by Antony Trew
‘What was it?’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry. Those are things that will never be told.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Just my feminine curiosity.’
‘Well, after fourteen years of that sort of life he began to get bolder. He must have believed the world had forgotten Kurt Heinrich Gottwald. Probably he began to feel that he really was Hendrick Wilhelm van Biljon. I’ve been Charles Black for nearly eight months now. You know, you begin to believe that the part you’re playing is real. That you are the other man.’ He chuckled. ‘That’s how I fell for you.’
She made a face. ‘You say the nicest things.’
‘Gottwald’s undoing was his longing for Europe. He must have become obsessed with the idea of getting back. But he appreciated the risks, and I imagine that’s why he chose Ibiza. It’s an attractive place. Europe, yet not in Europe, you know. And island life is easier for a recluse. He settled there eleven years ago. Always had the same staff. They were highly paid by local standards. Very loyal. We believe they have no knowledge of his identity.’
‘Did he ever leave the island?’
‘Occasionally. At very long intervals. He would go to Paris, or London, or Madrid—never to Zurich, incidentally—to look at a picture a dealer had put him on to.’
‘Now tell me about you. And that Cézanne picture.’
Black smiled. The way she said you, as if he were something special, touched him. ‘My family was English,’ he said. ‘My mother Jewish. Her sister married a German, Johan Stiegel. When the war started I was on holiday in Germany staying with the Stiegels. I’d been sent over because Mother was having a baby—my sister. The Stiegels hadn’t been touched by anti-Semitism then because Stiegel wasn’t a Jew. He was wealthy and had influential friends. About two weeks before the war started I got scarlet fever and was sent to an isolation hospital in Munich where the Stiegels lived. When I got back to my uncle’s house it was too late to return to England, the war was already on, so I stayed with my aunt. Everybody thought it was going to be a short war.
‘As anti-Semitism grew, the Stiegel family went underground—me with them. Eventually, in 1943, we escaped across Lake Constance. Gottwald met us that night on the Swiss side. I was only ten but—I can’t think why—I knew somehow that things were wrong. I didn’t trust Gottwald. I suppose I was terrified. Also my uncle seemed suspicious. He had a little compass with him and after we’d got into the van and started on the journey he made a great fuss because we were going in the wrong direction. But Gottwald explained why it was necessary. Said also that the compass was affected by the steel body of the van. Anyway, he pacified him. I should have explained that among the valuables my uncle brought over that night was the Cézanne picture of the water-mill.’
‘So it’s really your picture? I mean a family picture.’
Black stared into the corner, at nothing. ‘Yes. And it’s come back to the family. Temporarily. It’s in my cabin.’
‘I am glad,’ she said.
‘So will ZID be. It will pay for many things.’
‘Go on about that night.’
‘Oh, yes. Where was I? In the van. Well, after quite a journey it stopped. We were in a clearing inside a forest. It was dark. Gottwald took us a hundred metres or so along a footpath, well into the forest. He said we must walk about a kilometre down the path, when we would come to the main road into Zurich. There would be traffic on the road, he said. When we reached it, we were to turn right and start walking towards Zurich. After a few hundred metres we would find a blue Peugeot van waiting at the roadside. He gave my uncle the registration number and said it would take us into Zurich. He particularly stressed that if we were questioned at any stage we were under no circumstances to say how we had got out of Germany. Gottwald said it was vital not to compromise the escape route. It meant the difference between life and death for those who still had to come. There were, he warned, many German agents in Switzerland. Then he left us.
‘As we went up that path without him, I had a feeling of impending disaster. Something I couldn’t explain. The night was dark and violent. Lashing rain and wind, and although it was summer it was very cold. Gottwald had given my uncle a torch and he kept using it to keep us on the path. It seemed a long walk, and then, at last, the wind brought to us from somewhere ahead the distant noise of traffic. I remember my uncle saying to my aunt, “Stella. Do you hear that? It must be the Zurich road. We are safe.”
