“Hand it over to your own agents, who will just happen to be in the right place at the right time?” he asked with biting sarcasm. “You won’t even be allowed within lifting distance of that box. Be serious.”
“I am serious,” she said quietly. “I don’t need agents to help me. And if I can’t get near the box, then you certainly can. You may have to deal with it.”
“I?”
“But I shall watch, just to make sure. And then I leave. Not before.”
“Are you saying that I have to help your agents remove that box?” He was both shocked and angry. This was going far beyond the original understanding.
“We need no agents to remove the box. We simply destroy it.”
“Destroy?”
“Complete destruction of box and contents. Those were my official orders, received late last night. Today, I was sent this.” She reached for her coat, thrust her hand deep into one pocket, pulled out a padlock. It looked worn and old. “We snap this on to the Finstersee box. In ten minutes, it is destroyed.”
“Snap it where?”
“Onto one of the staples clamped together by the padlock that is already there.”
“But the box may not have staples and a padlock. It may have locks, instead.”
“If it’s the same type that was found in the Czechoslovakian lake, it will have two locks
and
a padlock. There should also be collapsible handles at each end of the box. But if it hasn’t any of these, we’ll have to use this strip of magnetic tape to fix our padlock in place.” She held out a small loop of grey metal ribbon and then slipped it back into her other pocket. “But that’s only to be used in an emergency. Much better to attach our padlock near the existing one. Then if anyone noticed it, he would think two padlocks were just another example of the Nazi passion for
security. Even if he did question it, he wouldn’t do much about it. Because, once you snap the padlock in place, and give it a sharp twist to the right, you set a time mechanism working.”
“Ten minutes?”
She nodded. “In ten minutes, the box will be blown to pieces and its contents destroyed.” She held the padlock up so that he could see that its tongue was at present turned away from the slot into which it would fit. “Safety position,” she told him calmly. “It won’t slip out of that. You have to turn it toward the slot very firmly, and then snap it hard. Then twist the padlock. Simple, isn’t it?” She replaced it in her pocket, almost carelessly, as if to prove to him how safe it was at the moment. “Don’t look so upset,” she added lightly.
“But others are bound to be killed.” The men, for example, who might be carrying that box to a car for transportation to Salzburg. Men standing near. Men in the car itself.
“The box
must
be destroyed. That is an order. You may be in charge of Operation Search, but I am in command of you.” She softened her words with a smile. “Cheer up, Felix. I shall leave as soon as I attach that padlock to the box—or watch you snap it in place if I can’t get near it. And that’s the last you’ll see of me. Too bad. I enjoyed working in Salzburg.”
She will leave, but someone else will come. Next month, next year, it makes no difference, I am condemned to their service, he thought, and every day I hesitated, every day I postponed making a clear and quick confession to Vienna, has only added another link to the chain that binds me. Perhaps the time to break off must be faced now. And yet, there might be some way out; some way in which I could keep what I have—my job, my reputation, my friends, and, above all, the respect of my
family—keep all that and yet be free. Free of this woman, free of her people. Free. Yes, there must be some way out.
“When will Bruno be here?” She was rising from her staircase seat, picking up her coat, looking around Frau Hitz’s neat kitchen with a critical eye. Peasant taste, she thought as she looked at the finicky mats with bright patterns on table and chests, the framed lithographs, the faded photographs of men in uniform. Clutter on clutter. “When?” she repeated.
“Tomorrow night.” Zauner’s voice sounded preoccupied.
She looked at him sharply. “Will he send you away when he takes charge?”
He shook his head. “I have duties to keep me here.” Duties? The word twisted like a knife in his heart.
“Good. We’ll manage it then. Even if we don’t find the box for another forty-eight hours.” By tomorrow, she would have two agents established in Bad Aussee, two others on their way. What would Zauner say if he knew she was up here completely alone? He wouldn’t believe it. And for her own safety, she did not intend to enlighten him. “I’ll get back to the inn.”
“Have you changed your mind about the attic room?”
“Yes. The people who stay there are so interesting.”
