by James Green
Jimmy felt like a rabbit who had just escaped from a fox by running across the road only to see the headlights about to hit him. Now you’re safe, now you’re not.
‘Have you anything to suggest?’
‘Nothing that will help. Make a will. Say your goodbyes and say some prayers. Get drunk and stay drunk.’
‘Thanks. I’ll try and remember.’
They both sat in silence. Jimmy turned to one side and looked out of the window. He had never liked travelling, these days it seemed he did nothing else. Not that he was actually going anywhere. Maybe soon it would be over and he would settle down somewhere. Permanently.
Strangely enough, all he felt was tired. Not weary, not frightened, just tired. He was close to knowing something important, something about himself. It was all building up to something. He couldn’t change who he was and he wouldn’t try any more. He had finally realised that he didn’t truly believe in anything except himself and staying alive. He wasn’t even a bad Catholic, only an onion-Catholic. None of it made any sense, not yet. But he was close.
‘Please, God, let me get there before it all ends.’
Udo surfaced from his own thoughts. ‘Sorry, I missed that. I wasn’t listening.’
‘It was nothing, just me talking to someone with a funny sense of humour who isn’t there and wouldn’t do anything even if he were.’
‘I see, a prayer. Well, why not? I hope it gets answered.’
‘So do I, Udo. So do I.’
TWENTY-SIX
Jimmy came into the living room in his dressing gown with a mug in his hand.
‘What time is it?’
Udo looked at his watch.
‘Just after nine. Did you sleep well?’
‘I slept well enough, I just didn’t sleep long enough. I think I’ll need three days solid to get back to anything near normal. I don’t even remember what the time was when we got back here yesterday.’
‘I know. I was the same. The first time you sleep after an operation your body goes to sleep, but your brain is only beginning to wind down. Sheer tiredness can switch off the body but not the brain. It’s been a long time, but I remember the feeling. You’ll be back to normal after a few days - you’ve been through a grinder and you’re new to this sort of thing. It takes some real rest to put things back together.’
Jimmy sat down.
‘How long have you been up?’
‘Since eight. We had a caller, the policeman with the funny sense of humour who came and asked us about Bronski’s visit to Hamburg. I’m pretty sure he’s Security Service.’
‘Did he want to know where we’d been?’
‘Strangely, no. It didn’t even get mentioned. He wanted some information from me.’
‘Anything I should know about?’
‘He wanted me to tell him who was after Bronski.’
Jimmy was taking a drink of his tea and he spilled some down his dressing gown.
‘God, how did they make that connection?’
‘No idea, but they did.’
‘What did you do?’
‘What could I do? I told him.’
‘And when they pick your man up ...’
‘They won’t. I was told to phone and tell my man, as you call him, that if he left Denmark today he would be allowed to go. If he was still here tomorrow, he would be arrested and charged with the bombing.’
‘Did you agree?’
‘Of course, what else could I do? He sat there while I phoned.’
‘And?’
‘He’s leaving, going back to Estonia. He’s doing as he’s told.’
‘Just like that?’
‘He’s got a wife and two kids back there. He wants Bronski dead but he doesn’t want it to cost him twenty years or more in a Danish prison.’
‘So was that it?’
‘No. I was told to tell him that if Bronski died in any way that might be interpreted as a professional hit, there would be an extradition warrant out inside twenty-four hours.’
‘So no ideas about paying for it to be done?’
‘No. It looks like Bronski gets to stay alive. When I’d made the call the funny man left and that was that.’
They sat in silence for a moment.
‘What does it all mean?’
Udo shrugged. ‘No idea, but it looks like Bronski will get on with his retirement after all. He gets out free and clear.’
Somehow Jimmy wasn’t surprised.
‘Yeah. I found that most of the really clever ones always did. How do you think your clever bugger of a visitor got to know about your involvement?’
‘How should I know? He did, that’s enough.’ Udo looked into his empty mug and got up. ‘Well, I’d better get on. There’s a lot to catch up with, phone calls mostly. If you’re away for just a few days it all backs up.’
‘Why don’t you take it easy for a while. It was tough for you as well.’
‘No, the world doesn’t stop just because you’re doing something else and it doesn’t stop because you’re tired. They get born, they die, they want to talk, they need you to visit. So you forget you’re tired and you get on with it.’
Jimmy was impressed. It had been a struggle for him to make himself a hot drink of tea and here was Udo going back to work like nothing had happened. He must be tough as old boots or dedicated to the point of obsession. Jimmy stood up and followed Udo to the kitchen.
‘How on earth did you get to be a priest anyway? Were your family Catholic or what?’
‘No, and I never met any professionally. All the religious ones I interrogated were Protestants or sect people. I suppose I just started to get interested.’
‘In religion?’
‘No, religion itself never interested me. People did. I interrogated many people. Often I used a degree of coercion, you understand?’
‘I understand, torture.’
‘I obeyed orders, it didn’t bother me. It had to be done so I did it. Some lasted longer than others and a few held out until they died. The ones who interested me were the religious ones.’
‘They were the ones who held out?’
