The Prize

‘Farelli-’ Even Garrett, who considered his enemy capable of any enormity, did not consider him capable of this. Garrett sat stunned. At last, he found words. ‘You have proof?’

‘As I explained-inconclusive proof. I shall read it to you.’ He read from the typescript. ‘ “Report to German Experimental Institute for Aviation Medicine. Attention Dr. Siegfried Ruff. Lieutenant General Dr. Hippke. Subject: Experiment 203 of heart action at high altitudes. Place: Dachau altitude chamber. Test persons: Five criminals, volunteers. Test levels: 30,000 to 70,000 feet. (Results to be forwarded under separate cover.) Test effects: Two casualties. Physicians participating: Dr. A. Brand, Berlin; Dr. I. Gorecki, Warsaw; Dr. S. Brauer, Munich; Dr. J. Stirbey, Bucharest; Dr. C. Farelli, Rome… Signed, Dr. S. Rascher, 3 April, 1944.” ’ Ohman stopped, looked up, and laid the paper aside. ‘There it is.’

Garrett plucked at his blanket and stared at the opposite wall. ‘Dr. C. Farelli, Rome,’ he intoned, as if reading an epitaph. He shook his head in daze. ‘Incredible. Is there more?’

‘That is all. There is nothing else.’

‘There can’t be two C. Farellis in Rome, both heart specialists?’

‘There were not two. There was only one. Our investigator checked.’

Suddenly, Garrett turned on Ohman. ‘With that damning evidence, how could you let Farelli share the prize with me?’

‘This evidence was weighed by my colleague with all else that was ninety-nine per cent favourable. He felt that this mere mention of Farelli’s name was too little with which to disqualify him. He did not submit it to the Caroline staff of judges.’

‘Too little to disqualify him?’ said Garrett sarcastically.

‘Farelli’s political record was otherwise good. He had been a prisoner through most of the war. This one blot, my colleague felt-uhhh-he felt Farelli might not have had a part in conducting the tests that day, might have only been a foreign observer.’

‘Is that what you think, Dr. Ohman?’

‘To be honest with you, I do not know what to think. I can only guess that Farelli may have weakened under long confinement-possibly even punishment-and at last, to buy some freedom, some relief, abandoned his resistance and bent to Mussolini’s will. In short, in those days, Il Duce was doing what he could to hold up his end with Hitler. There is evidence he offered some physicians to co-operate in various endeavours with Hitler’s medical researchers. Farelli was a notable cardiac man, even that far back, and I suppose Mussolini offered him a parole if he would join with other Italian doctors in flying over to Germany and lending a hand in these-these-uhhh-experiments.’

‘It’s no excuse,’ said Garrett relentlessly.

‘I do not say it is. But it is the only explanation I can find for such hideous behaviour.’

‘He should have been hung at Nurnberg with all the rest,’ said Garrett. ‘Instead, your weakling friend suppressed that and gave him the Nobel Prize.’

For a moment, Ohman felt national pride and tried to defend his colleague. ‘He weighed this-this one indefinite mention-against Farelli’s career before, and in all the years since. He felt Farelli’s contribution to mankind was proved, but the one fragment of evidence of collaboration was unproved That was the decisive factor.’

Garrett’s emotions had gone through many convolutions. At first, he had been revolted by the information-a description of an act of brutality and cowardice so low and foreign to his pedestrian nature and normal academic background that he had recoiled from the monstrosity and thought that he wanted no part of it. But gradually, as he became used to the evidence, as he again suffered the ache of his chin and stomach, his hatred for the Italian returned. Farelli had humbled him and humiliated him without mercy, in public and in private, the typical behaviour of a man who would have assisted his German medical friends in butchery at Dachau. Here was evidence that the soft Swedes, ever fearful of trouble, had tried to suppress. And so gradually, Garrett’s mind substituted for petty revenge the soul-satisfying and loftier notion of moral indignation and retribution, in the name of all humanity. He had a duty to humanity, to God, to protect the world from this Roman Eichmann. In an hour’s time, from grovelling defeat, he had vaulted, using Ohman’s pole, to a height of power and superiority. With Ohman’s generous revelation, he could wipe Farelli from his life, from the lion’s share of honours, and, at the same time, know saintliness for helping all unsuspecting fellow men.

