They drove for another twenty kilometres, past the belching factory chimneys of Kattowitz, and then March told Jaeger to leave the Autobahn.
He can see her in his mind.
She is checking out of the hotel. She says to the receptionist: “You’re sure there’ve been no messages?” The receptionist smiles. “None, Fraulein.” She has asked a dozen times. A porter offers to help her with her luggage, but she refuses. She sits in the car overlooking the river, reading again the letter she found hidden in her case. “Here is the key to the vault, my darling. Make sure she sees the light one day…” A minute passes. Another. Another. She keeps looking north, towards the direction from which he should come.
At last she checks her watch. Then she nods slowly, switches on the engine and turns right into the quiet road.
Now they were passing through industrialised countryside: brown fields bordered by straggling hedgerows; whitish grass; black slopes of coal waste; the wooden towers of old mineshafts with ghostly spinning wheels, like the skeletons of windmills.
“What a shit-hole” said Jaeger. “What happens here?”
The road ran beside a railway track, then crossed a river. Rafts of rubbery scum drifted along the banks. They were directly downwind of Kattowitz. The air stank of chemicals and coaldust. The sky here really was a sulphur-yellow, the sun an orange disc in the smog.
They dipped, went through a blackened railway bridge, then over a rail crossing. Close, now …March tried to remember Luther’s crude sketch map.
They reached a junction. He hesitated.
Turn right.”
Past corrugated iron sheds, scraps of trees, rattling over more steel tracks…
He recognised a disused rail line. “Stop!”
Jaeger braked.
This is it. You can turn off the engine.”
Such silence. Not even a birdcall.
Jaeger looked around with distaste at the narrow road, the barren fields, the distant trees. A wasteland. “But we’re in the middle of nowhere!”
“What time is it?”
“Just after nine.”
Turn on the radio.”
“What is this? You want a little music? The Merry Widow?”
“Just turn it on.”
“Which channel?”
The channel doesn’t matter. If it’s nine they’ll all sound the same.”
Jaeger pressed a switch, turned a dial. A noise like an ocean breaking on a rocky shore. As he scanned the frequencies the noise was lost, came back, was lost and then came back at full strength: not the ocean, but a million human voices raised in acclamation.
Take out your handcuffs, Max. That’s it. Give me the key. Now attach yourself to the wheel. I’m sorry, Max.”
“Oh, Zavi…”
“Here he comes!” shouted the commentator. “I can see him! Here he comes!”
He had been walking for a little over five minutes and had almost reached the birch woods when he heard the helicopter. He looked back a kilometre, past the waving grass, along the overgrown tracks. The Mercedes had been joined on the road by a dozen other cars. A line of black figures was starting towards him. He turned and carried on walking.
She is pulling up dt the border crossing — now. The swastika flag flaps over the customs post. The guard takes her passport. “For what purpose are you leaving Germany, Fraulein?”
“To attend a friend’s wedding. In Zurich.” He looks from the passport photograph to her face and back again, checks the dates on the visa. “You are travelling alone?”
“My fiance was supposed to be with me, but he’s been delayed in Berlin. Doing his duty, officer. You know how it is.” Smiling, natural…That’s it, my darling. Nobody can do this better than you.
He had his eyes on the ground. There must be something.
One guard questions her, another circles the car. “What luggage are you carrying, please?”
“Just overnight clothes. And a wedding present.” She puts on a puzzled expression: “Why? Is there a problem? Would you like me to unpack?” She starts to open the door…Oh, Charlie, don’t overplay it. The guards exchange looks…
And then he saw it. Almost buried at the base of a sapling: a streak of red. He bent and picked it up, turned it over in his hand. The brick was pitted with yellow lichen, scorched by explosive, crumbling at the corners. But it was solid enough. It existed. He scraped at the lichen with his thumb and the carmine dust crusted beneath his fingernail like dried blood. As he stooped to replace it, he saw others, half-hidden in the pale grass — ten, twenty, a hundred…
A pretty girl, a blonde, a fine day, a holiday…The guard checks the sheet again. It says here only that Berlin is anxious to trace an American, a brunette. “No, Fraulein—” he gives her back her passport and winks at the other guard “—a search will not be necessary.” The barrier lifts. “Heil Hitler!” he says. “Heil Hitler,” she replies.
Go on, Charlie. Go on…
It is as if she hears him. She turns her head towards the East, towards him, to where the sun is fresh in the sky, and as the car moves forward she seems to dip her head in acknowledgement. Across the bridge: the white cross of Switzerland. The morning light glints on the Rhine…
She had got away. He looked up at the sun and he knew it-knew it for an absolute, certain fact.
“Stay where you are!”
The black shape of the helicopter flapped above him. Behind him, shouts — much closer now — metallic, robot-like commands: “Drop your weapon!”
“Stay where you are!”
“Stay where you are!”
He took off his cap and threw it, sent it skimming across the grass the way his father used to skim flat stones across the sea. Then he tugged the gun from his waistband, checked to make sure it was loaded, and moved towards the silent trees.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Many of the characters whose names are used in this novel actually existed. Their biographical details are correct up to 1942. Their subsequent fates, of course, were different.
Josef Buhler, State Secretary in the General Government, was condemned to death in Poland and executed in 1948.
Wilhelm Stuckart was arrested at the end of the war and spent four years in detention. He was released in 1949 and lived in West Berlin. In December 1953 he was killed in a car “accident” near Hanover: the “accident”
