Nield signalled his good-bye, switched off the light in the bedroom that Keller had pointed out, made for its window. He eased it up gently, looked down at the drop, then around the small patch of back yard. A hedge, some bushes, no lights, an opened gate, cold blackness of enclosing night. He nodded, swung over the sill, and lowered himself out of sight. Mathison, listening intently as he watched Nield disappear, heard a faint thud. Then silence. He crossed over to the window, restraining an impulse to look out and see Nield’s second drop into the yard, closed it carefully. He was back at the door and had switched on the light before Keller returned.
Two men followed Keller. They had been assigned their jobs. One went into Greta Freytag’s room, the other started a careful check on all the others. “I’ll have more help for you in half an hour. Tell Homicide we need both these suitcases intact. Intact! That goes for anything else we find hidden in the attic—there is no need for them to crawl up there, and they know it. So keep them down here where they belong.” To Mathison, he said, “Better leave. Soon this house will be too crowded for comfort.” He gave one last look at Greta Freytag. “Perhaps,” he said softly, “she knew more than she told you. Or whoever instigated this murder thought she knew more than she actually did.”
Whoever instigated...
Elissa? Impossible, Mathison kept telling himself. A foreign agent, yes; but someone who could command abduction and murder? Surely not Elissa... He said, “Who did arrange this?” He wanted more than some of Nield’s clever deductions. He needed something factual, something conclusive.
But Keller wasn’t going to help him argue out his bitter thought. Keller wanted some facts himself, and he knew where to start. He looked at the handsome troubled face of the young man who stared at him almost angrily. Keller said very quietly, “You may have the answer to that question, Mr. Mathison. Come! We can talk as I drive you to your hotel. I’d stay close to my room for the next few days if I were you. We’ll send someone to keep an eye on you. Much safer.” He took Mathison’s arm and led him towards the staircase.
A friendly gesture? Mathison decided it was only that, and relaxed. “I’m leaving for Salzburg tomorrow. Unless, of course, someone thinks I’m a murder suspect.”
“No one will. Miss Freytag was obviously killed several hours ago. Two policemen can swear to the time you entered this house.”
“They didn’t see me enter it alone.” And it would be impossible to mention Nield, far less produce him as a witness.
“You entered along with a young man I had specially detailed to accompany you who is now on another assignment,” Keller said calmly. “And are you going to Salzburg on business?”
“Yes. For Newhart and Morris. I’ll have to deal with a bogus contract issued in their name.”
“How long will that take you?”
“A couple of days.”
“You might stretch them a little. Salzburg is a safer place for you than Zürich.”
“Is it?”
Keller’s quick eyes studied him briefly. “Unless the person who wanted to delay you in reaching Salzburg has as many resources there as here.”
She has less of a ready-made organisation to help her in Salzburg, thought Mathison—and there he was, putting the guilt right on Elissa Lang’s shoulders again. Yet, as Eva Langenheim, she had Yates’s group to help her in Zürich. But would they have obeyed her? How could she have asserted authority over them? “Do you think the Nazis were behind all this?”
They had reached the hall. It was empty now. Inside the abject living room, Willi was being guarded by a couple of men. Keller took Mathison’s arm once again in a surprisingly firm grip, lowered his voice even more. “This looks better, just in case our casualty is feigning unconsciousness. Those fellows have lawyers, you know, who don’t mind carrying messages out of prison. At least we know who he is. One of my men identified him as a Chicom sympathiser who has been organising anti-war meetings at the university. We thought him harmless.” He halted at the front door. “That answers your question, doesn’t it?”
“Then he is one of Yates’s group?”
Keller nodded. “We have also learned why he was here tonight. He seemed to think he was dying—he’s a type that always dramatises itself—and he made a brief impassioned speech denouncing the poor woman who is lying upstairs. She betrayed Yates to the Nazis. Yes, he really believes that. And
you
were the CIA agent who paid her to play traitor.” Keller
opened the door. “Now brace yourself, Mr. Mathison. Let’s get quickly to the car.”
Its driver had the engine running, the door already opened. “Good!” Keller said as they climbed into the back seat and shut out the curious eyes. Far along the street was a sweep of lights. Ambulance, thought Keller; Homicide, too. “And reporters,” he said aloud. “I think we’ve both had a lucky escape tonight, Mr. Mathison.”
