by Jack Higgins
She went into the kitchen and he followed her and stood leaning in the doorway, a slight smile on his face. “I much prefer to watch you.”
She turned to look at him, and suddenly she moved forward and into his arms. “Oh, Paul, I was so frightened for you,” she said. “You’ll never know how frightened I was.”
He held her tightly in his arms and stroked her hair and whispered comfortingly, and all the time he was staring out of the opposite window as he admitted the one, hard fact that he had not wanted to acknowledge. That from the moment he had first seen her at the Taj Mahal, standing just inside the door in her ridiculous harlot’s dress, he had been caught in a tide of emotion so strong it could not possibly be denied.
As he lifted her face, he wondered ironically what the Chief would say, and then he kissed her and forgot about everything. About Muller, Steiner, the Bormann manuscript – everything except this girl.
CHAPTER 7
They arrived at Blankenese at half past eight and parked the car in the Hauptstrasse. Anna led the way and Chavasse followed her along a narrow, steeply sloping alley that finally brought them out onto the shore of the Elbe.
There were plenty of people about, and the gaily painted, brightly lit cafés that lined the shore seemed to be doing good business. Anna led the way into one of them, and they sat down at a corner table on a terrace that jutted out over the water. Chavasse ordered two beers and gave her a cigarette while they waited.
The terrace was lit by a string of Chinese lanterns and they had it completely to themselves. As they sat there in silence, he felt curiously at peace with himself; a small wind lifted across the water, carrying with it the dank, moist smell of autumn.
“I like this place,” he said. “Have you been here often?”
She nodded. “Blankenese is one of my favorite spots. It’s very popular with young couples, you know.”
He leaned across and placed a hand on one of hers. “Do you think we could qualify for the club?”
A sudden, delightful smile appeared on her face and she took hold of his hand and gripped it firmly. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could, Paul? If only we were like all the other couples strolling along the Strandweg – just two people in love and enjoying each other’s company with nothing else to worry about.”
For a moment, he wanted to tell her that there was always something to worry about – money, disease, poverty, old age – but he didn’t have the heart. He smiled and said lightly, “Mark isn’t due until nine. That gives us at least half an hour to pretend.”
She smiled again and said softly, “Then let’s pretend.”
The waiter brought their beer and Chavasse drank his slowly, reveling in the cold dryness of it, and watched a passenger ship steam slowly past on its way out to sea, a blaze of lights from stem to stern. Faintly across the water, he could hear voices and careless laughter above the throb of the engines.
“I wonder where it’s going,” he said.
“Would it matter?”
She smiled sadly, and he took her hands and said gently, “You’ve stopped pretending already.”
She looked down into her glass for a moment, a slight frown on her face, and then she disengaged her hands and lit another cigarette. After a while, she looked across at him, a slight, wry smile on her face. “It’s rather ironic, really. Until yesterday, I was perfectly sure of myself, happy in the knowledge that I was doing something important, something worthwhile. Nothing else seemed to matter.”
“And now?”
She sighed. “Now I am in love.” She laughed briefly. “For me it’s a new experience. I haven’t had time before. But you jumped into my life feet-first. You appeared in my line of vision and I couldn’t possibly avoid you.”
“Are you sorry I did?”
For a moment, she hesitated, and then she flicked her cigarette down into the water and shook her head. “No, if I regretted having known you, I’d be regretting life itself.” For a moment longer, she stared out over the water at the ship disappearing into the night, and then she turned and said in a low, intense voice, “Is there anything for us, Paul? Can we ever get away from this sort of life?”
He stared out into the darkness and thought about it. How many times during the last five years had he been at this stage in a job? One jump ahead of trouble with the prospect of more to come, treading the razor edge of danger. Half his life seemed to be spent under cover of darkness, meeting strange people in even stranger places. And when all was said and done, when everything was finally under wraps, to what ultimate purpose?
Was any of it worth what he held now in the hollow of his hand? He looked across at her, at the despondent droop of her shoulders, and as he watched, she took a deep breath and straightened.
She smiled bravely. “I wonder if Mark will be on time.”
He reached across. “To hell with Mark. To hell with the whole bloody show. For two pins, I’d walk out now. We could take the Volkswagen and drive to Holland, cross the border on foot before daylight. I’ve got friends in Rotterdam – good friends.”
She shook her head slowly. “But you won’t, will you, Paul? The job comes before everything – remember telling me that? And it’s a fine principle and an honest one.”
If anything, he loved her even more for saying it. He leaned across until their faces were almost touching, and said urgently, “But afterwards, Anna? With any luck, we’ll have this whole thing wrapped up within two or three days. I could pack the game in then.”
She seemed to be infected by his own enthusiasm, and a faint flush of excitement tinged her cheeks. “Do you really mean it, Paul? But where would we go?”
He smiled. “Hell, what does it matter? Israel, if you like. Perhaps I could get a job lecturing at this Hebrew University of yours.”
She sighed and shook her head. “I’m afraid we suffer from a surplus of intellectuals.”
He shrugged. “All right, then. We’ll go back to the land. My grandfather was a Breton farmer – I’d probably manage to hold my own on that kibbutz you told me about.”
