The Map

by T. S. Learner

  August scanned the panorama; in the centre of the derelict grounds was an old fountain, with a large seated bronze figure of Neptune flanked by a couple of Teutonic-looking nymphs. A shallow pool of greenish water surrounded the centrepiece. As he looked, August noticed movement reflected in the smooth surface of the water to the side of the statue. Squinting, he could just make out the reflection of someone behind the statue, someone tall, someone holding an odd-looking weapon. It had to be Tyson or one of his men. Whoever it was, the man was professional, as the reflection revealed a modern crossbow equipped with viewfinder.

  August crept further along and slipped over a low wall to a roof beneath. From there he dropped onto a terrace, then climbed down a drainpipe to the ground, at the side of the house. He hugged the wall and looked around the corner – the man came into view. He’d stepped out from the fountain and was walking slowly, crossbow raised, towards the front of the house, looking hard at the turrets above for his quarry. August lifted the Mauser, steadying his wrist with one hand. Aiming carefully, he fired.

  The bullet hit Vinko in the side of the head, killing him instantly. He swayed for a second on his feet, then toppled backwards, the crossbow falling to the ground. August listened for anyone else but he heard nothing, only the faint cawing of crows and the distant hum of a shipping barge on the river. In front of him was a mass of brambles and overgrown roses. Then there was the sound of a passing car – the road must be beyond the brambles, higher up the slope. Without stopping to examine the body, he raced across the open lawn, then dived into the brambles, beating his way as fast as he could to the top of the terrace and freedom, half-expecting gunfire to cut him down any second.

  Seven minutes later he emerged from the overgrown garden and burst out onto a tarred road he calculated to be the main road running above the Treppenviertel towards the centre of Blankenese. He saw the motorcycle parked twenty metres away, back down towards the steps that led to the mansion. He ran down, and, after leaping on the bike, swung it around and headed back towards Hamburg as fast as he dared drive, leaves and brambles flying from his hair and shoulders as he sped away.

  As August turned towards Hamburg-Mitte he found himself behind a school bus, with a garbage truck approaching in the opposite lane. As he waited to pass he glanced in the wing mirror and saw a black Mercedes turn into the crossroads from the same direction he had. August watched it cruise his way in the mirror. It was following him. He gunned the BMW up onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing a couple out for a stroll. He overtook the bus, dropped back onto the tarmac, then went straight through a red light, outraging the bus driver who pushed down on his horn. But by the time August had swung into the next street it appeared he had lost the Mercedes. Crouching lower in his seat, he hit ninety miles an hour, the R75 smooth under his grip, the Elbe flashing past on his right like a brown snake, and for a moment he was swept away by the exhilaration of the chase. Then the Mercedes re-emerged, only about thirty metres behind him. The built-up streets of the city loomed up on either side. Each time he tried to lose the car it reappeared, as though telepathic. As he hit Altona, he took a hard left, then another, squeezing by a lorry unloading, which baulked the Mercedes. He roared towards the narrow streets of the Speicherstadt, then up onto a loading barge that threw off its moorings just as the Mercedes pulled up fast at the kerb.

  The barge took him down to the south side, where he disembarked and threaded his way through the docks and down the canals to the bunker, the U-boat and, most importantly, Izarra.

  22

  August knew something was wrong the moment he entered the bunker – the entrance hatch to the U-boat had been left open and all the lights in the submarine were blazing. He scrambled down the submarine ladder as fast as he could.

