Above Suspicion (32 page)

“The Nazis’ guts. It is funny that it should be one thing on which most Americans and Britishers can agree wholeheartedly, without any reservations. The average Frenchman hates the Nazis, too; but half, or at least part, of it is due to the fact he is a dangerous neighbour. Now you and I don’t hate the Nazis because they are German. We hate the Germans because they are Nazi. And if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be driving a strange car to God-knows-where into God-knows-what this afternoon. You’d be standing at a street corner shouting ‘
Heil!’
with the rest, and feeling all uplifted and mystic. You like the Myleses, I know, but if the Nazis didn’t curdle you up inside, you wouldn’t be doing all this. In fact, we’ve got to the stage where anyone who opposes the Nazis is worth helping. Isn’t that it?”

Van Cortlandt grinned. “About. I didn’t tell you how I felt when I arrived here? I was going to be the complete neutral observer. My stories were going to be a model of detachment. Can you imagine that? My angle was that the Germans had had a tough time of it. If they only had gotten a square deal… all that hash. It only took me a few weeks to find out that every deal was square if it benefited Germany, and to hell with the rest. Now I don’t mind them looking out for their own rights; we all do. But what got me down is the way no one else has any rights, unless they say so. That’s the rub. They are always in
the right, and the rest of us just misunderstand them. Criticism is just another stab in the back from Jews and Communists. They’ve kidded other people so long now that they’ve started kidding themselves.”

“Perhaps it is because they’ve developed two standards,” suggested Thornley, “one for Germany, one for the others. They really believe that anything which is good for them can’t be evil. That is how they can lie and commit all kinds of treachery. If it is for the benefit of the Fatherland, then it doesn’t seem a lie or a piece of treachery to them: it makes everything moral.”

“But then there are the exceptions.”

“Yes, and they should be thanking God for the exceptions instead of driving them into exile or putting them into concentration camps. If it weren’t for them, after the next war Germany might be blotted from the map.”

Van Cortlandt shook his head. “You can’t destroy a whole nation.”

“Can’t you? Just wait to see how Germany will try it with some of her neighbours. She will give the rest of us a few tips. And it worked with Carthage too. Don’t look so worried, Henry, the exceptions will get Germany her second chance. Or is it a third?”

Van Cortlandt shook his head. “God knows,” he said wearily.

They had circled round Innsbruck to the west. That avoided the main streets, which were crowding up once more. They passed several formations of uniformed young men. It seemed as if they were all marching their way to some meeting place. Neither the American nor the Englishman said anything, but as they passed one set of exhibitionists in goose-stepping precision their eyes met in the mirror above van Cortlandt’s head.

On the road which led to the Berg Isel (the road which led to the Brenner Pass eventually, as van Cortlandt carefully pointed out) three large black cars passed them in quick succession. They were filled with young men sitting uncomfortably erect, their faces white blurs under the uniform caps. Van Cortlandt heard a quick movement behind him, and turned to see Thornley looking through the back window of the car. He was repeating something to himself.

“Yes?” asked van Cortlandt. Thornley was clearly excited.

“One of these cars—that’s it, one of them.”

Van Cortlandt smiled. “Your grammar does your feelings proud,” he said. “What about it, anyway?”

“One of these cars is the same one I saw this afternoon with Frances in it. Don’t you see, Henry, if they have left Dreikirchen it will be all the better for us?”

Van Cortlandt thought over this for some moments.
“If
they left Dreikirchen,” he said. He was probably right, thought Thornley gloomily. And yet pieces of luck both good and bad had the oddest way of turning up. Whichever way you added up your plans, you should always leave a margin on either side for luck.

“Any time now,” said van Cortlandt. He had slackened the speed of the car as they approached the small railway halt; there were a few passengers waiting on the small platform. Richard had said he would be near here. Their eyes anxiously watched the road ahead and the paths which led into the surrounding woods, but it wasn’t until they were round a bend in the
road which hid them from the halt and its inn, and the car had stopped completely to let Thornley get out, that Richard stepped from behind some trees.

“I was beginning to think that we had missed you,” van Cortlandt said, worry sharpening his voice, as the car moved on.