‘But I didn’t feel safe, though I was too ashamed to admit it. I hung back and they would call me to hurry. I remember there was a flash of lightning and then, with appalling suddenness, two black shapes stepped out from the trees ahead of me. They shone torches on my aunt and uncle and shouted to them in German. My uncle called out and my aunt screamed. They were about twenty metres ahead of me. When I saw the Germans come on to the path, silhouetted against the beam of my uncle’s torch, I slipped behind a tree. Then, when they shouted, I ran. I don’t know how far I ran, but I stopped only when I fell into a hole in a clump of bracken. It must have been an animal burrow. I was cut and bruised and half dead with fright. It was raining hard and that saved me. I could hear the hunt going on. Men running, shouting in German, dogs barking and howling, and once there were shots. But the rain had destroyed the scent and washed away my footprints. I knew they’d be back at daylight, so I moved while it was still dark. I had no idea of direction. Didn’t know whether we’d crossed the frontier or not. But I assumed we were in Germany or Austria, and I decided to keep to the forests. Luckily it was summer and I had warm clothing and a raincoat. I used to lie up in the forests by day and move only at night. Because of the mountains I followed the river valleys and always I tried to keep going east—to reach Italy. I didn’t trust Switzerland any more. I lived on wild berries and fruit I took from the orchards at night. On the tenth or eleventh day—maybe the twelfth, I’d lost count—a woodcutter found me asleep in the forest where he worked. I was in pretty poor condition by then. Must have covered about eighty miles, mostly in Switzerland as it happened. Afterwards we worked out that I’d followed the valley of the River Inn to near its confluence with the Adige. Then I must have crossed over into Italy.
‘Anyway, to shorten a long story, the woodcutter was the son of an Italian family—farmers in the mountains above Siladron—and they kept me until the end of the war. Even then they didn’t want to part with me. They were the most wonderful people. I’ve been back several times.’
‘How marvellous, Charles.’
He smiled. ‘They called me Bernardino.’
‘And then you went back to your family in England?’
‘Yes. It was quite a homecoming. They’d long since given me up. But we weren’t together long. In 1947 they were killed in a car accident, with my sister. That was the end of the Falks, but for me.
‘A spinster aunt tried to cope with me after that but it was a losing battle. I was pretty impossible and the war experience had done things to me. I was only half a Jew but I’d lost faith in Europe, in the Christian world, and I felt my Jewishness intensely. When I was seventeen I went to Israel and worked on a kibbutz. Near Beth Saida, by the Sea of Galilee. Later I became interested in fine art. Studied it in my spare time. Worked as an art critic in Israel, England and Canada at different times. My only other real interests in life were ornithology and sailing. I served in the Israeli army. Fought in 1956 and the June war. I was a paratrooper. Commando unit.’
Manuela pointed an accusing finger. ‘So that’s where you learned to fight. I mean like the night you attacked Kirry and Tino.’
His eyes narrowed, but soon the frown changed to a smile. ‘I thought they attacked me. Never mind.’
‘You know what I mean,’ she said.
He stifled a yawn. ‘Well, that’s about all. Except that some years ago I learnt that the ZID people wanted to hear from anyone who’d used Gottwald’s escape route. So I got in touch. A lot happened after that. It took three years’ work to get me to the moment in t
ime when I had to rescue a damsel in distress on the steamer from Barcelona.’
She moved up the settee and leant against him, her head on his shoulder. ‘Oh, Charles,’ she said. ‘What a sad life you’ve had.’
‘Not especially sad,’ he said. ‘Just a life. Some of it grim. A lot of it dull. Some exciting. Some enjoyable.’
He put his arm round her and kissed her.
‘Tell me one thing,’ she said. ‘Why did you take off the old man’s shoes and socks in the gallery? Then put them on again?’
‘That was quite a moment for us,’ said Black. ‘Over the years ZID built up a dossier on him. Slowly and with enormous patience. Bits and pieces of evidence came in from various places. Contact was made with people he’d had dealings with in South America and South Africa. People he’d known in Zurich, some he’d been at school with. That sort of thing. The circumstantial evidence was strong. But the only way to identify him beyond doubt was to see his feet. He had no small toes.’
