The Salzburg Connection (12 page)

Mathison increased his pace and in a few minutes reached the cobbled street that backed right up against the steep rise of the castle’s hill. Here he could take the funicular for a quick ride up to the castle itself. And he was in luck; the cars were now finishing a descent, and he wouldn’t have long to wait until they were hauled uphill again. He bought his ticket and stood in the waiting room with half a dozen varied characters. No sign yet of the man in the raincoat. Then everyone filed out of the waiting room to find places in the nearest car, and Mathison could only wonder if the man was now arriving and buying a ticket. The idea amused him, although he felt annoyance too. Who the hell would want to have me followed? he wondered;
and then he decided the whole thing was ridiculous and his imagination had been running wild.

But the man was doing more than buying a ticket. He was using the few minutes before the scheduled departure uphill to put in a hasty call over the attendant’s telephone. “I picked him up in the hotel lobby, but I think he has seen me,” he told Dietrich at the other end of the wire. “He is bound to notice me on the funicular. He’s on his way to the castle. So get someone up there as fast as possible to take over. I’ll keep near him to mark him out. In case that’s difficult, Here’s the description of what he is now wearing: fawn tweed jacket, two vents in the back, well-cut: narrow dark-grey trousers; light-blue shirt, blue tie; brown shoes; raincoat at present over his arm; camera. And he’s—sorry!” The man jammed the phone back in place and made a dash outside to the funicular.

It was a quick, steep-angled haul through boulders and small trees, tunnelling through the lower wall and the first huge bastion. Once on foot, Mathison began his climb of exploration around ramparts, across inner courtyards, up staircases to the tops of other walls. He was so astounded by the inventive genius of the medieval mind—this place was a complex of fortresses guarding the Archbishop’s palace on the crest—that he stopped paying attention to the man who plodded behind him. One idea he did borrow from the man: he put on his Burberry to keep the sharp breeze from freezing him. He took his last photograph from a railed platform that twentieth-century Salzburgers had built to keep tourists from falling over the side of a bastion, and then stood with the wind whipping at his coat as he looked southward over the plain far below to the mountains with their jagged peaks.

“Is it safe up there?” a girl’s voice called. He turned to see her hesitating on the wooden steps (again, courtesy of the twentieth century) that led to his vantage point.

“Safe but cold,” he warned her, holding out his hand to steady her as she reached him. “The view is worth a chill, though. Magnificent.”

She studied his face. “An American?” she asked, breaking into English.

“You always can tell, can you?” And I thought my accent wasn’t so bad, he thought ruefully.

She was looking around her. “I never dare come up here alone,” she admitted, trying to clear her wind-blown hair away from her eyes. She hadn’t much success. Her hair was dark brown with golden lights in the rays of the late afternoon sun, long tendrils escaping from her fingers as she reached to take hold of a railing. “Heights scare me a little. But it is a wonderful view.”

“When you can see it,” he said with a grin. “Perhaps I ought to hold on to you while you keep two hands on that hair.” He gripped her arm lightly while she smoothed her hair back from her temples. But its length and thickness defeated her.

“I give up,” she said. “Would you help edge me off this platform? This is the point where I mustn’t look at my feet or I freeze.”

They retreated down the solidly built steps and stood in the calm of a sheltering wall. She found a comb in her pocket and combed the tangles out of her hair until it fell smoothly to her shoulders. Now he could see her eyes, wide-set and large, dark grey in colour. “That’s better,” he told her approvingly. She smiled, pale-pink lips curving softly, widely. There was a touch of pale-pink, too, over the broad cheekbones, but whether that
was due to the wind or skilful application with a light sure hand, he couldn’t tell. Eyebrows and lashes were enchanting even if the sure hand had been at work again. A short nose and a rounded chin completed a pretty picture. He felt a touch of annoyance with himself, and some sadness too; ten years ago, when he had been twenty-five, he would have just accepted the sum total rather than take a bloody inventory. And then he became amused as he felt somehow that she was taking her own inventory. It couldn’t have been altogether adverse, for she wasn’t saying good-bye, walking on, leaving him to follow at a polite distance. Instead, she was beginning a conversation as she slipped the comb back into the pocket of her coat. It was one of those expensive tweed jobs, fuzzy and soft yet somehow cut with slender shoulders, and its hemline was the shortest he had seen since he had left New York. Her legs, fortunately, were excellent. He liked the white mesh stockings, too, and the flat-heeled shiny black shoes with their silver buckles.