“Sorry,” said Richard. “I forgot to ask you the colour of the car and I wasn’t sure. Couldn’t risk anything. Sorry. How did everything go?”

“According to plan.”

“Good. Now we’ve about five minutes more on this road, and then ten minutes more to the right. I did some map studying while I waited and there seems to be a small road or track of some kind just before we get to the Dreikirchen road. If we follow that track then we can approach the place from the back. If it had been dark we could have risked the Dreikirchen road itself. But we’d better not wait for darkness. We haven’t time.”

Thornley looked at Richard’s white, set face. There was a gauntness about it which worried him.

“Had anything to eat?” he inquired casually. Richard shook his head and then took the slab of chocolate which Thornley handed him. He ate it with his eyes fixed on his watch. He doesn’t know or care what he s eating, thought Thornley; it might be linoleum for all he knows; he’s all shot to pieces.

“Brandy?” he asked.

“We’ll need it later,” Richard said. He was still looking at his watch. Thornley began to guess the kind of time he had been having while he waited for them to arrive. Shouldn’t have left him alone, thought Thornley.

“This is the track,” Richard said, and the car turned from
the Brenner road into a wood. Richard was still looking at his watch. He held up a hand to silence Thornley just as he was about to say something… And then Thornley realised that Richard was timing the distance they had to drive.

“Now,” he said, and the car swung off the track on to the lawn.

“I’ll turn while the going’s good,” van Cortlandt said, and manoeuvred the car until it rested on the grass, hidden from the track by a clump of bushes, its bonnet pointed back towards the Brenner road. Van Cortlandt unscrewed his flask, and handed it to Richard.

“Bob’s right,” he said. “We all need it. I’ve plenty more.”

“Rum ration,” suggested Thornley.

“Any of you got a gun?” van Cortlandt asked.

They shook their heads. Thornley produced a strong-looking clasp-knife and his souvenir torch. Richard had nothing. There might have been the shadow of a smile on the American’s face, but his voice was serious enough.

“Well, I have, so if we get into a tight spot…” He didn’t finish, but tapped his pocket thoughtfully. “Anything else, before we leave the car?”

They waited in the quietness of the trees while van Cortlandt locked the car methodically. When he joined them the three men looked at each other for some moments. Then Richard turned, and led the way up the wooded hillside.

It was a short climb. They paused on the crest, sheltered by the pines. Below them the hill sloped gently to Dreikirchen. They could just see three spires above the last trees.

Thornley pulled out his knife and motioned to them to wait. He disappeared back towards the road they had left, lopping off
a thin branch from every third or fourth pine, as he passed. Van Cortlandt exchanged glances with Richard. The idea was good; the cuts on the trees were white and jagged. When Thornley returned he seemed pleased. He must have found his way back in record time. As they followed Richard down through the trees he used his knife continuously. It slowed up their pace, but now that they were so near their objective there was little they could do but wait until the clear afternoon light had given way to the dusk of the evening—except for spying out the lie of the land. So they went slowly, walking carefully in order to make no noise while Thornley worked silently and unhurriedly. The spires had disappeared as they descended through the wood. Richard, who led the way, hoped that his sense of direction was as adequate as Thornley’s trail blazing. He would soon know, for at last they were reaching the edge of the wood. A steep bank and a garden were all that separated them from Dreikirchen. Behind the cover of the trees overshadowing the bank they lay and watched.

The fathers who had built the community had had an eye for balance and neatness. Into a curve of the wooded hillside, which had formed both a shelter and a background, they had built their miniature castle with its large chapel. Two smaller chapels flanked the main buildings on either side, standing at a respectful distance, and round these were grouped a few cottages. The effect was that of a semicircle which paralleled the curve in the hill, so that the small castle, as the centre of the crescent, dominated everything.

From where they lay they could see the road which came from the south. Straight, broad and white, it approached the centre of the curve of buildings in a dramatic sweep. That was
something, Richard thought, which the founding fathers had never even imagined. He remembered the map on which this road had been marked only as roughly as the track which they had followed. Anni had been right. Dreikirchen had changed.