“Near Migdal where I was raised?” she said. “That would be wonderful, Paul. Of all things, I think that would be the most wonderful.”
“We could climb that hill of yours,” he said. “I can see us now. A fine warm afternoon with no one else for miles.”
“And what would you do when we reached the top?”
He grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. I’d find something.”
She reached across and touched his face gently and shook her head in mock disapproval.
From another café a little way along the strand someone played an accordion, and the music drifted sweetly across the water, a little sad, transitory, like the autumn leaves that the small wind scattered from the trees at the water’s edge, and Chavasse pulled her to her feet and into his arms and they danced alone there on the terrace, her head against his shoulder.
For a little while, it was as she had wanted it to be and nothing else seemed to matter, just the two of them there on the terrace alone, and then there was a slight, polite cough and they drew apart hastily to find Mark Hardt standing looking at them, a strange expression on his face.
“So you got here,” Chavasse said, rather pointlessly, and they all sat down at the table.
“You two seem to have been enjoying yourselves,” Hardt said. He looked across at Anna and she gazed back at him calmly. He shrugged and turned to Chavasse.
“Where did you get to this afternoon? A little unwise venturing out during daylight hours, surely?”
Chavasse shrugged. “Not really. There was a message for me from London. I went to the races at Farmsen to meet Sir George Harvey.”
Hardt raised his eyebrows. “Anything interesting?”
“They’d just discovered who Muller was and thought it might be useful. Apparently, he was Bormann’s orderly for a time.”
“That was something I didn’t know,” Hardt said. “However, we’ve got more important things to thi
nk about at the moment.” He unfolded a sheet of paper and placed it on the table where they could all see it.
It was a carefully drawn sketch-plan of the clinic and Chavasse examined it with interest. “This is good,” he said at length. “Where did you get it?”
“A local real-estate agent,” Hardt said. “There’s an empty house next door and I told him I was interested in buying. The plan he showed me included Kruger’s clinic as well. Apparently, the property was only converted last year.”
“Did you find out anything else about the place?” Chavasse said.
Hardt nodded. “Yes, security is pretty strict. High walls, broken glass set in concrete. There’s a bar opposite the main gate and I had a word with the proprietor. According to him, Kruger handles a lot of mental cases. Rich neurotics, women with twisted sex lives. All that sort of thing.”
Chavasse studied the plan again. “How are we going in?”
“It should be pretty simple.” Hardt leaned over the plan. “The dividing wall between the clinic and the empty house is about ten feet high. Once over that, we enter the building by way of the boiler-house door. There are several cellars beyond that and from one of them, a small service elevator serves all floors. It’s used for laundry.”
“What about the patients?” Chavasse said.
“Every Sunday night they have a film show in the lounge on the ground floor. It doesn’t finish until ten. From what I can find out, everybody goes.”
Chavasse nodded. “That should give us a clear field. If Muller is in there, it stands to reason he must be on either the first or second floor and it shouldn’t take long to locate him. There are only fifteen rooms.”
Hardt glanced at his watch. “We’d better make a move. It’s nine-fifteen already and we haven’t got a lot of time to spare. Where have you parked the car?” When Anna told him, he nodded. “It’s only five minutes from there.”
Chavasse paid the waiter and they left quickly, and climbed back up the steeply sloping alley until they reached the Hauptstrasse. He and Anna got into the rear seat and Hardt drove.
The clinic was on the corner of a narrow side street lined with chestnut tress, and a sound of music came from the small bar opposite the great iron gates. As Hardt drove past, Chavasse saw that they were securely locked and beyond them the clinic loomed out of the night, half-hidden by trees.
Hardt stopped the Volkswagen a few yards beyond the gate of the next house and switched off the engine. He turned to Anna. “I want you to wait for us here. With luck, we should be in and out within twenty minutes.”
She nodded calmly. “And if you are not?”
Chavasse, who was getting out of the car, said grimly, “If we aren’t back by ten o’clock, you get out of here – and fast.”
She seemed about to protest, but Hardt broke in and said gently, “He’s right, Anna. There’s no point in your being dragged down with us. If anything happens, return to the flat and get in touch with London. They’ll know what to do.”
Chavasse could feel her eyes imploring him to turn and look at her, but some stubborn impulse kept him walking steadily back along the pavement, and in through the gates of the empty house. There was no sound, only the slight rustle of the wind through half-bare trees, and Hardt pushed him forward.
There was a decaying summer house set against the dividing wall, and Chavasse hoisted himself up onto its roof and peered cautiously over into the grounds of the clinic.
The top of the wall was covered with concrete in which hundreds of pieces of broken glass had been set, and he tested them gingerly with his fingertips. Hardt moved up beside him and quickly draped several old sacks across a section of the wall. “I found these in the summer house when I was nosing around this afternoon,” he whispered.
They could see the windows of the lounge running toward the front to the house, and heard a sudden burst of laughter from the patients who were watching the film. “Sounds as if they’re enjoying it,” Chavasse said. “Are you ready?”