He wondered if she knew that August Grell was the Nazi who had watched over Finstersee. He almost warned her. No, he decided, I’ll let her and her friends find out for themselves; they are so damned clever at ferreting out a man’s past, are they? “Such as Andrew?” he tried.
She nodded. “I might even see him trying to pretend he doesn’t know this unobtrusive American called Chuck. Glance into the street, Felix. I don’t want to run into Mathison again if I can help it.”
Zauner opened the door. “They’ve gone,” he said quietly. “The red Porsche isn’t there now.”
“They?” she asked quickly as she followed him into the street.
He cursed his slip of tongue. “Mathison and Mrs. Conway—she’s from the New York publishing house that Mathison represents. The contract business you know.”
“I know.” Her voice was as cold as the wind that whipped their cheeks.
“We’d better say good-bye. You’ll find me at the post office if you need me. And if I have anything to report, I’ll telephone the inn and leave a message for you to call Weiss, of your Innsbruck office. Right?”
“Right.” And will he? she wondered. “But we don’t say good-bye. Not quite yet. Be your usual gallant self and walk me as far as the inn.” She started crossing the village street. He had to follow her. “I did not see Mrs. Conway with Mathison. Where was she?”
“In the other room.”
“Why?”
“She was talking with Trudi Seidl.”
“Who’s she?”
“Johann’s girl.”
“How much of his girl is she?”
“He is marrying her.”
“Johann?” She looked at him, burst out laughing. Then just as suddenly she fell silent. “And when did Johann decide he was getting married?”
Zauner didn’t answer.
“You might as well tell the truth. Because I know it must have been some time since I last saw him, and that was only a
week ago. He talked of his future plans quite a lot that night; marriage wasn’t one of them.”
“How should I know when another man decides to get married?” he asked irritably.
“Well, when did you first hear of it? And where?”
“In Unterwald. On Monday night—no, early Tuesday morning.”
“From Johann himself?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” She listened with rising irritation to the yodelling chorus coming from the schoolhouse. “I begin to see a number of things. Why are you protecting Mathison and Conway?”
Protecting? Perhaps he had been, if only because Mathison had been Anna Bryant’s friend. A better friend than I was, he thought bitterly, even if I knew her for years and he only met her three times in his life. “Nonsense,” he told her, stopping to listen to the music. It carried sweetly on the night air. “They are a couple of innocents.”
“I wonder. Oh, let’s keep moving; it’s too cold to stand here. Where is Trudi Seidl’s house?”
“On the road to Bad Aussee.”
“I counted four or five as I drove into Unterwald. Which is hers?”
“The first you saw.”
“Not too far away.” They had come to the intersection where the Bad Aussee road crossed the main street and then ran uphill past the inn. “In fact, about seven or eight minutes from here on foot? Even less?”
“Less.” For an instant, he thought she was going to set off down the Bad Aussee road by herself. But she changed her mind
and started up the dark narrow road toward the inn. “If we were to keep on following this trail,” he said, trying to change the subject, hoping to get her mind off Trudi Seidl, “we would reach Finstersee. It’s beyond the forest.”
“How helpful you are,” she said very quietly, “in things that no longer matter. Why do you keep the important things hidden from me, Felix? I shall be writing a report, you know, and the Centre will read it carefully. You can fight them. You’ll lose. Too bad. I liked you.”
“I’ve told you all you asked for.”
“All right. Where are the Nazis holing up in Unterwald?”
He laughed, if only to cover his annoyance with himself. He had imagined he could keep some things back from this girl, and there wasn’t one of them that she hadn’t already thought of. If she had kept quiet about them, it was only to bring them out, abruptly, unexpectedly, forcing him into an answer. “I shouldn’t ask that question near here, if I were you, unless I lowered my voice to a whisper.” He glanced at the inn, brightly lit and welcoming.
“There?” she asked, looking at the inn, too. She had lowered her voice.
“You are right in the middle of them.”
She took a deep breath. “And you rather enjoy that, don’t you?”
“I thought it would appeal to your own sense of humour.”
“How long have you known?”
“Just in the last day or so. I’m searching for proof that can let us take action. Of course, if we find Johann alive, he can give us that proof.”
“August Grell—is he the leader of this group?”