But it wasn’t until Bill Mathison was actually walking through the lobby of his hotel that he could really believe he was a free man. He could still feel Keller’s tight grip on his arm, a reminder of what might have been. And here was the warm lobby, bright with lights, busy with people (some arriving for dinner, some leaving to eat elsewhere, the perpetual motion of the let’s-try-somewhere-else tourists), looking so blandly normal, so far removed from the strange world he had just left with its doubts and dark visions and danger, that it shook him. Keller and Nield, he thought, must have nerves of Toledo steel.
And then, as he waited for his key at the porter’s desk, he was startled to catch a glimpse of himself in one of the mirrored walls; he looked absolutely normal, too. The last ninety minutes of his life, for it was almost half-past eight, might only have been a particularly hideous nightmare, except that, in undreamlike fashion, its quick succession of events had been logically
developed and connected, and the memories it had left were sharp-edged. Tonight he had been administered a grim lesson in realities. He would no longer be able to talk blithely of the end of the Cold War, of the completely different set of problems that the sixties had brought into the political world; the Cold War in its old evident terms might have eased, but the Hidden War was there. Even a peaceful nation like Switzerland could vouch for that, or it wouldn’t have men like Keller in its service.
“No messages tonight,” the porter told him, unasked. “You did find the Bergstrasse, Herr Mathison?”
“I found it. Oh, by the way, I’ll be spending the week-end out of Zürich. I’ll be back on Monday.” I hope, he thought, and made for an elevator. He found he was more conscious of the people who stepped inside with him, but after one quick glance he paid little attention to the old lady who bickered all the way to the second floor with her companion except to note wryly that she had white hair pinned into a recalcitrant bun and leaned heavily on a stick. He got off the elevator with two ponderous men discussing soft loans, and did not even look to see what door they entered. There was a limit to suspicion. There had to be, or else he would find it a useless instinct when he most needed it in good working order. And that was the strange thing about suspicion: too much of it, and you had bricked yourself into a ten-foot-thick wall; too little, and you were buying the Eiffel Tower. It had been sold twice, he remembered hearing—and by the same crook. He was smiling as he opened his door.
Suddenly, he was alert. There was someone here, someone possibly inside the bathroom. He switched on the overhead light to help strengthen the lamp he had left on near the armchair,
closed the door, picked up a heavy ashtray as he moved quickly, silently, along the wall towards the bathroom.
Its door swung fully open. Nield’s voice asked lightly, “Friend or foe?” He stepped into the room, looked at the ashtray approvingly and said, “You’re learning.” He went back to the armchair where he had been sitting. “How did you know?”
“The chair cushion sags just after someone has been sitting in it.”
“What, not pure down? Let’s complain to the management. Was that all you noticed?”
“I didn’t leave the bathroom door half-shut. And I had the window open a couple of inches.” Mathison wasn’t amused.
“You
are
learning.”
Mathison replaced the ashtray. “You teach a hard lesson.” And was it necessary? he wondered.
“I was simply safeguarding myself. It would be hard to explain to a valet with a pressed pair of pants just what I was doing here. Without a passkey too. The hotel wouldn’t like that.” He paused, asked blankly, “What happened to the automatic I gave you? Don’t tell me Keller frisked you and took it.”
Mathison drew the pistol out of his pocket. “The hotel doesn’t like loud noises either.” He shook his head over his stupidity. And you thought you were so damned smart, he told himself. “I forgot about it,” he added frankly. Or perhaps I just trust my pitching arm more, he thought.
“Keep it. And just remember to remember,” Nield said easily. He seemed completely relaxed. He had got rid of his bulky raincoat and unprepossessing cap. His hair, well brushed, now looked faintly Byronic, and he had found time to change from rough tweeds back into banker’s grey. Was he actually staying
at this hotel? Mathison wondered as he slipped off his coat. “Give me a few minutes and then I’ll be off and you can ring for that drink,” Nield told him as he eyed the telephone. “I’m on my way to Austria. I just wanted to make sure that Keller did deliver you to the hotel door.”
“Had you doubts?”
“Not really.”
