‘Yes, he said that.’
‘Seventy-seven grains. Very temperamental stuff. It will have a length of RDX fuse and a chemical igniter.’
‘Yes. He did say that.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘How come you’re an expert on explosives?’
‘I’m not. I read about it some years ago and just sort of filed the information away.’
‘Must be quite a filing cabinet you’ve got in there. This instant and total recall bit – how’s it done?’
‘If I knew that I’d be making a fortune out of it instead of fooling my life away on a trapeze. Now, there’s something else I want. First a large, eight by eight – preferably – sheet of rubber matting or hide leather.’
She took his hand and said: ‘What do you want that for?’ Her eyes told him that she knew.
‘What do you think? To throw over that damned electrified fence, of course. A tumbler’s mat would do fine. Also I require a rope with a padded hook. I want to see them both as soon as possible. Ask Dr Harper to arrange for those things and have them put in the boot of the car. Would you like to have lunch with me tomorrow?’
‘What?’
‘I want to see that stuff.’
‘Oh. I’d love to.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘No, I wouldn’t. Not if you’re wearing those clothes. Anyway, no half-decent restaurant would let you through the front door.’
‘I’ll change.’
‘But if we’re seen together – in daylight, I mean – ’
‘There’s a charming little inn in a charming little village about ten miles from here. Nobody will know us there and nobody will be looking anyway: I’m dead. Which reminds me. It’s less than an hour since I was talking to a couple of grave-diggers.’
‘We are being humorous again, are we?’
‘Fact. Very interesting.’
‘In the Hunter’s Horn?’
‘In the cemetery. I asked them who it was for and they said it was for me. Well, the American who fell off the wire. It’s not everyone who’s privileged enough to watch his own grave being dug. They were making a very neat job of it, I must say.’
‘Please.’ She shivered. ‘Must you?’
‘Sorry. That wasn’t funny. I just thought it was. Now, you’ll go to this village – it’s called Kolszuki – by car and I’ll go by train. We’ll meet at the station there. We might as well go now and check the train time-tables at the Crau station. You’ll have to get clearance from Dr Harper, of course.’
On a very spartan metal table in a very spartan and largely metal office, the spools of a tape-recorder revolved. On either side of the table sat Colonel Sergius and Captain Kodes. Both had headphones to their ears. In addition to the phones Sergius had a cigar, vodka and as close to a beatific smile as he was ever likely to achieve. Captain Kodes, too, was permitting himself the luxury of smiling broadly. Angelo, discreetly seated in a far corner, although he had neither phones nor vodka, was also smiling. If the colonel was happy, that made him happy, too.
Bruno returned from consulting the time-tables inside the Crau station. He said: ‘There’s a very convenient train for lunch. Meet me at the Kolszuki station at noon. You won’t have any trouble in finding it – there aren’t more than fifty houses in the village. Know where this place is?’
‘There’s a map in the glove-box. I’ve checked. I’ll be there then.’
Bruno drove up the main street and parked the Volkswagen just opposite the lane abutting on the southern side of Lubylan. The street was not deserted – there were two trucks and a car on the south side of the lane, obviously parked for the night. It was a measure of the confidence in their security arrangements of those within Lubylan that they raised no objections to vehicles parking in such close proximity. Bruno made a mental note of this: there is no objection to the night-time parking of trucks in the south lane.
Bruno said: ‘Now don’t forget to tell Dr Harper everything we discussed tonight. And don’t forget that, for the benefit of any innocent passers-by, we’re just a couple of lovers lost in each other’s eyes. Darling, darling Maria. That’s for practice.’
‘Yes, Bruno,’ she said primly. ‘We’ll be married soon, Bruno.’
‘Very soon, my love.’ They relapsed into silence, their eyes fixed on the lane, Maria’s all the time, Bruno’s most of the time.
In the headquarters of the secret police Colonel Sergius was making harsh croaking noises in his throat. He was not choking on his vodka. Colonel Sergius was laughing. He indicated that Angelo should pour him another vodka, then indicated that Angelo should help himself also. Angelo refrained from crushing the bottle in his surprise, smiled his wolfish smile and swiftly complied before Sergius could change his mind. This was without precedent, an epoch-making night.
