by Desmond Cory
“And will he take us up?”
That was one thing about Marie-Andrée. She got to the point…
“No,” said Johnny.
“Can’t we make him, somehow?”
“It’d take a saint to do it.”
“A saint?”
“Well – someone who’s a useful hand at miracles. Our friend Mayer got there well ahead of me; and Aigen’s very, very dead.”
“Oh dear,” said Marie-Andrée.
“That’s just what I said, myself. Let’s walk.”
They wandered in silence towards the waterfall, and the bench on which they had sat the previous night. Johnny planked himself down upon it with a sigh that wasn’t intended as a tribute to the beauty of the surrounding scenery; the great bulk of the mountain was still towering before and above him, but for the first time that day he was quite unaware of its presence.
“Let’s face the facts,” he said, pulling Marie-Andrée gently down on to the seat beside him. “Unless he’s pulled some childish boner – which he won’t have – this blasted Mayer is by now pretty well one-third of the way up this overgrown embankment in front of us. That’s fact number one. Fact number two is that at the top of the mountain there is a hut, and in that hut there are some diamonds… Sounds like one of those interminable songs, doesn’t it?… It follows that if we want those diamonds – which we do, badly – we’ve got to get to that hut before Mayer. All very well. I’ve been racking my brains until they hurt, and if there’s any way of beating him to the hut, I’m damned sure I don’t know what it is.”
He paused, in case Marie-Andrée had any comment to make. She hadn’t. He wasn’t altogether surprised.
“… We haven’t a hope. Aircraft or any fatheaded ideas of that sort are right out; the only way to the top is slogging up on foot. Which apparently takes three days – and then only if you don’t get lost on the way. Hans Aigen and his brother are the only reliable guides to the area, and one’s dead and the other’s ill; so that even if we roped in Biel – or that other fellow Gruber – and charged off in pursuit, it’s even odds we’d miss our way. And if we didn’t; if we got through the forest all right; Mayer’ll still be going like a rocket and climbing alone. We’d never make up that day’s start he’s stolen. So that’s no good either… and the problem remains. The great Mahomet, you may remember, faced a somewhat similar situation – in fact, many consider it the turning-point of his career.”
“I doubt if that omen is acceptable.”
“I don’t know. What goes up must come down. If we can’t catch up with Mayer, the only thing to do is to wait for Mayer to come down to us… and then be anything but gentle with him.”
“The question arises,” said Marie-Andrée, “where do you propose to wait for him?”
“That is rather the difficulty. It’d be tempting Providence too far to assume that he intends to return here; in fact, we can almost assume that this is the one place he won’t be passing by. You’ve been consulting maps – what routes are available for the return trip?”
“Oh, well.” Marie-Andrée considered. “It’s not like going up; you can come down absolutely anywhere you like. At one place, I imagine you could do it in a little under thirty seconds – if you bounced at the right angle.”
Johnny breathed heavily. “Let’s assume that one uses the accepted methods and travels feet underneath.”
“Well, first of all, you can go down exactly the same way you came up. In which case, you have to pass the second hut. But you don’t have to go anywhere near the first; you can branch out after that, and come down anywhere in the valley.”
“So that to police that route properly, we’d have to get up to the second hut and stay there?”
“Yes. Or preferably, a little higher.”
“Uh-huh. What other ways are there?”
“Then there’s the north-east slope; the far side of the mountain. As far as I can judge,” said Marie-Andrée dubiously, “you can go down the north slope almost any way you like. No, seriously, you can even ski it.”
Johnny’s expression was one of complete incredulity.
“Honestly, Johnny. Biel said it was easy at lunch, don’t you remember?”
“But, good heavens—”
“He says you simply walk up it from the north side. There’s no rock face at all, just a stiff slope for twelve or fifteen miles.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Johnny explosively. “If you can just walk up it, why all this flannel about climbing the thing? Building special huts and everything – when all you’ve got to do is go farther round and—”
“But he says it’s no fun walking. It’s too easy.”
