The Salzburg Connection

by Helen Macinnes

  “Not the Nazis. Not this time.” She spoke in a strangely flat, hard voice. “They do not need to find out any more about my husband. They have already taken action. Their way.”

  He found a coal scuttle on the other side of the stoke. “No wood?” he asked, looking down at the heap of soot-black bricks under a heavy glove.

  “We aren’t allowed to use logs. Briquettes. They are safer.”

  He dropped only two on the embers so as not to smother them, left the door slightly open for increased draught, and hoped that would start warming the room again. She had shivered twice. People were always cold after shock. “Here,” he said, taking a heavy jacket from its peg on the door, “put this around your shoulders.”

  The jacket seemed to comfort her. She said slowly, “That was a woman who came here. Wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “A young woman. She moved fast. She knew her way around those streets.” He looked at the cluttered kitchen and then at the opened drawer. “She knew her way around here, too. She knew just what she wanted.”

  Anna looked at him blankly. “And now there’s nothing—nothing to show.”

  “I took some photographs. Remember? I’ll send you copies of the letters—” He stopped. His words were no comfort. It was the loss of the lake photographs that really appalled her. “I’m sorry, really sorry. It would have been a remarkable book.” But again his words meant little to her.

  “I promised him I’d never go near the lake. I was only to show—” She bit her lip cruelly. “All for nothing, it was all for nothing.” She began to weep, silently.

  He moved over to the desk, found a small directory, brought the book over to her. “Anna—please. What’s the name of your friend? The one you were staying with. She will be worried about you. Please Anna.”

  “Dietrich. Frieda and Werner Dietrich.” She stared at him, suspicion rising. “But I won’t leave here. I won’t!” She quietened her voice. “I should never have left,” she said dully.

  He found the number, and then had to search for the telephone—it was in the shop. He listened to Frieda’s worried exclamations for half a minute, eventually persuaded her to come around here and spend the night. He would wait until she arrived. He replaced the directory and, as he did so, he stooped to pick up a small scrap of paper that must have fluttered out of the book as he opened it. It was a telephone number, hastily written. It wasn’t Bryant’s writing, though.

  Anna was watching him. She was in control again. The tears had stopped. “That is Yates’s number—the one Dick was to telephone when he got back here.”

  He frowned at the number. Only one thing was clear: it wasn’t the number of the Zürich office; it wasn’t Yates’s home number either. “May I copy this down? And I’ll note your telephone number, too.” He remembered that all Newhart and Morris addresses had gone with the stolen file, so he wrote them out for her as a kind of reassurance. “I’ll be in touch with you,” he promised. “Don’t worry. We won’t forget you. This isn’t the end of this matter.”

  She stared across the room at the gaping drawer. “Perhaps Yates is responsible for that, too. He wants to take all the credit. He will give Dick none of it. None. He knows where to search. Now he has the photograph, the one that wasn’t sent to him—it wasn’t to be published. It was just a—” She broke off. “It won’t matter now. He has everything.” She rose. “I think I’ll go upstairs. I’m very tired.” She looked at the small lines of flame running around the edges of the briquettes on their bed of glowing embers. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll need a warm stove in the morning.” She added some more fuel, closed the door of the stove, adjusted a ventilator.

  She is far from hysterical, he thought, as he noted her movements and the practical voice. If what she has been saying seems wild, then it is only because I know so damned little about anything. “I’ll see you into the apartment upstairs, lock you in, and give Mrs. Dietrich the key.”

  The apartment seemed safe enough. No intruders here. And she was so exhausted, both emotionally and physically, that she might not even notice its emptiness. There would be bad days ahead for her, he thought, as he returned downstairs through the dark hall.

  He had to wait almost ten minutes before Frieda Dietrich appeared. She was, he noted with relief, a placid blonde with a capable air and a kindly face. “I’ll soon get this place straightened up,” she told him, and he could believe her. “Anna was never much of a housekeeper. Poor Anna! A terrible thing, terrible!”

