The Salzburg Connection

by Helen Macinnes

  “His wife—how much does she know, I wonder?” That’s what we should be worrying about, thought Anton. A faked accident to Bryant would be easy; but loose ends might be more difficult to deal with.

  Grell was reflective. The woman must have known something. Why else would she have sounded so upset? As if she knew that Finstersee was a dangerous spot, yet dared not mention it. But she had spoken about Yates’s call from Zürich quite freely. Grell allowed himself one small deduction. “She does not know everything, or else she would never have mentioned a man called Yates.”

  So that’s what all his telephoning was about, thought Anton; he was checking on the name of Yates. “And who is he?”

  “A man who has been sending messages to Warsaw from Zürich.”

  “The man we caught?”

  “Come on, come on,” Grell said brusquely. “Time to get Bryant moved out of here.”

  Anton took his cue. “How far do I drive?”

  “Well outside of the village—beyond the old church on the high meadow. There’s a sharp curve at that point. You go around it, and just where the road—”

  “I see what you want.” But, thought Anton, not that old cliché! Every time I hear of a car going over a cliff and ending in flames, I wonder who pushed it. He repressed a weary sigh, said diplomatically, “I’ll start a skid and stop the car near the edge. I’ll put his jacket around his shoulders, leave him slumped over the wheel, smash the window, take my loden, and get out of sight. And don’t worry, I’ll keep my gloves on all the time.”

  Grell was frowning as he pulled and tugged at the sweater to fit it over the body. “It may not be enough. The skid, I mean.”

  “Well, I’ll turn the car over on its side—it’s small enough.”

  Grell shook his head. “Better push the car right over the edge of the road.” That should be easy. It was a third-class road, with soft shoulders and no railing, narrow and rarely used except on market days. And Monday wasn’t a market day.

  He’s in love with his cliché, thought Anton, and restrained his amusement. The trouble with the old was that they had their set patterns. He rather enjoyed the idea of a skid around the corner, just to remind him that he had been an expert driver once. A second-hand motor-cycle was the most that Grell thought appropriate for him in this job.

  “Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now remember—get quickly through the village.”

  Anton nodded. He pulled the crumpled beret into an angle to cover the right side of his head, which would be seen from the more populated side of the street. Three hundred and forty people lived in Unterwald, but most of the houses were scattered down over the fields, some barely in sight, as if each and every one of them wanted its own view of the valley below. At this time of day, the children would be in school, the women would be hanging their washing under the broad eaves on ropes strung across their third-floor balconies, the men would be sawing timber for a winter of wood carving. Some would see the car, certainly, but they wouldn’t see too closely. Unterwald would be no problem. “You know,” Anton said as he got ready to hoist Bryant over his shoulders, “I quite liked him. I was beginning to believe his story until I heard you start telephoning. What gave him away?”

  “He trusted too much in a friend.”

  Anton’s quick blue eyes studied the other man’s impassive face, as if trying to read the riddle. Old Security-Conscious wouldn’t tell him, not until this emergency was over and done with. So he risked a probe. “The man whose code we broke? The one who is in our custody right now?”

  Grell began to smile. “That isn’t a bad guess,” he conceded.

  “Name of Yates?”

  Grell laughed. He liked to see bright intelligence in the young. We’ll need all we can get of it, he thought. “You are doing well.” He pulled the door wide, walked out between the two neat piles of logs that stretched along the entire back of the house almost to the balcony overhead, and opened the door of the car. Bryant had left the keys in the ignition ready for a quick departure. He really had thought of everything, that little amateur. I’d better go up to Finstersee right away, decided Grell, and make a careful check of that patch of boulders and trees down at the shoreline before I send my report. Rope burns on a tree, slime from the lake where the chest had been dragged over stones would tell me the real story. Then I’d know whether he managed to get the chest, or whether he was just on a scouting expedition.

  Grell looked casually to either side of him. No one in sight. He nodded to Anton, waiting at the threshold. Anton was shaking his head, the expression on his face openly well-I-never. “What is it?” Grell asked quickly.