Hardt nodded, and Chavasse placed one hand lightly on the thick padding of the sacks and vaulted over the wall. He landed knee-deep in dead leaves, and a moment later Hardt was beside him.
They moved across the lawn, keeping under the trees, and approached the door to the boiler house. Chavasse listened intently at the door for a moment, and then opened it easily and quickly and moved inside, hands ready. There was no one there.
He moved on without speaking, through the opposite door and along a narrow stone passage. Facing him was another door. When he opened it, the room was in darkness. His groping hand found the switch and turned it on. The cellar was full of laundry baskets and facing him was the entrance to the service elevator.
Chavasse examined it quickly. It was simple enough to operate and he turned to Hardt, who had followed him in, and said, “I’ve been thinking. We’ll do better if we take one floor each. You take the first floor, I’ll take the second, if you like.”
Hardt nodded without saying anything. He took out the Beretta automatic and checked the action. Chavasse said, “Without a silencer, that thing’s worse than useless on a job like this. If you do meet anyone and use it, you’ll have the entire household breathing down our necks.”
Hardt said, “What do you suggest I do – raise my hands and go quietly?”
Chavasse grinned. “I could tell you, but we haven’t the time now.” He pushed Hardt into the elevator and followed him. A moment later, the doors closed silently and they were rising.
He pressed the button for the first floor and they came to a halt. He turned to Hardt and whispered, “Let’s hope there’s no one in the corridor.”
The doors slid open and he peered out. The corridor was deserted and he pushed Hardt forward without a word and quickly pressed the button for the second floor.
He was beginning to enjoy himself and the old, familiar elation lifted inside him. It was a feeling he could not analyze successfully. He only knew that it existed, that at the bottom of things it was what made him continue to lead the kind of life he did, and that it would be impossible to explain to anybody – even Anna.
The elevator came to a halt, the doors opened silently, and he stepped into the corridor. Everything was still and he hesitated, undecided on which way to go, and then he shrugged and turned to his left.
He checked two rooms cautiously, in each case listening outside the door before opening it. The occupants were obviously downstairs enjoying the film. He checked his watch and saw that it was almost a quarter to ten. There wasn’t much time left. At that moment, he heard someone singing as they came down the attic stairs at the far end of the corridor. He moved quickly to the next door, opened it, and went inside, closing it behind him.
The room was in darkness, and when he switched on the light he found that he was standing in a linen cupboard. He opened the door slightly and peered out.
The singer was a young girl in a starched apron and cap. She went into each bedroom in turn, reappearing again within a moment or two. He decided she must be a chambermaid and was probably turning down the beds.
She paused outside the door that was next to the linen cupboard and adjusted her blond hair. She was extremely pretty, with blue eyes, red pouting lips, and rounded cheeks. She went into the bedroom, and he closed the door of the linen cupboard and waited for her to pass.
CHAPTER 8
Remembering it afterward, he could not be sure who was the more surprised when she opened the door and found him.
She stood there, one hand raised to the bun at the nape of her neck, the other still on the handle of the door, and her eyes went round with astonishment.
As she opened her mouth to cry out, Chavasse did the only possible thing. He pulled her forward and kissed her, crushing his mouth fiercely against hers, at the same time closing the door with his free hand.
At first she struggled, and he held her fast in his arms and continued to kiss her. And then she relaxed quite suddenly and her softness seemed to melt
into him as her hands came up and linked behind his neck.
After a while, he moved his head back a little and whispered in her ear, “Don’t be frightened, liebling. I won’t hurt you.”
“That seems obvious enough,” she said, and laughter seemed to bubble over in her voice. “Who are you, mein Herr, a burglar?”
He shook his head. “Nothing quite so romantic, I’m afraid.”
“I know,” she said. “You’ve secretly admired me for months and tonight you finally plucked up enough courage to declare yourself.”
Chavasse stifled an insane desire to laugh out loud. “What’s your name, liebling?”
“Gisela,” she said. “I’m one of the maids here.”
“Maybe you can help me,” he said. “I’m looking for a friend of mine. He was brought here early this morning in an ambulance from the Hauptbahnhof.”
“That’ll be the one in number twelve on the first floor,” she said. “They keep him locked in his room. Karl, the chief nurse, says he’s really mad, that one.”
“That’s the whole trouble,” Chavasse told her. “I don’t happen to think he is, but they won’t let me in to see him. That’s why I decided to try the more unconventional approach.”
She looked up at him critically. “You know, you’re rather handsome in your own particular way.”
“That’s what all the girls say,” he told her, and reached for the door handle.
She pulled him back, and sliding one arm up around his neck, kissed him full on the mouth. As he gently disengaged himself, she said hopefully, “I’ll be off duty at eleven-thirty. I’m on late shift this week.”
“Sorry, Gisela,” he said. “It’s been fun, but I’ve got to see my friend before the film ends. Number twelve, I think you said.”
As he moved out into the corridor, she whispered softly, “Whatever you do, watch out for Karl. He’s a terrible brute when he gets going.”
He walked quickly along the corridor and started to move downstairs to the first floor. There were only ten minutes left in which to finish this thing and as he turned the corner into the corridor, he wondered how Hardt was getting on. He soon found out.
