The two cars drew up with a scream of brakes, one behind the other, directly in front of the Seidl house. From the first car, two men slid out quickly and ran up the short path through the garden, heading straight for the door. They did not knock. They shoved it open, vanished inside.
Lynn... Mathison broke out of cover and raced across the meadow, tugging the automatic free from his jacket pocket.
The box, thought Chuck, and started after him.
Andrew set off, too, only pausing to call over his shoulder to Hank and Chris, “Watch that second car!” Its engine had been kept running.
Zauner stopped brooding about Mathison, took a step after Andrew, struck his foot against something metallic. He grimaced at the quick stab of pain, stared down in amazement.
He knelt and touched the object with his hand. “Get down to the road. Keep out of sight of the cars. Block them off if they start for Bad Aussee.”
“But they’ll be out of sight, too,” Hank protested. There was a curve in that road, just at the last grouping of trees on the edge of the meadow. He knew. He had found it useful for parking Chuck’s car.
“You’ll see them all right if they make a dash for it.”
“Are you staying here?”
“Someone has to.” Zauner glanced down at the box.
“Then keep your eyes open. I recognised one of the men. They are Grell’s friends. But how the hell did they learn about Trudi Seidl’s house?”
“Get going!” Zauner told them with all his authority. He watched them move off, two quiet shadows merging with the ragged rim of trees, heading for the lower stretch of the Bad Aussee road. His face was like stone, his thoughts a raging torrent. So they did not tell me they had actually discovered the box, taken it, were even now waiting for transportation. No, that wasn’t fair; he had only himself to blame, arriving too late to be told. Late because of Elissa, because of trying to find her at the inn to warn her there was some kind of alert down at the Seidl meadow.
Don’t cheat,
she had warned him, and all his determination to help as little as possible had faded away. There was no choice left... At the inn, he hadn’t been able to find Elissa. Or Grell, for that matter. Frau Hitz, busy clearing the dining-room, could only say they had been discussing the lady’s complaint about her room when she had last seen them in the hall. It couldn’t be, he thought as he stared obliquely across the open meadow toward the two cars parked in their
dark huddle in front of the Seidls’ garden. It couldn’t be. And yet, as the American agent had asked,
how the hell did they learn of Trudi Seidl’s house?
He drew a long deep breath. Hank and Chris were out of sight, must be at the road by this time. He checked in the direction of the house, too. (Mathison and Chuck had entered, Andrew was almost there.) His attention was jerked back to the cars; someone had just stepped from the driver’s seat of the second one. Someone who must be alone, for the figure stood hesitating, only its head visible, watching Andrew disappear into the house, deciding perhaps to go after him and even the odds against the two Nazis inside. It wasn’t Grell, that was certain. It wasn’t any of his hunting friends—their height would have brought their shoulders up above the car’s low roof. Yes, it could be...
Zauner stepped out from the trees’ shadows onto the meadow. He whistled softly. Then he raised both arms and signalled wide. Mathison had entered the kitchen silently, automatic ready. Chuck came hard on his heels, revolver in hand, drawing himself instinctively close to the side of the door before he took the final step inside. They stopped abruptly, lowered their weapons, looked with amazement at the placid scene. The two men weren’t there. Neither was the box lying behind the door. The two girls were sitting at the table, their heads turned toward the staircase. Trudi’s hands were at her lips, her eyes wide. Lynn held a forkful of meat half-way between mouth and plate, as if she had been eating supper when the two strangers from the car had come bursting in and gone rushing upstairs. They were there now, moving around from room to room with cautious footsteps.
Trudi said, her voice hushed in disbelief, “They didn’t stop, didn’t speak. They knew just where to go.”
“Ever seen them before?” Chuck asked quietly.
Trudi nodded. “They are from the inn.”
Nazis. Mathison glanced at Chuck, then looked around for any sign of the box. Lynn came to life again. She laid the fork down, drew her legs aside as she lifted the short hem of the tablecloth and pointed underneath. She tried to smile, but her face was strained and exhausted.
