Bruno turned away without reply.
Sergius looked after him thoughtfully, then turned away also. He said: ‘All the occupants of that coach here?’
‘All present, Colonel,’ Wrinfield said. ‘But you voiced the opinion that kidnappers were – ’
‘Might. And you heard what I said – a policeman’s job is to overlook nothing. Anybody here heard any noise, any unusual sound during the night?’ From the loud silence it was apparent that no one had heard anything. ‘Very well. The brothers slept in the end compartment in the coach. Who slept next to them?’
Kan Dahn moved his massive bulk forward. ‘I did.’
‘Surely you heard something?’
‘I already haven’t answered your question. That means no. I’m a very heavy sleeper.’
Sergius looked thoughtful. ‘You’re big enough to do it single-handed.’
Kan Dahn’s tone was mild. ‘Are you accusing me?’
‘I’m making an observation.’
‘Vladimir and Yoffe were good friends of mine, very good friends. Everyone knows this for years. Why should I wait until now and then do something crazy like this? Besides, if I did it there would have been no signs of a struggle. An arm round each and I would have just carried them away.’
Sergius was sceptical. ‘Indeed?’
‘Perhaps the colonel would like a demonstration?’ ‘It should be interesting.’
Kan Dahn indicated the two burly uniformed policemen standing together. He said: ‘They are bigger, much bigger, and stronger than the two brothers?’
‘I should have thought so.’
For the giant he was Kan Dahn moved with the speed of a cat. Before the two policemen had time to assume defensive postures Kan Dahn was upon them, a gorilla arm round each of them, pinning their own arms to their sides. A moment later both men were off their feet, struggling furiously to free themselves from what, judging by the expressions on their faces, was a far from affectionate embrace.
Kan Dahn, his voice still mild, said: ‘Stop struggling or I shall have to squeeze.’
Doubtless under the impression that Kan Dahn could squeeze no more, the men intensified their efforts to escape. Kan Dahn squeezed some more. One man cried out, the other grunted, both expressions of agony. Kan Dahn tightened the inexorable pressure. Both men stopped struggling. Carefully, gently, Kan Dahn set them on their feet and stood back and watched sorrowfully as the two men collapsed to the floor.
Sergius regarded the tableau thoughtfully. ‘Angelo should be here this morning. You, Kan Dahn, are exonerated.’ The tone was totally humourless. He turned as Captain Kodes hurried in. ‘Well?’
‘All we have is fingerprints, Colonel. There are many sets of two different fingerprints. Those must belong to the brothers. But we also found two other sets in rather unusual positions – against the walls, on the window, on the inside of the door – places where men might have braced themselves in the course of a violent fight.’
‘So.’ Sergius thought briefly, absently watching the painful efforts of the two policemen to struggle to their feet. Their sufferings obviously left him completely unmoved. He turned to Wrinfield. ‘Every man in this circus will have to be fingerprinted this morning. In the Exhibition Hall, where your circus is being held.’
‘Is it really necessary – ’
Sergius affected weariness. ‘I have a job to do. And, for the third time, a policeman’s job is to overlook nothing.’
Although Crau lay roughly to the north of the capital, the main railway station did not, as one might have expected, lie to the south of the town: because of unfavourable terrain the railway line curved round the city and entered from the north. Consequently, when the black limousine of uncertain vintage set out for the Winter Palace, it drove due south along what, downtown, developed into the main thoroughfare of the city. This north-south street was, confusingly enough, called West Street.
Bruno sat in the back seat and beside him was Dr Harper. Wrinfield, whose gloomy expression was indication enough that his dark forebodings about Crau were in the process of being confirmed, sat silently beside the driver. The weather was hardly calculated to lend a certain buoyancy to the spirits: it was just after dawn, a bleak and bitter dawn with snow swirling down from the darkly lowering clouds.
Some hundred yards from the siding Harper, who was sitting in the right-hand corner, rubbed the steamy window, peered out and up, then touched Bruno on the arm.
‘Never seen anything like it. What on earth is that?’
