The Milieu Principle

by Malcolm Franks

Matt had used his last card. He wondered if he’d played his hand right. Her departing kiss was more like that of a final farewell than an agreement to get involved. Not that he could blame her. Why would you want to risk your life for someone you had only just met, and didn’t really know? She now knew about the conspiracy and could probably take some steps to look out for herself and for Eva-Maria, which is all she really needed to be concerned with.

  He walked to the window and looked into the street below to watch Catherine leave, but couldn’t see her. It was then he noticed two police officers, stood at the left end of the street, illuminated by the overhead lamps.

  He glanced over to the right where another two policemen were stationed. Neither of the pairings seemed particularly interested at what was happening in between. Their attentions appeared to be focussed on examining the human presence in surrounding streets, leading away from where they were standing. Strategic positioning, he concluded. Catherine will have to be very careful not to be identified when she leaves the hotel.

  The knock at the door made him jump and he reached for the gun. A second knock sounded, sharp and rushed against the wooden frame.

  Maybe they had found him after all.

  He moved stealthily forward, listening for any sound of weaponry being checked into place. There was no peephole in the door so he couldn’t look out into the hallway.

  The third rap was harder still.

  “Who is it?” he called.

  “Open quickly,” said the woman’s voice.

  Matt wrenched the door ajar and Catherine burst into the room, flustered and anxious.

  “There are police, everywhere. I did not dare leave for fear of being seen.”

  Her voice trembled to the words tumbling from her mouth, the fear evident in the wringing of her hands and the startled look in her eyes. Instinctively, he reached out and touched her hand to offer reassurance.

  “Hey, it’s okay, did anyone see you downstairs?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she uttered.

  With her arms shaking he kept a firm grip of her hand, and waited patiently for the trembling to subside before releasing his hold.

  “Wait here,” he instructed, “I’ll wander around and find a secure route off the premises.”

  “No,” she said, gripping his arm. “It is not safe for either of us to go outside; better I stay here for the night.”

  He wasn’t going to argue. Quietly he was pleased to have the company, to have someone else fill the empty room, and he responded immediately.

  “Okay, I’ll take the sofa bed.”

  “You do not always have to be the gentlemen,” replied Catherine, her balance quickly recovered and the half smile returned to her face.

  “I wasn’t,” countered Matt. “It’s closer to the door and the window.”

  Her smile broadened sure his words were an instinctive quip, said more in jest in an attempt to refute any suggestion he could be chivalrous. Matt reached into the wardrobe and produced a white linen shirt from one of the hangers which he tossed over to her.

  “I don’t use pyjamas. This is all I can offer. Will that be alright for the night?”

  She studied the garment briefly, and then nodded to signify her approval before carrying it upstairs.

  The sound of the curtains at the window above being drawn filled the sparse room. He saw the bedside lamp flicker into life from his position by the sofa bed, and watched as the shadow from the mezzanine slowly discarded each item of clothing.

  One at a time she slid her arms into the sleeves of his shirt and then moved to fasten the plastic buttons at the front. He continued to stare as the shadow shook its head, releasing the hair from the collar. Matt pictured in his mind the slow and careful movements of her hands to the locket that hung around her neck.

  “I do have one question for you Catherine,” he said.

  “Shoot,” she answered.

  “The Cathedral Keeper, where did that come from?” he asked.

  “Many years ago,” she replied. “I was young and naïve. Along with another colleague we established a web site that was to be a monument to European democracy, a cathedral of truth. The Keeper was the signature we used to answer the many e-mails we received.”

  “I never found a site fitting that description connected with you,” he replied.

  “It was shut down after my friend was arrested for financial irregularities at the EU, the only one in history to be arrested as far as I know. I kept the e-mail address after the scandal. It was overlooked by the authorities, but rarely used since. I lost my naivety the day my colleague was imprisoned for he was innocent of any wrongdoing, merely a tool for someone else’s misdeeds.”

  “So how come you weren’t implicated?” asked Matt.

  A brief pause followed.

  “Someone looked after me. Though not in the EU he had much influence with people here and I was rescued from the situation.”

  “What happened to your friend?”

  “He died in a boating accident soon after being released on parole. It is a tragic story, for he was very gifted.”

  She paused again.

  “I learnt many valuable lessons from this episode.”

  Matt decided against delving any deeper. If Catherine had wanted him to know more she would tell him. The room fell into silence

  “Will you be alright down there?” she asked

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ve slept in worse conditions,” he added, thinking back to his last night in St Wolfgang.

  She climbed between the sheets and turned off the lamp. Matt decided against making up the sofa bed, preferring to lay across it with his head against the armrest, facing the door. Carefully, he tucked the gun between himself and the backrest and settled his body in the hope he could get some sleep this night. All he could hear was the rhythmic tick of the second hand on his watch.

  “Matt,” came Catherine’s voice from above.

  “Yes?”

  “Should I decide to help I will need you close, somewhere in the city, to make contact easier.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Catherine.”

  “You ask a lot from me. I would not be able to do this on my own. I need your help also.”

  Matt thought on her request. He was asking a lot. But he didn’t want either Catherine or Eva-Maria in any more danger than necessary, having promised himself after St Wolfgang he would let no-one else die for his cause.

  “There is too much danger for us to be seen close. People have been killed for less.”