He heard his voice. ‘Dr. Ohman, whatever your committee member thinks, I’m not going to stand by-I have too much conscience-and let this war criminal strut around Stockholm like a Caesar. I’m not going to let him sit on the same platform with me at the Ceremony.’

Ohman scratched his scalp nervously. ‘What are you proposing?’

For the first time this day, Garrett smiled. ‘I have my ideas.’

He threw off his blanket, and crawled off the bed, and stood up, a man rejuvenated, hitching and tightening his pyjamas.

Ohman jumped to his feet. ‘I brought you this, because we are friends. I hoped you would take time to digest this, think about it, and then proceed with utmost care. I hoped, when you returned to America next week, you might bring this up-somehow-with-uhhh-friends in your Pentagon Building, and let them see if they could check further. In that way, you might learn every fact. If Farelli were then proved innocent, you could forget the matter. And if you truly found him guilty, it would become known-’

‘No!’

‘Dr. Garrett-’

‘I’m not letting a war criminal escape. I’m not letting condemning information like this die in channels. Now is the time-now, when the whole world is here in Stockholm. Now is the time to make Farelli go on trial, before he makes fools of you and me and all of us.’

‘But the Nobel Committee will not support-’

‘I don’t need them. I have a better outlet, a far better transmitting agent.’

‘Who?’

‘Sue Wiley of Consolidated Newspapers. I’m going to lay Farelli’s infamy in her lap tomorrow. You won’t have a part in it, and I won’t. I’ll just give her the tip, and let her run from there, and by tomorrow night-I guarantee you this-the whole world will know, and what I have promised will come true. At the Ceremony, I will sit on the stage by myself, and I alone, will receive the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine!’

Night had fallen on the city, and a damp fog laced the frosty polar darkness. It was five past six in the evening when Andrew Craig reached the shrouded waters of Nybroviken, some blocks behind the Grand Hotel. The portier had given him exact directions to the Royal Dramatic Theatre, reminding him it covered an entire block near Strandvagen, on the iced bay of Nybroviken.

Now, in the fog, Craig was lost, and he waited for help. A Swedish youngster on a bicycle, whistling in the fun of the fog, bundled like a Lapp, approached the corner.

‘Young man-’ Craig called out.

The bicycle slowed.

‘-please, where is the Dramatic Theatre?’

The beet-coloured face was puzzled, and suddenly it beamed. ‘Dramatiska Teatern?’ He jerked his thumb behind him, and held up his forefinger-an improvement on Esperanto-and Craig understood that it was one block away.

He proceeded slowly, heading blindly into the blackness. His mind returned to-had really never left-the person of Emily Stratman. Her kiss, almost twenty-four hours old, was still on his lips. During the Hammarlund dinner, there had been no way to communicate with her, except with his eyes, nor had more been possible in the communal ride to the hotel afterwards.

This morning he had overslept, and had found her at lunch with her uncle and three Scandinavian physicists and their wives in the Winter Garden. He had joined the party, but there had been no opportunity to go further with Emily. Only afterwards, briefly, as they had all risen from the table, had he been able to ask when he might see her again. She did not know. In the afternoon, a social tea. And this evening, a performance of something or other-a pageant-at Drottningholm. Tomorrow then? She had hesitated, and worried, and he had perceived that she was again afraid, afraid she had gone too far on the Hammarlund terrace, afraid to be alone with him and take up from the last encounter. But he had been so pleading and kind that she had acceded, and almost with enthusiasm finally. Tomorrow she was free for dinner, and so that would be it. He had not seen her since, and he