The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  “Well, that’s jolly decent, old chap. Don’t mind if I do.” And as the waitress departed with the order, he added: “Must confess, old boy. That was a splendid run. The Germans could do with you in their bob team this week.”

  At that very moment, Frank’s eyes fell on the vain expression of a face he knew so well at the far end of the terrace. He was with a group of jovial back-slapping people, none of whom he recognised, and was himself in mid-slap as their eyes met. What promised to be a swaggering all-American thwack on some poor unsuspecting shoulder was suddenly sapped of all energy. The joviality hollowed out to a shell of disbelief, as his grin took on the appearance of a crevasse in one of the Bernina glaciers. The shoulder was reprieved.

  “Colonel, you see that man over there, coming towards us?”

  Frank nodded discreetly in the direction of Silverstone, who was already battling his way through a large crowd of expectant newcomers just arrived on the terrace in search of a table. The woman Frank had seen with him at the station in Basel was trailing along behind.

  “Tall, about fifty, wearing a green pullover.”

  “Got him, old boy,” he said, as if he had just spotted one of the enemy. The colonel’s curiosity was aroused, and Frank sensed he had him on his side.

  “He’s an American, called Silverstone. He won’t leave me alone, follows me wherever I go. You know the type. Could you do me a favour and distract him while I go to the toilet? We’ll meet back at the hotel and have our champagne there,” he added. “With Patricia.”

  “American, you say? My pleasure, old boy.”

  Suddenly the colonel was fired with the prospect of adventure. A mission to be accomplished, however small. His fingers fidgeted and his eyes flashed with the excitement, allowing Frank to slip away from the terrace, confident that the colonel would fulfil this mission with dedication.

  With grudging reluctance, he was beginning to feel deeply indebted to the colonel, a man who irritated him intensely and stood for everything he disliked about the English.

  ‘What’s the American doing here?’ Frank asked himself. Whatever it was, he would plainly be seeking revenge for their last encounter. Frank knew he would need to tread carefully for the rest of his brief time in St Moritz.

  But he had only one goal in mind. And it was this that occupied his thoughts as he walked back up to the hotel. Nothing would divert him from his goal now he knew that he had the substance and the passion to achieve it.

  It was a discovery that filled him with impatience – as if his life had been one huge tangled ball of thread that he had only now taken into his hands to consider the practicalities of unravelling it. And he was consumed with an urgency to get the job done. He needed to find Patricia and share the galvanism of this discovery.

  So much greater was his disappointment when she refused to come and celebrate his triumph over the Cresta Run with the colonel. Her eyes seemed darker and more beautiful than ever. But he failed to appreciate either the depth or the quality of her sadness.

  “I told you, Frank. I want nothing to do with your plans,” was all she had to say. It both irritated and mystified him, since it was she who gave him the motive and encouragement. And it was she who stood to gain from all the fretwork. Now he saw the delicate inlay cracked and broken by a ferment he had not anticipated. It was a damage he failed to understand. He had no idea how deep it ran, nor how it should be measured. He knew only that he had to repair the damage before he left. And that would take time. Champagne celebrations would certainly not help. So he made his excuses to the colonel later that day.

  The rest of their time in St Moritz he devoted to Patricia, to the restoration of the precious sparkle in her eyes and the defiant sensuality of her lips. They spent many hours walking the most deserted circuitous paths they could find in the snow, circumventing all the issues that teased at the forefront of his mind. And he let her lead him back into her dream world of Baudelaire. Or to her childhood in Normandy, catching crabs in the rock pools and picking wild primroses in the woods. Anything but the sinister demimonde that gnawed greedily at their being. It was a strange and telling irony that they found themselves compelled to avoid even the smallest detail of their shared experiences – of all those things that tie lovers up in knots and keep them forever entwined.

