The Salzburg Connection

by Helen Macinnes

  “On the Mönchsberg.”

  “With a very pretty girl who is probably dying of pleurisy right now. Oh, really, Johann, couldn’t you just have taken her to a café or the movies?”

  “We were at a café and we were at the movies, and then we walked along the heights to see the view.”

  “At midnight?”

  “There was a full moon until the rain came. And stop worrying about Elisabetha. She had my cape. How do you think I got soaked?”

  “Elisabetha. No, I don’t need to worry about that one.”

  “Anna,” he asked quietly, “where is Dick? Sit down. No; across the table from me. Have some more coffee. Where is Dick?”

  “He went up to Finstersee.”

  Johann stared at her, put his cup down slowly.

  “But it’s all right, Johann. It’s all right. He is at Unterwald right now. That was Dick telephoning me.”

  “From where?” he asked quickly. There weren’t so many telephones in Unterwald.

  “From the Gasthof Waldesruh. He was going to have breakfast with Herr Grell and his son Anton.”

  “I thought you told me all the photographs were ready.”

  “They are.”

  “Then he didn’t go up to Finstersee to take some more shots? He went up to Finstersee to—” He couldn’t finish. Anger choked him. Then he thought, That’s impossible; Dick must only have been taking another look around. He calmed down. “What did he tell you?”

  “Everything.”

  “And what is everything?” His anger was rising again. Dick wouldn’t have told Anna anything unless he was actually taking action about that damned chest. “Did he really believe that a box was lying on the ledge?”

  “He thought he would see, at least.”

  “But it was only an informant’s story—years ago—and he didn’t even believe it then. I know. We laughed about it together when he told me, and that was a long time ago.”

  “There is a ledge at that part of the lake.”

  “I know! I’m the idiot who found it for him!”

  “He told me that, too,” she said gently. Johann had taken a party of amateur climbers up around Finstersee last summer and brought them back close to the shore, just at the point where Dick thought the chest might be hidden. And Johann had started telling the girls in the party that the lake was so deep, so filled with strange currents, that no one would swim there. Anna could imagine the scene well enough: time out for rest, the girls teasing Johann about his wild statements. She could see his handsome tanned face smiling as he weighted the end of his climbing rope and threw it out into the lake to let it keep on sinking, sinking. And as the girls turned away impressed, he had dropped the rope into the lake in front of his feet. And the weight had touched ground just about four metres down by his calculation. “He told me he asked you to find some way to see if the ledge existed, and you did. And you know, Johann, I don’t think you would have bothered if that informant’s story hadn’t been haunting you too.”

  “Well, after what happened at Toplitz—” He didn’t end the sentence. She knew about Lake Toplitz, that he could see by her face. But he was willing to bet that she hadn’t been told about the two bodies there, or how they had died. “When did he leave? Come on, Anna. Tell me it all.”

  So she told him. Everything except the hiding place, and about the chest’s contents. That was a promise she had to keep.

  “He might have taken me along,” Johann said bitterly when she had finished. “He needed another man.” If Finstersee contained anything at all, the Nazis would be watching.

  “You had a cold. You can’t go diving with a cold. Dick said that could make you pass out and—”

  “He rushed this job. I was laid up, and he seized the chance to ditch me. Doesn’t he trust me?”

  “Of course he does. It’s just that—just that—” She was in trouble, so she stopped.

  “It’s just that he wants that chest to go to the bloody British or the damned Americans.” His anger was returning.

  “He says that the only important thing is that the Nazis never find it again,” she flashed back at him. “And you like the British and Americans, so why swear at them? Besides, he is English, isn’t he? He found it, so it goes to them. Isn’t that fair?”

  “No! It was in an Austrian lake. It’s ours by right.”

  “But we are neutral. We’d do nothing with it. We’d lock it up safely and then forget about it. But the Nazis won’t forget. Nor the Communists. Dick says they’ll infiltrate our—”

  “That’s his excuse.” Johann paused. The contents of the chest must be valuable, then. “Did he tell you what was in it?”