“Okay, okay,” Chuck said softly, and relaxed. He turned to Andrew who had just entered, put a finger to his lips. From overhead, there came a sharp curse, the voice of one telling the other to hold the light higher, here, here! And then the voice, rising in violent rage, “It’s gone!” A wooden lid crashed shut. Footsteps were louder now, stumbling heavily in one last angry search. A bed was pulled across the floor, a door was smashed.
“Let’s get them out of here,” Chuck said. That first; then I dash for the trees, try to draw them to that other box. If they find it, that will shut them up for good. “Get out of range,” he told the two girls, pointing to the back wall of the kitchen. “See what’s happening on the road,” he said to Andrew. He signed to Mathison to keep well to the side of the staircase. He raised his voice into a drillmaster’s yell. “Come down here, you! Drop your weapons!”
There was complete silence. Then instant bedlam. From outside came the roar of a car starting its way downhill. Overhead, a quick retreat from the staircase; the sound of a window being forced, glass breaking; a scramble of feet over a balcony, two heavy thuds at the side of the house. And at the back of the kitchen, a door was thrown open and a pink-cheeked
woman in a flannel nightgown, two grey braids over her shoulders, a stick in her hands, was screaming for police.
Chuck signalled with a nod to Mathison. They both stepped outside. Andrew was there, keeping well to one side of the door, watching the scene on the road with cold amusement. The two Nazis, one limping now, were piling into their car, starting off downhill after the other one. It hadn’t gone far, only to the end of the meadow edged by trees.
Andrew said, “There is one person in the lead car. A woman. I think it’s Elissa.”
“Working with the Nazis?” Mathison asked. He was incredulous. Just when could that have happened?
“One of those temporary pacts they go in for,” Andrew said, “and I think she is about to break it.”
The woman was out of the car, running toward the central clump of trees.
“She knows where to go,” Chuck said thoughtfully.
“She ought to. A man signalled to her from that exact spot. He stepped back into the trees as soon as he glimpsed me. He didn’t stay long enough to let me recognise him.”
“Then let’s get him. And make a show of protecting our possessions. Bill—someone has got to stay here, and you’re it. Sorry. But Grell may come prowling around. Anything can happen now.” Then he was sprinting after Andrew. Their two vague but discernible figures ran into a stretch of darkness and became nothing.
Mathison drew his back against the wall of the house, kept his head turned to the meadow on his right, put his trust in his senses to warn him of any approach from the left. The meadow was the action point. These two damned fools could
get themselves killed, he thought. Did they think the Nazis would let them get anywhere near that box? And yet Chuck was right about making a show of protecting it; the Nazis might otherwise wonder why they could take the box so easily. But not too much show, he told Chuck silently. Or perhaps you are too eager to nail that traitor?
His eyes turned to the road down near the trees. The two Nazis were out of their car, following the woman. She could run and she could dodge, Mathison noted; she was taking full advantage of the broken light with its strange patchwork of blacks and greys. She was already at the hiding place. He still couldn’t identify her clearly.
Then quite suddenly the cloud that had drifted obligingly over the face of the moon lifted and thinned. It was as if a mild floodlight had been turned on the meadow. Chuck was there, caught right in the centre; Andrew to one side. “Look out!” Mathison yelled as one of the running Nazis wheeled around, crouched, pointed his arm. Chuck dropped, lay still. Andrew veered, then fell on his face. The two quick shots sent tumbling echoes over the mountain slopes.
The door opened behind him, Lynn was running out. “Bill—”
“Stay back, stay back!” He kept his eyes on the meadow. The man who had fired was crouching there, watching Chuck and Andrew for any sign of movement. Beyond him, at the edge of the trees, the woman was pulling the box out of the shadows as if to make sure of what she had found. And then Mathison saw her face.
She had glanced up when she heard the shots. The quick lift of her head swung her long loose hair clear of her face. In the moonlight, there was no doubt: it was Elissa. Briefly,
she stared at the house across the meadow. She recognised my voice, thought Mathison. That look is deliberate. So is that light laugh. Then her head bent once more over the box.
Mathison raised his automatic, steadied his arm, as the crouching man straightened his back and limped forward toward Chuck. I won’t carry that distance, thought Mathison grimly, but I’ll give him something else to think about. That’s one job he doesn’t finish. The man was taking aim at Chuck as Mathison squeezed his trigger, ran forward to get within better range for a second shot. He never fired it. Nor did the man, turning to face him, fire back.
