Читать книгу Day of Judgment - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 7

For Margaret Campbell re-birth was a nightmare. Of suffocation, of freezing cold and then a long darkness from which she finally surfaced to find a middle-aged, grey-haired man at her side. He wore a brown habit, with a knotted cord at his waist from which a large crucifix was suspended.

Her mouth was dry so that she found it impossible to speak and he got an arm around her shoulders and put a glass to her lips.

‘Easy now,’ he said in German.

She coughed a little and said hoarsely, ‘Who are you?’

‘Brother Konrad, of the Franciscan order of Jesus and Mary. This is our house at Neustadt.’

‘How did I come here?’

‘One of my brothers found you this morning, caught on the weir, draped across the trunk of a tree. The Elbe is in flood because of the heavy rains.’

She tried to move and was aware of an excruciating pain in her left leg. Her hand, moving instinctively to the spot, encountered heavy bandages. ‘Is it broken?’

‘I think not. Very badly sprained. A torn thigh muscle.’

‘You seem very sure.’

‘I’m not without experience in these matters, Fräulein. During the war I served as a volunteer with the medical corps, mainly on the Russian front. Unfortunately the nearest doctor is at Stendal, but if you think it necessary …’

‘No,’ she said. ‘The nearest doctor is here.’

‘I see.’ He nodded calmly. ‘On the other hand, although our Lord said, “Physician, heal thyself”, this is not the easiest of precepts to follow.’

‘I am in your hands, it would seem.’

‘Exactly.’ He gave her two white tablets and a glass of water. ‘Take these, they will help with the pain.’ He arranged the pillow behind her head to make her more comfortable. ‘Sleep now. We will talk again later, Fräulein …?’

‘Campbell,’ she said. ‘Margaret Campbell.’

‘Is there someone I can notify of your safety?’

‘No.’ She leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. ‘There is no one.’

It was towards evening and she was wide awake when he came in, her head turned to one side, trying to look over the sill out of the window.

He put a hand to her forehead. ‘Better,’ he said. ‘The fever has gone down. A miracle when one thinks how long you were out there in the water.’

His face was full of strength, firm, ascetic and touched with a tranquillity that she found completely reassuring.

‘The Society of Jesus and Mary?’ she said, and remembered her first meeting with Conlin. ‘You’re Lutherans, isn’t that so?’

‘That’s right,’ he told her. ‘Our movement started in England in the closing years of the last century. There was a great interest at that time in the work of St Francis and a desire, by some people, to continue his mission within the framework of the Church of England.’

‘And how did you end up in Neustadt?’

‘A lady called Marchant married the Graf von Falkenberg, the greatest landowner in these parts. On the death of her husband, she offered Schloss Neustadt to the order. They came here in nineteen hundred and five, led by Brother Andrew, a Scot. There were twelve friars then, just like the disciples, and eight nuns.’

‘Nuns,’ she said blankly. ‘There are nuns here?’

‘Not any more.’

‘But this is not Schloss Neustadt,’ she said. ‘It can’t be.’

He smiled. ‘We were moved out of the castle in nineteen-thirty-eight. The Army used it as a local area headquarters for a time. Towards the end of the war it served to house prominent prisoners.’

‘And since then?’

‘The State has failed to find any particular use for it, but on the other hand has never shown any great desire to return it. This house, in which we have lived for some years now, is called Home Farm. If I raise you against the pillows you can see the river and the Schloss on the hill above.’

He sat beside her, an arm about her shoulders, and now she could see a pleasant garden surrounded by a high wall. On the other side there was a cemetery. To the right, the River Elbe raced between trees, a brown, swollen flood. Beyond, on the hill above the village, stood Schloss Neustadt behind its massive walls, pointed towers floating up there in the light mist, the approach road zig-zagging up the face of the hill towards the great gate of the entrance tunnel.

The door opened and another middle-aged man entered carrying a tray. ‘And this,’ Konrad said, ‘is Brother Florian who fished you out of the river.’