  “He didn’t want to talk about that.” Which was true.

  “You really don’t know?”

  With difficulty, she kept her eyes from flinching. “He said I did not need to know that,” she said, feeling her throat go dry. But that was true, too. Dick refused at first. And then, when I insisted, he told me. Not so much because I insisted but because he realised he had to—in case something went wrong. But it didn’t, and now I can forget all about the chest. If only Johann doesn’t keep asking, asking, asking.

  But Johann was off on his own train of thought. “Then he knows!” Johann said swiftly. He thumped his fist on the table, spilling his coffee, rose to his feet. “I’m going to phone.”

  “Whom?”

  He halted. Felix Zauner was the man to deal with this problem: he had been with the Austrian State Tourist Department for a number of years, and then—after the Toplitz incident—he had gone into business for himself. He had opened a sports-equipment shop in Salzburg, a very small business which allowed him plenty of free time for his particular hobby of skiing. He had a few branch shops, too, although that wasn’t known except by the men whom he had staked. Johann was one of them. Felix was the silent partner, with his name not even mentioned, far less over the door. He was equally casual about money matters or a share in the profits. All he needed were a few men he could trust who knew the mountains, and who wanted no Nazis or any other foreigners complicating Austria’s revival. His friendship with Johann was quite open; he liked Bryant and had a kind of gallant affection for Anna. But what had stopped Johann short on his way to the telephone was Felix’s words when they had last discussed the possibility of Nazi secrets hidden in lakes other than Toplitz. “Let them rot there,” Felix had said. “That’s what they deserve. Unless, of course, there’s definite evidence that the Nazis are raising them to use again. Then we’ll move. And if anyone else is idiot enough to think he could find these documents—these old Hitler boys will get him before he even reaches the spot, and another good man will be dead. Tell your brother-in-law to stop being curious. He isn’t serious by any chance, is he?” And Johann had said no, he didn’t think Dick was anything more than curious.

  Anna was watching him and wondering and guessing all the wrong reasons for his indecision. “But we don’t know anyone here to whom we could report all this about Finstersee. And why report Dick? You wouldn’t do that. He isn’t hurting Austria. Please wait until he gets back and talk it over with him.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me about the diving gear? What kind was it anyway?” And I told Felix he was only curious.

  “Don’t shout!” she pleaded. “I don’t know what kind. It is something he used for underwater pictures this summer.”

  “Where did he buy it?” Not in Salzburg, certainly. Word would have drifted around. And there had been no talk of Bryant dabbling in underwater pictures, either.

  “I think in Zürich.”

  He’s a close-mouthed bastard, thought Johann. He stifled some stronger language, thinking of what he was going to say to Felix, and came back to the table to get another handkerchief. He blew his nose again, and that seemed to clear his brain for a moment. “Anna! He can’t have found the chest! Don’t you see? He never would be having breakfast at the inn with anything as valuable as that chest lying in his car. Now would he?”r />
  She was silent. I won’t have to tell Johann any lies after all, she was thinking, and relief spread over her face. “No,” she said, at last.

  Johann’s resentment faded. She’s as glad as I am, he thought, that Dick failed. Felix was right: some things were better left to rot. “Just as well he didn’t find anything. He’d be in danger, and so would you. It isn’t only the Nazis we have to worry about. Did you know that a couple of Russian tourists in Bad Aussee were politely escorted to the frontier? They weren’t what their passports said they were. And then there was that Frenchman pretending to be an Italian schoolteacher on vacation. He was wandering around Lake Toplitz trying to find out whether we had salvaged more documents there. He left along with the Russians.”

  “Have we salvaged all those documents? Dick thought not.”

  “And what gave him that idea?”

  She half-dried her hands and went over to a drawer in the little writing desk where Dick had filed that newspaper clipping of last week. Someday, she thought, we’ll have a real kitchen and a real living room, both separate, both neat. “Here,” she said, giving it to Johann as she returned to the sink. She glanced at the clock. “Oh, dear! I ought to have done the shopping first. The soup should be on by now.”