In front of them was the garden which lay behind the right-hand chapel. It was the kitchen garden with its rows of neatly planted vegetables protected on one side by a hedge of red-currant bushes, which stretched from the bank almost to the chapel itself. On its other side, the side which adjoined the garden of the castle and the large chapel, there was a row of fruit trees. Pear-trees, Richard thought. They were obviously intended as a screen, so that anyone walking in the castle’s flower garden wouldn’t have his eye offended by the patchwork quilt of vegetables. They served the purpose well enough, for it was difficult for the three men to see the flower garden. It would be better to move behind the castle itself, and from there they would be able to see not only the flower garden but whatever lay behind the third chapel. For the curve of the buildings now hid that completely.

“Mark this spot,” whispered Richard. The others nodded, and looked at the shapes of the trees and bushes, at the outcrop of rock behind which they lay. It wasn’t easy, but it had to be remembered. If they got safely away from the castle and were in a hurry as they probably would be, then they would have to depend on being able to find the blazed trail quickly. Without the trail they might miss the car. It was unpleasant to imagine what it would be like to be searching desperately for the car on an unknown road with pursuers behind them. The best thing to remember, thought Richard grimly, was the outcrop of rock which lay about twenty feet away from the red-currant bushes. If they could reach the
red-currant bushes, he added to that thought.

Under the cover of the trees they worked their way carefully along to the back of the castle. It gave them the view they had hoped for. It was easy to see that an approach would be more difficult through the castle garden, planted with rose-trees and small flowering shrubs, than it would be through the kitchen garden. There was much less cover here. As for the ground behind the third chapel, it was quite hopeless. It consisted of tennis courts and a stretch of grass. There was no sign of life from the cottages on this side of the castle, either…no movement, no sounds of men’s voices. If it hadn’t been for the curl of smoke which came from the back of the castle, where a low, narrow building had been added as an afterthought, they might have been looking at a picture in a German calendar.

Richard motioned the others to go farther back into the wood. They reached some bushes, and sat down behind them. They talked in whispers.

“I can do the scouting,” said Thornley. “I’ve done some deer stalking. This should be easy.” He drew his diary from a pocket, and began making a rough diagram of the buildings and gardens. Richard and van Cortlandt exchanged glances. Thornley was obviously the best man for the job. Richard remembered the way he had climbed the balcony of the Pertisau house.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll watch from the top of the bank.”

“This is how I’ll go,” Thornley said. He traced a line on the diagram with his pencil. He would use the red-currant bushes and reach the right-hand chapel. From there he would follow the path in the kitchen garden which seemed to enter a kind of shrubbery as it reached the line of pear-trees. That would bring
him to the right wing of the castle, to the back of it where the smoke came from. Then he could perhaps find out who was in that part of the building, or a possible back entrance to the place, or whatever was to be seen or heard.

“All right,” Richard said again.

Thornley didn’t waste any time. He was already moving quietly down through the trees, in a slantwise direction which would bring him out of the wood near the red-currant hedge.

Van Cortlandt abandoned the plans he had been making while they had watched the castle. He would have liked something with more action than this—one of them to have made some kind of distraction, while the other two rushed the place. The trouble was that they had no weapons worth a nickel, not compared with the arsenal they might expect to face. Still, there seemed to be no one there; perhaps just a cook in the kitchen where the smoke came from, and Frances in a locked room upstairs with someone left to guard her while the others held their jamboree in Innsbruck or searched for Richard. All Thornley’s caution would then be a waste of good time. He had the gloomy afterthought that Frances might not be there after all; that had been worrying him ever since they left Innsbruck. In that case, they would have to imitate old Barney Finnigan…

They had traced their steps to the edge of the wood again, and had lain behind a fallen tree which would protect them from being seen. They themselves could see through its skeleton roots. As soon as Thornley reached the pear-trees and followed the path towards the shrubbery at the side of the house, they could watch him. If anything went wrong before he reached the trees, then they would have to depend on their hearing. Richard raised himself to listen, but van Cortlandt
shook his head. He was right; there was nothing.