  ‘Izarra!’ he yelled out, wanting her to be there waiting, perhaps even to rush down the narrow steel-ribbed corridor to greet him. Instead his own voice bounced back at him in the ominous silence – she hadn’t even called back to him. His heart started to pound uncomfortably. Had he made a huge mistake leaving her alone? Had whoever pursued him visited here first? August bolted down to the captain’s quarters. The cabin door was swinging open. The bed where they had made love had the covers pulled back and was rumpled as if she had just stepped out, but there was no sign of her clothes nor her bag. Not daring to think about the implications, August rushed to the desk and pushed the end of the desktop off one hinge. It swung open revealing the hollow interior. August reached down into the desktop, and felt a wave of relief sweep through him as he touched the wrapped package of the ancient manuscript. But where was Izarra? He looked back at the bed, at the indentation her body had made in the mattress. His first thought was that they had abducted her. Cursing himself for leaving, he sat down on the bed and punched the pillow in frustration. It was then that he noticed a note left under it, the scrawled handwriting in Spanish. His stomach lurching, he picked it up:

  Dear August, I went to the central post office and found a telegram from Jacob – he is in Geneva. He says Tyson is there and the agreement between the US and Franco is imminent. I have gone to join him. I’m convinced this will be the only way we can catch Tyson and sabotage the pact. Izarra.

  Furious, August crumpled up the paper.

  ‘Bird flown the coop?’ Karl’s voice boomed out, and August swung around, startled.

  ‘Jesus, you scared me. I didn’t think anyone else was here.’

  ‘Sorry, I learned to walk without making a sound in prison. Invisibility was a good way of surviving – I perfected it.’ He glanced down at August’s shirt. ‘You’re bleeding?’

  Surprised, August lifted his sleeve. It was stained red from Olivia’s blood, from when he had held her dying body.

  ‘Not my blood, someone I tried to save. I’ve just been fired at, strangely enough by a crossbow, over in Blankenese.’

  ‘An arrow will still kill. They didn’t follow you here?’

  ‘I lost them in the Speicherstadt.’

  ‘Good. I would appreciate it if you didn’t leave too many dead bodies behind you. One I can explain away, two gets a little difficult.’ He glanced at the letter August still held. ‘So, your Basque woman has gone, my friend?’

  ‘To Geneva. I can’t blame her, it’s probably a better strategy.’

  Karl glanced critically at the rumpled bed.

  ‘And I’m guessing it’s no longer such a platonic work arrangement?’

  August smiled ruefully. ‘She’s a good woman, Karl, courageous, strong-willed.’

  ‘Pig-headed? They’re the best, the women you can’t control. What’s in Geneva apart from UN and a few Swiss banks?’

  ‘A UN resolution is going to be passed on the impending US defence pact with Franco. I promised Izarra I would do what I can.’

  Karl turned towards the desk, noticing the end of the desktop hanging off like a hinge. ‘I have bad news. I made a few enquires – both Interpol and the Americans are after you. But what is more of a concern is that none of this is official, you’re off the radar.’

  ‘That would explain the professionalism of my pursuer.’ August stepped up to the desk and extracted the chronicle. Karl smiled knowingly. ‘So you must have some information they want very badly.’

  August held the chronicle close to his chest. ‘Or I have information they don’t want exposed.’

  ‘Gus, who is the man you’re after?’

  August glanced over. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the German – he couldn’t afford another death, not of an individual who had defied so many odds, a fighter with an almost supernatural aptitude to survive.

  ‘If I tell you, they will kill you, like they killed Jimmy and Edouard.’

  Karl sighed. ‘I understand, but I would have liked to have helped. Things have got a little quiet around here since liberation. Of course there’s always East Germany and Berlin – that will be interesting now Stalin’s dead. Everyone has got so wonderfully jumpy. It is going to be a real funfair ride, Gus.
’ He grinned then slapped August on the back.

  ‘You’ve helped enough, but meanwhile,’ August pointed to the Rolleiflex sitting on the bed, ‘I have some photos to develop.’

  The photographic paper floated in the tank, the image unfurling in a growing palette of greys and blacks as the developing chemicals worked their magic. Now the distinctive design of the kabbalistic Tree of Life emerged like a matrix. Smaller than the other two mazes, and ringed by the stone wall, the Blankenese maze’s topiary was still distinct enough to see the pattern clearly. August pulled the wet photograph out with the tongs and pegged it up to dry next to the other two shots he had taken. Outside, he could hear Karl and the young Communist who ran the centre arguing in angry, guttural German over who would be the next Soviet leader.

