Tamar

by Mal Peet

  “Marijke. Dear God. Marijke.” It was the first time in almost a year he had spoken the word.

  Their two monstrous shadows, thrown by the lamp onto the far wall of the barn, merged into one and became motionless. Then Marijke spoke, but her face was pressed into his chest and he could not make out the words. He held her away from his body slightly. “What?”

  “I didn’t even know if you were dead or alive,” she said, almost angrily.

  “Nor did I.”

  From above them came a muffled creaking. Marijke pulled away, taking the cap from Tamar’s hand. “I must go to the house,” she said, glancing up to where light was brightening at the head of the stairs. “My grandmother will be very anxious by now.”

  “How is she?”

  “The same. She will probably cry when she sees you.” She stepped away from him, then paused. “Are you still Christiaan Boogart?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled for the first time. “Good. I liked him.”

  She was across the barn and through the door by the time Dart began to descend the stairs.

  “Tamar? Tamar, are you all right?”

  Tamar drew in a long breath, as if he were about to dive into cold water, then turned to look up at Dart. “Yes. Fine. Is the set up to scratch?”

  “It works perfectly. I thought you were going to see how Koop was doing.” The upward light from the lantern he carried turned Dart’s face into a yellow-and-black mask that was both comical and sinister.

  “Yes. I just stopped to get my breath.”

  “Well, it’s been quite a night, one way or another.”

  Tamar almost laughed. “That is something of an understatement, my friend.”

  At the door of the barn, Tamar hung both lanterns on nails hammered into the wall. Then he extinguished them. The two men stood, invisible to each other, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  The journey to the Mendlo Mental Asylum took twenty minutes but seemed much longer on the narrow back roads. Dart saw a line of massive plane trees just before the car swung right between two tall brick gateposts. Then an impression of dark windows in a long brick wall. Ahead of them, the ambulance turned right again and vanished. Wim brought the German car to a halt beside what looked like a greenhouse. Koop was now very anxious about the nearness of dawn. Like a vampire, Dart thought. He even looks a bit like one.

  A glass door was opened by a nun. She called softly, “Dr. Lubbers?” Dart went up two steps to the door and shook the hand she held out to him. “I am Sister Agatha. Please come in.”

  She led him into a conservatory, where silvery-green plants cast complicated moon shadows. Oskar followed them, carrying two small black suitcases that he set down on the floor.

  “Dr. Veening is catching up on some sleep,” Sister Agatha said. “He asked me to wake him when you arrived. You’ll probably be more comfortable waiting in here.”

  She opened a door. Dart followed her through into complete darkness. Then there was the scratching of a match and a sudden blossoming of pale yellow light. He was in a large room containing nothing but an assortment of dilapidated chairs. He sat down on the one nearest him and instantly felt unbelievably tired. Sister Agatha fiddled with the lamp until its flame was steady. In the yellow light, her face looked as if it had been carved out of wax. Then she melted into the darkness.

  Dart had been sitting for less than a minute when he heard the German car start up and drive off. Once again he felt that events were out of his control. His reception committee had gone, and he had not been able to say goodbye or wish them luck. He fought against an aching desire for sleep. The muscles in the back of his neck could hardly hold his head up.

  He woke when he heard a chair scrape on the bare floor. He was being studied by a pair of ice-bright blue eyes set in a crumpled and stubbly face. The man was about sixty. He wore a grey dressing gown over a shirt and dark trousers. Wire-framed spectacles hung from a cord around his neck and rested on his chest.

  “Good morning.”

  Dart straightened up in the chair. “Dr. Veening?”

  “Do you know,” the other man said, “I think I would commit murder for a cigarette.”

  “What? Oh, right . . .” Dart fumbled in a pocket and produced a creased pack. The older man took a cigarette, ran it under his nose for the aroma, then lit it from the oil lamp. He exhaled a sigh of pleasure in a blue cloud.

  “It’s over two weeks since I had a smoke,” he said. “Scrounged it off a bloody German while he was checking my papers. He knew damn well who I was, too.”

  “You are Dr. Veening?”

