“Hallo,” said Denning. “And where did you come from?”
“Short cut.” He still watched the woods, his blue eyes hard, his lips tight with anger.
Then the dog appeared, straining at the end of a leash held by a tall, powerfully built man dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform. He halted, smiling, as he pulled back against the dog’s forward leaps.
Heinz yelled, “Next time I go for a walk, I take my gun. That isn’t a dog, it’s a wolf. And the land’s free. Do you hear? It’s free!”
The uniformed man laughed, enjoying his sense of power; then he gave a violent tug to the leash, a sharp command, and walked away slowly into the maze of trees, the dog obediently following. They disappeared from sight.
“All right,” Heinz Gauch said, now ready to leave, and he and Denning continued together on the path. He was silent for at least three minutes. Then, in his slow solemn voice, he said, “That’s a good path through the woods. We’ve always used it. These foreigners—they come here and think they’ve bought the land!” His lips tightened for a moment. He was a man, almost forty perhaps, muscular, lean, who spent most of his time in the open air, for his face was weather-tanned, and fine wrinkles crinkled away from the outside corners of his frank blue eyes. His light hair, sun-bleached, receded from his high broad brow, and his smile—even with two broken front teeth—was pleasant to see. Now, he was giving it generously to Denning, as if to show that the reference to foreigners wasn’t directed against him. “You’re on our side?”
The question, so direct, so simple, was heart-warming. Denning nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’m on your side.”
“There are two other Americans here too. A man and his wife. Came this afternoon. Staying at the inn.”
“At the inn?” The question had escaped him. He hoped it would be taken for polite interest rather than surprise.
“Bad days,” said Heinz Gauch, and brooded over that. “Falken’s a quiet place, usually,” he added angrily. “We live and let live.” Then he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Waldesruhe. “Who were those?”
“More foreigners.”
Heinz Gauch thought over that too. “They’re the kind we can do without.”
“Like the man with the dog? Where did he come from?” “Up there. That house on top of the hill. See?” He pointed. His forearm was thick and strong, his muscles prominent and hard.
“Does its property stretch to the edge of the woods?” Denning asked in surprise. The house must have been half a mile away.
“We never knew where its property began or ended until these men came. The trails are free.” Gauch swept his arm around the valley where paths, narrow and broad, straight and twisting, wound through green meadows, interlacing the village with the woods and the hills. “Herr Broach is all right. So is his secretary. It’s the men who work up at the house that cause the trouble.”
“Broach? He lives in that house up on the hill?”
Gauch nodded. “He’s all right. Quiet. Pleasant. Buys in the village.”
“How big is his staff?”
“Now he has four men.”
“Now? You mean some are recent additions?”
“Three came last week.”
“What do they find to do?” A chalet might run to eight rooms, perhaps even less.
Gauch shrugged his shoulders. “Each man spends his money in his own way. If I were rich”—he grinned—“I’d have seven pairs of climbing boots, one for each day of the week. Herr Broach likes to have servants.”
“A cosy establishment. Do all people who live here keep such a private army?”
Gauch looked at him. “That’s what the Inspector was asking too. Are you a policeman?”
“No. Are you?”
“I’m a guide. Today—well, I’m just kind of helping out.”
“That’s my status exactly,” Denning said.
“I thought you were a friend of the Inspector’s.”
“Why?”
Gauch grinned. “He came running out of the back door of the inn, got hold of us, and all the way to Waldesruhe he kept cussing you.”
“I guessed that, somehow,” said Denning, not too amused. “Tell me, has Broach made any friends in the—” But Gauch caught his arm, silencing him. From a high alp across the valley, on the other side of Falken, there drifted down through the clear air a long-drawn-out call.
“Yodelling?” Denning asked, with a smile. A pretty effect. But the village lying before him didn’t need any additional local colour. He already felt he was stepping on to the front page of a Swiss calendar, with a carpet of blue gentians rolled out in front to welcome him towards the dreaming houses. Yodelling and its silver echoes were too much. Falken was the kind of place you had to take little by little.
