Zauner is good, thought Mathison, he’s a first-rate man to have in charge. He hasn’t put one foot wrong since he went into action at the inn. I’ve been watching him, and I’m impressed. Speed, decision, and enough explanation to keep Karl on the alert. It is often as important to tell men why you take a certain action as well as the what and the how of it. But how do I tell a high-powered guy like Zauner that he is completely mistaken about the Finstersee box? Let’s hope he sees the joke in it; but he’s a proud man, and even if it’s his own fault—he arrived late at the Seidl meadow, never did get caught up in Chuck’s plan—that won’t make him feel any better about it. “You know,” he began carefully, “that box on the meadow—”
“Forget about it. No use going over our defeats. Perhaps, in terms of human misery, it is just as well there is nothing left of the Finstersee box. Have you any idea of what was in it?”
“Yes.” Three hundred names. Perhaps even more than that.
“Then you know the disaster it could have caused for a lot of decent men. They made one mistake. Do they have to go on paying for it?”
Mathison looked at him in surprise. Nice sentiments, but not quite honest. “You’re dodging the main question. They could go on making the same mistake, with the Communists blackmailing them this time. And millions of decent men might have to pay for that.” Zauner stared at him. “Sure, the Communists must have a duplicate of the Finstersee file. Why else did Elissa try to destroy it?”
“Try to destroy it?”
“That was an imitation she blew up. The real thing is safe.”
“Safe?”
“Intact.”
“Where?”
“Wherever Bruno and Chuck and Andrew are.”
There was a long silence. “Then it is on its way out of Unterwald,” Zauner said softly. “They were leaving as soon as—” He broke off, walked toward the wall near the door. Roughly, he tore down the tarpaulin that had been pegged over a slit in the rock, a fissure that served as a window. The cold air swept in, smothered him. He stood there, looked down over the sharp points of trees toward Finstersee, regained his breath.
“Good,” Mathison said. “That means they have managed to clear the road of people. Everything is getting back to normal.” He watched Zauner with some concern. Had he so much pride that he could see his ignorance about the real box only as a calculated snub by Bruno? “You know, we really did not have a free minute to tell you. Something was always happening. Everyone was really playing it by ear. We just kept one jump ahead of disaster most of the time. If it hadn’t been for Chuck’s speed—everyone’s speed—we would have been left sitting in Salzburg.” Perhaps even in Zürich, he thought. God, it has been a long, long day. He sat down on a low wooden platform in one corner of the room with fresh fir branches forming a bed. He looked at a neatly folded sleeping bag and wished he were in it. “They must have used this place regularly,” he went on, if only to cover Zauner’s silence. There were cans of food stacked on shelves, books, playing cards, even a game of chess set out on an upturned barrel. “A refuge in time of trouble? A lookout?”
Zauner didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“Are you all right?” Mathison asked sharply.
Zauner replaced the tarpaulin, began walking around the room. He stopped at the gallery, entered it, stared at the large room at its other end. The moonlight came through the cunningly disguised slits in its cliff wall, striping the vast empty black space obliquely. Ruined hopes, he thought as he heard the wind sigh through the openings. Nothing but ruins. To jump from there would be the quickest way out. The easiest way for me. Not for Ruth, not for the boys. They would have my death to remember as well as my life. I would have neither. The easiest way for me. Has that always been my excuse?
He turned, came back into the small room. Mathison was watching him carefully. Zauner said, “I forgot to tell you—Bruno is taking your car. They need extra transportation. It will be returned tomorrow morning. Frau Seidl will put you up for the night. You could leave now. The others will soon be here. It will take some time to fix Johann for his journey to the hospital in Bad Aussee. No need for you to stay.”
I don’t know about that, thought Mathison as he looked at Zauner’s face. He tried to play down his worries. “Oh, I’m quite comfortable resting my feet for another ten minutes. How is Johann? Could we risk some more morphine?”