Udo finished drying his mug and put it away but he stayed to talk so Jimmy stayed to listen.
‘No, not particularly, they were about the same as the rest, some weak, some strong, a few who died. No, it was something about quite a few of them. Even when you broke them you had the feeling you still hadn’t quite got them. That somewhere inside you’d missed something. That a small part of them was still beyond your control. Free in some way. It was interesting, from a professional point of view.’
‘And you followed it up?’
‘Good God, no. To associate with that sort for any reason was suicide in my job. But I was interested. Then, when I was in business for myself I was in a bar in Munich and I got talking to this guy. It turned out he was a Catholic priest on holiday. We talked about things and I asked him about confession, about how could a man forgive the sins of others.’
‘An odd choice of conversation.’
‘Not really, I wanted to talk to him about what interested me and it was a way of turning the talk in that direction. He told me a story. There was a German priest, a theologian called Bernard Häring who got into trouble with the Vatican. Something about what he wrote in his books, I can’t remember, I wasn’t interested. Häring said that he had been seriously interrogated only twice. As a soldier in the war by the SS, and as a theologian by the Vatican. The SS were polite and efficient. It was the Vatican that had scared him to death. They were the ones he had found hard to forgive.’
‘And that set you on the road to being a priest?’
‘I suppose you could say it did.’
‘How come?’
‘It occurred to me that any Church that could accommodate men like Häring and the sort who interrogated him at the Vatican would be worth looking into. I was a systems man. I had been brought up and worked all my life in a system, one that I believed in. Then it had gone, just
like that. The Catholic Church was a system and it had been around for a very long time. I figured it wasn’t about to suddenly disappear, so I started looking into it and ended up here.’
‘That’s it?’
Jimmy rinsed out his mug and began drying it.
‘Yes, that’s it. And now I must get going. You take it easy; in six or seven hours you’ll be ready to go back to bed. Don’t fight it, go to bed and sleep. Let your brain readjust. We’ll start getting back into some sort of routine tomorrow.’
‘Will your visitor be a problem? Do you think he’ll come back?’
‘I don’t see why he should. I think he got all he wanted.’
Udo left the kitchen and went to his study to make his phone calls. Jimmy put his mug away. Udo was right; already he was feeling the tiredness seeping back. Maybe it wouldn’t take as long as Udo said. Maybe he could help it along. He went back into the living room, to some bookshelves. Most were in German but a few were in English. One was called The Way to Nicea by someone called Bernard Lonergan. It looked promising so he took it out and went and sat down. Normally he didn’t read much, but at this moment he felt he had need of the right kind of book. He opened the book at the flyleaf. The subtitle was “A Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology”. That sounded promising. He turned to the Introduction. The first sentence ran, “In a recent study of ‘Biblical Hermeneutics’ published in Semeia, Paul Ricoeur not only conceived live metaphor as creative expression but also attributed a similar power to parable, proverb and apocalyptic ...”
Jimmy yawned. It was perfect. A couple of hours with this and he would be ready to go back to bed, never mind any six or seven hours. And he settled down to read.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Two days after Jimmy and Udo returned, Elspeth Bronski came home to Nyborg. Charlie had phoned her as soon as he’d got back and told her everything was over. The problem was solved. He also told her to take as long as she liked, not to hurry if she was having a good visit. But she didn’t want to stay. Hugh was becoming querulous and rambling. The house was a mess. She would stay long enough so that her departure didn’t look too sudden, but she would leave as soon as she could.
Charlie was uncomfortable waiting for her at the airport. She hadn’t hurried home because of Hugh. She was still worried. He met her as she came out of Arrivals, gave her a hug and a kiss, took her bag and began work.
Everything was fine, the FBI had found the man and now he was gone. It had all been a case of mistaken identity. He was some kind of nut who was convinced that Charlie had been responsible for the deaths of two of his family. God knows how he made any connection, but that’s what had happened. The FBI said it was definitely all over. The man would get treatment, the help he needed. There would be no charges, no court case, nothing. It was all over. It was what Elspeth wanted and she seemed to accept it.
Everything was back on an even keel.
Charlie didn’t make any fuss when they got home. He sat Elspeth down on the settee, got her a glass of white wine, then went to the desk and switched on his laptop. With him at his desk and her sitting on the settee things were just like they used to be. Write, do something normal, something routine. Elspeth gave him a smile. It wasn’t much of a smile but she was trying.
‘Still the black bread thing?’
‘No, that was too rich. I couldn’t even redeem it with vodka. This is something else, cold stuffed goose neck.’
‘My God, I think I preferred the black bread.’
Elspeth sat and watched Charlie as he began working, reading from the old cookery book and making notes on screen. She took the occasional sip. She didn’t want it but she had to try.
‘How can you just get back to writing as if nothing had happened?’
He turned and smiled at her. He was ready for that.
‘Because nothing did happen. We had a bad dream, that’s all. Now we’re awake and we can forget it. Everything is back to normal. Like I said, remember?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I know so.’
Charlie turned back to his writing and Elspeth stood up.
‘I’ll go and unpack then maybe we can go out somewhere for lunch.’
