The Bormann Testament (The Testament of Caspar Schultz)

Chavasse frowned and drank some of his coffee and she sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s difficult to put into words, but then feelings always are.” She shrugged and produced a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her kimono and offered him one. “If it comes to that, how does anyone get into this kind of work? What about you, for instance?”

He smiled and gave her a light. “I started as an amateur. I was a university lecturer – Ph.D. in modern languages. A friend of mine had an elder sister who’d married a Czechoslovakian. After the war, her husband died. She wanted to return to England with her two children, but the Communists wouldn’t let her.”

“And you decided to get her out?”

He nodded. “The government couldn’t help, and as I speak the language, I decided to do something unofficially.”

“It must have been difficult,” Anna said.

He smiled. “How we managed it I’ll never know, but we did. I was in hospital in Vienna recuperating from a slight injury, when the man I work for now came to see me. He offered me a job.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why you took it.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t – not straightaway. I went back to my university for the following term.”

“And what happened?”

He got to his feet and walked across to the window. It was still raining, and he stared out into the night and tried to get it straight in his own mind. Finally, he said, “I found that I was spending my life teaching languages to people who in their turn would spend their lives teaching languages to other people. It suddenly seemed rather pointless.”

“But that isn’t a reason,” she said. “That’s the whole human story.”

“But don’t you see?” he said. “I’d discovered things about myself that I never knew before. That I liked taking a calculated risk and pitting my wits against the opposition. On looking back on the Czechoslovakian business, I realize that in some twisted kind of way I’d enjoyed it. Can you understand that?”

“I’m not really sure,” she said slowly. “Can anyone honestly say they enjoy staring death in the face each day?”

“I don’t think of that side of it,” he said, “any more than a Grand Prix racing driver does.”

“But you’re a scholar,” she said. “How can you waste all that?”

“It takes intelligence to stay alive in this game.”

There was a slight silence and then she sighed. “Don’t you ever feel like giving it up?”

He shrugged and said lightly, “Only when it’s four o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep. Sometimes I lie in the dark with a cigarette and listen to the wind rattling the window frames and I feel alone and completely cut off from the rest of humanity.”

There was a dead, somber quality in his voice, and she reached across quickly and took one of his hands. “And can you find no one to share that loneliness?”

“A woman, you mean?” He laughed. “Now, what could I ever offer a woman? Long unexplained absences without even a letter to comfort her?” There was a sudden pity in her eyes, and he leaned across and gently covered her hand with his. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Anna,” he said. “Don’t ever feel sorry for me.”

Her eyes closed and tears beaded the dark eyelashes. He got to his feet, suddenly angry, and said brutally, “Keep your sorrow for yourself, you’ll need it. I’m a professional and work against professionals. Men like me obey one law only – the job must come first.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “And don’t you think that I live by that law just as fully?”

He pulled her up from the chair. “Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “You and Hardt are dedicated souls, amateurs playing with fire.” She tried to look away, and he forced her chin up with one hand. “Could you be ruthless – really ruthless, I mean? Could you leave Hardt to lie with a bullet in his leg and run on to save yourself?”

Something very like horror appeared in her eyes, and he said gently, “I’ve had to do that on several occasions, Anna.”

She turned her face into his shoulder, and he held her close. “Why didn’t you stay back in Israel where you belong?”

She raised her head and looked up into his face and she was no longer crying. “It’s because I wanted to stay that I had to come.” She pulled him over to the couch and they sat down. “As a small girl, I lived on a kibbutz near Migdal. There was a hill I used to climb. From the top, I could look out over the Sea of Galilee. It was very beautiful, but beauty, like everything else in life, must be paid for. Can you understand that?”

She was very close to him, and he looked down into her eyes and they moved together, naturally and easily, and kissed. They stayed that way for quite some time, and after a while she said with a sigh, “This shouldn’t have happened, should it?”

He shook his head. “No, very definitely not.”

“But I knew it would happen,” she said. “From the moment you spoke to me at the club, I knew it would happen. And why not? We are human beings after all.”

“Are we?” he said, and got to his feet. He walked over to the window and lit a cigarette, taking his time. “Perhaps you are, but I don’t think I could change now if I wanted to.”

She walked near and faced him, eyes searching his face. “Then what just happened changes nothing for you?”

He nodded somberly. “Except to make me feel even lonelier at four o’clock in the morning.”

A sudden determination showed in her face, and she was about to reply when there was a knock on the door. When she moved across the room and opened it, Mark Hardt came in.

CHAPTER 5

He wore a dark, belted raincoat and his hair was wet from the rain. He slipped an arm about Anna’s shoulders and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and then he smiled across at Chavasse. “So you found her all right?”

Chavasse nodded. “No trouble at all.”

Hardt removed his coat and threw it across a chair, and then he walked to the table and sat down. Anna got another cup from the kitchen and filled it with coffee. He drank a little. “It’s raining heavier than ever now.” He looked up at her. “Anything to report?”

She nodded. “Katie Holdt didn’t come in to work. I checked with her landlady. Apparently, she packed a bag and left without leaving any forwarding address.”

He put down the cup. “I was hoping she might put us onto something in time.”

“What about the hotel in Gluckstrasse?” Chavasse asked. “Did you find anything of interest?”

“Only the fact that Muller never lived there,” Hardt said. “He seems to have used the place simply as an address where he could safely pick up his mail.”

“And Otto Schmidt?” Chavasse said. “Any luck there?”

Hardt nodded. “He’s a widower – lives on his own in an apartment in Steinerstrasse. That’s not too far from here.”

Chavasse glanced at his watch. It was just after four-thirty. “How about paying him a visit? It’s amazing what one can sometimes get out of people in the cold, gray light of dawn.”

“Just what I was going to suggest.” Hardt got to his feet, and as he reached for his coat, he appeared to remember something. He turned to the girl. “By the way, Anna, didn’t you tell me that Muller had been in the Army?”

She nodded, a puzzled look on her face. “That’s right. Why, is anything wrong?”

“Only that according to a photo Chavasse found when searching Muller’s body on the train, he was in the Luftwaffe.”

“But he was in the Army,” Anna said. “I’ve got an old photo to prove it.” She picked up her handbag and rummaged through it. After a moment, she handed it across. “It fell from Katie’s handbag yesterday after she’d been showing it to me. It was taken in 1942 when she was only a child.”

Hardt took the photo and Chavasse moved to look over his shoulder. The photo was cracked and faded, but it was still possible to see the pride in the face of the little girl as she held the hand of the big brother who stood