Florian placed the tray across her knees. There was soup in a wooden bowl, black bread, milk. She put a hand on his sleeve. ‘What can I say?’

He smiled again and went out without a word. ‘He cannot speak,’ Konrad told her. ‘He is under vow of silence for a month.’

She tried a little of the soup and found it excellent. ‘The nuns,’ she said. ‘What happened to them?’

His face was grave now, something close to pain in his eyes. ‘They left,’ he said. ‘The last of them about two years ago. There are only six of us here now, including myself. A year from now I should imagine we’ll all be gone if the State has its way.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It states quite clearly in the constitution that no individual shall be prevented from practising whatever religion he chooses.’

‘True. The youngest among us, Franz, joined our order only six months ago in spite of every obstacle that officialdom tried to put in his way. Are you a Christian, Fräulein Campbell?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘When it comes right down to it, I don’t suppose I’m anything.’

‘The State is rather more equivocal. The rights to religious free expression, as you have said, are enshrined in the constitution. At the same time Walter Ulbricht himself has told the country in more than one speech that church membership is not compatible with being a good Party member.’

‘But the constitution remains. What can they do?’

‘Provide State services as substitutes for Christian ones. Marriage, baptism, funeral – all taken care of. To go to church is to deny the State, which explains why there hasn’t been a Catholic priest here for five years and why, in what has always been a mainly Catholic area, the church door remains barred.’

Her mind was full of disturbing emotions. Religion had never interested her. There had been no place for it in her home background, for her father had been an atheist for most of his adult life. Her education had followed the path set for the children of all important officials in the Socialist Democratic Republic. Privileged schooling and an open door to university. A private, enclosed world in which all was perfection. What Brother Konrad was saying was new to her and difficult to take in.

‘Why did the nuns go?’ she said.

‘There was an article in Neues Deutschland implying that orders such as ours were immoral. Old wives’ tales, common for centuries. That in pools near convents, the bodies of newborn infants had been discovered. That sort of nonsense. Then the State medical authorities started monthly inspections for venereal disease.’ He smiled sadly. ‘It takes great strength of will to stand up to such ceaseless pressure. The nuns of our order, one by one, gave in and returned to life outside, as did most of our brothers.’

‘But you hang on,’ she said. ‘A small handful, in spite of everything. Why?’

He sighed. ‘So difficult to explain.’ And then he smiled. ‘But perhaps I could show you.’

He brought an old wheelchair, a robe to put about her shoulders, and took her out and along the stone-flagged corridor into the courtyard, pausing only to push open the gnarled oaken door on the far side.

It was like plunging into cool water, a tiny, simple chapel with no seating at all. Whitewashed walls, a wooden statue of St Francis, the plainest of altars with an iron crucifix, a small rose-coloured window through which the evening light sprayed colour into the room.

‘For me,’ Konrad said, ‘there is joy in simply being here, for in this place I am aware of all my faults and weaknesses with utmost clarity. Here it is that I see myself as I truly am and here also that I am most aware of God’s infinite compassion and love. And that, Fräulein, gives me joy in life.’

She sat, staring up at that rosy window and made her decision. ‘Have you ever heard of the League of the Resurrection?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Have you and your friends ever assisted with its work?’

‘We are an enclosed order,’ he said gravely. ‘The contemplative life is what we seek.’

‘But you know of the work of Father Sean Conlin?’

‘I do.’

‘And approve?’

‘Yes.’

She swung to face him. ‘He’s up there now in Schloss Neustadt. Dachau all over again and it’s all my fault.’

It was cold with the bedroom window open, but her face was hot, burning as from a fever again, and the evening breeze eased it a little. She stirred restlessly in the chair and the door opened and Konrad entered with a glass.

‘Cognac,’ he said. ‘Drink it down. It will make you feel better.’ He pulled a chair forward. ‘Now tell me more about this American professor, Van Buren.’

‘I first met him in Dresden about eighteen months ago. I was just finishing my medical studies and he was lecturing on para-psychology, a fringe interest of his. He made a point of visiting my father. Said he’d always admired his work. They became good friends.

