‘I observe, Bernardo, that being only human we trust each other for the worst possible reasons.’
‘What about the car?’ Bernardo asked.
‘We must chance that. Straight from here to Harley Street. Quarter of a mile to the Legation garage. Leave it there for a month and change the tyres in case of police curiosity.’
‘God tells me not to go, David. But I shall.’
‘And God says every bloody minute counts. Kiss him, child! And look forward to the next one!’
Old Bernardo was very reticent about that parting. He had felt damnably ashamed of himself. Bond after bond had grown up between them since that first meeting of eyes at the Moş, but any physical bond had been, with trivial exceptions, out of the question. Until that kiss he had refused to suspect that Nadya’s own emotions might be more desperately involved; or, if he had suspected it—well, a passing girlish enthusiasm was no tragedy.
Kalmody gave the pilot his last instructions. He and his anonymous passenger did not wish to be seen and would swim or wade out to the plane after dark. He must get as close to the shore as was safe wherever the chart showed a hard and use the regular light signals as at Lake Balaton.
When Nadya and Pozharski had gone, taking the pilot with them as far as the main road, the Count and Bernardo settled down to wait out the day in their slit-trench of a creek. He was a little nervous of the great man, for they had not been alone together since the Arabian Nights entertainment. However, Kalmody’s ease of manner, presiding over the breakfast for four which he had brought back with him in the car, was perfect as ever.
‘I was so wrong about you, Bernardo,’ he said. ‘I realised your intelligence but thought it not very practical.’
‘It was not. I remember telling my story to a very kindly Jew and saying I was too innocent for the mess I was in. He told me that I would very quickly learn. I did.’
‘If only you had not run away!’
‘I am sorry about Nepamuk.’
‘Oh, no need to be! He was getting above his station in life. Of course I could not keep him on after he had been made ridiculous, but he is very well provided for.’
‘And Her Majesty?’
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, Bernardo, for it is the duty of the rest of us not to bother them. I believe I told you during your short stay in the villa that for once she had something worth stealing?’
‘So after all the fellow got away with it?’
‘Not exactly. Exchange is no robbery. A few days before my arrival at Lequeitio Her Majesty had been given a million francs in cash by a Viennese gentleman who claimed to be a loyal Hapsburg sympathiser. He was impressive, and she is easily impressed. He warned her not to change his gift immediately as questions might be asked by the French Exchange Control. She hadn’t got a safe, so she locked up the suit-case containing the francs and put it away in the downstairs office.
‘Now, when that chap whom we both thought was French had got away over the wall and you were swimming to the island I allowed myself to interrupt Her Majesty’s reading and asked her to see if anything was missing. Of course she rushed at once to her francs and found the case still full up and where it ought to be. So we thought no more of it. As I told you, I believed I had merely interrupted a burglar before he could get to work. I only realised when you turned up that the affair was likely to be far more complicated.
‘Soon after that dear Zita was inspired. She decided that what had been given by God should be returned to God, and she sent half to the Pope and half to the Little Sisters of St. Margit. She gets back a silky letter from His Holiness giving her a rather cagey blessing and his thanks for the pious thought. Same sort of thing from the Little Sisters! The letters were so alike that I could guess the Mother Superior had asked the Vatican what she should say. I assumed that His Holiness, knowing Zita’s poverty, had considered that charity ought to begin at home.
‘Meanwhile the Spaniards were very courteously occupying far too much of my time with pointed enquiries about you, Bobo and the late burglar. They would tell me nothing, so I appealed directly to King Alfonso. When he was a boy my father taught him to shoot. He said that the police had found no useful evidence except a few thousand-franc notes washed up at the foot of your cliff.’
‘Were they forged? Was that the reason why I was mixed up in the Windischgraetz case?’
‘No, they were good. I went home, suspecting you of robbery as well as murder, only to find that the Romanians were accusing me of financing international spies. The Romanians! A primitive tribe of revolting catamites who powder their faces and wear corsets!’