  Shutting his mind off, August stared across at the drying image, the centre sephirot. The third circle up from the base of the design was spectacular against the others, dark in its foliage, while the others stood bare and empty, white circles surrounding a black. It was like Morse code, a cipher that related to the placement of the other planted sephiroth. He sat down at the small worktable and under the infrared light studied the images of the other two mazes. An anagram, Olivia Henries had told him, as she was dying. He’d translated enough of the text now to know there was another maze mentioned further along in Shimon’s book, but the pages of the last chapter were missing, torn off. Yet the three mazes he did have images of made up a line of planted sephiroth – that had to be the main clue. The line could be a symbolic way to reach enlightenment, he guessed, remembering Jacob’s words. Perhaps Shimon had discovered the most direct, fastest route to enlightenment knowing how much significance both kabbalists and occultists attributed to the thirty-two different paths one could take to reach the highest spiritual plane.

  So far it had run directly from the base Malkuth/Kingdom – the first sephirot to be planted in the maze in the Basque country – to the next sephirot up the central trunk Yesod/Foundation – planted in the Avignon maze – and now to Tiphareth/Beauty, the third base along the central trunk. It was too simple and too easy. But unless he had an aerial photograph of the fourth maze, it was impossible to know which way the line would run from Tiphareth. It could go to the right – either up to Chesed/Kindness or down to Netzach/Victory – or it could go to the left – up to Geburah/Severity or down to Hod/Splendour. Was it possible that the Hebrew letters that began the name of each sephirot could make up an anagram that translated into another message? And he still didn’t understand the significance of the plants so carefully tended and cultivated in each planted sephirot. They too had mystical meaning – were their linked names an anagram? And how did Olivia mean the mazes were sacred? Whatever their power, it was obviously sacred and secret enough for her to have sacrificed her life. But why to save him? The idea that he might have been pulled into a role that had been preordained somehow had begun to tug at the edge of his mind. How much real control did he have over all this? Was he falling prey to the same obsession that drove Shimon and perhaps the young monk Baptise to their deaths? Did Tyson have the upper hand? Was he being manipulated in some way he was unconscious of? August glanced over at the photograph of the German maze. The black branches of a tree in the foreground reminded him of Izarra’s hair spread on the pillow the night before. The idea that without realising he had led her into danger filled him with self-loathing. But what should he do? Follow Shimon Ruiz de Luna’s journey to the fourth maze and the next clue to where Elazar ibn Yehuda’s great treasure might be or switch tables on Tyson and actively pursue him back to Geneva and join Izarra and Jacob?

  That evening, after ridding himself of his moustache and donning a pair of glasses, he caught the express train to Geneva.

  Tyson stared out at Lake Geneva, standing next to a line of bathers sunning themselves along the wooden pier of the Bains des Pâquis. He took solace in the variety of bodies lying out on deckchairs, from the robustly middle-aged to svelte long-limbed beauties of both genders naively oblivious to the power they held over others. It was all so human, so animal. He liked that; he liked to observe the flaws, the shifting undercurrents of attraction and repulsion that ran, like electricity, between the observed and the observers. Perhaps that’s how the world really ran, he mused; perhaps it was only the way one is perceived by others that actually gave definition to one’s existence. If so, who was he? A large presence, he liked to think, imagining with relish how Olivia looked as Vinko’s arrow pierced her. One could almost say he was like a god with the power to give or take life. He checked his watch – he had two hours before he had to meet the Spanish general, two hours to strategise. The conference at the UN tomorrow promised to be the apex of all his hard manoeuvring, all of the negotiations he had so carefully set into play. He didn’t like how one passion now threatened to destroy the other. The chronicle was not meant to intrude into the Spanish alliance. If the vested interest came to light, he would be court-martialled or perhaps even terminated. Fuck Winthrop, he should have had him killed at the maze. At least he could have saved Vinko. But he couldn’t get the antique dealer’s words out of his head. Angels good and bad. He’d climbed into the maze after August had left, had found nothing but a bunch of circular flowerbeds, all unplanted except one and in the centre of one of the paths those strange engraved footprints. What was he missing? Perhaps he shouldn’t have ordered Olivia’s killing after all – she would be able to answer those questions. However, patience serves the hunter, Tyson reminded himself. He sat down in one of the deckchairs, tipping the attendant an extra franc, dismissive of the incongruity of his large frame swathed in a tailored Fifth Avenue suit amid the sunworshippers. He watched a ferry chug its way over to the left bank of the lake. There was really no rush. He checked his watch again – the night train from Hamburg came in at nine-thirty and he’d received a wire earlier from a friend at the British base in Hamburg informing him that Winthrop had been sighted boarding it. Yawning, he relaxed into the deckchair and let the warmth of the sun beat a pattern across his sunglasses; the classicist really was so predictable. Time to pay Winthrop senior a call.