“We gave him all I brought with me. The others will have more. Poor fool—did you hear him? He only thought he could never climb or ski again. He never even imagined, once the Nazis had finished with him, he would never draw breath again. Why leave a witness alive? Why leave evidence? Or is that too bloody for your imagination?”
“Not after what I’ve seen tonight.”
“They even had the place to get rid of him finally. Walk into the gallery, Mathison.”
“I did.”
“There are slits, spaces in the cliff face. All they had to do was throw him out. The victim of a climbing accident, bones smashed at the bottom of a precipice. Oh, they’d stage it properly. A snapped climbing rope, a broken piton.”
“You do have a bloody imagination.”
“Except for my own benefit. Perhaps that is how the human mind works: we can imagine what may happen to someone else—but we shut off our imagination when it comes to ourselves. Unless, of course, the imaginings are pleasant day-dreams. But when they deal with the hard accounting of life? Two and two are four, and not just a fraction over or under four? That’s the kind of reasoning we resist. Perhaps we are all poor fools. Always hoping.” Zauner stopped looking down at Johann, came over to slump on the wooden platform beside Mathison. “Yet,” he went on, almost to himself, “there is such an emptiness, a frightening void, when we do stop hoping. As if life has stopped, too, no meaning left. No more choices, no more decisions; they are all out of our hands. We just wait. Hopelessly.”
I could make fifty guesses about this man, thought Mathison, and yet not know. Why is he talking like this, to me—a stranger, an almost-stranger? Perhaps that gives a sense of safety: I am someone he will never see again after tonight to remind him of a bad half hour up on the Sonnblick. Shall I shut him up or let him talk himself out? Mathison looked at the haggard face now staring across at Johann, and said nothing.
“I am to blame for so much of this,” Zauner said quietly, his eyes fixed on Johann. “You were right, Mathison. I’ve been dodging the main question. And for twenty years that was easy; it wasn’t even there any more—vanished along with the Nazis. Vanished forever, I hoped. Dead and buried, I began to think. Yes, two and two did not have to make four.” He drew a deep breath. “Two months ago, the threat rose from its grave. It seemed little at first, something nebulous, something I could deal with in my own way. I found twenty answers, all rational, all clever, and none of them right. Because I kept dodging the main question. But this week—the threat was no longer some thin poor ghost from the past.” He rose abruptly; then stood as if he did not know where to move. “It was a blast of fire, an explosion.” He looked directly at Mathison. “Don’t you understand what I have been trying to tell you?” he cried out angrily.
Mathison kept his voice even. “Your name is on file in the Finstersee box.”
Zauner laughed suddenly, turned toward the slit of a window once more. “You might have left that for me to say. A traitor confesses. Redeems himself with one sentence.” Roughly he pulled aside the tarpaulin, stared out at the lake. “I saved my wife from a gas chamber in exchange for leading my men into an ambush so that an SS colonel could be freed. What would you have done, Mathison? No, don’t answer that. It was never your question. You’ll have others to face, but not that one.” He looked back at Mathison with a bitter smile. “Or perhaps you may have to face it—if enough obedient traitors hand the West over to a ruthless enemy. At least you’ve helped eliminate more than three hundred of them. In one night! My congratulations.”
Mathison’s lips tightened. He rose, went over to Johann
, looked at his watch.
Zauner’s voice changed. Quite simply he said, “It was a job that needed doing. The file had to be found.”
Then give the credit to Richard Bryant, thought Mathison. He was still too angry to trust himself to speak.
But perhaps Zauner had the same thought, for he turned away again to look out the window. In clear weather it had a perfect view of one particular patch of the lake shore opposite: a barren slope of mountain strewn with crags, a small wandering trail picked out whitely by the moon that led down to the edge of Finstersee, and a clump of bushes, and a few twisted trees. “How did he do it?” Zauner asked softly.