He even obtained a medical appointment for me in his own department at the Institute of Psychological Research. A wonderful opportunity – or so I thought at the time.’

‘You didn’t like working there?’

‘Not really. Harry Van Buren is a remarkable man – certainly the most brilliant intellect I’ve ever been exposed to. But it seems to me he has one fatal flaw. He’s obsessed with his subject to such a degree that human beings become of secondary importance. At the Institute I saw him turn people around, change them completely. Oh yes, there were the psychotics where it was a good thing – a miracle, if you like. But the others …’

Konrad said gently, ‘So – he betrayed you?’

‘My father was ill – terminal cancer of the lung. They took him into hospital several weeks ago – I’m not certain of the exact date. They told me that the medical superintendent wanted to see me. When they took me to his office, I found Harry and a Colonel Klein from State Security.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Colonel Klein told me that the radio-therapy treatment needed to keep my father alive was costly and the equipment needed elsewhere. It was usual medical policy to allow such cases to run their own course. If I did as I was told, they might be able to make an exception.’

‘Which was to entice Conlin over the border for them?’

She nodded. ‘Harry explained why it was necessary in the finest detail. It was as if he was trying to persuade me. How Father Conlin could be made to stand up before the world and say exactly what he had been told. Harry said it was necessary because Conlin was an enemy of the State. That he and his organization had been engaged in espionage.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘My only thought was for my father.’

‘Honestly put.’

She carried on. ‘Harry calls his technique thought reform. And it works. He’ll have Father Conlin denying everything he’s ever believed in before he’s through.’

There was a long pause, then Konrad said, ‘And what is it you would have me do, Fräulein?’

‘When they sent me across, they used a man called Schmidt in East Berlin who specializes in such matters. Klein said they allowed him to operate because it suited their purposes. Sometimes they put agents across to the other side in the guise of refugees. That sort of thing.’

‘Which makes sense. And they had you followed?’

‘Oh yes. An SSD operative, not that he lasted very long. The man who handled the actual crossing was an Englishman – a Major Vaughan. He and his partner have an undertaker’s establishment in Rehdenstrasse in the West Zone. Julius Meyer & Co.’

‘You think he can help?’

‘Perhaps. He was the only one who could see I was lying. Isn’t that a strange thing?’

She broke down then, harsh sobs racking her body. Konrad rested a hand on her shoulder briefly, turned and went out. He paused for a moment, a slight frown on his face, then went to the far end of the corridor and opened a door which gave access to the

farmyard at the rear of the main building. There was a monotonous jangle of cowbells as the small dairy herd was shepherded in from the water-meadow by Brother Urban, a frail old man with white hair who wore a sack across his shoulders.

Brother Konrad opened the main door to the cow byres for him. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what time does Franz deliver the milk to the inn in the morning?’

‘Seven-thirty is the usual time, I believe, Brother,’ the old man replied.

‘And Berg, from the Schloss? What time does he collect his milk? Do you know?’

‘He’s usually waiting at the inn when Franz gets there.’

‘Good.’ Brother Konrad nodded. ‘When you see Franz, tell him that in the morning I will take the milk.’

Strange how cheerful he felt. He slapped the rear cow on its bony rump and they all tried to squeeze through the entrance into the byre together, bells clanking.

* * *

In the bedroom, Margaret Campbell stood at the open window awkwardly, all her weight on one leg as she leaned across the sill to cool her burning face. It was almost dark and yet it was still possible to discern the darker mass of Schloss Neustadt against the evening sky.

There was a light up there, gleaming faintly from one window after another as if someone was moving along a corridor. It was suddenly extinguished. She thought of Conlin alone up there in the darkness and was afraid.

The car which Klein had placed at Van Buren’s disposal was a Mercedes staff car of the war years. It was in excellent condition, a pleasure to handle, and he enjoyed the hour and a half’s run from Berlin in spite of the poor visibility towards evening.

It gave him time to think about the task ahead, and in any case he liked being alone like this. But then, he always had. An onlooker instead of a participant. In that way one could see things more clearly. Sum up

the strength of the opposition, which, in this case, meant Conlin.