“He is certainly one of their top men. He has been in charge of Finstersee for twenty years at least.”
“He must feel quite desperate,” she said, almost to herself. As I am, she thought. I wonder if Lev could get reinforcements up here tonight? I can’t rely on Zauner. He has been too late with much of his information, and even then I had to drag it out of him. Does he really want us to have the box? Or doesn’t he care any more what happens to him? I had better get in touch with Lev right away. Dare I risk it from my attic room? “How many of Grell’s friends have gathered here?”
“There were eight yesterday.”
“There were only three with him at dinner. Are five with Johann?”
“Two, possibly. I heard that three men were detained in Salzburg for Anna’s—” He stopped. “They may have come from here,” he ended.
She touched his arm as they reached the path to the inn’s front door. “Let me know if anything develops. And Felix—please don’t cheat. Keep nothing back. Or else it will be really bad, not just for you, but also for your wife and your two sons. Keep your promise.” Her voice was soft, entreating. Her eyes were sympathetic, her face sad.
He almost believed them. But there was one thing he could believe: the threat. He nodded curtly, turned away, and walked quickly down the rough road toward the village street. The concert was ending. Soon the people would crowd out; some to drive home, some to walk a little, some to come up to the Weinstüberl at the inn for a glass of wine, some songs, much talk. Saturday night... He thought of his wife, Ruth, at home in Salzburg, patiently waiting as she always did, never questioning
him, knowing a little about Unterwald as she had known about her release from a Nazi concentration camp twenty-two years ago. A miracle, she had called her release. A miracle I paid for, he thought. And am still paying.
I did not really enjoy doing that, she told herself as she entered the inn’s small deserted hall; I didn’t enjoy threatening him with his wife and sons. Much better if I could have kept them unmentioned. Now he knows that I have learned a great deal more about his past than he ever realised. I sacrificed a trump card which might have been useful at some future moment. Yet, it was the only threat that seemed to have a definite effect on him. And as for trump cards, the moments for playing them against Felix Zauner were nearing their end. Rapidly. So little time left. She glanced carefully into the dining-room and saw Andrew at one table, talking with a couple of off-duty policemen, and August Grell with his three friends sitting over cups of coffee at their own special place in front of the tiled stove. They were almost as silent as the rows of deer heads staring down at them from the wall. They are as depressed as I am, she thought with bitter amusement.
She slipped quietly to the staircase, climbed cautiously to her attic bedroom. So little time, she kept thinking. British and Americans already here in Unterwald, Vienna co-operating, so many men at their joint command. Who would have thought they could have moved so quickly? Last Monday, they knew nothing, nothing concrete. Tonight, they were in position and far ahead of her. She must risk making contact with Lev. He must send reinforcements immediately. Tonight. Tomorrow
would be too late. Unterwald had become no place for one agent working alone. And how it had become that way was something that baffled and angered her.
Her anger grew once she was in her room. It had been entered in her absence. Police looking for hidden terrorists? They would hardly search inside her suitcase; yet the thin, almost invisible, protective thread that she had fixed at the inside hinge had been torn loose as the lid had been opened wide. The clothes inside were in the right order. But someone had discovered the false bottom to the case, for when she drew out the transmitting and receiving set that lay hidden there, she could smell a slight odour of acid clinging to it. The batteries were destroyed.
She opened the machine to check, make sure, hoping against hope that she was wrong. But she had been right. The batteries were useless. Andrew...
Quickly, she replaced everything, left the suitcase where it usually stood, went quietly downstairs. A telephone call to Lev? It would have to be made from here—that horrible old woman and her smirking policeman at the post office wouldn’t let her use their phone. And she must not give Lev’s emergency number to Felix Zauner; that would be the worst mistake for her own future that she could make. Lev had no liking for her at all; she had felt that last night, felt it today with his final injunctions. He had no liking for anyone except himself. A cold, efficient, cautious, self-protective man. Call him from the inn? He would have her career ended for that, perhaps even more than her career. Because a call from a telephone that must be tapped by the Austrians, even a call with seemingly harmless phrases about an apparently innocent business
matter, might endanger Lev’s own security. And that was what mattered to Lev.