Johnny stared wildly ahead of him. “They’re mad, you know,” he said. “They’re stark, staring bonkers. Do you mean to say…? Then we can do it, we can get there without Hans Aigen. Good Lord – what are we waiting for?”
“Darling, don’t be in such a hurry. It takes far longer that way. Don’t you see, you have to go right round the mountain before you can start climbing up the other side… Why, it might take as much as a week.”
“Can’t we…? Why can’t we drive round?”
“The Russians,” said Marie-Andrée sadly. “It seems they’re mustard on the road-blocks round here. Not a hope.”
“Oh, damn. Oh, damn and blast. This is far, far worse than I’d thought. To think of him just walking away and slipping back wherever he pleases… I suppose the west side has a built-in escalator?”
“No; but he could go that way all right. It’s not very hard climbing; but it’s supposed to be very dangerous at this time of year, because the snow’s melting and… Well, that again you heard all about at lunch.”
“Yes, I did… Well, this is simply awful. We’ll have to start some serious thinking.”
And Johnny placed his head between his hands and rocked himself to and fro, making curious crooning noises the while. It was some time before Marie-Andrée was able to recognise the sounds as a distortion of the well-known ballad, “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.”
“Look,” said Johnny, having completed the thirty-fourth stanza. “Do you know where Mayer’s room is?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“We’d better try to find it. Where are Frau Mann – I should say Mayer – and the wonder-child? Out getting lots of fresh air and exercise, I hope; if not, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
“As it happens, they are. They went off towards the village; you must have just missed them when you came up the drive.”
“Good,” said Johnny, rising to his feet. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To have a hunt round Mayer’s room.” said Johnny equably. “The odds are against our finding anything, but there’s always just a chance… He must have left in the hell of a hurry, and there may be something lying about that’ll give us a clue to his intentions.”
“I suppose it’s an idea. But I don’t think much of it.”
“Nor do I, frankly. But,” said Johnny, striding firmly across the grass, “at least it’s a move in a positive direction. I’m getting fed up with sitting around doing nothing, while the opposition are working in the background.”
Marie-Andrée pattered along beside him and made no comment; though, privately, she considered that “sitting around doing nothing” was altogether too modest a description of their recent activities.
“This is it,” said Johnny, pausing in the doorway. “Come on in. Welcome to the residence of the Mayer family; or, to be precise, the senior members of same.”
Marie-Andrée slipped past him and stood hesitantly on the threshold, looking round the room. It was not large; only slightly larger than their own; and was in a state of almost offensive tidiness. The twin beds at the far side of the room were made up with a hospital-like neatness; the furniture – chairs, dressing-table, wardrobe, table, bookcase – without exception new and highly polished. The cloths on the table and dress
er looked as though they had that moment come from the laundry, and the very few essential toilet articles on the dresser – a pair of hairbrushes, a comb, a small manicure set, a lipstick, a packet of hair-grips – were all arranged with a regimental precision, as though for an inspection… She heard Johnny sigh as he closed the door behind him.
“Doesn’t look as if there’s a hair out of place, does there? Oh, well, we’ll just have to do our best. You take the dressing-table; that’s more in your line than mine.”
Marie-Andrée obligingly moved forwards and began to investigate the dressing-table drawer; while Johnny, after wandering about the room in what seemed a vague and absent-minded manner, started operations on the wardrobe. The clothes in it were almost entirely dresses, frocks, costumes and other feminine desirables; the only male clothing there was a heavy overcoat and an electric-blue suit of poor quality and decidedly unpleasing cut. Presumably Herr Mayer kept the greater part of his attire at his “office” in Linz… Johnny ran through the pockets of these without encountering anything more interesting than the remnants of an Austrian climate, and then transferred his attention to the dresses. Almost at once, he called Marie-Andrée over to him.
“These aren’t what you’d call my strong point. What’s your opinion of them?”