  “We are colleagues, so naturally we will use first names. You are Ernst; I am Albert.” He extended a hand, and Dart shook it. “Welcome to the madhouse, Ernst Lubbers. Since you must be out of your mind, doing what you are doing, you should fit in very nicely.” He drew on his cigarette. “You look almost as tired as I feel. When I finish this, I’ll show you to your room. It’s on the first floor, well away from the wards. The wailing and so forth won’t reach you there. Sleep as long as you like. I imagine you’ve had an eventful night.”

  Dart shook himself out of his dazed state. “Dr. Veening. Albert, sorry. I can’t sleep yet. I have to make a transmission in”— he checked his watch —“Christ, in just less than an hour. I have to set the equipment up.” He looked about the room anxiously. “Where’s my stuff?”

  “Sister Agatha took your kit bag to your bedroom.”

  “Is that where I set up?”

  Albert Veening looked almost hurt. “Certainly not. We’ve got a special hidey-hole for that. We’ve made a rather neat job of it, though I say so myself. I hope you’ll be impressed. And if you’re not, I hope you’ll pretend you are.”

  He put his cigarette out under his foot, then bent and picked up the stub and dropped it into the pocket of his dressing gown. He stood and lifted the lamp. “Your, er, technical equipment is already up there. Shall we go?”

  They went through a panelled door into an impressive hallway. Its three tall windows were barred on the inside. Dart saw that the sky was paler now, a blue-grey slate sprinkled with chalky stars. Veening led him up a wide zigzag staircase with a dark mahogany banister. On the second landing they turned right, through a reinforced door. A corridor, more stairs, two turns. Dart remembered an earlier night walk with a Luger pressed against his skull.

  Veening said, not looking round, “I know what you’re thinking. Bloody maze, this place. The architect must have been a lunatic. Right. Here we are.”

  They were in a passageway that ended at a black panelled door. Veening produced a large bunch of keys attached to his belt loop by a length of string. With some difficulty he separated one key from the rest and handed it to Dart. “Don’t lose it,” he said. “It’s the only spare. Go on, open up.”

  Dart put the heavy key into the lock. There was some resistance, but eventually the door swung open.

  “This is the old dispensary, where they doled out whatever weird and wonderful potions they hoped might do some good a hundred years ago. It hasn’t been used for God knows how long.”

  The room, with its counter, resembled a shop. An elaborate set of scales had gathered equal amounts of dust in its tarnished brass pans. Behind the counter, along two walls, were many rows of small drawers, each labelled with flaking gold lettering. Along the third wall, dusty-shouldered flasks of coloured glass sat on shelves. Next to these shelves was a door, its varnish like diseased skin. Veening lifted a hinged section of the counter, and Dart followed him through it. Veening opened the scabby door to reveal a walk-in cupboard. Dart’s two black suitcases sat on the floor next to a rusty bucket and a broom. Four iron hooks were screwed to the back wall.

  “Now then,” Veening said. “Watch.” He went into the cupboard and tugged the third hook from the left. It came away from the wall, attached to a short length of cord. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and it swung open. “Voilà!” he said, unable to keep the prid
e from his voice. “Do come in.”

  It was a room about three metres square, containing an ancient bureau, a chair, and a sort of couch covered in a green blanket. In one corner, close to a small leaded window, stood a gadget that looked like a bicycle converted into a device for torture. It had neither wheels nor handlebars; the saddle was perched on top of a triangular metal frame. The chain connected the pedals to a dynamo, from which dangled two electrical cables with crocodile clips at their ends.

  “A battery recharger,” Dart murmured. “My God.” He raised the lamp and looked around the room. “This is fantastic, Albert.”

  “It’s acceptable, is it? This used to be the dispenser’s office. The fake cupboard is something Sister Agatha and I cobbled together. Carpentry is one of her many skills, I’ve discovered.”

  “You must have worked incredibly fast. I’m amazed.”

  Albert Veening looked slightly embarrassed. “Actually,” he said, “we did most of this six months ago. For another young man like you. But he didn’t make it.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I’ve no idea. Now then, there’s a battery under the bureau, see? And just outside that window there’s a lightning conductor. I understand that the kind of antenna you’ll be using can be hooked up to it.”