  “So friend Yates alerted Warsaw to get Bryant?” Anton asked as he passed Grell.

  “Yes. Now hurry—don’t overplay our luck!”

  “Nice people,” Anton commented as he lowered the man he had murdered into the car and swung off his loden cape to cover the body. “I’ll circle back round the hills. See you in a couple of hours.”

  Luck, Grell had said. More than luck, thought Anton; we must have some good ears and eyes stationed around Europe. I have been told that often enough, but it’s reassuring to find it is true. We may be few as yet, but that’s the way every real power group started. Not in huge masses—that’s something to be used later. Not even with popular approval—only the democracies think in terms of the majority, and they are no model for us. They waste themselves in talk talk talk and self-indulgence. We have better brains than most of them and a sense of realism they never possessed. One thing East Germany showed me, and that was the fat-cat weakness of the West. The Communists have more to teach us; we can learn something from them. They have the right idea about power and how to get it and how to keep it. Look at Russia today: eleven million Communists, that’s all, controlling more than two hundred million non-Communists. China is the same: nineteen million Communists as the elite group over seven hundred million people. Popular approval? That’s a laugh. Just give us all newspapers and radio stations and TV channels, and we’ll give the people all the five-year plans they want; and well see... Crazy, are we? It can be done. Because it has been done. And we’ll do it better. Better than any Russians or Chinese. And we’ll be clever this time. The way the old Germany handled the Jewish problem was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. We’ll handle the Jews the way Russia does—a few for a showcase, the rest nothing-men. Yes, we’ll succeed where the old Germany failed; we’ll use all its greatness and repeat none of its mistakes. And it was a great country. Our enemies could destroy our homes and our nation, but we still have our brains and our courage and our perseverance. We don’t give up, we don’t compromise. And we have a cause. Universal peace through world domination. Why should we let the Communists have that plum?

  He took the hill road out of Unterwald at a good strong speed. It was empty of any traffic, and the next mountain village was at least fifteen minutes away. A nice lonely stretch. His speed increased. There was always an exhilaration in twisting and turning along the shoulders of the hills. In the distance, he could briefly glimpse the black onion-shaped cap on the white bell tower of the little church standing boldly on its high meadow; then it would be blocked from view by another wooded slope. In and out, twist and turn, soaring above the placid valley that lay far below to his left. The mists had lifted, leaving only dampness to bind the earth road more securely. His one complaint was the weight of Bryant’s bent-up body, which kept falling against his legs with each swerve and curve. Now he was almost at the church itself, rounding the turn with a screech of brakes.

  And then the skid started, much more of a skid than he had intended. A real skid. Startled, he swung the steering wheel to his right—no, that was wrong—he must turn into the direction of the skid. He remembered, too, to take his foot off the brake and press lightly on the accelerator. He had veered right across the narrow road, the rear tyres already digging into its soft shoulder. He felt it yield. He swore, reaching for the door
handle, but his legs were jammed by Bryant’s sudden weight, and there was no time, no time at all—

  The car slipped over the treacherous edge of the road and plunged downward, twisting and turning, twisting and turning.

  4

  The telephone rang, pulling Anna Bryant to her feet. She pushed back her disordered hair, tried to wipe the dried tear marks from her tight cheeks, and stood holding the edge of the table. She was afraid to answer. Could it be Dick? It had to be. She left the warm kitchen and ran through the narrow corridor, past the darkroom and the storeroom, into the little front shop. She caught the receiver on the seventh ring. “Yes?” she was asking, afraid to say “Dick?” But it was his voice.

  She leaned against the counter where the cameras were displayed, staring at the wall with the samples of his pictures scattered over it. It was daylight out in the narrow little street, people were up and around. And his voice was telling her that he was fine, that he was drying off at the inn, he’d be home around midday, he’d be home, he’d be home... “See you soon, darling,” his cheerful voice said, and he had hung up before she could ask if everything was all right.