Marie-Andrée was goggle-eyed with appreciation. “O – but – they’re marvellous.” She grabbed at the nearest female mystery and fondled it lovingly, relinquishing it immediately for another, apparently even more ravishing creation. “They must simply have cost the earth.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Johnny.
“How d’you think she…?”
“I don’t know. Maybe those diamonds aren’t exclusively furthering the aims of the Nazi party… I’m surprised at Mayer. Can’t you tell me anything else about them?”
“Lots,” said Marie-Andrée indignantly. “To start with, they’re French, definitely French. I could probably name the houses. And they’re very out-of-date. They’re cut to a wartime fashion – she’s tried to modernise them, but she hasn’t done it very well.”
“I suppose they are hers?”
“Oh, surely. They’re all shades she can wear, anyway; she’s really got very nice taste. Whose else could they be, anyway?”
“This one’s monogrammed,” said Johnny dryly, “in a natty gold pattern. The initials are E. B.”
“Well, that’s easy to explain. All these are from when she was married to her first husband. He must have been a wealthy devil,” said Marie-Andrée enviously.
Johnny turned. “Go on looking through them; let me know if anything else strikes you. I’ll do the dresser.”
They switched occupations and continued; but Marie-Andrée found nothing further to comment upon. She did the work rather too skimpily, as a matter of fact, because she was afraid that if she took too long over it Johnny would accuse her of lingering over the dresses instead of keeping her mind on her job. The temptation was certainly extreme… Johnny nodded in the direction of the bookshelves, and she transferred her attentions at once. They were even less promising; a number of light romantic novels in German, a handful of thrillers, six or seven weighty volumes of mountaineering memoirs, all in the same language…
“No good,” she said.
Johnny had found a small case in the bottom drawer of the dressing-table; it was locked, and he was doing his best to open it with one of Frau Mann’s hairpins. He nodded without looking up and said; “Test the carpet.”
Worse and worse. Marie-Andrée descended with a sigh on her hands and knees and began to explore the tiny pits made by the tacks in the carpet, looking for one that might show a tell-tale absence of collected dust. She was crawling painfully up the final stretch where there was a sharp click and Johnny said, “Ah.”
“What is it?” asked Marie-Andrée, jumping to her feet with a singular lack of hesitation.
“Papers. This could be promising.”
“Give me some.”
Johnny pushed a thin pile of variegated papers across the dresser towards her; his eyebrows were wrinkled uncomfortably. The top paper was a letter written in German, of a hand-writing so execrable as to be quite illegible; moreover, the ink was very faded, Johnny could make out the date, which was Mai 3, 1944; the opening phrase, which apostrophised the writer’s gnädiges Leni; an odd word or two throughout the text, and nothing else at all; not even the address or the signature. Least of all the signature. Johnny clicked his tongue in annoyance and picked up the next paper; which had at least the virtue of being typewritten and, in fact, resembled an official document.
For all that, it didn’t seem to make sense. Johnny scanned the first page with his frown of perplexity slowly deepening, and turned to the second…
… Die Erschienenen zu 1 und 2 erklären, daß sie rein arischer Abstammung und mit keiner der Eheschließung ausschließenden Erbkrankheiten befallen sind. Sie beantragen mit Rücksicht auf die Kriegsereignisse wegen außerordentlicher Umstände die Kriegstrauung und beantragen weiter das Aufgebot mündlich entgegenzunehmen und von sämtlichen Fristen Abstand zu nehmen.
…das Aufgebot. Johnny blinked.
And his mouth suddenly opened in a wide O of comprehension. He looked down towards the middle of the page, at the first of the signatures that lay sprawled across it; the handwriting was the same as that of the unreadable letter, and Johnny’s eyes narrowed. But this time he could just make out the name…
“Herr Gott und Liebster Jesu,” said Johnny; speaking in the language that was uppermost in his mind, and not altogether irreverently.