  “You seem well up on these technical matters, Albert.”

  “Not at all. I had a call from a mutual friend the other day. We discussed what you would need. I’m glad that it’s suitable.”

  Dart fetched in the two suitcases. He lifted one onto the bureau and opened it. From the left-hand compartment he took out the headset, the Morse key, and the leads. He looked at his watch again.

  “Albert, I don’t want to seem rude, but it’s probably best if you’re not here when I do this.”

  “Of course. I’ll wait outside. I imagine you’ll want me to guide you back.”

  “God, yes.”

  “Fine,” Veening said. “I’ll take the lamp. There are two just like it in the right-hand bottom drawer of the desk, along with notepads and pencils.” He turned to go.

  Dart said, “Albert? You said just now you’d had a call from a mutual friend. Do you mean a telephone call?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got a phone here? One that works?”

  Veening grinned. “Oh, yes. I’ll show you tomorrow. It’s a work of art.” He closed the concealed door behind him.

  Dart found the lamps and lit them both, placing one either side of the transceiver. He connected the Morse key and the battery leads and clipped the antenna to the lightning conductor. He switched the set on. The voltage meter lit up, its needle swinging across the dial all the way to fifteen. From his coat pocket he took a crystal disguised as an ordinary two-pin electrical plug and slotted it into the transmitter. Then he tuned the aerial, using the most delicate of touches. Good.

  He switched off, removed his wristwatch, and put it on the desk. He took a second watch from his trouser pocket and laid it next to the first, checking that both gave him exactly the same time. After a bit of anxious fumbling, he found the loose stitching in the hem of his coat and pulled out the squares of silk. He studied the one headed TRANSMISSION PLAN and tuned the crystal to twelve megacycles. Using a notepad, he covered all but the bottom row of letters on a second silk and used them to encode his brief message. He double-checked it, then took from the inside pocket of his coat a small wallet made of scuffed crocodile skin. It contained a comb, tweezers, nail scissors, and a file. He used the scissors to cut off the bottom line of the silk, then held the strip of material with the tweezers and set light to it with his cigarette lighter. He rehearsed the Morse in his head. At six forty-seven he switched the set on and made tiny adjustments to the transmitter. Then he rubbed his hands together vigorously with his fingers extended, like a pianist about to begin a recital. When the second hand of both watches touched twelve, he placed the second finger of his left hand on the Morse key and tapped out his identity checks, followed by a sequence of five-letter groups.

  Ten minutes later, in London, a young woman in a blue uniform tiptoed into an office where a man was sleeping on a camp bed. She placed a sheet of paper on top of a pile of folders on his desk. Her note read: River 3 in place. Checks okay. Delta Centrum not yet informed. Please advise.

  By the time Nicholson read the note, Dart was deeply asleep in a room in a building where mad people were starting to struggle free of their dreams.

  The bed had shifted and groaned slightly when she left it, and Tamar’s hand had moved instinctively towards the pistol under his pillow. But Marijke had taken hold of his wrist and hushed him, and he had slipped back into the dream of slow-motion falling through endless plates of silently shattering glass. When he was at last fully awake, he groped on the floor for his watch and swore softly when he saw how late it was. Then he realized he was happy and lay back on the pillows, making sure that he had remembered everything accurately. Making sure his reasons for being happy were good ones. Which they were.

  He became aware of voices from the yard below. When he swung his legs out of the bed, he was ashamed to notice that the spaces between his toes were still rimmed with dried mud. He went naked to the window and peered through a narrow gap in the curtains. Marijke was talking to a woman with copper-coloured hair who was holding a bicycle by the handlebars. The bike had a little trailer attached to the back of it, in which a small child was sleeping.