Bernardo refrained from comment. One could not defend Romanians to Hungarians or Hungarians to Romanians without risking an explosion. Powder, yes, because of their very blue chins. Corsets—possibly among well-covered staff officers. But catamites was a ridiculous slander upon a country where every man’s chief interest was fornication to the limit of his income.
‘Then more scandal in January! Windischgraetz and his forged francs! I saw him in gaol and told him he ought to have known his young idiots would be caught as soon as they started to distribute the forgeries. He replied indignantly that they had started in July and got away with it.
‘July. I smelt a rat. I visited the Vatican....’
‘I remember Pozharski asking me if I had bumped off a cardinal.’
‘I visited the Vatican,’ Kalmody continued impassively, ‘because in the first place they are well informed and, in the second, because a Kalmody is always welcome. My vague suspicions were confirmed. The francs sent by Zita to His Holiness and the Little Sisters were all forged. They knew she must be utterly innocent. They had also discovered that the distributors did start in July, and that the French had caught them at it and stayed quiet for reasons of their own. So the whole matter discreetly vanished into the private files of the Curia.
‘Then, Bernardo, Sigi Pozharski met you in circumstances which I do not understand and perhaps should not. He came back from Bucarest insisting that all your story was true and that you had told him to impress on me that the suitcase in the boat was full.
‘I had a dear Russian friend who would tell me the truth. It was so much easier in old days when, if one had a private question to ask, one could just order a special train and ask it. Now those blasted Romanoffs are never in one place long enough. When I had run him to earth, I asked him if Bobo ever did any jobs for the French Secret Service. Answer: yes, he did. I was congratulated on having removed him. That is the sort of reputation you have given me, Bernardo. I all but replied that the Kalmodys are an older family than the Romanoffs and have at no time found it necessary to resort to assassination. Now, my dear fellow, again my apologies and I hope all is clear to you.’
‘I am awfully sorry, Count Kalmody, but I was a small boy in the old days and the Empress Zita and Hapsburgs and King Alfonso are all beyond me.’
‘Not Alfonso, surely? He will insist on seeing you himself, you know, before giving orders to the Ministry of Justice. A case like yours can’t be fixed lower down.’
‘Oh, God!’
‘You’ll like him. He’d be the best King of Spain for centuries if he didn’t make the mistake of thinking himself the best politician too. But you were asking?’
‘I was asking what you were talking about.’
‘Bernardo, I have again overestimated your sophistication. Could the French and their scoundrelly allies find a better way of discrediting the Monarchy for ever than by proving that Zita circulated forged francs?
‘They had only to buy two identical suitcases and fill one with forged francs and the other with genuine francs in case some mistrustful servant of the Crown took a handful round to the bank for approval. Then, having thoroughly cased the joint, as they say, land from a small boat and swop one bag for the other! Probably Bobo and his accomplice were told they could keep the good million for themselves if they pulled it off. The plot would have worked to perfection, Bernardo, if there
had not been an unexpected stranger present with some experience of hand-arms.’
It seemed to Bernardo that the Count exaggerated the effect of his spectacular shot. What had really disrupted the whole operation was a very simple woman better fitted to be a saint than an Empress.
He thanked Kalmody profusely for taking such an interest in his fate—an individual who did not matter one way or the other.
‘Of course it mattered. Justice is too important to be left in the hands of common magistrates. And now tell me all that happened to you in Romania! Alfonso will want a complete dossier and we shall prepare it for him. He loves people and dislikes documents, so leave out nothing which could entertain him.’
His story, together with Kalmody’s acute but always courteous questions, occupied most of the morning. When he came to Rabbi Kaplan, the Count exclaimed:
‘A great gentleman of religion! In Hungary, Bernardo, the well-born have no fear of Jews. They tend to marry them when short of money, and often when not.’
‘In that case may I ask you a favour?’
‘It is granted of course.’
‘A ticket from Roman to Jerusalem to be used by anyone whom Kaplan nominates.’
‘I shall be delighted. Let’s make it fifty of them!’