  “What happened actually?”

  “His car went off a hill road near Unterwald.”

  “Unterwald?”

  “It’s up in the mountains south-east of here. Just beyond Bad Aussee. That’s where Johann Kronsteiner has his ski shop. He’s Anna’s brother. Lucky she has him around. There’s no one else. Of course, there’s a niece in America, but she was adopted in Vienna by an American and his wife. An army officer in the American occupation forces. That was years ago, soon after the war. The niece was only a baby then, won’t even remember her. You know what it’s like with adoptions: people don’t want the family to keep in touch. It’s understandable, I suppose. Too bad that Anna never had any children of her own. Never could understand it. She’s young, too. Only thirty-five. He was much older; she depended on him for everything. It’s a terrible thing. Terrible.”

  Yes, Mathison agreed, it was a terrible thing. He backed away. “Well, now that you are here to take charge, I’ll start thinking of dinner. Good night, Frau Dietrich. I hope everything will be all right.” He looked around for his camera. He had dropped it somewhere in his chase through the house. “Here it is,” he said, picking it up from the floor. “Good night. And lock this door after me, will you?”

  “We don’t lock our doors—”

  “Do it to please me,” he said with a grin. He left quickly, seeing all the amiable questions that were rising in her curious face. Let Anna deal with them, he thought. I’m just the innocent passer-by.

  He headed back for the hotel. The evening was shot to pieces. He would have dinner in his room and work at his brief for Newhart, getting everything down as quickly as possible while his memory of the details was fresh. He would have it ready by the time Newhart telephoned at midnight. As he turned the corner into the busy street, he looked at the doors of the shops and houses, wondering again which one the woman had used to vanish behind. She was young, all right. A girl. And the stockings on her slender legs had been light in colour, very light. Flat-heeled shoes. No one could have run like that in high heels. And a swinging tweed coat, a neutral colour from the distance... That reminded him to look over his shoulder for a man in a grey raincoat, but he could see no signs of anyone following him. That was one thing about losing your temper and losing it hard: it could discourage the other fellow.

  In the hotel lobby there was a large decorative map of Salzburg and the surrounding country that brightened up one wall for the benefit of the tourists. Mathison studied it as he waited for the elevator. South-east of here, just beyond Bad Aussee... Yes, almost directly east of Bad Aussee was Unterwald, so unimportant that it had been given only the smallest printing. It was near a lake, a little blue oblong among the greens and browns and etched greys of the mountains. There was spider type, delicate, almost unreadable, stretching up the side of the narrow lake. He resisted the impulse to tip his head to read it more easily, just as he had kept his finger from tracing the road from Bad Aussee. With difficulty, he read the name sideways. Finstersee. Yes, definitely Finstersee. He turned away from the map, looking now at the selections of dirndls and lederhosen inside the display cases, showing—he hoped—more interest in them than he had done in the map. At last he could step into the elevator and reach his room.

  The first thing he did was to take his camera case from the wardrobe and open the Minox. The decoy roll of film was gone. Ridiculous, he had told himself this afternoon, when he had inserted it; all that trouble possibly for nothing. Yes, that was what he had thought then. But
now?

  He fished in his jacket pocket, brought out the matchbox. He was shaking his head as he replaced the box in his trouser pocket—keep close my pet, keep close—took off his jacket, loosened his tie. He went over to the head of his bed and picked up the telephone. A double Scotch; sandwiches; a typewriter, with carbon paper; three separate orders, with a repeat added to the Scotch to see him through the evening. No real dinner or wine tonight, he decided regretfully: he couldn’t afford to feel expansive and pleasantly lethargic on the job that he faced. And it was going to be quite something, to boil down events and words and facts into a straight brisk summary. Nothing longer than three pages for the completed brief, including the footnotes. Jimmy Newhart liked his reading crisp and clear.

  He flopped on to the comfortable bed to wait for the drinks, lit a cigarette, stared at the ceiling. Now let’s begin at the beginning, he thought. First, you noticed two men as you entered the shop early this afternoon—hey, what happened to them? Shut up and concentrate! You entered the shop and met Anna Bryant...