“Sh!” Gauch held up his hand impatiently.
Again the high call. And then, again.
“Three,” said Gauch. “That means the Blümlisalp.”
Then came a series of shorter calls, ringing down over the mountainside, running so close to each other that they formed little circles of sound, falling, falling into the valley. Heinz Gauch stared at Denning. “Trouble,” he said. “They’ve found trouble up there,” and he began to run. Denning started after him. In a nearby field, a man dropped his hoe and ran towards his house.
In the village street, there were others who ran. And those who didn’t run had stopped to look up at the mountains which lay westward. At open doors, people stood. There was nothing to hear but the steady running pace, even, sure, that echoed over the stones.
Denning halted and regained his breath. Gauch had disappeared into a house. The other runners were disappearing into their houses, too.
“What’s wrong?” he asked a white-haired woman standing at the door of the inn. She didn’t seem to hear him.
“Someone needs help, up there,” a very quiet voice said beside him. It was Keppler. “But the guides will take care of it.” He stared up at a green patch, high on a wooded mountainside, sheltering under the ragged rims of grey precipices.
The white-haired woman said, “The hut on the Blümlisalp was only opened up for the summer this very day.”
“Yes, yes, Anna,” said Keppler quickly, silencing her, and moved on his way along the street, stopping to talk to someone here, pass a remark there.
The woman called Anna put her hand quickly to her mouth. She had made a mistake, there. Another amateur like myself, Denning thought. He smiled and said, “I’m looking for the café-restaurant.”
“Cross the street. Follow that little road.” Her hand had dropped to her heart; her blue eyes were worried as they looked, not at him, but over his shoulder. He turned as the approaching footsteps reached him: two men, visitors probably, judging from their clothes.
“What’s wrong?” one of the men asked, halting beside the doorway. He was young, strongly built, with a breadth of shoulder and length of arm which would be formidable in a fight. His companion was a husky specimen too.
“I’m trying to find out,” Denning said. He didn’t quite like the way their eyes were examining him.
But now Heinz Gauch came out of his house, heavily booted, a rope neatly coiled over his shoulders. He began running again, with that same steady lope, along the street towards the woods beyond the church. From another house, one of the other men joined him, then another and another, one with a rope, another with a sheet wound round wooden poles; and the sound of the heavy boots, keeping their running pace, echoed through the little street.
“Whenever I hear that—” Anna turned abruptly and went indoors.
Denning thought, that’s the kind of excuse I could use too. But he said, “It looks as if a climber has got stuck on a mountain face.”
“Where?”
“Up there. Somewhere.” Denning looked vaguely at the back-drop of mountains.
The curious young man was more interested, suddenly, in the file of six steadily running men, now past the church, entering the trail w
hich seemingly began in the woods. “That’s the Blümlisalp trail,” he said to his friend quickly, as if the remark had been surprised out of him. Then he noticed that Denning was listening. “Isn’t it?” he asked, too casually.
“A lot of trails begin there and then branch off.” That was a safe enough answer. You could always depend on trails branching off.
“I wonder if the guides need any help.” The man took a step away.
Was this an offer, or an excuse to follow? Denning said, beginning to move away too, “It’s a team, obviously. Like a fire brigade or a lifeboat crew. If they needed volunteers, I guess they’d have asked for them.”
“They can’t keep up that pace,” the one who did the talking said, as if he resented such efficiency. Then he walked on, his silent friend keeping step with him. They stopped a woman and asked her a question, for she shook her head. “No, no,” she said in her loud innocent voice, “It can’t be trouble on the Blümlisalp. Why, a child could climb up there and down again.” She laughed merrily at such ignorance, and it seemed to Denning that the men were more than a little taken aback, perhaps because of her unfortunately clear voice, perhaps because her estimation of climbing the Blümlisalp didn’t please them.
He crossed the street slowly, as if there were no need for haste, and entered the narrow road which led away from the centre of the village. There he could begin to hurry. Keppler must have reached the café-restaurant by this time.
