The Salzburg Connection

by Helen Macinnes

  “When did you hear all this?”

  “On Sunday, just as we were having one o’clock dinner after I had been to church. Mr. Yates telephoned and explained everything then. He needed some extra money for his trip next day to Salzburg, and because he was so busy he asked me to get it from his desk in the office when I was out for my Sunday walk along the promenade if it wasn’t too much trouble. He was always so thoughtful.”

  “Yes, he thought of everything,” Mathison said wryly. “Did he ask about me?”

  “But of course. He was sorry he was so busy that he couldn’t see you until he got back from Salzburg. He thought perhaps you were working too hard over nothing.”

  “I suppose he saw the light burning late in his office on Saturday night. I was a bit of a nuisance, wasn’t I?”

  “I’m sure he never felt that. He just felt that the only way to solve the problem of Bryant was to see him personally. There is nothing in our files at all about that man.”

  As I can now well believe, thought Mathison. “And if you had seen me working in the office on Sunday, you weren’t to tell me anything?”

  She flushed slightly. “Only to assure you that Mr. Yates had the solution to the problem. You could easily go back to New York, and he would telephone you there on Tuesday. He really was upset about all the unnecessary bother you were having. He felt it was a reflection on the integrity of our office.”

  “And he worried a great deal about that.”

  “But of course.”

  “That policeman who visited the office on Monday morning—was he in uniform?”

  “No—just in plain clothes like the two who are there now. But he had an identification, and he didn’t ask to see any files or anything important. He just wanted to know what friends Mr. Yates had in Salzburg. I thought he might be after that Bryant, too.”

  But not as a policeman, Mathison thought. On Monday morning, Swiss Security hadn’t known about Richard Bryant in Salzburg; they hadn’t even known about any connection between Burch and Yates. None of us knew. Not on Monday morning. “Did the two policemen who arrived at the office today ask you any questions about Salzburg?”

  “No. They were interested in a man called Emil Burch.”

  Then they are authentic, Mathison thought with relief. Burch-Yates was the target for both the FBI and Swiss Security. Gustav Keller had moved in quickly as soon as he had got the excellent excuse of Yates’s death. And that changed everything. I won’t need to search through these files, Mathison realised; Keller’s boys will have done the job. I won’t have to meet Keller either; so forget those neat small feet. Strange how things keep twisting in this investigation, just like Yates himself. Every time I learn something new about Yates, I have to change the plans that I thought were definitely settled and straightforward. I didn’t really need to come back to Zürich, after all... How often does this kind of thing happen to Frank O’Donnell, or to Charles Nield? How much trouble and effort spent on a project that abruptly ends with the death of a man? Or plunges forward in another direction? Shifts emphasis, changes shape? If ever I meet either of them again. I’ll congratulate them on their fast footwork as well as their patience. No one would get very far in counter-espionage work if he didn’t possess both these items. “More coffee?” he asked quickly, noticing her returning dejection. And keep talking, he told himself. She’s too used to being neglected. “Yes, let’s have another pot. And have a chocolate éclair. Come on. It looks inviting on that tray.”

  “I really couldn’t.”

  “Of course you can. It seems to be raining outside. We can’t leave yet.” He signalled to the waitress and set things in motion. “And what did you tell the policemen about Emil Burch?”

  “He is a dealer in very fine maps. Mr. Yates bought two from him. Mr. Yates used to visit the old bookshops in town. He collected ancient maps. That was one of his hobbies.”

  Yes, Yates had thought of everything, even to an excellent excuse for entering Burch’s place of business. Almost everything, that was. But somewhere there had been a slip, worse than signing a faked Burch signature to a cheque. It had cost Yates his life. “Sailing was another hobby?”

