The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  The face of the old familiar stranger was nodding, nodding. ‘Yes, Emily, it is Walther-your papa. I know how you feel this minute-as I feel-the shock, the incredibility-but we are alive, my little goose-and together-the darkness gone, forgotten-from now on together, always. I am free, Emily.’

  ‘Papa,’ her voice said aloud.

  And suddenly his rough red face slipped away, sucked slowly into the gaping vortex of the spinning room, and she felt herself moving into the vortex, too. Desperately, she tried to keep her balance, hold on to the something inside, the upright thing you held to keep straight, but she felt it crack beneath her, and she let go and abandoned herself to the airiness of the spinning room. For the eternity of a second, she hung suspended and legless, and then the carpet floated up into vision, and the coarse nap of the carpet was on her cheeks and mouth, and after that, the far voices and enormous shoes, and after that only blackness, star-peppered, and then blackness and blackness…

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon.

  Seated on the side of the double bed, in the unfamiliar single room on the fifth floor that he had moved into, Andrew Craig dropped the telephone receiver back on the cradle in despair. For an hour and a half, every fifteen or twenty minutes, he had been ringing Emily’s suite without getting a response. If she had been accidentally delayed, why had he not heard from her? The only answer was that she had regretted the message she had sent him, and was purposely avoiding the telephone.

  He rose, jittery with frustration, and decided that some activity would calm him down. His valise stood on the baggage table, still not unpacked. He loosened the straps, set the suitcase flat, unlocked it, and began to throw his effects into a cupboard drawer. He passed fifteen minutes in this way, and when the valise was empty, there was nothing more to do. There was, as a matter of fact, his acceptance speech to write, but he had no interest in it.

  He filled his pipe, and considered phoning Emily one last time. But it seemed pointless. She knew where he was, or could find out by asking the operator, and if she wanted to see him, she would ring.

  Then, as he paced, worrying about Emily, troubled about the speech that must be written, something else occurred to him.

  He strode to the telephone and asked to be connected with the portier’s desk in the lobby.

  ‘Yes? This is the portier.’

  ‘This is Andrew Craig. Tell me-the keys to the Stratman suite-Miss Emily Stratman-Professor Stratman-are both their keys in the box? I’m trying to find out if either one has returned to the hotel yet.’

  ‘One second, Mr. Craig.’

  Craig waited, holding the receiver to his ear, and then the portier was back on the line. ‘Both keys are missing, so they must both be in. I would-one second, please hold-’ Craig heard indistinct voices, and then the portier again. ‘My colleague behind the desk tells me that Professor Stratman took his key and went up to his suite no more than ten minutes ago. And he says he believes that Miss Stratman came for her key about-it was shortly after the noon hour. So-’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Craig.

  He hung up. That was it, then. Emily had been in her room all this while, and returned to answer his call, and had then had a change of heart and stayed away from the telephone. The important thing she had to tell him would not be told. Their reunion was not to take place.

  Suddenly Craig was weary of pursuit and disappointment. If she was this way, then it was this way she would always be, and there would be no making her over. He had not the energy for these ups and downs. He would forget her. That would be for the best.

  He decided that he would go downstairs, have a few drinks and a snack in the Winter Garden, and after that, there might be time enough to outline some sort of acceptance speech-a brief, conversational speech larded with the literary clichés and double-talk (where man became Man) expected on these occasions, and then, at last, it would be time to dress for the final Ceremony.

  But when Craig arrived at the elevator, and pressed the button, he knew that his destination was not the Winter Garden but the Stratman suite.

  Quickly traversing the red-striped corridor carpet of the third floor, he reached her front door with every intention of buzzing and knocking until Emily was forced to make an appearance and engage in a showdown, but then he found that the front door was ajar. This was better, he decided at once. He would simply walk in on her and corner her, before she could temporize and equivocate, and he then would have it out with her. As he reached for the knob, the door moved away from his touch.

  A stooped chambermaid, in clean but faded green, carrying a pail of suds and brushes, a mop clenched awkwardly, was opening the door to leave.

  Craig stepped aside for her, nodding politely. ‘Miss Stratman is expecting me,’ he explained, because he felt that an explanation was needed.