But Keppler wasn’t there. Not immediately.
Instead, there was a note, short and glowing, from Elizabeth. Nothing seemed to dampen that girl’s enthusiasm. “Darling,” she began, “at last you’re in Falken. We’ll have a wonderful week-end. Wait here for me until I get rid of the family. And keep this evening free for a party at the inn. But tomorrow we’ll have to ourselves, I promise! All love, as always…”
Tomorrow, he thought, sounds wonderful: a day for oneself, a day to stretch out on a soft piece of green grass under a birch tree—the kind that had invited him today as he walked towards Falken, with its delicate leaves showing blue sky between them; a book to read, sleep to come softly; no one talking, questioning; no one to worry about, whether friend or enemy. A day to be kept for oneself.
It was too good a promise. He looked round his room, a small white box inside a large white box, a ground-floor room tucked away near a back entrance to a café-restaurant which didn’t even sell beer. Keppler’s humour was peculiar. Or practical.
He felt cheered, oddly enough. For there was his luggage, waiting to welcome him: it was another sign, however small, that someone was organising something around here, and efficiently too. Or perhaps Elizabeth’s optimism was having its effect. Had Keppler intended that? Wily old bird, Keppler—what assumed name had he chosen to match his new identity? He had looked so completely at home in this mountain village, a visitor who had every right to be strolling around its quiet roads.
Denning didn’t bother to unpack. But he took off his shoes and jacket, slipped his tie loose, and stretched his spine out on the narrow white bed.
And then suddenly he knew why he was encouraged. Until now, what had depressed him most was the feeling that against him, against Heinz Gauch and the white-haired Anna at the inn amid Francesca and the Waysmiths, were a few men tightly organised, completely ruthless, relentless, with one single purpose and a plan long made. But somehow, within this last half-hour, the balance had shifted. “You’re on our side?” Heinz Gauch had asked. And the “Yes” he had given as an answer had come surging back on to his tongue, as he stood at the inn door and watched the six men set off to the Blümlisalp. Heinz Gauch, and Bohren, and Le Brun, each with his own pattern of action, each part of the same general plan. The Waysmiths, himself—how many more? Their particular problems had merged—the village’s concern for the missing Andrássy, the Waysmiths’ worry over Francesca’s safety, Le Brun’s search for the Herz diamonds, Bohren’s tracking down of murderers, his own preoccupation with Max Meyer’s death. They had merged, and Keppler had done it.
Suddenly he rose and crossed over to the window. It faced west. Yes, up there, slightly to his left, he could see a small green patch on the shoulder of the mountain. The Blümlisalp— the high meadow of little flowers. It haunted him, somehow.
A soft step, a careful closing of his room door made him swing round.
“If I had been a murderer,” Keppler said quietly as he locked the door behind him, “you wouldn’t have had much chance.”
“Interesting,” Keppler said, “interesting. And let me compliment you on the way you present a report.” He glanced at his watch with approval. Five minutes since he had come into the room; and Denning hadn’t wasted one word.
“I’ve been writing reports for the last four years,” Denning said, with a smile. There, he could claim to be a professional.
“Ah—that explains it: no wonder you accept action so readily. Four years of report-writing…” Keppler shook his head in commiseration. “It’s always been one of my theories that the most effective men are intellectuals in action. But they also cause a few palpitations, a good deal of annoyance, and sometimes a lot of unnecessary trouble. Still, who doesn’t?”
Denning wasn’t quite sure whether that was praise or censure.
“The intellectual in action,” Keppler said again, enjoying the phrase as though it were a mouthful of wine worth rolling around his tongue.
“Look—if you want to cuss me out, do it in Bohren’s way. That’s easier to take.”
“Ah—Bohren. He’s stopped cussing you out. In fact, he’s now at the stage of wanting to pin a decoration on your chest.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“He telephoned ten minutes ago. That’s what delayed me getting here.”