  All the while Frank was unable to shake off the image of Silverstone on the terrace of the Kulm, ploughing a way through the crowd towards him. Or the certain knowledge that he would be seeking revenge and doubtless now trawling through all the hotels in St Moritz in search of him. But as time passed, and there was no further sighting of Silverstone, he began to wonder whether he had simply imagined hearing his name over the loudspeaker, whether the man on the terrace at the Kulm was just an innocent American tourist. Nonetheless, he remained alert to the danger and kept his eyes open for that brash figure. But he never saw him again. And his suspicions of an overactive imagination saw their hunch slowly harden with every day that the American remained absent from Frank’s remaining days in St Moritz, especially when they went to watch the final races of the bobsleigh championships.

  He was reluctant to go, not only for fear of running into Silverstone, who would certainly be there, but also because the toboggan seemed to have acquired a symbolic value of unpredictable force in his relationship with Patricia. But it was she who insisted with that effervescence he had come to adore in her that they go.

  For Frank, this was the first tangible sign of the damage beginning to mend. So, even at the risk of being confronted by his American persecutor, he agreed. Her enjoyment was infinitely more important than this threat, which dwindled to insignificance as he watched her becoming steadily absorbed in the excitement on the ice. To see the joy in her eyes was bewitching. And his own heart reached a new pitch of exhilaration whenever she clasped her hands around his arm. He could sense the mend becoming stronger and firmer by the minute, and he savoured every unexpected moment of her delight. But what surprised him was her unabashed support for the English teams over all the others – even the French. And it was not that the English confirmed their position as favourites and ran away with one trophy after another. That was more likely to irritate Patricia, who was always better disposed towards the underdog.

  “I just wanted them to win for the colonel,” she explained. “Because I know it would please him.”

  Her continued liking for the colonel baffled Frank all the more since the man’s active encouragement of his exploits on the Cresta Run, which she had so disapproved of. But it gave him an idea.

  “I’m surprised he’s not here,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking about the colonel.” Which was not entirely true. “I’ve been wanting to take you on a sleigh ride in the Val Roseg ever since we arrived here. And it occurred to me that it might be a nice idea if we invited him to come along with us.”

  “That’s very sweet.” She held his right arm tighter in her grip as she stretched up to plant a kiss on his cheek. “When did you have in mind?”

  “I thought Sunday would be a good day.”

  Sunday would be a perfect day, he told himself. But he would need somebody to look after Patricia, to take her mind off things. And the colonel was the ideal choice.

  So it was settled. The colonel proved every bit as keen on the idea as Patricia, especially since he was returning to England on the Monday and it would make a fitting finale to his holiday, he suggested. In a curious way, this pleased Frank, because he felt he owed the colonel something after letting him down on the champagne celebration.

  The night that carried him into those last decisive hours was long and wakeful. And the darkness swelled with emotion, while Patricia slept into the innocence of her dreams, her peace with Frank restored. Or so it seemed.

  He ran his hands over the silky slenderness of her body. Every touch brought a new dimension to his rapture, whispered to him in a new voice, felt different, as if she was somehow a complete stranger to him. This freshness invested his arousal wit
h a charge that was hard to resist. But these moments are too precious to be felled by a deciduous passion, he told himself. They needed preserving. And yet he knew they would evaporate eventually. Before dawn at the very latest.

  There was only one path to any lasting kind of conservation. And he was impatient to get on with it. To get moving. To see it through. It was this impatience that kept him awake. Kept him prowling the darkness with his eyes as he acted through every sequence of events in his mind and prepared for every twist and turn.

  When the light of day began gradually to penetrate the curtains on their window high up above their little frozen corner of the Engadin, the sweeping wastes of snow that stretched away below them still slumbered quietly. Their tidy repose scorned him in his dishevelled unslept state. Only the overcast sky came close to matching the grey fuzziness that filled his skull. With his oedematous eyelids barely capable of opening, his head thick with unrest and the exhaustion of his fidgeting mind, he felt as if he had spent all night on the tiles. But this woeful condition could not have fitted more neatly into his designs, and helped lend credence to his excuses when Patricia eventually woke.