  Johann watched her with amusement; you could depend on Anna to plan things the wrong way round. And yet, in the darkroom, her work was excellent. Even Dick, who fussed and fumed about texture and light and shade and flawless prints, admitted she was good. Now she had decided to let the dishes drip and fetch her coat and shopping basket from the crowded closet near the door. By the time she was ready to go, he had read the clipping. It was datelined Vienna, and only a few days old.

  Since the first diving operations in Lake Toplitz during the summer of 1959, when various chests that had been sunk there by the Nazis in 1945 were recovered, there has been considerable speculation in informed circles concerning the contents of these discoveries. It was officially announced, at the time, that among the items recovered from the lake was a cache of counterfeit English five-pound bank notes amounting to more than 25,000,000 Austrian schillings in value, as well as plans for U-boat rockets. (The details were given in the August 11th publication of the German magazine “Der Stern” of 1959.) But until today silence has been officially maintained about subsequent discoveries, leading certain interested people to believe that documents might still be hidden in Lake Toplitz. Such ill-founded beliefs can now be laid to rest. According to a reliable source, the documents have been identified as German records and receipts of the period 1936–39, including a list of Balkan agents working for the German Reich at that time. A government spokesman stated today that all diving operations ceased some years ago when it was officially decided that our Styrian lakes had given up the last of their secrets. Such operations were highly expensive to maintain and, without further results, a waste of time and money.

  “What got into Dick? It’s obvious we did fish up the documents, too.” And they were scarcely worth the trouble, thought Johann. Now that hoard of counterfeit bank notes and the submarine rockets had been something; but a list of Balkan agents, who probably never survived the war anyway... He laughed.

  “Is it?”

  “Of course it’s obvious! It says here—”

  “It doesn’t say anything of the kind. ‘A reliable source,’ it says, and that’s all. What reliable source?”

  “But the government spokesman—”

  “Is stating the truth, and just read again what he says. It simply means we stopped diving.”

  “But it says here—” Johann insisted.

  “It doesn’t.” Anna was impatient. “It is simply trying to give that impression. It’s trying to convince people like your Russian tourists and Frenchmen that they are wasting their time. Which means there must be some interest starting up in the lakes again, enough to worry our government and make them want to discourage prowlers. It’s—it’s hidden diplomacy. That’s what Dick says.”

  “That’s what Dick says,” he mimicked, and then laughed.

  “Yes,” she said, blue eyes large with indignation.

  “But he doesn’t think they are going to be discouraged?”

  “Some of them won’t be. They know that the Nazis sunk several chests, and these held more important things than the names of Balkan agents.”

  “So that’s what triggered him off!” Johann lit a cigarette and poured the last of the coffee. “He’s a crazy idiot,” he added, shaking his head.

  “Yes,” she flashed back at him, “only a crazy idiot would have given shelter to a fifteen-year-old refugee with a three-months-old baby in her arms.” The door closed behind her, leaving him staring at nothing.

  The coffee was cold, but he drank it. The cigarette tasted like floor sweepings. It was the first time Anna, in all these years, had even mentioned Vienna to him. Dick had kept his silence, too, except for one brief explanation of why he had brought her to Salzburg. “I took her away from everything that reminded her of what Vienna had suffered.” And it was Dick who had arranged for the adoption of the child. That was part of the therapy. “It was Anna’s only chance. And mine. Rape distorts a girl’s mind, leaves revulsion and fear in place of trust. For months, even when she would share my room willingly, she wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t go out into the street unless I was with her—she wasn’t afraid of me somehow, only afraid of being abandoned again—she would flinch if I ever touched her hair, tremble against her own will when I put a hand on her cheek.” So, thought Johann bitterly, it was a stranger who found my sister wandering in the ruined streets—the family friends she had hoped to find either dead or scattered, new addresses unknown. I wasn’t any help to her then, when she needed most help. I wasn’t even there.