  She nodded. “He hadn’t so much time for it recently. Last year—well, he used to spend every Saturday afternoon on the lake when the weather allowed.” She opened her purse again and found a wallet. “This is the way I am going to remember him,” she said sadly. She drew out a snapshot. “I took this one Saturday afternoon, when I was walking on Uto Quai.” The white cheeks flushed slightly as she handed the colour photograph over to him. It was Yates, quite unaware of the camera’s distant eye, a tall handsome man of fifty with a cheerful face. His hair was wind-blown, his cheeks tanned. He wore Bermuda shorts and a heavy cricketing sweater, its V neck rimmed with his college colours. He had one foot on the wooden dock, the other stretched out to his light sailboat. He had an arm out, too, holding it to someone who was standing on the pier, gripping her hand to help her into the boat. The shape of a slender wrist was all that could be seen. Miss Freytag had cut her out very neatly.

  “Who was his friend?”

  “No one important. Just a girl who was living in Zürich last year. She left, this spring.” Miss Freytag took back her precious photograph. She shook her head as she looked at it. “Why must the good always be taken from us? Such a handsome man.”

  “And so kind.” He was getting pretty tired of Yates’s imposed image.

  She looked at him quickly.

  “So kind,” he said, trying to recover his mistake, “in taking a lonely girl for a Saturday afternoon of sailing. What was her name, do you know?” Of course Miss Freytag would know; she would make it her business to find out who was the pretty menace to her daydreams.

  “Eva Langenheim. She came to the office to inquire about secretarial work. She didn’t get it. But that is how they met. A forward girl. I could hear her laughing during the interview as if she was quite sure of obtaining the position.”

  “She was in Yates’s office?”

  “She just walked in. I thought she was a friend until Mr. Yates told me afterwards that she was a stranger to him. She was a very forward girl.”

  “Have you any other photographs? Perhaps one that shows Miss Langenheim?”

  Miss Freytag almost choked on her last forkful of éclair. She stared at him. “Now why should you want to see them?” she asked coldly.

  “I think the police might like to learn about any of Yates’s friends.”

  “But why would they—”

  “They are investigating his death.”

  “I couldn’t—no, I really don’t want to talk to them.”

  “I think you should. Just tell them everything you have told me. They’d be grateful.”

  “I couldn’t,” she repeated, panic-stricken. “The scandal—”

  “No scandal. Everything will be handled discreetly.” He watched her gathering her gloves and purse, buttoning her coat, ready for flight. “Just think of it as your duty,” he tried.

  That stopped her.

  “But don’t talk to just anyone who says he is a policeman and flashes a badge at you. Especially if he is trying to question you about Yates’s friends in Salzburg.”

  Miss Freytag was no fool. “Are you trying to tell me that the man who visited the office on Monday morning was not from the police?”

  The only man who could have known on Monday morning about Yates’s connection with Salzburg was either one of his own agents—and he wouldn’t have come asking questions—or one of the opposition, who had stopped Yates from making that trip he had been planning to see Richard Bryant. Abduction was a grim word, but it might be the key to Yates’s death. Mathison said, “I think that man sounds a bit of a phony. You can find out that very easily, though. Just ask the two detectives who are now working through Yates’s files.”

  “But if he wasn’t a policeman, how could he have me followed?”

  “What?”

  “Followed. Aft
er he left, I saw him speak briefly to a man down in the square. And that man walked behind me all the way home that evening. He was outside the office again on Tuesday. And on Wednesday. And yesterday, too. But today—I could see no one.”

  “Good God,” he said quietly, and saw her flinch. “No wonder you were in a state of nerves when you telephoned New York.” That softened her face again. Sympathy was what she needed. Sympathy and praise for a self-sacrificing life, for duty faced and work well done. Yates must have laid them all on with a trowel. And suddenly Mathison felt deeply sorry for the faded blue eyes that rarely dared look at a man directly, for the thin pale lips and the neat lank hair cut in a no-nonsense bob. “Miss Freytag,” he said very gently, “you can go home now, and I’ll take care of Mrs. Conway or anyone else who turns up at the office.”

  “But this is Friday, and there is so much to do before the week-end.” She shook her head pityingly at his lack of knowledge about the running of an office.