She was saying, “I have been wandering around here making my good-byes. What about you? Is it hello or farewell?”

“Both.”

They had begun walking slowly down a cobbled path. “You mean,” she said in horror, stopping abruptly, so that her heel almost skidded on a worn stone and he had to catch her elbow to let her regain balance, “you mean this is your first and last visit?” She looked down at his hand on her arm. “And thank you. You really are very quick, aren’t you?”

“And tenacious,” he said with a grin, keeping hold of her arm. “I’ll just make sure you get along this road without twisting an ankle. Are you positive this is the right direction, by the way?”

“For what?”

“For a drink at that restaurant. There is one somewhere around here.”

“Near the cable railway,” she told him. She gave him that same warm and charming smile. “And I think a drink would be perfect. We’ll give a toast to a quick return to Salzburg. You do intend to come back, don’t you?”

“I hope so. You sound as if you were a native.”

“I’m from Chicago. I came here last spring. But now—” She sighed quite openly. “Oh well, money does run out. And my father refuses to send any more except for the fare home. Tomorrow I leave for Zürich to visit my grandmother for two or three weeks. Father’s orders.” She laughed then.

“Zürich? I may be there myself for a week or so.”

“But how fantastic!” she said delightedly, and halted abruptly again, almost slipping, letting her weight rest on his arm for a moment.

“And how dutiful of you,” he said with amusement. “Do you always obey your father?”

“It’s economic necessity,” she reminded him severely.

“What about a job? If you like Salzburg so much—”

“Oh, I made some extra money in the summer months. Translator, sort of a guide for special parties, that kind of thing. But the season is over now and jobs are scarce for foreigners. So it’s Zürich for me. At least that gives me two more weeks abroad. Any excuse is a good excuse for travel, don’t you think? But what about you? Are you on holiday or business?”

“Business.” And he remembered the man whose business it had been to follow him. He glanced back, but the path was empty. So were the fortifications. The man had vanished. “The light’s fading,” he said. “We’d better hurry.”

She was somehow amused. “We’ll be all right. Look!” She pointed to the courtyard lined with houses that lay ahead of them. There was a large tree with children playing around it, and lighted windows, and the sound of women’s voices as they worked indoors. “And that’s the main entrance gate around the corner at the other end.”

So people lived up here, he thought. He kept an eye open for the man who had followed him so persistently. He could see only half a dozen men, who looked like guides or caretakers or artisans. She was watching him curiously, as if she had noticed his interest in the people. He said lightly, “I suppose these are the fellows who build all those wooden catwalks and railings? Now
there’s
one who is obviously a tester.” He pointed to a massive figure who was carrying an outsize tankard of beer across the sloping cobblestones. “His job is to jump three times daily on each wooden step so the tourists won’t break their necks.”

“He’s an artist,” she said with a faint giggle. “Some of them live up here, too, you know. There’s an international school of fine arts—I took some classes here last spring.”

“You are full of surprises.”

“Hi, Jan!” she called to the artist, and waved.

“Hallo!” he called back in German. “Don’t forget the dance next week!”

“He’s Polish,” she explained as she walked on.

“Refugee or devoted party member?”

“Refugee.” She disengaged her arm from his.

“If you want to explain to him that you are leaving Salzburg, I’ll wait at the gate.”

“I hate good-byes,” she said curtly. “Besides, artists never notice anyway whether you come to their parties or not. As
long as there’s a crowd, they’re happy.”

Now what did I say to annoy her? he wondered. Or perhaps she would like to be at that party more than she will admit. “Well, what about that toast to Salzburg and a quick return?” he tried.

“Let’s have it in town.” Her voice was back to normal. She glanced at her watch. “Yes, that’s the best idea. It always seems so spooky up here when it gets dark.”