  The chambermaid muttered an incomprehensible phrase in Swedish, and waited for Craig to enter, and then she closed the door after him.

  In the entry hall, Craig hesitated on the frontier of propriety. One did not barge into other people’s private quarters unannounced, unless one was Leah, but then Craig justified his act by remembering that he had telephoned Emily often enough, and that she had wanted to see him. If she now suffered timidity or doubt, at least one of them should be the aggressor.

  Nevertheless, he felt uncertain of his position as he went into the sitting-room. He looked about. The room was vacant, and quiet except for the ticking of a clock. He moved past the sofa to what he recalled to be Emily’s bedroom door, intending to call her or rap, when he was arrested by the torn note held upright between the telephone and lamp. The upper half of the note had been crossed out. It read:

  Had to suddenly go out to a business lunch. See you soon. Room service says your gown will be back at 3. Love, UNCLE MAX.

  Beneath these crossed out sentences was a later communique:

  2.20. Liebchen-Have returned from lunch and want to rest. Do not let me oversleep. Wake me before 4 o’clock. UNCLE MAX.

  Craig straightened. Emily was not in after all. He felt ashamed for having mistrusted her, and equally ashamed at this intrusion on her privacy. Whatever had detained her, he told himself, was her own business, and if she intended to telephone him, she would do so before the Ceremony. He felt better now. To hell with the Winter Garden. He would return to his room and outline the speech and wait for her.

  Simultaneous with his decision came the sound of the front door buzzer. His first thought was: Emily, at last. Then his second thought corrected the first: she would not buzz, for she had a key. Well, he had no business here. He would see who it was-Emily’s gown being returned by the valet, no doubt-he would accept it, hang it up, allow old Stratman his nap, and then leave.

  When he hurried into the entry to answer the buzzer, he noticed that a single sheet of white typing paper had been slipped through the crack at the bottom of the front door. He stooped to pick it up, not intending to invade privacy further by reading the typewritten message, intending only to place the message on the table, when Emily’s name leaped out of the page at him.

  He read the typed words set down entirely in capital letters:

  PROF. STRATMAN: IF YOU WISH TO KNOW THE WHEREABOUTS OF YOUR NIECE EMILY STRATMAN THEN OPEN THE PARCEL IMMEDIATELY AND LISTEN TO A FRIEND.

  The cords in Craig’s throat constricted. The words on the sheet in his hands were bland and harmless words, but the effect was ominous. Like all Americans, so isolated from the everyday intrigues of the Old World, Craig was conditioned by lurid fiction and film, to believe that such skulduggery was as extinct as history. To even project the possibility of conspiracy, on a level lower than unreal high government circles, was to cast aside maturity and sophistication. Automatically, to one raised as he had been, all machination was the façade of what was more familiar and innocent-the practical joke.

  At once, Craig rejected menace and prepared for the unfolding of the joke. He opened the front door to admit the page with his parcel. But
there was no one there, which tended to confirm the joke. He poked his head into the corridor and searched off right and then left. The corridor was empty. And then his shoe bumped the parcel on the corridor floor.

  Taking up the small, light parcel, meaning to place it with the ridiculous message on the entry table, he was nagged by an urgency to reread the message. Now he did so, and now he sensed jeopardy. What corroborated the threat of the message was Emily’s actual absence. She had said that she would be back in her suite at 12.30, but it was past 2.30. The thing to do, he knew, was to awaken Professor Stratman-message and parcel were directed to him-and be reproved for interrupting an old man’s rest with collegiate nonsense. His instinct was to obey the message himself, and, at worst, be accursed for a meddlesome fool. And if it was not a joke? His instinct was reinforced by a deep emotion: his stake in Emily was, by this time, as great as Stratman’s stake.

  Foregoing further vacillation, Craig tugged at the strand of twine around the grey parcel, tore it off, and then peeled away the paper.

  When he was finished, he held in his hand a miniature tape recorder, no more than four by five inches, constructed of black plastic. To the lower left, in white lettering, were the words ‘Record… Play… Stop’ with a tiny lever set at ‘Stop’. A slot above revealed the miniscule tape inside. And next to that was a knob with lettering beneath that read ‘Manual Rewind’. There was no trade name on the plastic machine. Craig turned it over. On the back, in a corner, imprinted black on black, were the words ‘Made in Stettin’. And then Craig saw that a coil of wire was attached to the device, and at its end, a plastic earplug, which was the speaker.