‘I can’t see from here.’
‘On top of those buildings. Bushes, shrubs – good heavens, they’ve even got trees growing up there.’
‘Roof gardens. Very common in central Europe. Living in a flat doesn’t have to mean that you can’t have your own little plot of land. Lots of them even have lawns.’ Bruno rubbed his own window. The building to his left was as grim, bleak and forbidding as any he had ever seen. He counted the storeys: there were nine of them. He saw the windows, each one heavily barred. He observed the curving menace of the steel spikes that surrounded the roof, the watch-towers at the north and south corners: from that angle it was impossible to see what might be on the roofs of those towers but Bruno knew there would be searchlights and klaxons mounted there. He looked at Harper and lifted an eyebrow: the driver had smilingly shrugged when addressed in English, but the chances were high that he was one of Sergius’s men and Sergius would not have picked a non-English speaker for the job. Harper caught his glance and nodded, although the confirmation was really superfluous: the reality of Lubylan all too dismayingly matched Harper’s description of it. The prospect of trying to effect an entry into the fortress was as chilling as the dawn.
Some quarter of a mile farther on they passed by a row of stationary black cars lining the right-hand pavement. At the front was a wreath-covered hearse: the hour was not early but it was daybreak: the cortège, Bruno reflected, must have quite some way to go. Across the pavement from the hearse was an establishment with draped black velvet curtains in the windows, those being the framing for what the proprietor obviously regarded as being his choicest selection of wreaths, artificial bouquets under glass domes and unengraved marble tombstones, all in black. The adjacent door was also of the same cheerful colour, relieved only by a white cross. Bruno caught a glimpse of the door opening and the foot of a coffin on the shoulders of the two leading bearers.
‘How very convenient,’ Bruno murmured.
Dr Harper appeared not to have heard him.
The Winter Palace was the pride of Crau, and deservedly so. Deliberately baroque in construction, both inside and out, it was in fact only three years old. It was a reinforced steel and concrete structure, clad both inside and out with white marble veneer from which, presumably, the name of the building arose. The building itself consisted of a very large, elliptical covered forecourt, which gave on to the much greater elliptical stadium beyond it. The interior could not have been in greater contrast to the spires, minarets and gargoyles which so liberally be-festooned the exterior: here all the latest ideas in spectacle presentation had been incorporated, so that everything was modern, almost excruciatingly so, functional and above all adaptable. The permutations of staging and seating, always to the best advantage of performers and audience, were practically limitless. It could be and was used for opera, theatre, cinema and music-hall: it was also used for the presentation of sporting spectacles ranging from ice-hockey to covered court tennis: for the setting for a circus amphitheatre it was nothing short of superb. In the last capacity, the sharply tiered seats, each one upholstered and with its own armrests, could accommodate no fewer than eighteen thousand spectators. It was, Wrinfield declared, the finest auditorium he had ever seen, no mean compliment coming from a man who had seen the best in North America and Europe, especially when it was borne in mind that the population of Crau totalled just under a quarter million.
The mass fingerprinting of the entire circus staff took place during the course of the foren
oon in one of the many restaurants and bars – empty at that time of day – that lined the inner side of the forecourt. Resentment and indignation at what was pretty well regarded as cavalier and unnecessary treatment ran high, and it required much of Wrinfield’s considerable tact and powers of persuasion to ensure co-operation. Sergius, supervising by remote control from the comparative comfort of Wrinfield’s prefabricated office and armoured in his seemingly pachydermatous hide, remained totally unmoved by the sullenness of the circus employees, the numerous far-from-affectionate glances that were cast in his direction. Towards the end of the fingerprinting he received a telephone message, but as he spoke in his own language neither Wrinfield nor Maria, who were present with him, could understand the burden of the conversation.
Sergius drained his glass of vodka – he had the same osmotic affinity for his national drink as parched sand has for water – and said: ‘Where is Bruno Wildermann?’