  “How much work will get done today?”

  “But—”

  “Just go home like a good girl.”

  She was half converted. “I really should be there to welcome Mrs. Conway. We are expecting her this afternoon.”

  He shook his head. “Do as I say.” Then he added in a tone as severe as her father had probably used, “I insist.”

  That did it. She waited patiently as he paid the bill, refused the suggestion that he would call a taxi, made her ladylike good-bye on the Limmat Quai. Unexpectedly, she relaxed. “And thank you so much, so very much,” she said with a rush of emotion. “You’ve been so kind, so thoughtful, so—”

  “Good-bye, Miss Freytag. I’ll tell the office you’ll be in on Monday.” He turned away to walk briskly towards the busy square with its rattle of trolleys as they came over the bridge at the head of the lake. And the sooner I get out of Zürich the better, he thought, as he remembered that look of gratitude.

  “Mr. Mathison!”

  He looked around in disbelief to see Miss Freytag almost running behind him.

  “Mr. Mathison,” she said, dropping her voice, trying to catch her breath, “that man who followed me on Monday and Tuesday—he was waiting outside the café. I saw him start to follow you. So I thought I had better warn you.” She had the good sense to keep looking at Mathison as if they were discussing some after-thought that concerned only them.

  “Where is he?”

  “He is at the edge of the quay. He is watching the swans. He is wearing a very wet raincoat, dark grey in colour. And his hat is grey. It is the same man, I assure you,” she ended earnestly. “He is quite young, about your age.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “He has fair hair, good features. He looks so nice. It is incredible he should do this, isn’t it?”

  “Follow people around? Yes, there are more graceful ways of making a living.” Mathison’s thoughts were racing as he talked. “Miss Freytag, would you mind very much if you changed your plans slightly? Before you go home, will you telephone our office and speak to one of the detectives there? Tell him quickly about this man. Tell him that I am going to try to lead the man right into his arms. Ask him to have a reception committee waiting for us just inside the front door. Will you?”

  She nodded, almost smiling. “You have such an odd turn of phrase, Mr. Mathison. A reception committee—yes. I’ll try to arrange that.” Then her voice changed to a solemn church whisper. “Is this man connected with Mr. Yates’s death, do you think?”

  “You may be right.”

  “Then we must see he is caught.”

  He’s worth questioning anyway, Mathison thought. “And thank you, Miss Freytag.”

  “Yes, we must see to that,” she said determinedly as she turned and walked sedately away. She did not glance in the direction of the loitering man. Neither did Mathison. He strolled on, looking neither to right nor to left.

  Behind him, the man stopped admiring the slow-cruising swans and followed.

  12

  Bill Mathison reached the bridge at the junction of river and lake, and had to wait for the traffic lights to change. Only then, surrounded by people, did he glance around casually. And there was a fair-haired man in a dark-grey raincoat, now increasing his pace to join the crowd waiting for the signal to go. As the green light flicked on, they surged across in a tightly packed phalanx before the spate of traffic, dammed safely for a brief minute, would again sweep down like a flash flood. Mathison was willing to bet that the Zürich pedestrian was quicker in his footwork than even an old New Yorker.

  He headed for the quiet of the broad promenade of Uto Quai, and strolled along the lake. It was comparatively peaceful except for the sparrows; one group clustered on the ground just ahead of him with fiendish chirps. And then he saw that they were intent on pecking one of them to death—the bird had stopped fighting back, was lying in the centre of the scrum, cowering and resigned. Mathison pulled out two francs from his change pocket, threw them hard at the circle of sparrows, and sent them protesting into the branches of the trees. “Go on, stupid!” he told their victim, and waited until it had regained enough gumption to fly into the deep cover of a tangled bush. Then he picked up the coins, taking the opportunity as he bent and straightened to look briefly back along the Quai. Miss Freytag had been right. The man was following him.