  Standing in the entry hall with this novelty, Craig decided that if it was a prank, it was an expensive prank. Somehow, he did not like this, whatever it was. Indecision had disappeared. He would follow the advice in the message. He would LISTEN TO A FRIEND.

  Carefully, he placed the miniature tape machine on the table, unwound the wiring, pushed the plastic earplug into his left ear, and then he switched the tiny lever from ‘Stop’ to ‘Play’.

  At first, there was the rubbing of the tape, and no other sound. Suddenly, piercing his eardrum, a disembodied male voice: ‘Max, this is your old friend, Hans Eckart, addressing you. I should have preferred communicating with you in person, and, in fact, tried to do so earlier today. Since I could not locate you, I took the liberty of arranging to meet your niece. She is beside me now. Do not be alarmed in any way. She is well and the recipient of some extremely good news, which she will convey to you in a moment. Forgive my use of this melodramatic instrument, Max, but circumstances made it necessary. I might have sent Emily in person with the news, or had her telephone you, but she could have revealed our whereabouts, and that would have been troublesome. I thought to have her write you a note, but she is too excited, and moreover you might not have believed her news unless you heard it from her own lips.’

  There was the briefest pause. The clipped voice spoke perfect English, yet the cadence and inflection were unmistakably Teutonic. Craig, first tense and worried when he had begun to listen, then gradually disarmed by the speaker’s informal reassurances to Max, tried to recall if he had ever heard the name of Hans Eckart. He could not remember, but before he could search his mind further, the same voice had resumed.

  ‘Max, as I have already told you, your niece is understandably excited by the good news that has occurred. Before I put her on-and in order to prevent any misunderstanding of what she tells you-I had better present the news first. You must prepare yourself for a shock.’

  Once more, Eckart’s voice paused, and now, for the first time since Craig had started listening, an intimation of benumbing horror ran through him. He did not like ‘good news’ that had ‘excited’ Emily and would ‘shock’ Stratman. He did not like ‘good news’ that had to be transmitted in this fashion to conceal and protect the speaker’s ‘whereabouts’. He did not like or trust the ‘old friend’ unknown to him. With desperate attentiveness, he listened to the rubbing of the tape, and then the Teutonic recorded voice came on again.

  ‘Max, listen carefully. Your brother Walther is alive. Yes, I will repeat this for you, so there is no mistake. Walther Stratman is alive. He is here in Stockholm. He is with me in this room right now. He is seated beside Emily. They have had their reunion. I know you are stunned. I was no less amazed when I learnt the good news yesterday. When you and I met for lunch previously, it was you who declared that you had heard he was dead, killed by the Russians at the end of the war. It was I who reminded you that he was known to be missing and only presumed dead. And it was I who had to tell you that only recently he was announced as legally dead. But the fact is-by what means is of no relevance at this time-I found Walther alive and healthy in Russia. What had deceived me, all of us in East Berlin, is that these many years he has lived and worked under the name of Dr. Kurt Lipski. The metamorphosis from Walther Stratman to Kurt Lipski had been engineered by Soviet authorities immediately after the war, for reasons of security. Once I was certain of this, I convinced the Soviets that a better use could be made of a Walther resurrected than a Walther supposedly dead. I also convinced them that Walther, under proper circumstances, deserved freedom of choice as to where he wished to live and work in the future. The Soviet authorities graciously permitted Walther to be flown to neutral Sweden. He arrived this morning. He has been with me since his arrival. The moment I had him, I tried to locate you. I knew you would want to see your brother at once. Because you were unavailable, I brought Emily here, in your place, to be reunited with her father. I will now permit your niece to confirm what I have said and to speak for herself. One moment.’