They came down through the trees at a sure steady pace, Mathison and Zauner leading, two men carrying Johann strapped to a stretcher, Karl and another policeman forming the rear guard. Up in the Sonnblick room, two more men would keep watch throughout the night. It was an empty place now. Apart from the lights and the heating stove, all equipment and food had been taken away by Zauner’s order.
“I heard his footsteps on the path,” Zauner said softly.
Mathison, whose eyes had been watching the steep rise of trees and crags for any moving figure, tightened his grip on his automatic. “When?”
“About twenty minutes ago, when we were waiting with Johann. He heard our voices, and retreated.”
“Why didn’t he rush us?”
“Two of us? He would have attacked one, I think; but not two. It’s just as well. We’ll pick him up without too much difficulty when it is daylight. No use risking any more stretcher cases.”
“It may not be so easy to pick him up.”
“He will surrender, half-frozen, a pathetic sight. He can plead he knew nothing about Johann—no connection with anything, just a guest at the inn who didn’t know what was really going on.” Zauner’s eyes glanced in the direction of the lake shore as they reached the meadow. “Six hours and he will start thinking that out for himself.”
Surrender? Mathison wasn’t so sure, somehow. But Zauner knew his mountains—and his Nazis. “Looks damned cold along there. I can feel the lake even from here.” That was one thing on which he did agree with Zauner.
They quickened their pace across the frozen grass. Two men with rifles were guarding the ambulance and cars. One of them reported, “A man started coming out of the trees over there. He saw us, ran back, keeping close to the shore. Do we start searching?”
Zauner shook his head. “Wait here and watch. Until it’s daylight. I’ll send everyone available to join you then. We’ll make sure of him.”
“One thing is sure,” the man said with a laugh. “He has no place to go.”
Zauner turned to Mathison as the man left for his car, a cup of hot coffee, an extra cape. “Karl will take you down to the Seidl house. So good-bye. And thank you, Mathison. I’m glad you stayed. On several counts.” He almost offered his hand, seemed to hesitate about that.
“What about you?” Mathison spoke casually, but he eyed Zauner uncertainly.
“Oh, I’ll be at the inn. There is a lot to clear up.”
Mathison just kept looking at him.
“Grell’s equipment to be examined, a final report to be made, my full statement to be written,” Zauner said evenly. “Not that that is necessary, once they open the Finstersee box. What action do you think they’ll take? Is that what is worrying you? But the box is supposed to have been destroyed. So, to keep that myth strong for another year or two, I would imagine my punishment may not be publicised and my record kept quiet.”
“The Communists may not be so obliging.”
“I don’t suppose they will be. They feel virtuous about exposing ex-collaborators with the Nazis—when it suits them.”
Well, thought Mathison, he knows what he is facing and he seems ready to accept it. I wouldn’t have bet on that half an hour ago.
Zauner, watching him closely, seemed to sense something of his thoughts. “Is this what has been bothering you, all along?” Zauner drew out Grell’s small white capsule from his pocket. He broke it open with his thumb-nail, scattered the powder wide over the grass. “A symbolic refusal,” he said with his light, mocking laugh. “Oh, that never was the answer—not in my case, not with my record. You agree?”
“I agree.” Mathison put out his hand. Zauner took it, shook it firmly. “Good luck,” said Mathison. He walked over to the waiting car and eased himself into the one small space that was left. They jolted off with Karl’s heavy touch at the wheel. Ahead of them, the ambulance was moving slowly, its rear lights rising and falling sharply with each bump on the rough hard ground. Mathison watched them, flinched at one particularly heavy drop. The ambulance slowed, went on.
“It’s all right,” Karl told him, “they’ve got the stretcher suspended. It will just be swinging around.”
“Hey, Karl,” called someone from the back seat as the car bounced savagely over the same rut, “you could use some stretchers in here. Just about lost my teeth down the back of my throat.” There was brief laughter, some more simple banter, a feeling of general relaxation. Weapons had vanished; pipes were being lit. The woods closed around the narrow road, wrapping a dark blanket of silence over them all. Behind them, the meadow had vanished and the mountains of Finstersee were lost in the night.