Or she might see more of her artist friends, he thought. And as she said, she hates good-byes. “Anything suits me. Don’t you think we had better start having names? I’m Bill—Bill Mathison.”

She studied him. “Yes, that suits you. And I—I’m Elissa.”

“That suits you completely.” Soft, pretty and romantic, and different. “Elissa what?”

“Lang. Elissa Lang. It’s really Eliza-Evaline, shortened by me aged nine.”

“Your first revolt against the family?”

“And my most successful one. Nothing since has been half so permanent!”

“You haven’t done too badly,” he said teasingly. “The last one brought you six months in Salzburg.” He made a guess at her age and thought of something around the early twenties, although in some ways she seemed older than that—it was difficult nowadays to pin a precise number of years on most women. “So what now? Back to college?”

“I’ve finished with all that,” she said indignantly. “It’s another world.”

“No more picket lines, demonstrations, or LSD parties?”

“You know what? I don’t believe you take me seriously.”

“I wouldn’t mind trying,” he said softly. Then he retreated instinctively, and covered that slip in his emotions by looking
at the view. They had come out of the gateway of the castle on to one of its lower terraces. Dusk was deepening rapidly. The lights in the town at their feet were a handful of diamonds scattered on a dark velvet cushion. On the black curve of river, the reflected gleam from the bridges was rippled by the strong currents. Almost reaching eye level were the peaks of the other hills that rose on either side of the river bank. And far beyond all that—the mountains, ringing the town around.

She studied his face. He is different from what I expected, she thought as she changed her mood to suit his. “Let’s walk down instead of taking the funicular,” she suggested. “It’s always fun to see the domes and towers coming up to meet you.” Why, she thought again in surprise, this man may even be what he says he is. I won’t have to cover my interest in him with pretty prattle about their Excellencies the Prince-Archbishops who held court for centuries in the heart of that fortress while their judges held court above the torture chambers, or about their mistresses, or about all the little footnotes to history which usually make an hour pass easily and safely. I might even relax and enjoy myself. He’s attractive, definitely; a twentieth-century romantic. “And this is an evening for walking, isn’t it?” she added gently. She slipped her arm through his, and they started down the steep road.

“It will have to be a very quick drink,” she said regretfully as they entered a bar-restaurant that lay, tucked into a spare space between two Grimm’s fairy-tale houses, on the narrow street near the base of the castle’s cliffs. She stole a glance at her watch and frowned a little.

“You can’t have dinner with me?” Mathison asked, guessing what was coming, masking his disappointment, looking around for a quiet corner. The place was so small that he hadn’t much choice. Fortunately, the half-dozen customers were grouped before the bar, and the lighting was so artfully dim that they only appeared as a cluster of silhouettes in a haze of cigarette smoke. He pulled off his raincoat and hooked it on a wall. He selected the table farthest from people.

“I’m so sorry, Bill.” She stretched out a hand to touch his as he sat down beside her on a narrow bench against the roughly plastered wall. “It’s my last night in Salzburg. I already promised—Oh, if only I had known we were going to meet—” She paused abruptly. Her voice brightened. “I have an idea. I’ll telephone while you order the drinks. Better stick to Scotch or beer. Avoid the Martinis. The man behind the bar is Italian and he is devoted to vermouth.”

He watched her walk to the telephone near the door. She had her coat around her shoulders, and he had the odd idea that she was perhaps leaving him, that she was going to slip out of his life as quickly as she had stepped into it. But she came back to their table as the drinks were arriving. She was walking slowly, and as she reached him, he saw that the small frown had returned to her brow. It cleared as she became aware he was watching her. She sat down, pushing back the coat from her shoulders, and let him help ease it off. But she looked dejected. “It can’t be as bad as all that,” he said with amusement. “Didn’t your idea work out?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got to keep my appointment tonight—just can’t even be late for it. Sorry.”

“We’ll have dinner in Zürich.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I may have to move. A bankers’ conference is going to take up most of the rooms next week. But what’s your address?”

“My grandmother lives out of town and refuses to have a telephone. But I’ll be in Zürich often enough. I have a friend there who will put me up at her apartment if I stay overnight.”