From the edge of the meadow where Elissa was rising to her feet, there was a sharp explosion, a violent blast, a burst of raging flame. There was nothing left standing, neither Elissa nor the Nazi who had just reached her. The box was in fragments, nothing remaining except a small glowing heap at the bottom of a wide hole.
As the echoes of the explosion rumbled over the hills, Lynn had run toward him. Mathison put his arm around her shoulders, and they stood together in silence as they looked across the meadow.
The Nazi was the first to move. He made a limping dash for his car, but several men were there now, and other cars from Bad Aussee. He gave up meekly enough, perhaps under shock.
Andrew rose stiffly to his feet, and went over to help Chuck. So he had been hit, thought Mathison. Seriously? He watched Chuck being pulled to his feet. At least he could walk with Andrew’s support. Then as one of the newcomers down at the road, a heavy-set man with blond hair and quick feet, ran toward Chuck and Andrew, Mathison remembered the Finstersee box. “Come on,” he said to Lynn, and he led her back to the house. Trudi and her mother were in the garden, the door as wide open as Frau Seidl’s mouth. This time, she wasn’t shrieking.
And now, thought Mathison as he sat down at the table
with Lynn opposite him and put one foot on the box, we have nothing to do but wait for Chuck and listen to Frau Seidl’s stream of consciousness. It was pouring freely.
It started the moment she stepped back through the door, shivering in her nightdress. “God in heaven, did you hear that? Such an explosion. I thought the Nazis were back. Blasting the Sonnblick. We heard it all the way down at Bad Aussee. That’s where they sent us, the people of the village, when they took over here. They made some of the men work for them. My husband had to supply the logs. But everything they built was blasted to bits. The Russians were just to the east, you see; and the Americans to the south. So the Nazis destroyed all the fortifications—because they couldn’t get the big guns in place, not in time. Just as well they didn’t. Or else there would have been fighting all over Unterwald and not a house left standing. My husband used to say—”
“The Sonnblick?” Lynn asked slowly. Where had she heard that word before? Tonight? She looked at Trudi. The mountain that was mostly a cliff face?
“The Sonnblick,” Frau Seidl said, nodding vigorously. “They hollowed out its top for the big guns. It was a secret, but my husband knew what they were doing. So did his friends—the ones who had to haul the timber and the cement and the steel and the electric wires. The Nazis were working day and night. And then it was nothing at all, just explosions and explosions, and it was nothing at all.”
Mathison was really listening now. “Heavy guns? Then the Nazis must have tunnelled into the Sonnblick. It would be interesting to see some of these fortifications. Where do you enter?”
“There’s no entrance left. It was all destroyed and then closed up. It is just a mountain again.”
Trudi said, “Get dressed, Mutti. There are people on the road. Everyone in the village is coming here.”
Frau Seidl became aware of her clothes. One hand went up to her face, and she blushed like a young girl as she turned toward her room, leaning heavily on her walking stick. At its door, she paused with a new thought. “Who were they?—Oh, yes, the terrorists. And their dynamite exploded. Poor souls.” She stared blankly at Mathison. “But why did they keep dynamite on my meadow?” she asked, turning indignant. “We could all have been blown to pieces.” She closed her door with a bang.
Terrorists and dynamite, Mathison thought: that would be the tale that would keep Unterwald talking for months. Was Frau Seidl’s story about the Sonnblick as much of a myth? “Did the Nazis really take over the village?” he asked Trudi.
She nodded. “They put their troops in the houses. The inn was their headquarters.” She spoke absent-mindedly, listening to the rising flood of excitement on the road. “They have forgotten about Johann. The search for him has stopped.”
“No,” Lynn said quickly. She looked at Mathison for support.
He nodded, watching the door. There were two or three men out there, talking quietly. It could be an informal conference between Chuck and Andrew and the Austrian they had been expecting—Bruno, wasn’t that the name Chuck had mentioned? He rose, taking out his automatic once more, crossed over to the door and opened it. Hidden voices made him nervous tonight. But outside were Hank and Chris and a couple of other capable types. “Just making sure,” he told them.