“Any success with Nikolaides?”
“At first—no. Flat denials. And then, suddenly, he crumpled. One little thing did it.”
“The passport?”
“No. The tyre marks left by his car late last night. They could have led to a murder charge. That’s what he thought, seemingly. Had you prepared him for that idea?”
“A little.”
“Then you saved us at least a couple of hours. Thank you.”
Denning’s face flushed slightly. “And what did Bohren discover?”
“Let me see, now,” Keppler said, with tantalising deliberation, “if I can remember how to put a report together. We’ve learned a lot of things from Nikolaides.”
Denning’s smile was back. Keppler, the diplomat, was amusing in his own way: what could he tell, what would he leave out? That was his problem.
“First, the diamonds. The man who bought them is indeed Mr. Broach. They are in his house. So is the man who is in charge of the whole operation against the Committee. Tonight, the final move—in Falken, at least—is to be made. Broach will be alone then, in his house on the hill. It seems he knows very little. He certainly is taking no active part.”
“Except furnishing the money for kidnapping, torture, and murder,” Denning said bitterly.
“Which brings us to my second piece of news. The threat against the Committee is centred on the girl Francesca. She alone knows the present addresses of the exiles whom the Committee helped. She keeps no files. Everything is in her memory. Dangerous, yes. But also wise. However, my department has known about this Committee and its purposes since its beginning, and we insisted—naturally enough—that all the names and addresses must be registered with us. A matter of simple precaution. We have the only existing file, and it’s kept safe. I see to that. So the danger here is around Francesca. She is, in fact, the file that the Communists want. If they can abduct her, question her, they’ll have all the information they need. Within a few days of extracting it, there won’t be one of the Committee’s exiles who will be left in freedom. Remember, the Communists have had much practice in secret assassination and political kidnapping. Since 1930, they have developed their techniques. Did you ever hear of Eugene Millar, Navachine, K
lement, Krivitsky, Koutienov? All murdered secretly, or abducted. Last year, in Berlin, there was Linse. Since 1948, more than one hundred Germans have been kidnapped for political reasons. So the problem we face here, in Falken, is not a fantasy.”
“Tell that to Richard van Meeren Broach.”
“I hope I have that pleasure,” said Keppler, with equal grimness.
“What about Andrássy?”
“That is my third piece of news. We think he is being held here, until Francesca Vivenzio can be taken out with him.”
“How would they be taken out?”
“Quite simply. A specially chartered plane leaves the Bern airport. Foreign diplomats travelling to Czechoslovakia or Hungary or Poland. Two of the passengers seem listless, dazed. But they’ve got diplomatic passports and identities. And immunity like all the others on the plane. We may try to question the passengers. Difficult. Impossible, if Andrássy and Francesca have been so drugged that they can’t give their names, can’t help us. Without actually forcing them off the plane, getting a doctor to examine them, bringing them out of their drugged condition— what can we do? Diplomatic immunity is what beats us.”
“Is there any chartered plane leaving Bern late tonight?”
“There are three, with diplomatic missions on board. Bern has all the embassies, remember.”
“Three,” repeated Denning blankly. “And two could be genuine?”
“Yes. That’s one of our problems.”
“Seems to me we’d better solve it right here in Falken—never let them get near any airport.”
“I agree. So this is our plan. We have created the impression that everything is normal, that Francesca is alone with a sick aunt at her house. Actually, her aunt is staying quietly out of the way—at Schlossfalken-Bad. And Francesca, once tonight’s party is over at the inn, will seem to walk back to her house. Gregor will accompany her. At the church there begins a good stretch of trees. You will be waiting there, in the first shadows, with a very charming policewoman who will be dressed like Francesca. She walks on with Gregor. Francesca, you, and three policemen will make your way through barns and fields—we’ve planned the route carefully—to the back door of Heinz Gauch’s house. That’s where Francesca will spend the night, with you and the three policemen to guard her. We’ll have other guards round the house. And it stands right in the centre of the village street. All clear?”