‘He’s in the stadium. But – but you’re not seriously thinking of fingerprinting him? His own brothers – ’
‘Please. I look so foolish? Come. It concerns you, too.’
As the two men approached, Bruno turned away from the supervision of the rigging of a low wire across the centre ring. He looked without expression at Sergius and said: ‘You have word, Colonel?’
‘Yes. Both from the railways and the Air Force. But I’m afraid both reports are negative. No trace of any person lying alongside the railway tracks.’
‘So that has to make it kidnapping?’
‘There would appear to be no other obvious solution.’
Late that afternoon, when Bruno was rehearsing his solo act on the newly slung high trapeze, he was summoned to Wrinfield’s office. He slid to the ground, put on his mentalist’s mandarin cloak and went to the office, which, as seemed inevitable, was only feet from the as yet empty tigers’ cage. Wrinfield was at his desk, Maria at hers. Sergius and Kodes were standing. The atmosphere was halfway between the tense and the funereal.
Sergius took a piece of paper that Wrinfield was studying and handed it to Bruno. It held a printed message, in English, which said: ‘The Wildermann brothers will be returned alive on the receipt of 50,000 dollars. Used bills. Any denomination. Instructions for transfer on Sunday, delivery Monday. Failure to deliver will result in delivery of two left little fingers Monday. Same fingers delivered if notes received but found to be treated for identification by infra-red, ultra-violet or X-ray. Two fingers on Tuesday. On Thursday, two one-handed trapeze artistes.’
Bruno handed the note back to Sergius.
‘Your suspicions were correct.’
‘I was right. No nerves. No feelings. Yes, it would appear so.’
‘They seem ruthless.’
‘They are.’
‘And professionals?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do they keep their promises?’
Sergius sighed. ‘Are you so naive as to try to trap me into something? You are about to say that I seem to know a lot about them. If they are who I think they are – and this has all the hallmarks of previous ransom demands – then they are an extremely able and efficient gang of kidnappers who have carried out a number of such kidnap-pings in the past few years.’
‘You know the members of this gang?’
‘We think we know one or two.’
‘Then why are they still at large?’
‘Suspicion, my dear Wildermann, is not proof. One cannot ask for the death penalty on suspicion.’
‘I did ask an earlier question. About their promises. Will they carry out their mutilation threats? If the ransom is paid, will they return my brothers alive?’
‘I can offer no guarantee. But, judging by past experiences, the chances are high. It’s only logical and good business for them, as specialists in kidnapping operations, to do so. Sounds ridiculous in this context, but it builds up good faith and good will. If a kidnapee is returned promptly and unharmed after the payment of the ransom, then the parents and relatives of the next victim will meet the demands at once, knowing the chances are good that the victim will be returned. But if the kidnappers were to accept the ransom and then kill the victim, then the relatives of the next victim might conclude that the paying of a ransom was a waste of time.’
‘What are the chances of tracing them before Monday?’
‘Four days? Very little, I’m afraid.’
‘Then we’d better have the money ready, hadn’t we?’ Sergius nodded and Bruno turned to Wrinfield. ‘It would take me a year to pay you back, sir.’
Wrinfield smiled, a not very happy smile. ‘I’d do it for the boys themselves without any hope of return. And – I’m being purely selfish, of course – there is not and never will be another group like The Blind Eagles.’
Walking casually, aimlessly, they turned right down a street opposite the undertaker’s on West Street. Dr Harper said: ‘Are we being followed, do you think?’
Bruno said: ‘Watched, I don’t know. Shadowed, no.’
Inside two or three hundred yards the street deteriorated into a winding country lane. Soon afterwards it came to a stout wooden bridge which spanned a slow-flowing and obviously very deep river, some thirty feet in width with ice already forming at both edges. Bruno examined the bridge with some deliberation, then hurried to catch up with an impatient Harper, whose circulation was clearly not geared to cope with the sub-freezing temperature.
Immediately beyond the bridge the road was swallowed up by what appeared to be virgin pine forest. Less than a quarter of a mile farther on the two men came to a large semicircular glade lying to the right of the road.