  He felt like a man who was walking across a stream of whirls and eddies, managing not too badly, and then, all at once, had stepped into the steep drop of a deep pool and was up to his chin in rushing water.

  He pushed away the typewriter at a quarter to twelve, studied the pages of his preliminary notes, and tore them into small pieces once he made sure he had left nothing out of the final concentrated report. There were two copies: one to carry with him, the other to mail at the airport as he left Salzburg tomorrow. He was taking no chances.

  He read the report once more (with its appendage dealing with his own experiences that had made him take Mrs. Bryant’s information seriously). The gist of it made clear that there were two separate problems for Newhart and Morris. First, there was a dubious contract and a peculiar cheque signed by some Emil Burch. Secondly, there was Bryant’s death near Finstersee. And because Yates seemed so deeply involved in both problems, Newhart and Morris had been placed in a difficult if not doubtful situation. In one case, they stood to lose some money even if Mrs. Bryant didn’t sue; there was a question of good faith involved here, or rather, the cancelling of their employee’s bad faith. In the other, it seemed as if their chief representative in Europe might be a British agent using their name as cover for his activities.

  And that, thought Mathison as he burned the discarded scraps of paper one by one in the large ashtray, that is the joker in the pack. It had taken Newhart years to build up his firm (Morris had retired handsomely a couple of years ago), and now he might see its reputation and good will dissipated within a few weeks. If the newspapers started playing around with Yates’s name— He didn’t finish the thought. Even sly gossip, whispered rumours could be as dangerous as headlines. The Swiss, for example: how long would they let the Zürich office stay open if they thought it had been a centre of espionage activities? There was only one consolation in the whole bloody mess. The British, presumably, weren’t working against American national interests. At least, they were supposed to be on the same side of the fence. But he wouldn’t describe the placing of one of their agents inside a perfectly innocuous American firm as exactly a friendly gesture.

  It was time to get prepared for Newhart’s call. He rose to bring the telephone over to the armchair near the window. The view was as spectacular at night as it had been by day, and at last he would have time to enjoy it while he stretched his back in a comfortable seat and propped his feet up. The architects and stonemasons who had built this town would have been astounded to see what effects electricity could bring to their work. The careful floodlighting had added another dimension. Maybe we can’t build like them, he thought, as he remembered the tall glass boxes and slabs of metal cheese springing up over modern cities, but we do know how to use light. That wouldn’t inspire any future poets, though; there would be few twentieth-century remains worth eulogising once the barbarians destroyed the power plants.

  He was halted abruptly by the telephone cord. It jerked him to a standstill at the foot of the bed. At first he thought it was tangled and couldn’t make its full stretch to the armchair. But it was straight and taut. He sat down on the edge of the bed and broke into laughter. They really had been after his telephone, right from the start. They? He sobered up and looked at the neat black instrument in his hand. Latest model with microphone in place? He would need a screwdriver to investigate. Perhaps a nail file might substitute. Before he could try, the telephone rang. Careful what you say, he told himself. But how was he to keep Jimmy Newhart in check? Jimmy not only raised his voice when he made a call, he got the most wordage out of every minute he paid for.

  Mathison need not have worried. Newhart’s call was his shortest on record. “Look, Bill, will you get back here right away? Yes, right away. When can I expect you?... Sure, I know you’ll have to juggle nights and connections. Try to get here by tomorrow night. Call me from Kennedy Airport, and I’ll let you know where and when to meet... Cut out Zürich meanwhile. Just get here.” There was a deep sigh. “Boy, you’ve given me one hell of a day.” And on that note of gloom, the booming voice cut off.

  So Zürich was cancelled.

  Meanwhile—whatever that meant. And there were two good suits and six of his best shirts waiting for him in his hotel room there.