It was almost completely dark when he reached Neustadt. There were lights at the windows in the village, but the Schloss was in complete darkness. He drove up the narrow approach road, negotiating the sharp bends with care as it climbed the hill. There was a sentry standing in the mouth of the entrance tunnel out of the rain.

Van Buren held his identity card out of the window. ‘Captain Süssmann is expecting me.’

The Vopo examined the card by torchlight and nodded. ‘Straight on to the main courtyard. I’ll telephone through and tell them you’re on your way.’

Van Buren drove on, along the dark tunnel. There was a barrier at the far end, another sentry who examined his identity card again before raising the pole and allowing him through. Security was thorough enough, or so it seemed.

He drove across the inner courtyard and braked to a halt at the foot of a row of wide stone steps rising to a massive wooden door

which stood open. A small group of Vopos waited to greet him. Two privates holding lanterns, a sergeant and a young man whose uniform carried a captain’s tabs.

The captain saluted as Van Buren got out of the car. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Herr Professor. Hans Süssmann.’ He nodded to the sergeant, a large, brutal-looking man. ‘Becker.’

Van Buren looked up at the dark bulk of the Schloss. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘The place has its own power plant from the days when it was an army group headquarters. The dynamo is giving trouble. Nothing serious. There are a couple of electricians working on it now.’

Van Buren took out a leather case and selected a cigarette. Süssmann offered him a light. The American said, ‘You’ve had your orders from Colonel Klein? You understand the situation here?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘How many men have you got?’

‘Twenty. All hand picked.’

‘Good. Let’s go in.’

The entrance hall was impressive, a marble staircase lifting into the darkness above. A silver candelabrum stood on the table in the centre with half a dozen lighted candles in it. A short, stocky man stood there. His dark beard was flecked with grey, his hair tangled, and the elbows of his old tweed jacket were crudely patched.

‘This is Berg,’ Süssmann said. ‘The caretaker. The place hasn’t been occupied for any official purpose since the war.’

Van Buren said to Berg, ‘We spoke on the telephone earlier. You’ve done as I said?’

‘Yes, Herr Professor.’

‘Good – I’ll see Conlin now.’

Süssmann nodded to Berg, who picked up the candelabrum and led the way up the marble stairs. As they followed. Van Buren said, ‘What’s the situation in the village?’

‘Population, one hundred and fifty-three – agricultural workers in the main. The local innkeeper is the mayor – George Ehrlich. He’s Berg’s brother-in-law. There has never been any trouble here – not from anyone. Oh, there

are a handful of monks in the old farm at the bottom of the hill by the river.’

‘Good God!’ Van Buren said, genuinely astonished.

‘Franciscans. Berg says they supply the village with milk.’

They were passing along an upper corridor now, the light from the candelabrum in Berg’s hand throwing shadows on the walls.

At the far end, two guards stood outside a door. Süssmann unlocked it. Van Buren said, ‘I’ll see him alone first.’

‘As you wish, Herr Professor.’

Süssmann opened the door for him. Van Buren took the candelabrum from Berg and moved inside.

It was a fairly ornate bedroom with a painted ceiling. Conlin was crouched at the end of the bed, his wrists handcuffed to one of the legs. He glanced up, blinking in the sudden light. Van Buren stood there, the candelabrum held high, looking down at him. He placed it carefully on the floor and

squatted, taking out a cigarette and lighting it.

‘I understand you smoke rather heavily.’

‘It’s been said.’

Van Buren placed the cigarette between the old priest’s lips. ‘Enjoy it while you can. The last for a long time. My name is Harry Van Buren. Does that mean anything to you?’

‘Oh yes,’ the old man said calmly. ‘I think you could say that. Thought reform – an interesting concept.’

‘You know what to expect then.’

‘You’re wasting your time, boy.’ Conlin smiled. ‘I’ve been worked on by experts.’

