As James watched, the man nodded. A tiny, almost invisible, jerk of his head. James followed his line of sight and there stood a familiar figure in grey.
Colonel Sedova. Babushka.
She was here. Skulking over by the news-stand.
James was already on the move, back round the way he had come, away from the man under the clock and on the opposite side of the concourse to Sedova. He saw a noisy and excited group of young priests crossing towards the ticket counters and he joined them, keeping his head down.
An old woman in a floppy hat walked away from the queue, clutching her ticket, and Roan stepped up to the counter.
As she opened her mouth to speak, James grabbed her by the elbow.
‘Don’t say anything,’ he hissed and dragged her away. He could feel her tense but she made no sound and didn’t resist. James pulled her quickly towards the platforms.
‘Just keep moving,’ he said, and he glanced across at the destination board. The train waiting on platform three was heading for Paris and was leaving in five minutes.
‘This way,’ he said, pulling Roan towards the platform.
‘I don’t have a ticket,’ she protested. ‘Are you sure that’s our train?’
‘Don’t worry about tickets,’ said James, pulling her faster.
‘What’s going on, James?’
‘There’s someone on our tail.’
‘Who?’ Roan struggled in his grip.
‘Don’t look round,’ he said as they hurried along the platform. The last few passengers were climbing aboard and the train was shrouded in clouds of steam as the engine boiled up, ready to be off. There were shouts from the porters.
‘En voiture!’
James wrenched a door open and shoved Roan up the steps.
He glanced back down the platform. Babushka and the man with the newspaper were barging their way past people at the far end. A whistle blew. The train gave a metallic groan, as if straining to be under way.
James hesitated for a moment then swung up on to the train after Roan. He pulled the window down and leant out. Their pursuers were clambering up the steps about four carriages behind them. If they had left it a moment longer they would have missed the train.
Good.
‘James, are you sure this is our train?’ asked Roan, who was looking angry and confused.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said James. ‘Follow me.’
He crossed the compartment to the corridor at the other side. A fat man was struggling along with a bulging suitcase. James opened the window in the door and looked down at the tracks.
‘As soon as the train starts to move we’re getting off,’ he said. ‘Can you do that?’
‘Sure I can,’ said Roan, and she gave him a wry smile. ‘Full of tricks, aren’t you, Mister Bond?’
There was a jolt and the train shunted forward, the carriage shaking, the wheels squealing. James looked at Roan.
‘Ready?’
‘After you?’
James swung the door open, threw down his suitcase and dropped after it on to the tracks. He looked back at the train. It was picking up speed. For one chilly moment he thought Roan might not follow him, but then her suitcase tumbled out and a moment later there she was, jumping lightly down. He ran to her and caught her as she stumbled, then they retrieved their luggage and hurried across the tracks to where a second train stood waiting at the opposite platform. They opened a door and chucked their bags on board before hauling themselves up and scrambling to their feet. They crossed the carriage and got out the other side.
‘Keep walking,’ said James. ‘We’re not going to risk taking a train. Let’s just get well away from here. Once we know we’re safe we’ll plan our next step.’
They walked briskly down the length of the platform and went back through the station and out on to the streets.
‘That was too close,’ said James. ‘We mustn’t forget that we’ll have to be careful every step of the way.’
They made their way to the bus station and hopped on a bus that seemed to be going in roughly the right direction. Once they were clear of Calais and in open countryside they got off at a deserted stop.
They stood there and watched the bus trundle away down the road. Soon they were all alone. Skylarks darted in the blue sky. Flat green fields of potato and turnips spread out all around them.
‘Now what?’ said Roan.
‘We walk,’ said James, and he looped his arm in hers. He glanced at Roan. She looked glum.
‘Cheer up,’ he said. ‘We made it. We got away.’
‘But now what?’
‘We’ve the whole of France spread out before us,’ said James, ‘the whole of Europe, the world. We needn’t stop in Kitzbühel; we can just keep on travelling forever if we want. We’re free, Roan. No more school. No more adults telling us what to do. No more report cards or Latin construes, no more Pop, no more Library, no more beatings. Just you and I together on the road.’
Roan laughed. James struck up the Marseillaise that she had been humming earlier and she joined in. Arm in arm they marched down the road, singing at the top of their voices.
They bought some bread and cheese in a village and ate lunch on top of a small hill looking out across the countryside.
‘I could almost be back home,’ said Roan. ‘Reminds me of Ireland.’
‘Where did you grow up?’ James asked.
‘I was born in Holycross, in County Tipperary, in the west. It’s the sort of tiny place that if you sneeze the whole town knows about it the next day. All I ever thought about was getting out of there. My dad was a drayman, delivering beer to all the pubs in the area in his big old horse and cart. There were five brothers and six sisters. Two of me sisters died young and one of me brothers. The rest of us, we never got on that well with one another, if you want to know the truth. We were always fighting for attention. But I did love me eldest brother, Johnnie. He was like a grown man to me. He always seemed so tall and handsome and he sheltered me from being bullied by the other kids. When he was old enough he went off to Limerick to look for work, though. He joined a printer’s, but when the civil war broke out he was caught up in the siege of 1922. The government troops thought he was an anti-treaty IRA man and shot him. He wasn’t fighting for anyone, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. God, I still miss him. I was only six years old. I was so miserable at home after that.’
