automatic. He would have to return to this room and tell Max Stratman the truth and let him do what would have to be done. Max Stratman would offer himself to the exchange at once. He would offer himself because of brother love and Emily love and, most compelling of all, because of the old swollen guilt. He would do so, without second thought, if Craig returned helpless in an hour and three-quarters, and he would do so this moment, if Craig marched into his bedroom and woke him with Eckart’s news. But not yet. Craig’s passionate need for Emily, for her safety and her peace of mind and what he now knew was right for her, shook him. He was animated into action.
Pocketing the anonymous typewritten note, he hid the miniature tape recorder in the entry hall cupboard. Then, taking his pen, he added a thoughtful postscript to Max Stratman’s note left for his niece: ‘Have taken Emily out on the town. We’ll meet you at Concert Hall. Best, Craig.’ Now he lifted the receiver of the telephone and spoke to the operator. Did she have a number for one Nicholas Daranyi? He waited restlessly, and then the operator reported that there was no listing of any Daranyi in Stockholm.
Craig hung up, and promptly his mind went to Lilly. At this hour, she would be in the Nordiska Kompaniet. He would find her, and through her find Daranyi. It was the best that he could do, he told himself helplessly.
Swiftly, he strode out of the Stratman suite, hastened through the corridor, and rode the elevator down to the lobby.
The lobby was, as ever, crowded. Craig pushed through the circle of people trying to enter the elevator, jostled against the Marceaus, with no time to murmur a civil apology, and started towards the stairs leading to the revolving door and the outside.
As he reached the topmost step, he thought that he heard his name. He turned, and heard the stentorian voice again. ‘Craig.’
It was Gunnar Gottling, in his eccentric fur cap and mangy coat, his bloodshot eyes and drooping bushes of moustache, not this time hiding his outgoing affection, tramping towards Craig. ‘You old son of a bitch,’ he was bellowing, ‘I was just ringing your room. I wanted to tell you I reread all those crappy books of yours the last couple days and-’
Craig cut in. ‘Gottling, I’ve got no time for tea talk today. There’s trouble, and I-’
‘What trouble you in?’ Gottling’s face and manner had taken on the protective ferocity of a giant grizzly bear-
Craig became aware that Gottling’s voice carried, and many eyes were on them. He lowered his own voice. ‘I’m not in trouble. Someone else is-and it’s a matter of life and death-so-’
He started to go, when Gottling clamped his arm. ‘I am here to help, Craig. What can I do?’
Craig had started to say to Gottling that there was nothing he or anyone could do, and then, at once, he realized that Gottling could be of help. This was his city, this Stockholm, and he was a part of the best and the worst of it, and he was fearless. The question was his dependability.
‘How much can I trust you?’ asked Craig.
‘Cut that crap,’ said Gottling angrily. ‘I won’t fall in front of any trains for you-but I’ll go damn far. What’s your trouble? Abortion, blackmail, somebody’s arm you want to break? Just say it. Since that night in the Wardshus, I got to thinking-that tall drink of water isn’t such a bad-’
‘Have you got your car with you?’
‘You bet your ass.’
‘I’ve got some mighty important calls to make, and I haven’t got much time.’
‘Hop in,’ said Gottling.
And he thundered down the stairs after Craig, and through the spinning door behind him, and then caught up and pointed off to his compact Volvo station-wagon alongside the quay. Craig had forgotten his overcoat, but the last of the setting sun was still visible, and the air was only slightly chilled.
They trudged through the low-packed snow, and Craig began to speak of what had happened and was happening in a sort of oral shorthand. With brevity, he filled Gottling in on his relationship with Emily Stratman.
Once inside the station-wagon, Gottling looked at him questioningly.
‘Just a few blocks for the first stop,’ said Craig. ‘Nordiska Kompaniet.’
Gottling started the car, and crouched over the wheel in his near-sighted way, as Craig picked up his story. He related all he knew of Emily’s tardiness which became absence, of his visit to her room, the typewritten sheet, and then he recited what he had heard on the miniature tape machine, feeling better to know that another shared the facts, should anything happen to him.
When he had finished, Gottling belched across the wheel, and cursed classically. ‘Those friggin’ Commies,’ he said.
‘We don’t know-’
‘The hell we don’t,’ said Gottling. ‘Who wants the old man in East Berlin, anyway? Those little Prussky puppets? They’re go-betweens. It’s the big boys who want Stratman on their side. Goddammit, Craig, don’t you ever read the papers any more? Every other week some fag Englishman or little American with goggles turns up in Moscow and says peace it’s wonderful, and hands them a briefcase of discoveries. Do you think all the defectors do it just for love and money? Well, maybe most, because their heads are screwed on backwards, but dollars to doughnuts, every tenth man is blackmailed into crossing the line-they’re holding a relative or somebody-and the poor bastard scientist or diplomat-what can he do?’ They were on Hamngatan, and he swung the Volvo to the kerb. ‘Here’s your N.K. What gives here?’
Craig opened the door. Then, one foot still on the floorboard, and the other on the kerb, he explained, in rapid-fire sentences, about Lilly Hedqvist and Nicholas Daranyi and himself.
‘I know Daranyi,’ said Gottling. ‘Always nosing around for gossip. I’m one of the decadent little bastard’s pet sources. I do it to let off steam. He knows it. But I like him. I like rabbits.’
‘Do you think I’m crazy to gamble Walther’s freedom-maybe even Emily’s life-on a longshot? Should I go to the police?’
‘Police? Ha! Those crooks. For all we know, they pulled the job. Naw, play it like a one-man team, Craig, a decathlon entry-all by your lonesome and no bumbleheads with billy clubs. Go in and see that broad of yours, and find out where the slob Daranyi lives-I wish I knew, but I don’t. Now, take off, and I’ll keep my engine revved up.’
Craig pushed through a glass entrance door, and once inside the cavern of the crowded store, he tried to take his bearings. His eyes fell on the information booth to his left, and he fought through the swarm of shoppers to the pert Swedish girl in the booth. It was imperative that he see one of the assistants, Miss Lilly Hedqvist, in ladies’ wear, he pleaded. There had been an emergency in her family. The pert girl rang a bell. A slender young boy came on the run. There was an exchange in Swedish. The boy was gone. Craig was asked to wait. Ignoring the shoppers with bundles, who came and went before him, he waited, and he worried about Emily.
It was several minutes before Lilly arrived, blue eyes opened wide with concern. Craig drew her aside, to a corner near the doors.
‘Lilly, I haven’t much time. Emily Stratman is in trouble-’
‘Trouble? In what trouble? I do not understand.’
‘I won’t go into it now, but we’re trying to stay away from the police to protect her and her father. It’s all tied up with her uncle being here for the Nobel awards, and I remembered something-you told me Daranyi was investigating the Nobel laureates-’
‘It is true.’
‘Where do I find Daranyi?’
‘He should be home. I will take you there.’
‘I haven’t got time. Just tell me-’
‘No, it is better I take you. One minute. I will inform the manager my mother is very ill. Wait outside.’
Craig went outside, shivered as the breeze nipped at him, signalled Gottling to wait, and then himself stalked back and forth before the wide entrance of Nordiska Kompaniet. Lilly had said one minute, and it was literally one minute later that she burst out of the store, tugging on a bright plaid coat.
Craig hustled her into the rear of the station-wagon, and swung himself into the front seat beside Gottling, who had, as he had promised, kept his motor running. Craig blurted his introduction, and Gottling’s dissipated face