‘I think that Kaplan might be startled, unbelieving. He’s not the sort of man to want a miracle to be—well, spectacular.’
‘If ever you are wealthy, Bernardo—and it’s going to be that or disaster—never forget that sometimes, very rarely, one may tend towards vulgarity. Would half a dozen be all right?’
The grey day wore on in silence. Bernardo at intervals raised his head to feel the wind. It was still east and dropping. The Count was apparently immune to anxiety about weather. He made himself comfortable and went to sleep. The mous tache of brown velvet stirred with occasional snores. It could be dyed. He was much older than Bernardo had thought, and dead tired.
When the sun was already low he sat up, shook himself and splashed his face with the salt water now silently rising towards their feet.
‘Bernardo, I need your advice. At Pasajes I am admitted without question though distrusted. A passenger, above all Bernardo Brown, might strain the friendships I have bought.’
‘Then you had better let me out somewhere else.’
‘Those blasted civil guards are everywhere. We should be seen.’
‘Where are you taking me afterwards?’
‘Straight to Madrid where Sigi’s flat is at our disposal. I could pick you up by car at any rendezvous.’
Bernardo could think of one or two beaches and coves where he could swim ashore unseen, but none of them was near a road. A wet stranger walking to a rendezvous with Kalmody was likely to be stopped and questioned as he had been before, especially after a plane landing on the water had attracted attention. He built up images of his beloved coast, superimposing them upon the drab Essex marshes and dreaming of past summer days on lonely beaches: Sopelana, Gorliz, Mundaca, names like remembered trumpet calls from another life. The Atlantic was still cold in May, but a few of the heartier young Basques would be trying it already.
‘Have you got a swim-suit in your bag?’
‘No. But I can do a dressing gown.’
It was impudent to return at a point so close to Bilbao, but the conditions could be met given a calm sea which would allow the pilot to come close in under the headland opposite Plencia. A swimmer could not be seen from anywhere. Then he could go round by the rocks—not before midday—wade across the river and on to the beach at Gorliz. Nobody would suspect a young man in a bath robe unless it happened to be raining.
‘Tell your man to aim at Bilbao Harbour,’ he said. ‘When we are a mile or two off the breakwater I’ll give him directions.’
They moved off in the dusk, working their way towards the River Crouch and tying themselves up among the creeks as the light faded. Kalmody lost patience, swearing that only a fool entered marshland without a guide. He walked straight for the lights of Burnham and strolled along the waterfront with an appalled Bernardo.
‘What the hell does it matter? Sooner or later they are going to know it was you and me. Boldness, boy! There won’t be a cop.’
In fact there was. He paid no attention. After all, one had only to look at Kalmody striding regardless through the world to feel that he had a right to do whatever he happened to be doing. Why, Bernardo asked himself, had he ever run? Could it have been as simple as this? No railway lines, no false religions, no false passports and dyed hair. It was only with an effort that he remembered he also had no money.
A waterman took them out to the plane. Two boats were there already, and an enthusiastic garage hand was being taught by gesture and scraps of English how to swing the propeller. It was incredible to Bernardo—this assumption of his peace-loving countrymen that any perfectly open activity must be quite in order so long as nobody in authority said it wasn’t. Somewhere—perhaps in one of those softly lit pubs—a coastguard or customs officer was sitting and wondering whether the usual rules applied to seaplanes and if he should not telephone; but meanwhile they were on a straight course down the tideway with the plumes of spray streaming from the floats.
The lights of England fell away behind. An hour and a half later they picked up those of Le Havre. The pilot warned Kalmody, in a voice which was a shrug of the shoulders, that they now had to risk two hundred and fifty miles with no water to come down on.
‘Je m’en fous! The Loire is in the way somewhere.’
‘I must keep to the shortest line. We shall not cross the Loire till Nantes and once there we are over the sea again.’
Bernardo listened for any faltering of the engine in the mood of poking a tooth to see if it hurt. He wondered how far they would get if the wind changed to the south. Yet the pilot’s back was relaxed, the Pole Star was steadily behind them and the night sky brilliantly clear. It appeared that weather, wood and metal were all infected by the confidence of a Kalmody. He went to sleep as soundly as if he had again taken one of Zita’s orange pills.