  It must be all right, she thought. He must have found the chest and hidden it. Or else he wouldn’t have sounded so confident. Perhaps it had been easier than she had thought, after all. Except for that mist. She drew a long deep breath. The truth was that she had scarcely hoped to see him alive again. Last night, as she had listened to him over their late supper, watching him eat, unable to swallow a bite from her own plate, she had felt only horror and fear and the cold anguish of her world smashed to pieces again. But he had been right: he could do the job; and he had done it. She paused before one of the pictures on the wall, touching it lightly with her hand. It was a study of Finstersee, taken from the picnic ground in early July, showing the meadow scattered with flowers and, behind it, the deep green forest and, behind that, the mountainside of grey barren rock. But it was on the three tilted boulders at the edge of the meadow, garlanded at their base by wild roses and lupins and long-stemmed daisies, that her eyes rested.

  As she returned to the kitchen through the long stretch of the old house, she heard her brother’s footsteps clumping around in the spare bedroom overhead. One thing about Johann as a guest—he gave good warning that he was about to come downstairs. She moved to the kitchen door that led out into the stone hallway and unlocked it so that Johann could enter, for the dark vaulted hall was both the main entry from the street for all the people who lived in the apartments above and the only means to start climbing to the various landings. It was a complicated business living in the Old Town of Salzburg, but the Bryants had thought themselves lucky to find a flat over the shop and, like everyone else who lived in this section, had grown accustomed to coping with seventeenth-century surroundings. Walls bulged and floors sagged, but everything was kept repaired and painted and people talked of character and charm. Inconvenience was never mentioned except by those who moved away to the more antiseptic suburbs—that was Dick’s phrase for the modern houses spreading out over the hills that surrounded Salzburg.

  Anna, looking around at the disorder of her kitchen, was almost disloyal to Dick. Somehow, the parlour furniture from upstairs had infiltrated down here piece by piece—there had never been much of it but it certainly made the large room seem small. Originally, it hadn’t been a kitchen either. But Dick had decided that it was easier to cook here, when they were working late in the darkroom, and to eat here too. Now—just what would you call this room? she wondered. She smiled, knowing Dick’s reply: the warmest and most comfortable in the whole house. I had better start clearing things, she thought, and stood wondering where she’d start, and then heard through the half-opened door the quick clatter of Johann’s heavy shoes as he came running down the stone staircase outside.

  “Careful!” she called in alarm. The stairs were worn, deceptive, dark. She heard him slip and fall. He was cursing everything in sight as he burst into the kitchen. He calmed down when he saw her. “Bloody hell,” he ended, rubbing his backside. “Last week I climbed over the Dachstein, got caught in snow flurries, hiked back to Bad Aussee in pouring rain, took neither a fall nor a cold. All I have to do is come to Salzburg for three days and I start sneezing and splitting my—” He became aware of the kitchen’s state, of his sister’s appearance. Dirty dishes were uncleared from the table, the sink was littered with pots and pans, the lamps were on and the curtains tightly drawn although it was broad daylight out in the streets. Anna’s hair seemed to be falling in pieces around her thin, pale face. She was wearing the same sweater and skirt he had last seen when she had brought him broth and her special brew of herb tea yesterday evening. And in spite of the comfortable warmth of the kitchen, she was huddled in an old coat of her husband’s which usually hung on the backdoor peg. “Have you been down here all night? What—”

  “Nothing is wrong,” she told him, decidedly, cheerful. “Except with you. You shouldn’t be up and dressed. Another day in bed would do no harm.”

  “I’m all right.” His voice was thick with his cold, his eyes looked more grey than blue, but the flush of fever had gone. “One day in bed is enough for me.” He switched off the light, pulled back the curtains, and stared out at a honeycomb of other people’s houses around their tight little courtyard.

  “You should stay indoors—”

  “We’ll see, we’ll see,” he said irritably. He was hungry, but the kitchen was a mess and his appetite was beginning to leave him. Anna never had been much of a housekeeper, but this morning she had surpassed herself. “Anna, you look awful. Will you go upstairs and make yourself decent, and we’ll get this mess straightened up so that a man can enjoy his breakfast?”