  Mathison’s progress slowed to a saunter; he must give Miss Freytag time enough to get that call through. So he studied the hills across the lake as if he hadn’t anything else to do. There was scarcely any breeze now, and the clouds had vanished, leaving only sodden leaves underfoot to prove there had been a heavy shower while Miss Freytag and he had been in the café. He stopped twice: once at a boat anchorage, another time at a complex of swimming pool and dressing-rooms. But he didn’t look back for the rest of his journey. Let’s keep the man happy, he thought. No good discouraging him only to have another, and unknown, face following me doggedly around. I learned that little lesson in Salzburg.

  But, he wondered now, is there any connection between those men who tailed me in Salzburg and this one? No...almost certainly no. Grey Raincoat is simply interested in anyone who may be closely connected with Yates. He must have been hanging around the mortuary on University Street this morning, waiting to see who came to identify the body. He knows who Freytag is, but he becomes curious about me. So he follows us to the café at a time when neither of us is in a mood to notice anything very much. We talk and talk, and he becomes even more curious. I’m the question mark, I may even be a new lead. Is that it? Quite possibly. But in Salzburg last Monday, it was something else again. That American agent, Nield, suggested the Austrians might well investigate any stranger who came asking about Bryant on that particular morning, and in his quiet offhand way Nield could be right. But what Austrian knew of my visit to Bryant’s shop except Anna Bryant’s brother? (Yet he seemed hardly the type to initiate any surveillance.) And that friend of his, of course: Zauner. Felix Zauner?

  As Mathison crossed the bustling street that edged the lower side of the square on which the Newhart and Morris office lay, he stopped thinking of Zauner. The business on hand was right here, now, in Zürich. And if the man who followed him was working for neither the Swiss nor the Austrians, the only way to find out where he belonged was to catch him. Concentrate on that, Mathison warned himself. He reached the square and stopped dead in his tracks. It was almost empty. Across its central garden, there were a few people and some parked cars, but on the sidewalk ahead of him there was nothing but a clear view right to the Newhart and Morris building. And Grey Raincoat knew this square, knew the office entrance. He would not have to follow Mathison. He could stand at this corner, feeling reasonably unnoticed, and mark the doorway Mathison entered; there was nothing to block his sight or confuse his judgment. Damn it, thought Mathison, as he lit a cigarette to cover his indecision, who would have guessed the square would be so empty at this hour? You’ve made things too easy for him; you’ll never get him near that
doorway. Or will you?

  He began walking, but slowly, to give the man time to get into position at the corner. No doubt Grey Raincoat was already guessing that Newhart and Morris might possibly be Mathison’s destination. I bet, thought Mathison, he imagines he can stop worrying. Well, we’ll see about that. He threw his unfinished cigarette into the gutter, looked around him quietly, carefully, to add some proper colour to his behaviour, and stepped quickly into the apothecary’s shop that lay one door ahead of Newhart and Morris.

  It had dark wood panelling, large jars filled with coloured liquid, a handsome display of mortars and pestles, and a delicate scent of lime. A middle-aged man in a starched white coat was wrapping a box of pills in stiff white paper. Mathison watched, fascinated with the precision of the miniature mitred corners. Red wax, heated over a thin candle flame, was deftly applied and sealed. “Now,” said the chemist as he laid the package at one side of the dark polished counter, “what does the gentleman wish?” Polite eyes peered at Mathison over rimless glasses.

  “Some cough medicine.”

  “For yourself?”

  “For my sister.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Adult.”

  “I see. May I recommend one of the usual brands? They are—”

  “I’d prefer something you would make up.”

  “You have a prescription?”

  “Unfortunately, no, but I am sure you must have an excellent prescription of your own.”

  “It will take a few minutes.”

  “That is perfectly all right.” Indeed it was. The longer, the better. Let’s make Grey Raincoat a little less sure of me, Mathison thought. How long would it take to make him uncertain enough to investigate?

  “Would the gentleman have a seat?” The chemist gestured to the leather armchairs before he vanished behind a screen of shelves, each with its neat arrangement of tightly packed apothecary jars.