Bruno turned suddenly, put his arms around Maria and kissed her passionately. For a moment she stared at him, dark eyes open in astonishment and surmise, let herself relax against him, then stiffened as an authoritative rat-tat-tat came on her window. She broke from Bruno’s arms and swiftly wound down the window. Two large policemen, complete with the customary guns and batons, were bent down peering into the car. Uniforms and weapons apart, however, they bore no resemblance to the popular conception of the Iron Curtain policeman. Their expressions were genial, positively paternal. The larger of the two sniffed suspiciously.
‘Very strange smell in this car, I must say.’
Maria said: ‘I’m afraid I’ve just broken a phial of perfume. A drop is nice – but a whole bottle – well, it is a bit strong, I must say.’
Bruno, stammering slightly and with his voice sounding acutely embarrassed, said: ‘What is it, officer? This is my fiancée.’ He held up Maria’s beringed left hand so that there should be no doubt about it. ‘Surely there’s no law – ’
‘Indeed not.’ The policeman leaned a confidential elbow on the window-sill. ‘But there is a law against parking in a main street.’
‘Oh! Sorry. I didn’t realize – ’
‘It’s the fumes,’ the policeman said kindly. ‘Your mind must be all befuddled.’
‘Yes, officer.’ Bruno smiled weakly. ‘Is it all right if we park behind those trucks?’ Hopefully, he indicated the vehicles in the south lane.
‘Certainly. Don’t catch cold now. And, comrade?’
‘Officer?’
‘If you love her so much, why don’t you buy your fiancée a bottle of decent perfume? Needn’t be expensive, you know.’ The policeman beamed and walked away with his colleague.
Maria, remembering her momentary yielding to Bruno, said in a cross voice: ‘Well, thank you. For a moment there I thought you had found me irresistible.’
‘Always use your rear-view mirror. It’s just as important when you’re stationary as when you’re driving.’
She made a face at him as he pulled the car into the south lane.
The two policemen watched them park. They moved out of eyeshot of the car. The larger man pulled a walkie-talkie microphone from his breast pocket, pressed a button and said: ‘They’re parked in the south lane by the Lubylan, Colonel.’
‘Excellent.’ Even with the metallic distortion and the fact that his speech was interrupted by a series of whooping gasps – laughter was an unaccustomed exercise for him – Sergius’s voice was unmistakable. ‘Just leave the love-birds be.’
It took Bruno and Maria minutes only to establish that there were indeed ground-level guards. There were three of them and they kept up a continuous peripheral patrol, each making a full circuit of the Lubylan in turn. At no time was any guard in sight of the other two. As sentries, they were a degree less than enthusiastic. Not for them the continually roving, probing eyes, the piercing scrutiny of all that lay in their path of vision: with downcast gaze and trudging steps, they gave the impression of thoroughly miserable men, huddled against the cold and living only for the moment of their relief. There had been night-time sentries patrolling the Lubylan for ten, perhaps twenty years, and probably no untoward incident had ever o
ccurred: there was no conceivable reason why it ever should.
From the two watchtowers they could see, the south-west and south-east ones, searchlights flashed occasionally and erratically along the tops of the perimeter walls. There was no discernible predetermined sequence to the switching on and off of the searchlights: it appeared to be a quite random process, its arbitrary nature dependent on the whim of the guard.
After twenty minutes Bruno drove off to the public convenience he had patronized earlier that evening. He left the car, kissed Maria goodbye as she moved into the driver’s seat and disappeared into the depths. When he emerged, the grimy parcel with the old clothes and the amatol tucked under his arm, he was clad in his original sartorial glory.