  “Then how would we communicate?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he confessed. “I’ll think of something before you leave in the morning.”

  “That is reassuringly well thought through,” she quipped, and her humour made Matt laugh out loud.

  He was enjoying the Austrian woman’s company, despite the dark nature of their evening. Matt had expected her to be dour; in the belief politicians wouldn’t have their own, unique personality.

  “Food,” he said, out of the blue.

  “What?”

  “The restaurants by the lakeside at St Wolfgang, they should be our contact venue during the winter recess.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “Use their dining tables to exchange information.”

  “Now you suggest we publicly dine together?”

  Her words weren’t meant to be amusing, but it made him smile all the same.

  “No, nothing like that,” he laughed. “We could use one of the tables as a handover, a venue to exchange handwritten messages. If we make a series of reservations for the same dining table, using alternate times, whosoever eats first can fix their message to the underside of the table with tape. The second diner can retrieve the note, make a written response, and then leave it in the same way.”

  “So we vary our meal times,” she said.

  “That’s right. It’s the perfect set up. There would be no phone calls to eavesdrop on, no phone tex
ts to intercept and no e-mails to trace. No-one, bar you and I, would know there was any ongoing communication between us.”

  He waited for her to respond.

  “Much time has passed since I was last in St Wolfgang,” she said.

  “At least it’s away from a main conurbation and distant from any prying eyes, a little more discreet.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I will make the arrangements through my cousin in St Wolfgang. She is a person I can trust.”

  A temporary silence fell between them, both minds locked into their own private thoughts.

  “You were very brave to leave St Wolfgang at such a young age, and start afresh at the EU Commission here in Brussels,” he said. “Few others would have attempted such a bold move.

  “Some say it was a calling, though I did not recognise it as such at the time. I had an overpowering sense to try and make a difference to other people’s lives and aspirations. I find it hard to put into normal language.”

  “Seems to me, Catherine,” he said, “your speeches put it very eloquently indeed. It is a gift few other people possess and makes you a special and interesting person.”

  She returned to her thoughts and Matt wondered what was going through her mind.

  “Thank you, Matt. Those are very kind words, some of the kindest I have heard. They mean a great deal to me.”

  Now it was Matt’s turn to reflect.

  “Yeah, it does sound a bit like a chat up line at a teen disco, doesn’t it?” he said, dryly.

  Catherine burst into heavy laughter, bringing a smile to his face.

  “And did it work often, this special and interesting person line?” she asked between a burst of giggling, which also had him now in a fit of stitches.

  “Put it this way, I never got to finish a dance.”

  Their joint laughter lasted for a long while and it took some time before they settled back into a mature frame of mind. The ensuing silence caused them both to reflect.

  “You should tell her,” he said, finally.

  “Tell who, what?” she asked, confused by the unlikely contribution.

  “Tell Eva-Maria she is your daughter. It would make such a difference to both your lives; make them better, more fulfilling. If she were mine, I would want her to know.”

  He heard her sigh deeply.

  “Her arrival proved difficult, made harder by the attitude of Eva-Maria’s father.”

  “Attitude?” questioned Matt.

  “His view was I had both been careless and deliberately deceitful to have found myself with child when, in truth, I believed he wished me to bear his children.”

  “It’s not always easy to read people correctly, Catherine, particularly in youth. Do you have contact with the father?”

  “He has no interest in the child. Had I been bolder at the time I would have ignored his demands to give up Eva-Maria for adoption and kept her as my own; for she is my child; my beautiful daughter.”

  Matt lay quietly and listened to the Austrian woman pour out the contents of her heart. It was a conversation she had waited years to have and talked of lost time, time she could never recover. He was sure he heard her voice crack and tremble on occasion but, like the true politician she was, Catherine always managed to recover her poise. Eventually, her words stilled and darkness resumed control of the night.

  “You still have time to put things right,” he finally offered to break the silence. “That’s if you want to take advantage of the opportunity. It would take a certain type of courage, perhaps the greatest kind. But you know in yourself you possess the mental strength to overcome such an obstacle.”

  “You are a good man, Matt. A man with a good heart,” she told him.

  “No. No I’m not,” he answered directly. “A good man doesn’t tell lies, doesn’t deliberately use or mislead people for personal benefit. And he certainly doesn’t kill people. I have done all these things over the last few months. I’m not a good man, Catherine, not anymore.”

  His openness surprised her.

  “That is incorrect, Matt,” she replied immediately. “You are still a good man, despite all of the terrible things you have said you had to do. Even good people must sometimes do bad things for the right reasons.”

  The expected response did not arrive. She switched on the bedside lamp and peered down. He was dozing gently. She smiled inwardly and returned her head to the pillow.

  “You are a good man, Matt Durham,” she said quietly, and switched off the light.

  Catherine had been asleep moments when Matt opened his eyes. He heard the rhythmic patterns of her breathing as he stared into the night. Whilst much about her appeared genuine, the name Catherine Vogel gnawed away at him like an open sore. He knew it from somewhere, but where?

  All he did know was that someone had betrayed him and his friends in St Wolfgang, and his enemies were waiting for him in Brussels. Vogel remained the most obvious candidate. Yet, if she were the betrayer, then why not surrender Matt up in Brussels when she had the chance? He still wondered if he had done the right thing this night.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Mountain Retreat