Rice made a whistling noise through his nostrils. ‘I may have been driving — I can’t remember now. Frisby was careless, stepped out under the wheels. He was also a nuisance. He’d started asking too many questions. In Mexico he got talking to one of the tanker masters, then he somehow got hold of some papers — top secret, German, from the German Embassy in Mexico City. I tell you, he was a nuisance.’
‘Did you kill him?’
‘The car did.’
‘Did you murder him?’
‘Murder? He was knocked down by a car. Read the official reports.’
‘I have. At least one of them is missing from the files.’
‘That’s not my fault.’
‘What about Shanklin? How much was he involved?’
‘I was giving him a lift. His car had broken down.’
‘I mean, how much was Shanklin involved in “Operation Bettina”?’
Another pause. ‘He was suspicious. He’d become suspicious in Istanbul. He’d got himself posted to the Caribbean to try and find out more. Frisby could have told him — only he was killed first. Shanklin, I mean,’ and he sniggered, as though he remembered something that amused him.
Hawn said, ‘And what do you think’s going to happen to you, Doctor Rice, when all this comes out?’
‘Comes out?’
‘Is published all over the world — at least, in the free press?’
‘The free press!’ Rice had again turned his skull-like features to Hawn and bared his dreadful teeth. ‘My dear sir, I am a professional scientist. I am one of the three greatest scientists in the German Democratic Republic. Nothing will happen to me. I shall merely continue my work.’
‘Let’s get going,’ Hanak said, with a note of impatience.
The road began to twist, the trees grew closer, darker, until it became twilight. Then it cleared. Ahead was a wide flat wasteland fringed with distant pines: an untidy pattern of lake and marshland, with road following the edge of the water for a few hundred yards, until it reached a wooden pier that ran out to a little island. At the end of this was a small cafe, shuttered and desolate, its terrace empty of tables, its yellow paint blistered and blotched with damp. On the roof was a red star with one of its points bent inwards like a rusty claw.
Doctor Rice told Hanak to stop at the end of the pier. For a moment none of the party moved, as though each were waiting for one of the others to lead the way. Hanak got out first. He opened Rice’s door and held it back, while the hunchback climbed out and stood gaunt and lopsided against the dark wall of trees.
Hawn and Anna followed him. It was very still, very cold — a dank, bone-chilling cold that carried with it the corrupt whiff of stagnant water and dead waterlogged vegetation.
Hawn looked around: ‘This another happy playground for the workers?’
Rice said, ‘In the summer they sometimes have banquets in that cafe.’
Hanak turned. ‘All right, Herr Doktor, show us the way.’
Rice pointed a long finger at the pier. ‘That wasn’t there before, you understand. Nor was the cafe. Just the island.’
‘Lead the way.’
Rice loped on to the pier. Hanak let Hawn and Anna follow him, before taking up the rear, his big steel-tipped boots clomping on the spongy boards.
The pier was about fifty yards long. The water below was black and freezing; crusts of ice had collected round the wooden piles. The cafe stood at the near end of the island, which was perhaps a hundred yards long and thirty wide, tapering to a point.
They crossed the abandoned concrete terrace and began to follow a muddy path towards a clump of pines. At the far end two rocks jutted out of the water. Rice stopped and stood peering down between them, at a crevice half clogged with moss. He raised his crooked shoulders and turned to Hanak. ‘Down there,’ he said, with a vague gesture towards the rocks.
‘Get it.’
‘It weighs at least fifty kilos! It’ll take all three of us to get it up. It’s made of lead.’
Hawn said, ‘So you weren’t just dumping die stuff? You were preserving it for posterity?’
‘You know what the Germans are like,’ Rice said: ‘They love documents. They never destroy anything, if they can help it. As for this stuff, we never knew when it might come in useful.’
Hanak had stepped forward and stood examining the crevice. Hawn and Anna joined him. It took them several seconds to make it out: about three feet down, a stout piton, filthy with rust, had been driven into the rock at a steep angle. Hanging from it was a chain, its links at least half an inch thick, disappearing between the moss into the black water.
Anna said, ‘You’re going to need some sort of lever.’ She glanced quickly round — at the silent water, the row of trees, the abandoned cafe behind them.
Hanak flopped down on his belly and poised himself forward until he was hanging over the mouth of the crevice. ‘Just let’s see how much slack there is.’ He reached down, groped for the end of the chain and pulled. It came up slack — several feet of it. He then stood up and gave it a hard wrench, stumbled and sat down in front of Hawn. The icy chain was trailing limp and slimy between his fingers. They all stared at the severed link, dangling at the end of about four feet. It was crusted with algae and weeds, as well as rust, but by rubbing it in die mud they saw that it was a clean cut.
Hanak spoke first. ‘A chain like that doesn’t break. Somebody’s been here before us.’
‘The question is, just how long ago,’ said Hawn. ‘And it wasn’t any casual picnicker playing around these rocks. It would take a heavy saw, even oxyacetylene,