“I had. It was lucky we were dealing with Keller.”
Nield’s voice became crisp. “I assure you that if I had been organising any clandestine operations in Zürich, like Yates, I wouldn’t be here now. Or you either. The Swiss
are
neutral, it doesn’t do to forget that. But there is another characteristic about the Swiss: they pay their debts. Tonight we helped them. Considerably.”
“Yes. If you hadn’t put Willi out of action, the first of Keller’s men to enter that house would have caught it. Willi’s revolver was lethal.”
“Not a kindly type,” Nield agreed. “Too much shock value.”
“Keller didn’t take it so lightly. He told me—”
“The point is,” Nield said, turning away any compliments, “what did you tell Keller?” The question was routine, a matter of simple checking; he could stop worrying about Mathison, the amateur who had stepped into a jungle. Mathison had had a shock, possibly a nasty scare, but he was in control—no rush of over-excited words, no dramatics, no braggadocio. And his reflexes were quicker than ever. He would be able to take care of himself, something Nield had not quite believed when he had made this special trip to Zürich. Amateurs were tricky to handle. Too often they fell into extremes after a touch of action: all zeal and zest, or all quibble and qualms.
“The story of My Day,” Mathison answered as he lit a cigarette and walked over to the bathroom, stepped just inside and pulled the door half shut. He looked through the crack at the hinge, and could see the entrance to his bedroom. So that was how Nield had known it was safe to come out. “That saved me asking a silly question,” he said as he returned and pulled over a chair to face Nield. “I also told Keller I was going to Salzburg. He had no objections. It saves him having to detail a couple of men to look after me, I suppose. He will need all of them in the big roundup. He may also hope that I’ll run across Elissa in Salzburg—he calls her Eva Langenheim, of course. At least, if I see her, he wants me to let him know.”
“That’s one way of dealing with her.” Nield’s voice hinted that he could think of other ways, too. “But first we have to find her. And I don’t think it will be in Salzburg. In any case, that’s my job. You keep clear of her.”
“Delighted.”
“She has to move quickly. She must. She will stop off in Salzburg only long enough to make contact with the KGB colonel who is in control there. I don’t think Elissa will turn in a report on her activities today in Zürich. Not yet. Not until the mistakes she made today don’t matter.”
“Mistakes?” Well, that’s encouraging, thought Mathison—if true.
“Mistake one: she hadn’t time to get advice from her control in Salzburg, who, in turn, would have got in touch with Moscow. And the Centre doesn’t want bright ideas put into action until they’ve been studied from every angle. There were some angles she did miss, and that was her second mistake and a very grave one. So she won’t say much—at present—about
Zürich, but concentrate on Finstersee and ask the KGB man for support in dealing with that problem.”
“But he is bound to question her about the four days she spent in Zürich. She wasn’t here on holiday.”
“She achieved her original purpose in coming here. She had one whole clear day last Tuesday to visit Yates’s secret hideout, where he sent and decoded messages. She could pick up a lot of information there from his special files and notes. If she has done a good job on that, her KGB control will be satisfied. The urgency of Finstersee will catch all his attention.”
“You mean she now knows as much about Finstersee as Yates did?”
“She had the time to search for it. The Swiss didn’t even hear of Yates until early on Wednesday.”
“She’d manage it, all right,” Mathison said. Clever, clever little Elissa. “But what angles did she miss tonight?” Not Elissa. Elissa didn’t miss anything. “She didn’t do so badly. She did eliminate Greta Freytag. She did use some of Yates’s people for the job. She did have me detained by the Swiss—or, rather, that was her intention, and if she gets word about the police raid on the house she will think she was successful in that, too. So why wouldn’t she make a report on all that?”
“Because four of Yates’s Progressive Action party were picked up tonight. That was the first angle she missed.”
“You mean she had expected them to get away before the police arrived?”
“And be arrested later, perhaps even weeks later, once the Swiss collected clues and followed trails.”
“But now someone may talk.” Not Willi; but possibly one or both of the two men who bolted from the house to save
their skins. Then Mathison shook his head. “That’s little help to us. They won’t know her as Langenheim, or as Lang. They can only identify her by a code name. Isn’t that the way these boys work it?”