Kalmody poked him. It was dawn. There was no land at all in sight unless the solid and irregular clouds to the south were in fact the Cantabrian Mountains.
‘Anticyclone over the Bay. Wind has been pushing us west a bit. Very civil of it! So we are making Bilbao as easily as Pasajes. Here’s my dressing gown.’
It was of blue silk and not too conspicuous. At any rate there was no collar of sable. Huddled warmly into his fur-lined flying coat Bernardo looked at it with distaste. He was going to be vilely cold hanging about on the rocks at the foot of that north-facing point.
Half a sun rose out of the Atlantic—enough to light up the rusty cliffs of Vizcaya and a faint streak which was the breakwater at the mouth of the Nervion. A haze hung over the shipyard and the foundries. The sea looked calm. Bernardo undressed, left his chair and knelt beside the pilot to give him exact instructions when to turn to port and lose height. The pilot swept round in an easy half circle as if he had picked up a landmark and found himself off course. They were then off Galea Point and flying just above the water parallel to the beach of Sopelana.
‘Now!’
The plane taxied gently over the water beneath the next overshadowing cliff.
‘Gorliz then as soon as I can get there,’ Kalmody confirmed. ‘And keep out of the bars! I’ll bring lunch.’
Bernardo rolled up the dressing gown, tied it to his body and slipped from the moving float into the sea. It was very cold. He reckoned that he would be the only person on Gorliz beach. When he hauled himself out on to the tumbled rocks at the foot of the cliff, the plane was just lifting from the water like a skimming swallow which had quenched its thirst. He saw Kalmody wave and hoped no one else had.
It was not quite as bad as he thought it would be. He had forgotten that round the point and—if one was careful—still out of sight of the little town of Plencia, the cliffs caught the morning sun. Even so he could not stop shivering. He trie
d some private cliff climbing to keep warm and found that he had completely lost his nerve for any height above ten feet.
But it was going to be the splendid day that the haze over the Nervion had promised, with the grey and green of the coast and the red and white of houses glittering in the sun. He wondered what Nadya, if she ever came, would make of still another foreign country. He hoped that Pozharski was making her laugh. That faultless oval with, sometimes, the veiled, cat-like eyes! Surely any surgeon must feel that he was clipping the wings of an angel? Wings? He could be giving her wings.
When the sun was nearing south he ventured out and strolled round the point. Back at last in his own world, he sat on the shingle down river from Plencia. The town appeared to be carrying on its business unconcerned with assassins of Grand Dukes and seaplanes that passed at dawn, so he waded across to Gorliz beach and lay down on the warm sands, annoyed that he could not take off the dressing gown and dry it.
By midday there were mothers and nannies and children on the beach with here and there a man. Only paddlers were in the water, but passers-by readily assumed that he had been swimming and told him he was very valiant. It was a joy to talk and laugh. He deliberately coarsened his Basque accent, remembering with unfair disgust the formal, old-fashioned Spanish of David Mitrani in the Crucea de Piatra.
A car was bumping down the rutted, sandy track to the beach. Even before seeing the coroneted falcons on the door panel he had no doubt who was in it. Nobody else would have a dark red Hispano-Suiza the size of a bus. He walked unhurriedly towards it as if returning to the inn where he was staying. Kalmody pulled him immediately into the warmth of furs, then opened the lunch basket. None of that damned champagne, but the dark purple Rioja from the wood. What a thought and what a man! Who else could have guessed what would be the right wine for his home-coming?
‘I’d have been here sooner, but we ran out of fuel just outside Pasajes and had to get a tow in,’ Kalmody said. ‘Never mind! The Spanish roads are excellent now and we’ll easily do the four hundred kilometres to Madrid in time for dinner. By the way, they are operating this afternoon. The surgeon says it will be a long job but straightforward and she’s tough as nails.’
The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown Page 28