He spun around and stared at Marie-Andrée, whose eyes were already fixed upon him and as glazed as his own. In her hand, she was holding a thin, worn photograph; it was as though she had forgotten how to release her hold upon it. Johnny took it from her and glanced at it; the confirmation it offered of the marriage registration on the dresser was complete, but unnecessary. One of the two faces that looked out from it had been, perhaps, the most famous in the world.
“Hitler,” said Marie-Andrée weakly.
Johnny jerked his thumb in the general direction of the village.
“Eva Hitler,” he said concisely. “Oh yes, and Hitler junior.”
Marie-Andrée fell backwards, almost as though he had struck her, on to the edge of the nearest bed. Johnny dropped the photograph on the dresser, face down – it looked better that way – and leaned thoughtfully against the wall.
“She should have got rid of all that stuff,” he said.
“She must have been crazy to keep it… I knew she reminded me of somebody. And Martin too, by heaven.”
“You think Martin…?”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Johnny. “Not the slightest doubt… Well, all this is a bit of a facer; but it isn’t getting us anywhere near Mayer.”
He began to shuffle through the remaining papers with an air of carefully controlled boredom.
“But what are we doing to do?” asked Marie-Andrée, in what was very nearly a wail.
“It’s a tricky situation, isn’t it? Of course, she’s not much good to anybody. Allied Intelligence doesn’t want her, and I don’t suppose the Nazis do, particularly. The boy’s another matter altogether; he could cause trouble.” Johnny frowned at his reflection in the mirror. “Right at the moment, though, Mayer’s worth more than the pair of them put together.”
Marie-Andrée played with her fingers. And Johnny went on patiently examining Eva Hitler’s personal papers.
“I must admit I’d like to know how she got out of that ruddy Berlin bunker,” Johnny mused. “Let’s see… Mayer left town on the first of May; got out through the Grunewald. It’s a hundred to one he took her with him… Yes, well, no wonder Adolf didn’t feel like letting the world in on it. Wife runs away two days after the wedding; shouldn’t wonder if that wasn’t a record. Can’t very well blame her for it, either… Of course, it could have been fixed. There’s the boy… Oh, it’s anybody’s bet. Better ask her, I suppose. There
doesn’t seem to be anything here…”
It was the mirror that saved Johnny’s life; though it may well be doubted if it could possibly have saved anyone else’s. No other man in Europe could have performed the sort of shot that Johnny did then. The gun was in his hand and kicking backwards almost before the movement in the mirror had registered in his brain; and the answering shot came so quickly that the sound was in absolute unison. The mirror exploded into a shower of glittering fragments, leaping across the room; and, in the doorway, Helmut bowed ceremoniously and sank down on to his knees.
The pistol cascaded from his right hand, in a shimmering of dull grey light, and struck the floor with a solid thump; then his body arched forwards and covered it. He lay there, his whole frame shivering as though in the grip of fever.
Helmut alias the Baron von Knopke had little longer to live. Johnny could see that without having to examine the wound; could see that it was a matter of minutes, or maybe of seconds. The German’s teeth were tightly clenched, his eyes blurred and staring at a point four feet in front of them. Nobody could tell what they were looking at. Maybe Mussolini’s ghost; or maybe the taller, more benign shade of Dante Alighieri.
“It had to be you or me,” said Johnny; tritely, but not unsympathetically.
Helmut’s eyes focused on Johnny’s face. His lips drew away from his teeth, and he spoke; painfully, indistinctly, haltingly.
“I always knew it was you. I felt it from the first.”
He moved sluggishly, his fingers clutching at the pile of the carpet; and the blood began to trickle downwards from his mouth.
“… Viele Grusse an… Ihre Herr Dolan… traut…” The last word was spoken so faintly that Johnny could hardly believe he had heard it correctly. Yet, for all its weakness, Helmut’s voice had found a surprising last-moment clarity; and his eyes, fixed on Johnny’s forehead, seemed perfectly comprehending. Then, as though to forestall Johnny’s question, the light fled from them suddenly, and Helmut’s head rolled silently sideways.
Johnny stood up. “Did you hear that?”