28
Perhaps midnight had been the natural curfew hour for Unterwald, even on a Saturday like this one. The inn was the only place lit. The rest of the village slept. The sparse lights along the main street had been shut off. Windows were shuttered; smoke from the chimneys had died to invisible wisps. A dog barked, and that was all. Unterwald was back into its own world.
And so am I, thought Mathison as the car swept down toward the Seidl house. For the first time in two full hours, he let himself think of Lynn again. Had she waited for him? Or had she left with the others? He kept hoping. He kept trying to guard himself against disappointment: the sensible comfortable thing was for her to go to Bad Aussee, have a long hot bath, a long deep sleep in one of those cumulus clouds that the Austrians called beds. Yes, that was the sensible thing. But he kept hoping.
The Seidl house was as deeply asleep as any in Unterwald. He stared at the dark windows, felt expectation and excitement drain out of him. And suddenly he was tired, just damned tired, completely devoid of energy, nothing but a slow-moving collection of tightening muscles and chilled bones. He got stiffly out of the car. He almost asked Karl to drive him as far as Bad Aussee, but the faces giving him a friendly farewell were as exhausted as his. At the inn, they’d have four hours for sleep, little more, before they started bundling themselves up again for their return to the lake with the dawn. “Gute Nacht,” he added to his thanks, and started slowly up the short path.
“Gute Nacht, schlafen Sie wohl!” Karl called to him as he angled the short wheel base of the car to turn back uphill.
He gave them a last wave and opened the door.
The room was dark except for a small pool of light on the table where a lamp stood with its wick trimmed low. From the hearth came the faint glow of a dying fire, reflected weakly on the ceiling of the room. He couldn’t see the fire itself, not with the table blocking his view, but he was too tired to take the extra steps to check it. It must be safe enough, or Trudi wouldn’t have left it. Everything else was in order—table neat and chairs in place. It seemed in this quiet, warm room as if nothing at all had happened tonight. Nothing at all. He slipped off his heavy jacket as he made for the staircase. His feet were as heavy as lead. Better take off his shoes and keep Mother Seidl deep in sleep, avoid a flood of questions. This was one night he did not want to search for tactful answers.
There was a quick movement from the top of the stairs, a lamp held high to catch him on the second step, where he had sat down to draw off his shoes. He glanced around; but it was only Trudi. She came down to meet him as he climbed slowly up the next few stairs. She was barefooted, a shawl over her thick nightgown. “I heard two cars,” she whispered. “One went to Bad Aussee.�
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“That was the ambulance with Johann,” Mathison whispered back.
“He was hurt?”
Mathison nodded.
“How bad?”
“He will recover. Don’t worry, Trudi.”
She raised the lamp, looked into his face. She tried to say something, could not.
“He asked for you.”
Again she tried to speak. Then she bent down, gave him a quick embarrassed kiss on his cheek, turned and ran, her bare feet pattering on the wooden stairs, the need for silence quite forgotten. He heard her door close. The staircase was in darkness again. Better get that lamp from the table to light my way upstairs, he thought wearily. He envied Johann for a moment, broken bones and all. He turned to retrace his steps.
“Bill—Bill?”
He looked down across the room. He saw her struggling free from a blanket in front of the fire’s warm embers. He reached her as she rose to her feet, her arms outstretched. He caught her in his, crushed her against him, held her, held her. He looked down into her eyes. Their lips met slowly, truly. He kissed her with all his heart.
Their arms dropped away from the desperate embrace. They stood staring at each other. He put out one hand slowly, gently touched her cheek. “Lynn...” I frightened her, he thought. I frightened myself. I love this girl.
She shivered a little, pulled the dressing gown more tightly around her, dropped to her knees in front of the hearth and reached for a small log. He knelt beside her to help.
“What’s this?” He looked down in amazement at the mattress under his legs. “Camping out for the night?”
The Salzburg Connection Page 45