She looked at him strangely, half fearing to ask what was in her mind. ‘Now that you’ve got him, has the hatred gone? I ask that because they say the end of revenge is pity.’
He shook his head. ‘It was not a question of revenge. When I was young, yes. I was obsessed with the idea. But that was a long time ago. The motives now are quite different. We pursue these people for two reasons. One, because the world is full of reactionaries. What Hitler did to the Jews, can be done to them again. And it can be done to non-Jews.
‘By hunting down those who committed these crimes, by pulling them out from where they believe they are safe, we teach a lesson which all can understand. There is no escape. Only the certainty of punishment can deter people with the same inclinations as Eichmann and Bormann and Mengele.’
He took a deep breath. ‘It is not just that they must know that they will hang. That’s not enough. They must live with the knowledge that they will be pursued—if necessary for a quarter of a century—that they will be found, that they will be hanged, that each day they wake up may be the day. In this way a man dies many times.
‘That is one of our motives. The other is that the public trials of these people inform new generations of something they should know. Something that would otherwise be forgotten because many would like it to be. But we intend that it shall not be.’
‘What will happen to Gottwald?’
Black shrugged his shoulders. ‘You can imagine. In some ways he was worse than the others. He can’t plead that he did it in the course of duty, or on orders from his superiors. He isn’t a German. He wasn’t even in Germany. He did it for greed. To enrich himself. And he did it in the most callous, revolting way, betraying at the moment of rescue the very people he was employed to save, sending them to their death so that he could steal their possessions. There is no punishment severe enough for that.’
He stood up to stretch and yawn, then looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly four-thirty. ‘Hell’s delight! I must go and see what’s happening. We should have had a reply from ZID by now.’
He saw her tired eyes, the smudges under them and the high cheek bones giving her face an almost skeletal appearance. ‘Manuela, please try to sleep.’
She shook her head, patting her mouth as she yawned. ‘No. Impossible. I don’t want to be alone. I’ll wait here for you.’
She curled up on the settee in a corner and waved to him jauntily. ‘Bye. Don’t be long.’
There was some delay before ZID’s reply came. It was as terse as it was welcome: ‘Your 0348. Weissner will do Rendezvous Delta 0700. Regret aircraft.’
‘So do we,’ said Black. ‘But thank God for Weissner.’
The fresh wind had built up the sea and increasingly the schooner’s bows threw up sheets of spray which blew back over her, stinging the faces of the man in the cockpit despite the spray-dodgers which had been rigged.
‘Lot of cloud,’ said Black. ‘Nearly nine-tenth. Don’t think you’ll manage star-sights?’
‘Verdammte Wolke,’ Helmut grumbled. ‘It will be difficult.’ Black looked astern into the darkness. ‘Wish I knew what was there. If only we had radar.’
‘Nordwind has,’ said Francois. ‘We should have borrowed hers.’
‘Very funny,’ said Black. ‘But I imagine she’s using it.’
His fingernails bit into the palms of his hands and he tried consciously to relax, but the tension remained. It is the darkness, he decided, and exhaustion, nature’s morale busters. With daylight everything will seem different. Half an hour of it will bring us to the rendezvous with Weissner. Then I’ll hand over. Get rid of my responsibilities. All of them, but Manuela.
It was ten minutes to six. Soon it would be daylight. Through the portlight in the cockpit, van Biljon could be seen lying on the bunk, manacled hands on his stomach, eyes open. Francois, noting his restlessness, had gone in and offered him sleeping-pills or an injection. But van Biljon had declined.
Black had just come up from the engine compartment where he’d relieved Kamros for a short spell.
‘Starsights will be impossible,’ said Helmut. ‘Unless I get luck. A cloud break in the right place at the right time. You know.’
‘If you can’t, our D.R. position shouldn’t be too bad,’ said Black. ‘We haven’t been all that long at sea. Even if it does seem a bloody lifetime.’