  But what good would a sixteen-year-old kid have been anyway? He hadn’t described himself as that, of course, back in those days. He was a veteran, a courier for the underground that the Americans and British had formed in the mountains both south and north of the Italian border; he was a man, a grown man by his reckoning, a very big man indeed. Hadn’t he, a city boy born and bred, made his way to the mountains when he was only fourteen? The Germans weren’t going to make a stiff-backed Nazi out of him as they had done with Josef, his older brother—killed in Poland, which was one way of settling Josef’s savage political arguments with their father. (Come to think of it, it was his father who had turned Josef into a Nazi before the Germans even arrived.) And his father wasn’t going to convert him into being a fellow Communist—Marxist was his way of describing himself; Father had always liked the intellectual touch—and sharing the martyrdom of a Nazi concentration camp. Yet the old man was tough. He had survived.

  Yes, he had survived to come home after that great night of liberation and find what his comrades had done to his wife and daughter. He solved that problem even more quickly than he used to solve all the problems of the world: he hanged himself from an exposed and blackened beam in the ruins of his house. As for Mother...

  Johann drew a deep long breath. Yes, that was all his mother had needed to push her out of this world. She retreated; first mentally, then physically. The day after she died, Anna made her way out of the Russian zone. A fifteen-year-old girl with a three-months-old baby in her hands. On foot. With only the clothes they wore. He had tried to imagine that journey, and couldn’t. Wouldn’t. That was more honest. The past was past... He was thinking too much about it, today. Perhaps because Anna had been thinking about it. Had she sat all through last night remembering?

  He rose abruptly, went through to the shop. Here everything was neat and businesslike. He admired the display of cameras, the expensive gadgets that tourists like to drape around their necks, and the photographs on the wall that were Dick’s real interest. Mountains, glaciers, forests and meadowlands, lakes (yes, Finstersee was there among them) and alpine villages with their half-timbered houses, wooden walls rising from white plaster, balconies set into alcoves under deep eaves. There was a pict
ure of Unterwald, too, with the Gasthof Waldesruh standing peacefully against its background of trees. Suddenly, Johann frowned. He hesitated. Then, obeying his instinct, he moved quickly to the telephone. He hoped Felix Zauner wouldn’t still be reading a newspaper over his cup of mid-morning coffee at Tomaselli’s. But Felix was in his office above the Getreidegasse.

  “And where are you sneezing from?” Felix wanted to know.

  “I’m in Salzburg, staying with Anna and Dick. Look, Felix—what do you know about the Grells, August and Anton Grell? They keep the inn at Unterwald.”

  “Pleasant enough. Efficient. The old boy is pretty conservative, though. I couldn’t interest him at all in turning his place into a real ski lodge. I have an idea for a ski lift up from the valley, but so far he says it would only ruin Unterwald.” Felix laughed. “It’s the first time I’ve ever heard a little more prosperity spread among the villages being called their ruin.”

  Johann wiped his nose, repressed another sneeze. The shop was cold.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know,” Johann said slowly. He hadn’t any real reason, only a small worry that had started out as a simple question. He frowned again at the picture of the Gasthof Waldesruh. “It’s just that Dick went up to Finstersee early this morning—”

  “Oh?” Felix’s quiet voice was now serious.

  “And he telephoned Anna from the inn. He was having breakfast there.”

  “Why not?”

  “The inn is closed at the moment. At least, it looked very closed when I was up visiting Unterwald two weeks ago.”

  “I didn’t think you noticed anything when you were with Trudi.” Felix might be making a mild joke about Johann’s girl-in-every-village, but his next words went right to the heart of Johann’s question. “So they invited him in for a hot cup of coffee. Why does that puzzle you?”

  “He doesn’t know them except by sight. They aren’t friends of his. I was wondering if they were—well, perhaps a little curious about his photographing the lake.” Now that he had said it, it sounded damned silly.