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can face that sleigh ride today,” he said. “You’re going to have to make my excuses to the colonel.” It took little theatrical talent to present a convincing picture of his debility. All the outward signs were there. He needed only to paint in some covert detail, such as a sore throat and aching limbs. “Would you mind just the two of you going on your own? I’m sure he’ll look after you.”

  The way she pampered Frank and tucked him comfortably up in his bed made him feel shoddy and mean in his deceit. But this failed to prevent the ludicrous pangs of jealousy that tugged at him when she accepted his suggestion with an enthusiasm that went far beyond the gestures of self-sacrifice he had anticipated. It seemed an absurd idea, but he wondered whether there might be more to the attraction than his appeal as a father substitute. But these wild thoughts were too thin and tenuous to get the better of his vanity. And they faded into oblivion under the sweet commitment of the kiss she left with him when she departed. An indelible keepsake of his deepest wishes sealed into place.

  But he could not afford to linger too long in the delicious realms of this sentiment, since there was a risk it might carry him off into the sleep that he had sorely missed. There was time enough for him to recuperate on the train, he told himself.

  However, he was not prepared to leave sentiment entirely on the side lines. So he contacted room service and arranged for dinner to be served in their room at nine o’clock that evening – fillet of beef in Madeira sauce with a bottle of Chateau Haut-Brion, which he had noticed on their wine list. The vintage was tantalisingly wrong – a 1931, not a ’13 – and his superstitious nature talked him into regarding this as a good omen. Of course, he would have some explaining to do when he got back, and a candlelight dinner in their room seemed a better framework for confessions than most. As long as the railway service did not let him down. He had checked the departure times, and a nine o’clock return appeared just about feasible.

  Chapter 23

  The early afternoon sun was making a half-hearted effort to break through the clouds when Frank walked out onto the central square outside the railway station, scene of his rendezvous with Patricia on their flight to the mountains. He found it hard to believe it was already three weeks ago that they had met here. So much water had passed under the bridge since then. Yet it seemed like only yesterday. Time seemed indefinably confused. A sensation that was reinforced by the babel of tongues which filled the air outside the station – the same sounds he had heard the day they left. Seemingly so carefree and open to the world. Were they the same young migrant children at play? Frank wondered. The same unsuspecting fugitives in permanent transit? Their faces all looked vaguely familiar. Yet he could not be certain that he had seen any one of them before. What struck him above all was their joyful laughter, the sparkle of their play, the ease of their every move competing defiantly with the sadness in their eyes, the truth of their exile. In this, they reminded him of Patricia.

  The paradox of their captive freedom stayed with him and fed his thoughts of Patricia in the tram that carried him close to the border with Germany. To the smart suburban streets where Breitner’s villa violated the quiet reserve of the streets with an aggressiveness that matched the style of its owner. The sight of the place prompted a painful re-enactment in his mind of the only other visit he had ever made here. The familiar Maybach stood in the driveway. But the house itself appeared deathly still. Frank’s hand rested on the gun in his pocket, as it had done during most of the journey from St Moritz.

  He was surprised by the calmness of his step as he walked up the driveway. Only a vague thrill undulating through the wall of his chest betrayed a hint of anything that might approach anxiety or tension. Nerves of steel tempered on an anvil of ice. His thoughts turned to the colonel, and he sensed them bring a faint trace of amusement to his expression as he lifted the heavy black knocker on the front door. It had the same feel, the same shape and the same dull thud of the knocker on the door to his mother’s house in Cologne. He half-expected to be greeted by the sour-faced vulture, or even his mother herself.

  His hand gripped tightly round the gun in readiness, as he heard the busy shuffling and fidgeting of an elaborate unfastening ritual. Slowly the door opened, just far enough for a face to peer through the crack. He had not anticipated that Breitner himself would answer his knock. On the other hand, nor had it occurred to him that he might find Lutz here. So he was uncomfortably taken aback when he met the gaze of the man’s unpleasant, bulbous eyes gaping at him through the narrow doorway.