  He searched for Elissa Lang’s address in the Salzburg directory, but it wasn’t listed. It was just possible, though, that the farewell party was still lingering over its last drinks or frugging its feet off. So he called the porter downstairs, who was a knowledgeable character, and enlisted his help in tracking down Schloss Fuschl. It was on a nearby lake, the porter told him. A little late, perhaps, to telephone but he knew the night porter there. Would Herr Mathison like him to handle the call?

  It came through in a few minutes. No, he was assured most earnestly, there had been no party of six people from Salzburg tonight. No party of any size whatsoever. Not tonight. Definitely.

  He put the telephone back on its table and went over to the armchair. He looked at the castle across the river, towering over everything. This afternoon, he had been followed all the way up there. Then suddenly no one was following him. And later he was followed again.

  Meaning? Nonsense, he told himself angrily. The first man could have kept well out of sight once he saw Elissa speak to me. There were enough walls and battlements rising around that castle to let fifty men keep watch on two people who were completely absorbed in each other. And it didn’t have to be a lie about Schloss Fuschl. Her friends could have changed their minds and taken her some place else.

  He called the hall porter once more and began discussing flights out of Salzburg tomorrow morning. That brought him back to his own world, and he stopped thinking of people whom he might never see again anyway. In that mood, he stubbed out his last cigarette angrily and went to bed.

  But there was one postscript to be added to his day in Salzburg. It occurred early next morning when he had arrived at the airport and joined a small group of people at the reservation desk. Ahead of him were two men. They had dropped the fancy dress and now wore stiff-looking business suits, but they were the same two who had maintained a dogged vigil yesterday afternoon outside Bryant’s place on the Neugasse. They were trying, in a mixture of very exact German (for the benefit of the Austrian clerk) and a strange language that was difficult for Mathison to identify (used in quick discussion between themselves), to extend return tickets from Prague into the longer trip to Warsaw. That should be done at Vienna when they changed planes, the clerk kept repeating. But they were worried about connections and time, and so they argued for a useless two minutes. As they walked off in sullen annoyance, each carrying one small suitcase, the clerk had the last word. He shook his head sadly, and said to his next customer, “They think they know everything, these Czechs.”

  9

  With the help of the five hours’ time lag between Central Europe and Eastern daylight-saving America, Bill Mathison arrived at the Newhart and Morri
s offices just as the staff was pouring out of the elevators to catch the evening trains and buses home. But on the eighteenth floor, where Jimmy Newhart had his suite, his secretary was waiting in the outside office. The three typewriters near its door were shrouded in grey plastic covers, their desks empty of papers, nothing in sight.

  “Hello, Linda. I’ve never seen this place so quiet. It looks like the morgue. Are you working late?”

  “I’m the hat-check girl tonight. I also keep cleaning women at bay.” She took his coat and camera, picked up the hat he had thrown on a chair, and with her foot pushed his bag more closely against the wall where he had dropped it. She was in one of her brisk moods. He had never seen her quite so serious either.

  “Had a bad day?”

  She turned her eyes helplessly to the ceiling.

  So he didn’t waste any time on even one joke, but headed straight for Newhart’s office. It was empty. He kept on going, to reach the inner room. Newhart was standing at its wide window, looking down at the street below him. “A fine mess,” Newhart said, turning away from the giant excavation in the block opposite. “And that goes for Zürich, too.” He was a short man, with a mass of prematurely white hair, a pugnacious face usually softened by an easy smile, and an excellent taste in clothes. His manner was capable but quiet, with occasional bursts of machine-gun energy. Tonight, he seemed strangely subdued. To begin with, at least. “Good to see you, Bill. Glad you got here so promptly. We’re having a couple of visitors. Thought I’d brief you before they come. Well, how are you?” He shook Mathison’s hand with a good hard grip, offered him the most comfortable leather armchair, and poured him a stiff Scotch. “I expect you need this,” he said, but that was all the time he seemingly had for talk about the difficult journey.

  “Here’s my report,” Mathison said, pulling it from the safety of an inside pocket. “And here’s this.” He produced the matchbox.