  Eckart’s voice stopped, as if severed by a cleaver. The rubbing of the tape was the only sound. Except for pressing the earplug deeper, Craig had made no other movement during this recital, lest he lose a single word. Even his emotions had been frozen into unnatural attitudes of diligence. He was like one who, except for ear and brain, had been turned to stone by a dark force. Craig waited and listened. But as seconds passed, his mind began to admit thoughts of Walther alive, of Emily with him, of what this must mean to Emily, of what it would mean to Max Stratman, and, inevitably, of this Eckart’s design and purpose.

  The smooth passage of the tape in Craig’s ear was suddenly disturbed by a loud click, and then a female voice, more distant, came through.

  ‘Uncle Max, this is Emily.’ Craig was not sure. Was it Emily? He had anticipated an ‘excited’ tone. The feminine voice was lackadaisical. Craig concentrated. The feminine voice resumed. ‘Uncle Max, it is Emily. They brought me here to meet Papa. At first I didn’t recognize him, and then I did. It is Papa. Yes. There is no mistake or trick. He is well-he is-he is in good spirits, and wants to see you, too. It’s all so sudden and surprising-I’m afraid I’m mixed up. Actually, when I saw him-’

  The feminine voice stopped abruptly, edited out. Now Craig was sure, more than sure, positive. The tape was true. The voice flat and low, oddly disinterested and heavy with sleep as if drugged, was the voice of Emily Stratman, and none other.

  That moment, Emily’s voice dragged through the earplug, verifying Craig’s suspicion. ‘-but now, because of the way I am, so mixed up, they gave me sedation, and I must rest a little while. Uncle Max, I’m so confused I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what will happen.’ The blank tape took over, until Emily’s tired voice rode it once more. ‘Uncle Max, Dr. Eckart says the Russians have agreed to let Papa go free and live in America if you will take the job that was offered to you-the job in the university in East Berlin. I don’t know what to say. I can’t think. Dr. Eckart will explain. I don’t want you to do it. You can’t do it. But I don’t want them to take Papa back either.’ The slightest pause, and then Emily was saying, ‘They tell me to assure you I am not in danger, and whatever you decide, I will be released tonight after the Nobel Ceremony. At that time, they will either take Papa back or take you.’ Suddenly Emily’s voice pitched hig
her, came alive in agitation, defying her sedation, and then broke. ‘Oh, Uncle Max, they want you, but please, please-’ The next portion was edited out, and only the last of Emily’s plea was retained. ‘-what is best for you.’ The tape rubbed on and on.

  Shaken, Craig stared down at the miniature recorder. Through the upper slot, he could see that three-quarters of the tiny spool had run its course, and one quarter remained to be unreeled. He waited.

  The Teutonic male voice had returned, but now, in some subtle way, changed, more clipped, more positive, more confident. ‘Max, you have just heard your niece address you without coercion. Everything she has told you-about your brother’s presence, her own situation, your necessity to make a decision-is true. I will spell out our terms-let us say our offer to you-precisely. I ask you to listen with attention. It is our desire that you defect from the West and join the peace corps of scientists in East Berlin, capital of the Fatherland. You will be treated with the honours and care commensurate with your high position in the world. Between five and six o’clock this afternoon, after you have received your Nobel Prize from the King, you will make your acceptance speech. In this speech, you will announce your change of allegiance. It will be televised, and we will be watching and listening. If you agree to this, you will return from Concert Hall to your suite in the Grand Hotel after the programme. You will be contacted there, and ultimately, sometime tonight, you will be brought to me. I, in turn, will take you to your brother and niece. Before midnight, the exchange will be effected. Walther and Emily will be released in Stockholm and be free to go to America. You will accompany me-the method of transport I cannot disclose-to your new and better life. Should you fail to agree to these terms, and persist in working as a tool of American capitalism, it will mean the rejection and loss of your brother, Walther Stratman. You will not see him again in your life, and he will be returned, against his wishes, to the custody of the Soviet Russians. Since you are a man of good will, and of good conscience, I have no doubt that your conscience will guide you correctly. You will not forget, I am certain, that it was Walther’s sacrifice on your behalf in 1945 that allowed you the so called freedom that he desired, and permitted you to gain the honours and comforts tha t are now yours. To forget this, to ignore the post we offer you, will condemn your brother to continued exile in a land he hates, and keep him from finishing his years with the beloved daughter he has longed for and loved.’