‘Pity the rendezvous is so far from the African coast. Otherwise we could get a radio fix.’
‘We’ll manage somehow,’ said Black.
He left them in the cockpit and went back to the saloon. Manuela was still curled up in the corner but she’d wrapped herself in a blanket. She opened her eyes. ‘I was dozing,’ she said.
‘It’ll be daylight soon.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘It’s okay. Weissner will be at the rendezvous.’
She looked round the saloon. ‘The boat seems to be moving about much more. Such vibrations.’ She shivered. ‘I’m cold.’
‘Wait till you see the sun. You’ll feel better.’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking at him gravely. ‘I suppose so. But it is terribly stuffy. Such a smell of food and—’ she hesitated.
‘Men?’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Yes. Men.’
He stood watching her, ready to go back to the cockpit, but there was something nagging at him. ‘Manuela,’ he said.
She’d sat up and was arranging her hair, gathering the long black strands behind her neck, smoothing them back. Now she stopped, looking at him, head on one side. ‘Yes.’
‘What are you going to do when we get to Haifa?’
‘Go back to Ibiza, of course.’
His apprehension and disappointment changed to anger. ‘Why?’ he asked coldly.
She looked away and went on with her hair. ‘Because I live there, and …’
‘And what?’
‘The exhibition. My pictures. Other things.’
‘Like Kyriakou?’
‘Him, too, I suppose.’
‘So you must go back? Nothing you want to do more than that?’
‘I’m confused.’ she said in a subdued voice. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
Frustrated, hurt, he watched her with hopelessly mixed feelings, hating her because he loved her, because she was making it clear that he wasn’t as important to her as she was to him. Determined to hurt her, to bump her into reality, he said, ‘Typical little junkie, aren’t you?’
She looked at him sadly, her eyes moist with tears. ‘Whatever I say you think I am, so I suppose I must be.’
He was exhausted and his jumbled emotions spilled over. ‘Well you bloody well are. So why not have the guts to admit it?’
She winced and he knew he’d hurt her. But standing there, feeling brutal and helpless, he had no idea what to do or say next. As he turned to go, Helmut almost fell in the saloon. He was breathless. ‘There’s something coming up astern.’
‘What?’ said Black.
‘Can’t say. Not eno
ugh light yet.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
The wind from the south-east brought the dust across from Talamanca, swirling it along the Avenida Ignacio Wallis, clutching at left-over newspapers in the racks outside the news agency, picking up discarded wrappings and dead leaves, rustling them along the side walk, whirling itself into a vortex which rattled the windows of the tired looking building, scattering red dust in the big office where Capitan Calvi was making his early morning report.
The Comisario interrupted him. ‘Close that window, please, Capitan.’
Calvi shut the window, picked up the papers which had blown on to the floor, and sat down again.
‘You were saying,’ said the Comisario, ‘that the arrests were made at midnight. You mentioned Rosetta. Who is he?’
‘A cleaner in the funeral parlour. The procession met the Barcelona steamer yesterday morning. Padre Dominco officiated. Family and friends were there of course. The funeral is to take place this afternoon. Last night the coffin was left in the funeral parlour. We kept it under observation. At nine o’clock Rosetta was seen to go in through a back entrance. From a little-used lane. Capitan Sura’s men went in ten minutes later. Rosetta had already opened the coffin. They caught him lifting out the drugs. Heroin, cocaine, opium, LSD, cannabis.’
The Comisario leant forward. ‘Madre de Dios! Was there a body in the coffin?’
‘Yes. The drugs were packed round it.’
‘Incredible. Are the family—any members of the church—involved?’
‘No, no,’ said Calvi deprecatingly, shocked at the other’s suggestion. ‘They are entirely innocent.’
The Comisario eyed him keenly. ‘So this was the special item of cargo?’
‘Yes, señor Comisario.’
‘How did you get on to this?’
‘There is much detail I will not trouble you with.’ Calvi examined his fingernails with studied preoccupation. ‘But I can say that the agent of the U.S. Narcotics Bureau was invaluable.’