“Aren’t you German?”
“Of course – but my parents are dead. Nobody knows about them. So Stebelson and this man make up a whole family history for me.”
“So you and Stebelson had an arrangement that if during all this something came up that might offer a quick profit – then you’d double-cross Malacod.”
“In a way.”
“But you’ve gone back on that. Why?”
“Because perhaps he wants to marry me.”
“He?”
“That way I get better things than ever Stebelson can arrange.”
“He,” I said firmly. “Who is he?”
“Alois ... the one here, the one you saw in Venice.”
“What’s his other name?”
“Vadarci – he was adopted by them.”
“But you must know why Lottie’s here. He’s going to choose between the two of you. He might choose Lottie.”
“Perhaps – but perhaps it will be me. So, I finish with Stebelson.”
“And what’s behind all this? Bringing you and Lottie here secretly? And this big case, the lead affair – I saw it go into the helicopter at the Villa Sabbioni and you went with it. You must know about that.”
“No. Truly. They promise we shall know soon. But they swear us to secrecy, Lottie and me. Both of us will get many good things.”
“One of you might. Whichever is chosen. The other, no matter what she’s sworn or what she expects, is going to be killed, dropped in a lake and never seen again. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’ve got to get both of you away fast!”
“Oh, no!” She was really shaken.
“Oh, yes. You’ve both got to get out of this place. There’s no profit here for anyone, you, me, Stebelson, or anyone. There’s something, too big for you or me to handle, cooking here. What about all these guards?”
“All this we are promised to have explained.”
“And you’ve accepted all this?”
“Why not? They are good to us. Maybe something nice comes from it.”
I looked at her hard then. She had promised me the truth. I seemed to be getting it. But how could I know with a girl who was so sure of herself, so much herself, her own mistress, that you could never tell what was going on inside her beautiful blonde head?
I said, “What does Lottie think about all this?”
“Sometimes she says she is frightened.”
“But you aren’t?”
“No.”
“I wonder. You chucked Stebelson. You did that from Venice. But you kept me coming along. Why – if you thought you might end up marrying this Alois?”
She took her time over answering, smiling at me.
“Because I love you – truly, I do. I want you near.”
“But if you married this type? What then?”
“I have plenty of money. I travel. And we could see each other. You and me. Have little good times together.”
“You think I’d stand for that?”
“Maybe you would. Why not? For me, nothing is black and white. I don’t say Yes, I don’t say No, until the last moment. How can I tell what I will do tomorrow until it comes? You are not like that?”
She sat there as pretty as a pin-up and said it, laying out the whole Katerina philosophy and expecting me to go along with it.
“For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t you ever think about anyone else? If you marry Alois, then Lottie gets dropped into a lake! You’d know about that. You couldn’t keep that secret as the price of marrying him. Could you?”
For a moment she hesitated, and then she shook her head.
“No. But I did not know all this. You sound so angry.”
“Well, you know now. And I’m getting both of you out of here. There’s big and dangerous trouble behind it all. Get that into your head! It’s big enough to have people like Malacod spending money to ferret it out, and others spending government money. If it suited the book, both you and Lottie could finish up in the lake.” I stood up, and I was angry, angry because I was afraid for her and Lottie, and also because of what she had said about me, that I would have accepted the “little good times together” if she had married this Alois.
“Darling, I like you when you get angry.”
I pulled her up to me, holding her tightly by the shoulders.
“From the moment I saw you on that pier I knew exactly what I wanted. From now – if it takes the rest of my life – I’m going to knock some sense into you. Do you understand?”
I shook her shoulders a little. She nodded her head slowly, and my arms went round her, holding her, and it was at this moment that I heard the sound of the helicopter.
It roared overhead as though all the girders were falling out of heaven, and the window-panes rattled until I thought they were going to crack.
I let Katerina go, ran across the room and switched off the small table-lamp that was burning, and then went to the window. I jerked the curtain partly aside.
In the courtyard below, the lights around the ornamental water basin were turned on and pointed upwards. I was just in time to see the great clumsy dragonfly affair swing in from the lake, hang poised, racketing and whirring, and then drop gently to the gravel. The moment it touched the ground the lights went out. The motors died and there was the quick movement of people passing, shadowy and vague, across the gravel.
Close behind me, Katerina said, “That is the way I come here. Lottie also. Inside the helicopter you see nothing because the windows are covered. We do not know where we are; though we guess Austria or Germany. Also, tonight we are told there is a special conference and not to mind the noise of the helicopter.”
“Special conference?”
I saw the great hall with its velvet catafalque and the dim blue lighting. Because I had a memory stuffed like a jackdaw’s nest with odds and ends, I remembered a book I had read, and knew then that one’s mind never knocks off working, clicking away quietly