‘The helicopter,’ Dr Harper said, ‘will land here.’
Dusk was falling when Bruno, clad in his best street clothes, returned to Wrinfield’s office. Only the owner and Maria were there.
Bruno said: ‘Okay if I take my fiancée for a coffee, sir?’
Wrinfield smiled, nodded, then got back to looking worried and preoccupied again. Bruno helped the girl on with her heavy Astrakhan coat and they walked out into the thinly falling snow.
Maria said crossly: ‘We could have had coffee in the canteen or in your living-room. It’s very cold and damp out here.’
‘Nagging and not even married yet. Two hundred yards is all. You will find that Bruno Wildermann always has his reasons.’
‘Such as?’
‘Remember our friends of the other night, who followed us so faithfully?’
‘Yes.’ She looked at him, startled. ‘You mean – ’
‘No. They’ve been given a rest – snow has an adverse effect upon both marcelled hair and bald heads. The lad behind us is about three inches shorter than you, with a cloth cap, torn coat, baggy trousers and scuffed shoes. Looks like a skid row graduate but he’s not.’
They turned into a café that had obviously abandoned hope a generation ago. In a country where the cafés seemed to specialize in smoke and minimal lighting, this one had really touched rock bottom. One’s eyes immediately started to smart: a couple of guttering candles would have provided an equal level of illumination. Bruno guided Maria to a corner seat. She looked around her in distaste.
‘Is this what married life is going to be like?’
‘You may look back on this as one of your happiest days.’ He turned round. The Chaplinesque figure had slumped wearily into a chair close to the door, produced a ragged paper from somewhere, and sat there dispiritedly with his elbow on the table and a grimy hand to his head. Bruno turned back to Maria.
‘Besides, you must admit there is a certain wild Bohemian charm to the place.’ He put his finger to his lips, leaned forward and pulled up the collar of her Astrakhan coat. Nestling deep in the fold of her collar was a small shining metal device no bigger than a hazelnut. He showed it to her and she stared at him wide-eyed: ‘Order up for us, will you?’
He rose, crossed to where their shadow was sitting, seized him unceremoniously by the right wrist, pulled it away from his head and twisted
sharply, an action that gave rise to a sudden yelp of pain from the man but no reaction from the few other customers, who were presumably accustomed to such diversions to the point of boredom. Nestled in the man’s hand was a tiny metal earphone attached to a wire. Bruno followed the wire to a small metal box, hardly larger than the average cigarette lighter, which was tucked away in a breast pocket. Bruno put those items in his own pocket and said: ‘Tell your boss that the next person who follows me will be in no condition to report back again. Leave!’
The man left. Bruno went back to his table and showed the trophies. He said: ‘Let’s try it.’ He lifted the tiny meshed metal oval to his ear. Maria turned her mouth towards the collar of her coat.
She murmured: ‘I love you. Truly. Always.’
Bruno removed the earphone. ‘It works just fine, although it doesn’t seem to know what it’s saying.’ He put the equipment away. ‘A persistent lot, aren’t they. But so very, very obvious.’
‘Not to me. I think you should be doing my job. But did you have to let him know we were on to him?’
‘They know anyway. Maybe now they’ll stop shadowing me and let me move around in peace. Anyway, how could I talk to you with that character invading my privacy?’
‘What is there to talk about?’
‘My brothers.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – why were they taken, Bruno?’
‘Well, for one thing, it’s given that hypocritical, twisting, sadistic liar – ’
‘Sergius?’
‘Are there any other hypocritical, twisted, sadistic liars around? He had the perfect excuse to fingerprint every man in the circus.’
‘How will that help him?’
‘Apart from giving him a feeling of power and making him feel very clever, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They’re my hostages to fate. If I step too far out of line things will happen to them.’
‘Have you talked to Dr Harper about this? You can’t risk their lives, Bruno. You just can’t. Oh, Bruno, if I lose you and they’re lost and all the others in your family gone – ’
Circus Page 14