‘Not really,’ Van Buren said. ‘You only think you have.’ He took the cigarette from Conlin’s mouth, turned to the door and opened it. He handed the candelabrum to Berg and said to Süssmann, ‘We’ll take him below now.’

At the rear of the main staircase in the great hall an oak door gave access to the lower reaches of the Schloss.

As he unlocked it. Berg said. ‘There are three levels, as I explained to you on the telephone, Herr Professor, dating back to the fourteenth century.’

They descended a long flight of stone steps and then a tunnel which sloped into darkness before them. Berg led the way, holding a lantern, and Van Buren and Süssmann followed, Becker bringing up the rear with Conlin between two Vopos.

Berg had to unlock two gates to reach the lowest level. It was very cold now and damp. He paused finally at an iron-bound door and unlocked it. The passageway stretched onwards into darkness.

Van Buren said, ‘Where does that go?’

‘More tunnels, Herr Professor. Dungeons, storage cellars. The place is a rabbit-warren.’

Berg opened the door. Van Buren followed him in and the caretaker held up his lantern. The cell was very old, stone walls smoothed by time, shining with damp. There was no window. The floor was stone-flagged and the only furnishing was an enamel bucket in one corner and an iron cot with no mattress. The

door had a small flap at the bottom for food to be passed through.

‘Is this what the Herr Professor wanted?’

‘Exactly.’ Van Buren turned to Süssmann. ‘Let’s have him inside. No shoes – shirt and pants only and leave the handcuffs on.’

He moved out, ignoring Conlin as Becker and the two guards hustled him in. ‘Nothing to say, Professor?’ the old man called.

‘Why yes, if you like.’ Van Buren turned to face him through the open doorway. ‘Frances Mary. Will that do?’

Conlin’s face sagged, he turned white. Becker and the two guards came out, the sergeant closed the door and locked it.

‘I’ll take the key.’ Van Buren held out his hand for it. ‘And I want a sentry here at all times – understood?’

‘Yes,’ Süssmann said.

‘He stays in here for a week. Total darkness and no communication in any way. One meal a day. Bread and cheese, cold water, passed through the flap at the bottom of the door. Above all, no noise. Better make your sentries wear socks over their boots or something like that.’

‘I’ll see what can be done.’

‘Good. I’m returning to Berlin tonight. If anything comes up, contact Colonel Klein.’

‘And we shall see you again?’

‘Exactly seven days from now. Then we really start to get down to it.’

They moved away along the passage, leaving Becker with one of the guards. The sergeant gave him his instructions, then followed.

Inside the cell, Conlin stood listening, aware only of the muffled sounds of their going. Frances Mary . So long since he had thought of her. And if Van Buren knew about her, what else did he know? His heart raced and the anguish at that moment was physical in its intensity.

He took a deep breath and shuffled cautiously through the darkness until he found the cot, then lay down on it carefully, the springs digging into his back. It was very quiet. Phase One , he thought. Sensory deprivation leading to complete alienation of the subject .

The darkness seemed to move in and complete panic seized him as he remembered Dachau. To be alone, so alone, of course, was the worst thing of all – and then it occurred to him, as it had many times before, that he was not. He closed his eyes, folded his hands, awkwardly because of the handcuffs, and started to pray.

It was just before seven-thirty on the following morning when Brother Konrad and Franz pulled their hand-cart, loaded with milk churns, into the courtyard of the local inn. Berg’s old truck stood beside the front door and the caretaker leaned against it, smoking a pipe and talking to his brother-in-law.

Georg Ehrlich was a small dark man with an expression of settled gravity on his face that never altered. A widower, he left the running of the inn mainly to his daughter, for not only was he mayor, but chairman of the farm co-operative and local Party secretary.

He managed a smile for the Franciscan. ‘Konrad – we don’t often see you.’

‘I wanted a word,’ Konrad said. ‘Official business, and besides – I thought the boy here might like a little help for a change.’

Franz, who at nineteen was the youngest member of the order and built like a young bull, grinned and swung a full milk churn to the ground with ease.