CHAPTER NINE
Precisely at noon on the following day Bruno was met by Maria at Kolszuki station. It was a beautiful, cloudless winter’s day, crisp and clear and sunny, but the wind off the plains to the east was bitingly cold. On the twenty-minute journey out Bruno had passed the time of day studying his own highly-coloured obituary in the Crau Sunday paper. He was astonished at the richness and variety of his career, the international acclaim that followed him wherever he went, the impossible feats he had performed before heads of state the world over: he was particularly touched to discover how kind he had been to little children. It contained just enough fact to make it obvious that the reporter had actually been interviewing someone in the circus, a person clearly possessed of a deadpan sense of humour. That it wasn’t the work of Wrinfield he was sure: Kan Dahn appeared much the most likely culprit if for no reason other than the fact that he was the only person mentioned in the article apart from Bruno. The article, Bruno reflected, augured well for the morrow: the turn-out at the cemetery at 11 a.m. promised to be a remarkable one. Bruno carefully cut the piece out and put it together with the previous day’s black-bordered obituary.
The inn Bruno had in mind was only two miles away. One mile out, he pulled into a lay-by, got out, opened the boot, gave a cursory examination to the tumbler’s mat and the padded hook attached to a rope, closed the boot and returned to his seat.
‘Both mat and rope are just what I wanted. Just let them stay there until Tuesday night. You have this car rented until then?’
‘Until we leave here on Wednesday.’
They pulled off the main road, went some way up a narrow lane, then pulled up in the cobblestoned courtyard of what looked to be a very ancient inn indeed. The head waiter courteously escorted them to a table and took their order. As he was finishing, Bruno said: ‘Do you mind if we sit by that corner table?’ Maria looked her surprise. ‘It’s such a lovely day.’
‘But of course, sir.’
When they were seated, Maria said: ‘I can’t see any lovely day from here. All I can see is the back of a broken-down barn. Why the new table?’
‘I just wanted my back to the room so that no one could see our faces.’
‘You know somebody here?’
‘No. We were followed from the station by a grey Volkswagen. When we stopped at that lay-by he passed us but then pulled into a side turning and waited until we had passed him, then he tucked in behind us again. Where he’s sitting now he’s directly facing our previous table. He may well be a lip-reader.’
She was vexed. ‘It’s supposed to be my job to see those things.’
‘Maybe we should swop jobs.’
‘That’s not very funny,’ she said, then smiled in spite of herself. ‘I somehow don’t see myself as the daring young girl on the flying trapeze. I can’t even stand on a first-floor balcony, even stand on a chair, without getting vertigo. Fact. See what you’re letting yourself in for?’ The smile faded. ‘I may have smiled, Bruno, but I’m not smiling inside. I’m scared. See what else you’re letting yourself in for?’ He said nothing. ‘Well, thanks anyway for not laughing at me. Why are we being followed, Bruno? Who could possibly know we were out here? And who is the person they’re following – you or me?’
‘Me.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Did anyone tail you out here?’
‘No. I’ve listened to your lectures on driving mirrors. I spend more time looking backwards than forwards now when I’m driving. I stopped twice. No one passed me.’
‘So it’s me. And nothing to worry about. I detect Dr Harper’s hand in this. It’s what I take to be the old CIA mentality. Never, never trust anyone. I suspect half the members of espionage and counter-espionage services spend a good deal of their time watching the other half. And how is he to know that I’m not going to go native and revert to my old Crau sympathies? I don’t blame him. This is a very, very difficult situation indeed for the good doctor. A hundred against one that that lad behind us is what it pleases Harper to call his man in Crau. Just do me one favour – when you get back to the circus train, go see Dr Harper and ask him straight out.’
She said doubtfully: ‘You really think so?’
‘I’m certain.’
After lunch they drove back to Kolszuki station with the grey Volkswagen in faithful if distant attendance. Bruno stopped the car outside the main entrance and said: ‘See you tonight?’
‘Oh, yes, please.’ She hesitated. ‘Will it be safe?’
‘Sure. Walk two hundred yards south of the Hunter’s Horn. There’s a café there with the illuminated sign of the Cross of Lorraine. God knows why. I’ll be there. Nine o’clock.’ He put his arm round her. ‘Don’t look so sad, Maria.’
‘I’m not sad.’
‘Don’t you want to come?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, yes, I want to spend every minute of the day with you.’
‘Dr Harper wouldn’t approve.’