  “Yes,” she said, latching the coat back on its peg as she left. She climbed the stairs quickly. I’ll get him fed before I give him the news about Dick’s absence, she was thinking. Dick had said she could tell Johann everything. Everything that was, except the hiding place of the chest. Or about its contents. No one was to know that. Not at this time. And I was only told about it in case things went wrong, in case Dick never got back. She had been given full instructions what to do if that happened. But she wouldn’t have to do anything. Dick would be home to take charge as he always did.

  She washed away the sticky streaks of tears, combed her fair hair into its soft wave, added lipstick to her pale lips for some courage. Johann was going to be angry. He was going to be more than angry. She went downstairs slowly.

  He had solved the problem of the dirty dishes by shoving them inside the small sink beside the pots and throwing a drying towel over the heap to get them out of sight. He had ground fresh coffee and was putting the kettle to boil. “That’s more like it,” he told her as he gave her a quick glance. “You’re short of food—there are three eggs and not much bread.”

  “I only want coffee.” She had made a big supper for Dick last night.

  “But what about Dick’s breakfast? He’ll need something when he wakes up.”

  “I’ll get some more food before then.” She began breaking the eggs into a bowl.

  “He takes it easy, doesn’t he?”

  “In between assignments. The book is all ready now. The photographs are waiting to go to Zürich. He may take them there this week.”

  “Why not mail them?”

  “Oh, Dick wants to see the publisher himself about some details. Well—he is not exactly the publisher. He’s the man who runs the Zürich office of the American publishing house. It’s a New York firm—” She stopped whisking the eggs, glanced across the kitchen. Johann did not seem impressed. “It’s a very important firm,” she told him severely.

  “I know, I know.”

  “It was a very generous advance: a cheque for three hundred American dollars.”

  I could live for three months on that, thought Johann. “Any chance your Zürich friend would like a book on mountain climbing?” He watched the answering smile on his sister’s face. No, she w
asn’t unhappy. So there hadn’t been a quarrel between her and Dick. Yet why had she sat up all night? Breakfast first, he thought, and then I’ll find out. He sat down at the table to wait in silence. Anna’s cooking was better than her housekeeping provided no one disturbed her concentration. It was on the simple side, of course; Dick’s taste in food was simple. But what chance had she ever had of being taught how to run a house or bake Linzertorte? Aged fourteen she had been when the Russian shelling of Vienna had stopped and the horde of soldiers poured in from the east. There hadn’t been a woman or girl in that part of the city—yes, some had been younger than Anna, some five times her age—who hadn’t nightmare memories of that day of liberation. No one spoke of it any more; it was something dead and buried like the corpses under the burned ruins of the Cathedral. No one spoke of it; all was silence, all seemed forgotten. Seemed... How often did the memory steal unexpectedly into a man’s mind and make him want to seize the whole bloody world by its filthy throat and break its hypocritical neck?

  “Johann! Please eat it while it’s hot.”

  She had set before him his favourite omelette, fluffy and soft, slightly sweetened, filled with heated apricot preserves, powdered on top with fine sugar. He turned his head aside and blew his nose violently. “Has Dick any spare handkerchiefs? This cold is all in my head now, blast it.”

  “I’ll get them. And his slippers.”

  “They won’t fit.”

  “They are better than shoes that are damp,” she told him severely. “You men!”

  Yes, he thought, you men... He had almost finished the small omelette before she came running downstairs. There had been no other sounds from the bedroom overhead except her quick light footsteps. He frowned, pouring himself a mixture of hot milk and coffee, and then, as she placed the handkerchiefs at his elbow and the slippers beside his feet, he asked quite simply, “Where is Dick?”

  “Your shoes are really sodden,” she told him, and poured her own cup of coffee. She didn’t sit down, though. “That must have been quite a shower you were caught in. Where were you anyway?”