  “Mr Eigenmann,” he said. “Really, this is most unwise.”

  There was a consternation in his expression. Lutz hovered, plainly at a loss to know what he should do. “Does Mademoiselle Roche know you are here?”

  “Are you going to announce me to Breitner? Or shall I do it myself?” Frank asked with gruff impatience. Perhaps too much impatience. But he wanted to get it over with. Lutz hesitated. His eyes scanned the street outside. Was he looking out for danger? Or searching for support?

  “Come in.”

  With these uncertain words, Lutz stepped back. And Frank entered the lair. A gloom hung over the hallway that deepened even further when Lutz closed the door behind him. A hallway that had stamped itself so vividly on his memory. The staircase steep and vicious. The deep red carpet that concealed his blood stains. And that image of Breitner’s brightly polished shoes laughing in his face before he was turfed out into the street.

  “Where is he?”

  “Mr Breitner is at a meeting today,” Lutz said. “He won’t be back until later this evening.”

  “On a Sunday? Is there anybody else here?”

  Lutz shook his head.

  “I’ll wait.”

  But Frank had no wish to have Lutz keep him company while he prepared himself for Breitner’s arrival. However protective of Patricia the man had become, Frank did not trust him an inch. He would feel more comfortable sitting in a snake pit.

  Frank pulled the gun from his pocket as if about to offer Lutz a cigarette.

  “Is there a cellar here?”

  Lutz eyed the firearm and nodded. Like a docile dog, he led Frank past the staircase to a door in the darkest, farthest corner of the long hallway. He knew Frank meant business, that Breitner’s time was up, and without any further bidding led him down into the cellar. Lutz moved with a lightness that suggested a sense of deliverance, as if this was the moment he had been waiting for all his life.

  “Just tell me one thing,” Frank said before shutting the door on Lutz. “What happened to Achim?”

  “Mr Zimmermann?” The expression in Lutz’s eyes displayed a look of cold resignation. “I only know that he was shipped back across the border.”

  “Shipped back?” Frank repeated. “Like rejected goods?”

  “That�
��s all any of us are when it comes to it,” Lutz said with a shrug of the shoulders.

  “And his family?” Frank asked. He caught the trace of a flinch in Lutz’s eyes. And a hint of tearfulness in the reply.

  “His wife became very excitable when they took her husband. Almost uncontrollable. Until Horst…”

  “Horst?”

  A sense of revulsion filled Frank instantly with nausea as he repeated the name. He knew painfully well what kind of animals Horst and his sidekick were.

  “And her little boys?”

  Lutz said nothing. But he could no longer mask the tears.

  “The baby boys?” Frank repeated. The anger in his voice was seized with a sense of alarm. He tightened his grip on the gun.

  “They were there,” Lutz whispered, the words almost inaudible.

  “And you? Were you there?”

  “I only know what I was told,” Lutz mumbled with a timorous shake of the head.

  With a look of disbelief and disgust on his face, Frank relaxed his grip on the gun. There were bigger fish to fry. He turned and shut the door, leaving Lutz with a single naked light to keep him company and a strange look of relief, almost gratitude, on his face as Frank locked the door on his captive.

  He pondered Lutz’s words as he returned back up the stairs to the room where Breitner had received him all those weeks ago. At least they gave him the satisfaction of knowing that he had meted out justice of a sort on Horst.

  The waiting dragged deep into the night. It left too much space for reflection, a pondering so deep it let the bottle of Bordeaux waiting in St Moritz slip completely from his mind. For in that one room, he was cloistered within the whole limited compass of Breitner’s personality. From Biedermeier to kitsch. There was a temptation to scratch beneath this surface and look for the man. But it was not a search to be encouraged, as the colonel had made plain to him. Better to focus on the rat.