‘I suppose not.’ She took his face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes. ‘But have you ever thought that now is all the time there may be?’ She shivered. ‘I can feel someone walking over my grave.’
‘Nobody’s got any manners any more,’ Bruno said. ‘Tell him to get off.’ Without looking at or speaking to him again she let in the clutch of the car and moved off: he watched her until she disappeared from sight.
Bruno was lying on the bed in his hotel room when the phone rang. The operator asked if he was Mr Neuhaus and when Bruno said he was put the caller through. It was Maria.
‘Tanya,’ he said. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’
There was a pause while she apparently adjusted to her new name, then she said: ‘You were quite right. Our friend admits responsibility for what happened at lunch-time.’
‘Jon Neuhaus right as ever. See you at the appointed time.’
By 6 p.m. that evening the full darkness of night had already fallen. The temperature was well below freezing, a faint wind was stirring and patches of slowly drifting cloud occasionally obscured the three-quarter moon. Most of the sky was bright with twinkling frosty stars.
The lorry parked outside the truck-drivers’ pull-up, three miles south of the town, was filled almost to capacity. From the low single-storey café came bright yellow light and the sound of jukebox music: the café was being heavily patronized, drivers entering or leaving at fairly regular intervals. One driver, a middle-aged man enveloped in the numerous swathes of his breed, emerged and climbed into his vehicle, a large and empty furniture van with two hinged rear doors and securing battens running along both sides. There was no partition between the driver and the body of the van: just that single seat up front. The driver turned the ignition, the big diesel thudded into life but before the driver could touch brake, clutch or gear he was slumped forward over his wheel, unconscious. A pair of giant hands reached under his armpits, plucked him from his seat as if he were a puppet and deposited him on the floor of the van.
Manuelo applied adhesive to the unfortunate driver’s mouth and then set about fixing a blindfold. He said: ‘I am grieved that we should have to treat an innocent citizen in this manner.’
‘Agreed, agreed.’ Kan Dahn shook his head sadly and tightened the last knot on their victim’s w
rists. ‘But the greatest good of the greatest number. Besides,’ he said hopefully, ‘he may not be an innocent citizen.’
Ron Roebuck, who was securing the man’s ankles to one of the parallel securing battens, did not appear to think that the situation called for any comment. There were lassos, clothes-lines, heavy twine and a large coil of nylon rope – the most conspicuous of all and by far the heaviest and thickest: it was knotted at eighteen-inch intervals.
At 6.15 p.m. Bruno, magnificently attired in what he privately thought of as his Pierrot’s suit and the magnificent pseudo chinchilla, left the hotel. He walked with the unhurried measured gait of one for whom time is not a matter of pressing concern: in fact he did not wish to disturb the fulminate of mercury in the six explosive devices that were suspended from his belt. The voluminous nylon coat concealed those perfectly.
As befitted a man with time on his hands, he wandered at apparent random, following what would otherwise have been thought to be a devious twisting route. He spent a considerable amount of time in stopping and apparently examining goods in shop windows, not omitting the side windows at shop entrances. He finally sauntered round a corner, quickened his pace for a few steps, then sank into the dark shadow of a recessing doorway. A dark raincoated man rounded the same corner, hesitated, hastened forward, passed where Bruno stood concealed, then sagged at the knees, momentarily stunned, as the edge of Bruno’s right hand caught him below his right ear. Bruno held him upright with one hand, went swiftly through his pockets with the other and came up with a snub-nosed automatic. The safety catch clicked off.
‘Walk,’ Bruno said.
The hijacked furniture van was about halfway down the south lane abutting on the Lubylan, the last of five parked trucks. Bruno saw it at once when he halted, arm apparently cordially in arm with his erstwhile shadow, at the corner of the main street and the south lane. Bruno had deemed it prudent to halt because a guard was coming up the other side of the lane, machine gun shoulder-slung. From his general appearance the weapon was the last thing on his mind. Like the guards of the previous night he wasn’t walking with a brisk military step, he was trudging along, wallowing in the unplumbed depths of his own frozen miseries. Bruno dug his automatic deeper into his companion’s side, just above the hip-bone.