his drink. “Harvey here – who’s speaking?” he barked. Chavasse told him and Sir George’s tone changed at once.

“My dear chap, I’ve been wondering what had happened to you.”

“You said you’d be willing to help me at any time,” Chavasse said. “That all I had to do was call you. Does that still go?”

“Naturally!” Sir George said brusquely. “I’m not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean.”

“Then leave the hotel at once,” Chavasse said. “Get into your car and take the main road to Lubeck. About twenty miles out of Hamburg, you’ll come to a signpost on your left, pointing the way to a place called Berndorf. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

“Is this really important?” Sir George asked.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” Chavasse told him, “and I’m not being melodramatic.”

“I’m on my way,” Sir George said, and his receiver clicked into place.

Chavasse went upstairs and found Anna in their bedroom, laying out a tweed suit, underwear, and socks on the bed. “I’ve even managed a pair of shoes. I hope they fit.”

He started to strip his wet clothes and she toweled his body briskly. “I’ve been in touch with Sir George Harvey,” he said. “He’s going to pick us up at the Berndorf signpost on the main road.”

“What do we do when we reach Hamburg?” she asked as he dressed quickly.

“We’ll drop you at your apartment,” he said. “I’ll go on to the Atlantic with Sir George. I’ve been in touch with London. They’re arranging for a German intelligence man called von Kraul to meet me there – do you know him?”

She shook her head, “So far, we’ve tried to stay out of their way.” She cleaned his battered face with a wet washcloth as she talked, and covered the slash across his right cheek with sticking plaster.

“That’s partly why I want to leave you at the apartment,” he said. “The less von Kraul knows about Israeli underground groups working in Germany, the better. Another thing. If Mark manages to elude the chase, that’s where he’ll try to contact you.”

“Do you think he stands a chance?” she said.

Chavasse shrugged. “There’s always hope. In this heavy rain, it will be difficult for the dogs to follow his scent, and the mist should help him a lot.”

“I hope and pray he comes out of it safely,” she said, and there was a poignancy and depth in her voice that he found curiously disturbing.

“You think a lot of him, don’t you?” he said gently.

She nodded. “I should – he’s my stepbrother. We’ve always been very close.”

For once, he could think of nothing to say, and they went downstairs in silence. From several coats hanging in the hall, he selected a thigh-length, waterproof hunting jacket for himself and a green Tyrolean hat. He helped Anna into an old and shabby trench coat that was far too large for her, and they left.

They followed the road out of the village, walking in silence, and he felt curiously depressed. It was a feeling difficult to analyze, but probably caused by too little sleep for too long. Every muscle in his body seemed to be aching and his face pained him intensely.

After they had gone a couple of miles, he paused. “I think we’d better go through the trees for the rest of the way. Just in case they happen to be patrolling the main road.”

She nodded without speaking, and they left the road and walked through the trees, brushing aside the rain-soaked branches of the firs. Chavasse saw the hunting lodge first, and beyond it the white gleam of the road. As they approached, he realized that the place was derelict; the door hung on one hinge and the windows gaped sightlessly.

He checked the time. It was just after four-thirty. It was unlikely that Sir George would arrive before five. “We’ve got about half an hour to spare,” he told Anna. “We might as well stay here. The main road is only fifty or so yards away.”

“Just as you like, Paul,” she said listlessly, and preceded him through the door.

It had that peculiar musty smell usual to such places, composed of dampness and leaf mold. Anna sat down on the windowsill and Chavasse gave her a cigarette.

For a little while, they smoked in silence and she gazed out of the window, an expression of great sadness on her face. After a while, Chavasse said, “Anything the matter?”

She shook her head. “Not really, nothing I could put my finger on.” She turned and smiled at him, looking suddenly absurdly young in the old trench coat.

He grinned. “That coat’s far too large for you.”

She nodded. “It was made in England. I noticed the label when I put it on. I wonder how it came to be hanging on that peg at the inn.”

He shrugged. “Probably left by some tourist a long time ago.”

“I think that’s one of the saddest phrases in the English language,” she said. “A long time ago. On me it has the same effect as a bugle sounding taps. Lights out, you’re through, it’s all over.”

There was a terrible pathos in her voice, and he dropped his cigarette and caught hold of her arms. “Anna, what is it? You’ve never talked like this before.”

“I’ve never felt like this before,” she said. “I’ve been watching you, Paul. The way you react to danger, the way you always have an answer for every emergency, that utterly ruthless streak so essential to success.” She shook her head. “You’ll never change, Paul. You couldn’t even if you wanted to. All those things we discussed – the things we said we’d do after this is all over – they were just a pipe dream.”

He gripped her arm fiercely, bitter anger rising inside him. “But I can change,” he said. “I promise you, Anna. When this job is finished, I’m getting out of the game for good.”

She touched his face gently with her fingers and shook her head. “No, you won’t, Paul. You and I, this hunting lodge, everything we’ve gone through in the last few days – none of it has any reality. One day, you’ll look back on it all and it will simply be something that happened a long time ago.” She laughed lightly. “What was that line in one of Marlowe’s plays? But that was long ago and in another country.”

He pulled her into his arms, holding her against him, and then he heard the unmistakable sound of a car slowing down in the road.

She tried to pull away from him and said gently, “I think we’d better go now, Paul. That sounds like Sir George.”

He tried to bring her back into his arms, but she braced herself to resist him, hard and unyielding. After a moment, he shrugged and released her. She turned without a word, and he followed her out of the hunting lodge and through the trees toward the road.