Charlie didn’t stop writing. ‘Yes, I’d like that. There’s a couple of letters for you. I left them on the dressing table.’
Elspeth went to the bedroom. Her case was on the bed. She went to the dressing table, put down her glass and picked up the two letters. One from England, the other from Denmark.
She opened the one from England. It was about Hugh. Her sister Angela wanted her to support the idea of putting him in a home.
Now that you’ve seen it for yourself, I’m sure you’ll agree that the best thing for everyone, but especially for Daddy, would be if Nigel and I found somewhere he could be looked after ...
The place was certainly a mess and he had become unbearable to live with. But that wasn’t the real reason Angela had written. She had her eye on St. Anthony’s. If she could get Hugh put in a home, she and her family would move in. Well, Daddy was a lot worse now in many ways but he certainly wasn’t ready to go into a home, and, as far as Elspeth was concerned, the longer Angela was kept waiting to take possession of St Anthony’s, the better. Self-centred bloody cow. And as for that prick of a husband, Nigel ...
Suddenly she was shocked by her words, even if they were only spoken in her own head. She didn’t use language like that.
She put Angela’s letter down and picked up the other. The envelope was postmarked Odense and was handwritten, so was the letter. It was quite short, almost scrawled, as if written in a hurry.
Dear Mrs Bronski,
You do not know me but I have some information I think you should know. The man you think is your husband, and now goes by the name of Charles Bronski, is in fact Yuri Kemedov, formerly of Russian Intelligence and before that the KGB. He defected to the British and was given a new identity, the one he has now. I am the man who put the bomb in his car. He was responsible for the deaths of my sister and father and many more innocent people. For reasons you do not need to know, he is safe from me now but I pray to God that some relative of one of his other many victims will do my work for me. I will do my best to see his present location becomes known. Leave him, Mrs Bronski, or you may die with him. Whatever you do, do not try to warn him. If he became aware that you know his real identity, your life would be in danger. You will not believe what I have written but you can confirm its truth by talking to Fr Udo Mundt in Copenhagen.
There was no name. Elspeth re-read it, then quickly put it back into its envelope and put it in her handbag. She stood for a moment. Then she went to the bed and began to unpack. She needed to occupy herself while she thought.
At his desk in the living room, Charlie had stopped writing. His mind was circling a problem he had been working on ever since he had got back. If Costello was so important, how could he sell him, and who would the likely buyers be? The British wanted him dead but that didn’t help. The British didn’t count these days – they did as they were told, and the ones who told them were the Americans. He had to find a way of contacting the Americans and testing the water. One thing was certain, he could do nothing from Denmark. He needed to go to a European capital and make initial contact through an embassy. Paris seemed a good option. He got up and went to the bedroom door. Elspeth had her back to him, hanging things in the wardrobe.
‘What about a break?’
Elspeth started and dropped a jacket on to the floor. She turned round and looked at Charlie. He walked to her, picked up the jacket and held it out.
‘Are you OK? You look frightened.’
Elspeth gave him one of her weak smiles. She took the jacket from him.
‘I try to tell myself it was all a bad dream, that it’s over now and I can forget it. But I was always a hopeless liar, so I don’t convince myself any more than I could convince anyone else.’
Charlie put his arms round her and held her to him. ‘What y
ou need is a break. We both do.’ He stood back. ‘Let’s go to Paris. Autumn on the boulevards. We can relax and forget Denmark for a few days. What do you say?’
‘Do you want to?’
‘It’s what you want that matters.’
Elspeth gently pushed his arms away and went past him and sat on the bed still holding the jacket.
‘It doesn’t seem to have affected you at all. Somebody put a bomb in your car, you had to go the FBI and then we had to run away and hide. Now it’s all over and you just pick up where you left off. I can’t do that, Charlie. I just can’t do that.’
Charlie came and sat beside her.
‘I was in base security for most of my Air Force time. You get used to alerts and then standing down. It’s something I learned to do. As far as I’m concerned there was a short alert, I went to stay with an old friend and his wife. The specialists came and sorted out the problem and now we’re stood down. Things are back to normal.’
Elspeth looked at him.
‘Did you ever have to kill anyone, Charlie, in the line of duty, as part of your job?’
Charlie looked surprised.
‘Good God, no. What made you ask that?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t seem to make myself look at it the way you do. If you’d ever had to kill someone it would make you different, wouldn’t it?’
‘I bet it would, but base security was about being careful, not about being violent. Now, what about Paris? A change, a rest, a good time.’
‘If you want to.’
‘Do you want to?’
Suddenly Elspeth seemed to pull herself together. She stood up and smiled at him.
‘Well, I’m not going to Paris looking like this. If we’re going to Paris, I need a new outfit. We can go to Paris if I can go to Copenhagen and buy a proper suit.’
Charlie stood up.
‘I thought the right idea was for a woman to do the shopping in Paris?’
‘It is. But I couldn’t go into a Paris shop looking like I do. I’ll go to Copenhagen today and you can arrange everything. Please, Charlie, if we’re going, let’s go straight away.’