Berg said, ‘I’m going to need at least one of those a day from now on. Put it on the truck for me, Franz, there’s a good lad.’

‘A full churn?’ Konrad said in surprise. ‘What on earth for?’

‘Vopos up at the Schloss. Twenty of the bastards.’

‘Come on in,’ Ehrlich said. ‘Sigrid’s just made fresh coffee.’

They moved along a whitewashed corridor and entered an oak-beamed kitchen. Ehrlich’s daughter Sigrid, a pretty, fair-haired girl of seventeen in a blue dress and white apron, fed logs into the stove. She glanced up and Ehrlich said, ‘Coffee and perhaps a brandy to go with it? A cold morning.’

‘That’s kind of you,’ Konrad said, ‘but a little early in the day for me.’ He turned to Berg. ‘What’s all this about Vopos up at the Schloss? I don’t understand. What are they doing?’

‘Guarding a prisoner they brought in the night before last. Twenty of them plus a sergeant and captain for one man. I ask you.’

Konrad accepted the cup of coffee Sigrid passed him with a smile of thanks. ‘Someone important, obviously.’

‘That’s not for me to say, is it?’ Berg said. ‘I only follow orders like we all have to these days.’ He leaned forward, the hoarse whisper of his voice dropping even lower. ‘I’ll tell you one thing you’ll never believe. You know where they’re holding him? In a cell on the third level. Solitary confinement to start with. A full seven days before we even open the door on him again. That’s what the man from Berlin said and off he went with the key in his pocket. Van Buren, his name is. Professor Van Buren.’

Konrad frowned. ‘Merciful heaven! I would have thought that even the rats might have difficulty surviving down there.’

‘Exactly.’ Berg emptied his glass. ‘I’d better be getting back with that milk now. They’ll be wanting their breakfasts up there.’

He went out. Ehrlich took down his pipe and started to fill it. Konrad said, ‘Some political prisoner or other, I imagine.’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Ehrlich said. ‘In times like these it pays to mind your own business. He talks too much, that one.’

‘He always did.’

The innkeeper applied a match to his pipe. ‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’

‘Ah yes,’ Konrad said. ‘I’d like a travel permit, to go to Berlin to see my sister. I think I mentioned when we last spoke that she’d had a heart attack.’

‘Yes, I was sorry to hear that,’ Ehrlich said. ‘When do you want to go?’

‘This morning, if possible. I’d like to stay a week. I’ll remember, of course’ – here he smiled – ‘to wear civilian clothes.’

Ehrlich said, ‘I’ll make you a permit out now.’ He reached for the bottle. ‘But first, that brandy I mentioned, just to start the day right.’

‘If you insist,’ Konrad relented. ‘But just a small one.’ When he raised the glass to his lips, he was smiling.

Margaret Campbell had spent a restless night. Her leg ached and she had fallen into a sleep of total exhaustion just before dawn. She was awakened at eight-fifteen by a knock at her door and Konrad entered with a breakfast tray. She had a splitting headache and her mouth was dry.

He took her temperature and shook his head. ‘Up again. How do you feel?’

‘Terrible. It’s the leg mainly. The pain makes it difficult to sleep. The pills you gave me last night didn’t do much good.’

He nodded. ‘I’ve something stronger in the dispensary, I think. I’ll leave them out for Urban to give you while I’m away.’

He placed the tray across her knees. She looked up in surprise. ‘You’re going somewhere?’

‘But of course,’ he said. ‘West Berlin, to see this Major Vaughan of yours. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?’

There was an expression of utter astonishment on her face. ‘But that’s impossible.’

‘Not at all. The cooperative produce truck leaves the square at nine for Stendal, from which there are regular buses to Berlin. I’ll be there by noon.’

‘But how will you get across?’

‘The League will help me.’

‘The League of the Resurrection? But when I asked if you and your friends had ever assisted with its work, you said . . .’

‘That we are an enclosed order. That the contemplative life is our aim.’

She laughed suddenly and for the first time since he had known her, so that for the moment it was as if she had become a different person.