  August stood outside the Gare de Cornavin. The streets of Geneva, untouched by war, were bustling with a kind of old world opulence and it was hard not to go into cultural shock. The train ride had been tense and he was relieved to discover that the fake passport Edouard supplied hadn’t appeared to be registered with Interpol. The Swiss border police had been perfunctory, efficient and polite. They’d studied the passport photograph and smiled when, making a joke, August had taken off his glasses to make perfectly clear it was him in the photograph. And now with his bag with the chronicle in it tucked safely under his arm, he felt strangely invincible, as if his luck increased with each escape from the authorities. It was a dangerous illusion and one he knew well from the battlefields of the Civil War – ‘the luck of the blessed, the blessed undead’, they called it in the brigade.

  Geneva was warmer than Hamburg and the whisperings of summer were evident in the blossoming flowerbeds in front of the station. After circling around the block, carefully scanning the milling pedestrians, he began walking in the direction of Les Pâquis district – an area famous for its cheap migrant hostels, nightclubs and red-light district. It was also conveniently close to the Palais des Nations and the United Nations building. If Izarra would be staying anywhere, it would be there, he decided.

  Les Pâquis was a warren of cheap apartments and boarding houses for poor Italian workers and other refugees. August tried at several hostels, but no Spanish woman of Izarra’s description had checked in over the past few days. Still convinced she was staying somewhere in the area, he decided to return later, but as he turned away from one hostel he caught sight of himself reflected in a shopfront. Unshaven, with wrinkled trousers and wearing the clothes he’d picked up a lifetime ago in Paris, he looked like some kind of unemployed construction worker or poor immigrant. He needed to disguise himself. He glanced up the street; at
the end he could see a neon sign advertising an exclusive gentlemen’s sauna. There was a ploy he’d used before – unethical but effective. Steeling himself, August began walking.

  Apart from August there were two other men in the changing room: a tall well-built businessman who was just pulling off his trousers and a plump Indian who, naked, was rigorously towelling down his rippling back. The whole place smelled of a cheap lemony disinfectant. August glanced surreptitiously around; through a glass door he could see a small plunge pool, around which several naked men lounged on wooden benches; it was obviously a pick-up joint. Opposite the plunge pool door were several doors that looked as if they led to individual steam rooms – this would buy him time. August unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall to the ground. Look at me, look at me. He willed the businessman to turn in his direction. That’s it, take the bait.

  The man, in his early forties, glanced appreciatively over at August, who assessed his physical dimensions in seconds. He was roughly the same build as August and the suit, now folded on the bench, looked expensive. August smiled back, a subtle whisper of encouragement. Now wearing only a small towel wrapped around his waist, his excitement evident, the man nodded discreetly in the direction of one of the doors of the steam rooms. August nodded then indicated he would be a few minutes. After giving August another appreciative glance, the businessman stepped into one of the rooms. As he left the Indian went back out to the plunge pool, leaving August alone in the changing room.