‘So what happened?’ said James. ‘How did you end up at Eton?’
‘That was all down to Dandy,’ said Roan. ‘My life changed when he turned up in Holycross one day, on the run from the police. He hid out in an old barn and I used to take him food. I was just sixteen and he was twenty-five. Sure and he reminded me powerful of my dead brother, Johnnie.’
‘Why was he on the run?’ James asked.
‘He was a rebel,’ said Roan, ‘and he was wild. He was a red, more of an anarchist than a communist. He’d already blown up a rich man’s house in Belfast. He reckoned the IRA had it all wrong, reckoned they should be fighting for the poor against the rich. That was the real struggle. He filled my head with ideas and my heart with passion. In the end I ran away with him. We ended up in Dublin, and we met all sorts there. Communists, playwrights, criminals, IRA men – what a time we had. We planned to blow up the parliament, but someone ratted on us and we had to leave Ireland in a hurry. We went to Spain, and then to Portugal. Once we were there we fell in completely with a group of reds. We went to secret meetings, we studied books and pamphlets, we learnt how the world really turns. Then one day Amethyst appeared on the scene. He’d heard all about us. He worked for a top-secret communist cell and told us how they were planning something spectacular, something that would really make a difference.’
‘Operation Snow-Blind?’ said James.
‘Yes. It was so hush-hush we weren’t allowed to discuss it with anyone. Amethyst and Ruby trained us and then I was sent over to Eton in January.’
James was silent for a
long while. He wondered, not for the first time, what he had got himself into.
‘I presume you changed your names,’ he said at last. ‘You and Dandy.’
‘We might have done.’
‘The SIS knew nothing about you. What was Dandy really called?’
‘Well, it can’t harm him now he’s dead, I suppose. His real name was Sean Cullinan.’
‘And yours?’
‘Ah, now. That’s for me to know and you to find out.’
‘Don’t you think, Roan,’ said James, trying not to lose his temper, ‘that after all I’ve done for you, you owe me a little something in return.’
Roan kissed him.
‘I’m like a character in a fairy story, aren’t I, darling?’ she said. ‘Only when you know my real name will you be able to defeat me.’
‘I don’t want to defeat you,’ James snapped angrily. ‘I only want to know who you really are, Roan… Or whatever you’re called.’
‘Don’t be cross, darling,’ said Roan. ‘I told you I was a witch.’
Before James could say anything else Roan had picked up her bag and was marching down the hill towards the road.
25
Fallen Among Friends
James was rattling along the Inn valley on the same train that he had arrived in Kitzbühel aboard all those weeks ago. Only this time he had Roan with him and he was on the run. They had been travelling for days, south-east to Amiens from Calais, then on through Picardi to Rheims, then down to Nancy. They had crossed into Switzerland near Basel and from there it was a straight run to Kitzbühel. They had travelled by train and bus and foot. Sometimes they had hitched rides with farmers, riding in battered old lorries or on the back of horse-drawn carts. They had even bought bicycles and cycled part of the way. Some nights they had slept in fields under the stars, other nights they had spent in farm houses, occasionally they had stayed in cheap hotels, and one special night, in Rheims, on Roan’s nineteenth birthday, they had stayed in a smart hotel and had an expensive meal. They had bought knapsacks and French clothes and felt at home on the road. It had been like the most glorious holiday James had ever spent, because there was no end to it.
Except that every day there was a little less money in the brown envelope, and they knew that sooner or later the real world would catch up with them.
The scenery was very different compared to James’s last sight of it. There was still snow on the very highest peaks but down in the valleys the grass was bright green, there were flowers everywhere and the trees were in full leaf. The countryside was bursting with fresh life, taking advantage of the warm sunny conditions before the cold returned. Longhaired cows stood in the meadows, birds sang from the rooftops and everywhere men and women in Tyrolean dress went cheerfully about their business.
James’s skin was tanned a deep nut-brown from being in the sun all day. He was lean and fit and felt comfortable in his worn and dusty clothing. All the belongings he had in the world were fitted into his knapsack, but that was fine. What more did he need?
He was no longer a schoolboy; he had grown into a young man. He sat next to Roan who was gazing out of the window at the passing scenery. Whenever they travelled on a train or bus they were especially careful and rarely spoke to each other, in case anyone heard their foreign voices and wondered who exactly this young couple were.
As they got closer to their destination, James became more and more nervous. He had been at his most carefree in the country lanes of France, striding along in the sunshine, chatting to Roan. Now there was a full stop approaching. They had always had their sights set on Kitzbühel, but had never really discussed what would happen once they got there.
There was something else worrying him, too. A niggling doubt that he had pushed to the back of his mind. Now that he was getting closer to where it had all begun, though, he couldn’t help but brood over it.
He kept coming back to that strange night in the clinic when he had been woken by Graf von Schlick’s shouts from his private room.