‘You are a devious man, Brother Konrad. I can see that now.’

‘So I’ve been told,’ he said, smiling, and poured her coffee.

In West Berlin, Bruno Teusen stood at the open window leading to the terrace of his apartment in one of the new blocks overlooking the Tiergarten and sipped black coffee. He was at that time fifty, a tall, handsome man with a pleasant, rather diffident manner, that concealed an iron will and a razor-sharp mind.

A lieutenant-colonel of ski troops on the Russian Front at twenty-five, a serious leg wound had earned him a transfer to Abwehr headquarters at Tirpitz Ufer in Berlin, where he had worked for the great Canaris himself.

His wife and infant son had been killed in an air raid in nineteen-forty-four and he had never remarried. In nineteen-fifty when the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, popularly known as the BfV, was formed, he was one of the first recruits.

The function of the BfV was primarily to deal with any attempted undermining of the constitutional order, which, in practice, came down to a constant and daily battle of wits with the thousands of Communist agents operating in West Germany. Teusen was Director of the Berlin office, a difficult task in a city whose inhabitants still tended to equate any kind of secret service with the Gestapo or SD.

It had been a hard day and he was considering the merits of dining on his own and having an early night or phoning a young lady of his acquaintance when his bell rang. He cursed softly, went to the door, and peered through the security bullseye.

Simon Vaughan was standing there, Brother Konrad behind him, wearing corduroy trousers, a reefer jacket and tweed cap.

Teusen opened the door.

‘Hello, Bruno.’

‘Simon.’ Teusen looked Konrad over briefly. ‘Business?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘You’d better come in, then.’

He closed the door and turned to face them. Konrad took off his cap. Vaughan said, ‘This is Colonel Bruno Teusen. Bruno, Brother Konrad of the Franciscan Order of Jesus and Mary at Neustadt on the other side. I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say.’

He walked across to the drinks cabinet, poured himself a Scotch and went out on the terrace. It was really very pretty, the lights of the city down there, but for some reason all he could think of was Margaret Campbell, trapped at Neustadt with her injured leg and probably frightened to death.

‘Poor stupid little bitch,’ he said softly. ‘You shouldn’t have joined, should you?’

It was perhaps fifteen minutes later that

Teusen and Konrad came out on the terrace.

‘Not so good,’ the Colonel said.

‘Can you do anything?’

‘For Conlin?’ Teusen shrugged, ‘I don’t hold out much hope. I’ll get in touch with the Federal Intelligence Service in Munich, but I don’t see what they can do, other than inform interested parties.’

‘And who might they be?’

‘The Vatican, for one. He is a priest, after all. Where was he born – Ireland?’

‘Yes, but he’s an American citizen.’

‘They might be interested then, but I wouldn’t count on it. And we haven’t any proof that Conlin’s over there. If anyone approaches the East German Government officially, they’ll simply deny any knowledge of him. In any case, from the sound of it, getting him out of Schloss Neustadt would take a company of paratroopers dropping in at dawn, and Skorzenys are thin on the ground these days.’

Brother Konrad said, ‘And the girl?’

‘We might be able to do something for her.’ Teusen turned to Vaughan. ‘Would you be willing to help there?’

For a moment Vaughan saw again her pale face, the dark weary eyes in the early morning light on the bridge over the Spree. He smiled. ‘Julius won’t like it.’

‘I know. Something for nothing again.’ Teusen glanced at Konrad. ‘When do you have to be back?’

‘My permit allows me a seven-day stay in East Berlin.’

‘And where are you staying now?’

Konrad turned uncertainly to Vaughan, who said, ‘At our place in Rehdenstrasse. You might have to sleep in a coffin, but it’s home.’

Teusen said, ‘I’ll be in touch. Possibly tomorrow – certainly by the day after. We should have the responses of all the interested parties by then.’

He closed the door behind them and poured himself a cognac. Then he went to the telephone, dialled a Munich number and asked to speak to General Reinhardt Gehlen, Director of BND, the Federal Intelligence Service. Strange that he no longer felt tired.