  Tamar found his sweater and put it on. The scruffy leather jacket was hanging from a peg on the back of the bedroom door. His other clothes had disappeared, and for a moment he was at a loss. Then he saw that faded but clean cotton trousers and a pair of woollen socks had been left on the chair beside the bed. He put them on, went to the bedroom door, then remembered the gun. He took it from under the pillow, put it in his right-hand trouser pocket, and moved quietly towards the stairs. Marijke was waiting for him in the hallway outside the kitchen door, looking up at him. When he reached her, she put her arms around him, and he held her head against his shoulder, stroking her hair.

  After a while she pulled away from him and said, “Your courier is here. Come and say hello.”

  In the kitchen, the visitor was trying to interest her child in what looked like porridge. When Tamar came in, she put the spoon down and stood up, hoisting the child onto her hip. She smiled and held her hand out. “I’m Trixie Greydanus.”

  “Christiaan Boogart.”

  Trixie raised her eyebrows and glanced at Marijke, who bit her lip to hide a smile and turned away. “And this is Rosa,” Trixie said.

  The child studied Tamar through chestnut-brown eyes, and then buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.

  “She’s beautiful,” Tamar said, meaning it.

  “She’s still sleepy. She always drops off in the trailer. It’s the bumping that does it.”

  Trixie Greydanus had a wide suntanned face scattered with darker freckles; with shorter hair she would have looked like a boy who had spent a long happy summer at the seaside.

  “Trixie was at the asylum this morning,” Marijke said.

  The asylum, Tamar thought. Dart. Christ, I haven’t so much as thought about him since he left last night. What the hell is wrong with me? He said, “Did you meet our friend? He got there safely?”

  “I didn’t see him, but he’s fine, apparently. He was asleep. I spoke to my aunt. She’s the head nurse there.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “She said that he was a good-looking boy with lovely hands.” Trixie grinned. “Aunt Agatha didn’t become a nun until she was forty. She still takes an interest.” Trixie turned to Marijke. “She also pointed out that she now has another mouth to feed, and that Dr. Lubbers doesn’t have a ration card yet.”

  “I’ve put a parcel together,” Marijke said. “A loaf, eggs, dried sausage, a jar of Oma’s raspberry jam, some other stuff. But make sure you keep some for you and Rosa.”

  “Bless you,” Trixie said. She turned
to Tamar. “I hope you realize how lucky you are to be sent here, Christiaan. You’ll get home comforts that other men would kill for.”

  Her smile was innocent, but was that a wicked twinkle in her eye? Tamar wondered. And was he blushing? To cover his confusion he said, “Tell me about your routine, how you get about.”

  Trixie became businesslike. “Right. I visit my aunt at the asylum two or three times a week. Then I either go back to my place in the town or come here, visiting my ‘cousin,’ Marijke. I can do it more often, if you need me to.”

  Tamar thought about this. “That’s quite a trek on a bicycle. How long does it take you?”

  “About an hour each way, usually. Less, if I haven’t got Rosa with me. I’m used to it. It’s why I’ve got legs like a carthorse.”

  “And how will you carry stuff, when we need you to? Other than messages, I mean.”

  “Rosa’s trailer has a false bottom. It’ll take a radio, one of the smaller models. Or a Sten, if it’s in three pieces.”

  Tamar nodded. “What about the Germans? Do you get stopped very often?”

  “On the country lanes, hardly ever. There aren’t many motor patrols away from the main roads. There are checkpoints on the way in and out of town, of course, but I’m a familiar face. They don’t even look at my papers most of the time. Some of them try to feel me up, but they don’t usually go too far, maybe because I have Rosa with me. One or two of them are quite soppy about her.”

  And you are a very cool customer, Miss Greydanus, Tamar thought. “So,” he said, “tomorrow morning. You’ll call at the asylum at about nine o’clock, pick up the other transceiver, take it to the Grotiuses’ house in Mendlo, and stand watch while Dart — Ernst Lubbers — sets everything up and makes his test transmission. Is that right?”

  “Yes. I thought I might walk to town with him.”

  “Is that safe? We don’t want the two of you seen together.”

  “Sure, but the chances of us meeting anyone on that road are next to nothing. Besides, what could be more natural than me escorting the new doctor to town to make his calls? I’d be going that way anyway.”