‘They are going to kill cousin Jürgen…’
It was one of the things that had alerted James to Dandy’s plan.
But the more he thought about it, the less sense it made.
Von Schlick had been at the Langton-Herrings’ party in Windsor. He had spoken to the Prince of Wales. Yet when James had asked him about that night in the clinic he had denied all knowledge of it. That was perhaps understandable – the man had been delirious and he might have forgotten all about it. But why, then, had he claimed that he didn’t have a cousin George? It was entirely possible, of course, that he didn’t want a nosy schoolboy talking about it. But if he had known about a plot to kill King George, then why had he not said anything to the Prince?
Why had the King not been warned?
One possibility was that, although they knew about a plot, they didn’t know the details.
But surely the SIS would have been informed, wouldn’t they?
James knew all too well that on the morning of the Fourth of June he seemed to be the only person who was aware of what was going on. Merriot, Nevin and the others had had no idea about the plot, even though it was being carried out right under their noses.
Another possibility was that the Graf had been simply rambling under the influence of morphine that night. He really knew nothing about any plot and James had made a false link.
No. He had definitely shouted out ‘Schneeblind’, Snow-Blind, the name of Roan and Dandy’s plot.
James had quizzed Roan about this, but she had been vague. She knew nothing about the Graf. Her contacts had all been in Lisbon. She had no idea how this minor member of the Austrian aristocracy could have heard about the plot. But then Roan had been vague about a lot of things. Despite his gentle probing she had not really told him anything more of import about the plot and the characters involved, beyond giving a name to Amethyst – Vladimir Wrangel.
In the end James had given up asking. In truth he didn’t really want to know any more. He wanted to put all that behind him. He had saved the King and that was enough. Snow-Blind, Amethyst, the Graf, they were all part of his old life.
He was just telling himself to stop worrying when they pulled out of Jensbach station and a man entered their compartment hefting a bulky rucksack with a climbing rope wrapped around it. He looked to be in his twenties, with the firm build of a soldier. He was dressed for hiking in the mountains, with long socks, stout boots, a hunting jacket and a soft felt hat. There was something unmistakably English about him and James watched him out of the corner of his eye.
James had bought an English newspaper in Switzerland and had found nothing about either him or Roan in it, but that did not mean that his disappearance hadn’t been noted. He glanced at Roan, a practised look that told her to be wary.
As the man reached up to put his backpack in the luggage rack his jacket flapped open and James caught sight of something that caused the breath to catch in his lungs.
‘Kommen Sie mit, lassen Sie uns ein wenig frische Luft schnappen,’ he said to Roan. She couldn’t understand any German, but as he stood up and smiled at her she quickly got the message and obediently followed him out of the compartment into the corridor.
‘What did you say?’ she said once they were out of earshot.
‘I said let’s take some air.’
‘You could pass for a real German, you know.’
‘That was the point,’ said James. ‘I don’t know who that man is that just got on, but he has an Enfield number 2 mark 1 British service revolver in a shoulder-holster.’
Roan blanched. ‘Are you joking?’
‘I wish I was.’
‘Do you think he’s on to us?’ Roan looked nervously back towards their compartment.
‘I don’t know,’ said James. ‘It’s a pretty clumsy approach if he is, but I don’t aim to stick around and find out. We’ll have to get off at the next station and make our own way from there.’
‘And we were so close,’
said Roan wearily. ‘I was just beginning to let myself think we might make it in one piece.’
‘We’ll get there,’ said James, and he put a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘Now let’s not draw any attention to ourselves.’
They sat back in their seats until the train stopped in Worgl, then took their bags and got off.
James was relieved to see that the man didn’t follow them.
They were still about twenty miles from Kitzbühel so they decided in the end to take a taxi the rest of the way. It was an extravagance, but they had been careful with their money and they were bone tired from travelling. All they wanted to do now was reach journey’s end.
As they drove, Roan looked out of the window.
‘I thought we were going to see some snow,’ she said. ‘I love the snow when it’s fresh on the ground, so clean and pure and white. What use is a mountain without snow? It’s just a big ugly lump of rock.’
‘There’s no snow here,’ said James. ‘Not in the summer. These mountains aren’t high enough.’
‘Well, the least you could have done was to arrange some for me.’
James asked the driver to drop them off on the outskirts of town, below the Oberhausers’ chalet. He wanted to walk the last part of the way and arrive on foot. He told himself that he didn’t want the driver to know exactly where they were going, but he also needed a little time to think.
He had always assumed that Hannes Oberhauser would welcome them with open arms. But what if he was wrong? What if he had read too much into Oberhauser’s offer? What if Hannes had merely been being polite? Mouthing the words that everyone used to a guest as a matter of course? ‘Oh, yes, come back any time you like, you’ll always be welcome here…’
Well, there was no turning back now.
The light was fading from the sky and an indigo glow had descended on the valley. They could hear the clonk-clonk of cowbells and a stream chattering nearby. There were two tents pitched in the apple orchard, and up behind them the dark wood of the chalet looked almost black. James felt a nervous cramp grip his stomach.