The Age of Treachery (13 page)

“Gilly,” said Forrester, feeling as though the floor was tilting away beneath him. She smiled again at him, a little wistfully.

“It’s been a long time,” she said, “since you were at our house.”

“Yes,” said Forrester and then for what seemed to him like an eternity, could not speak. At last he said: “I did come to see your parents, actually, on my next leave after… But you were away at school.” He took her hand, and suddenly found it hard to speak. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

The girl looked away. “Yes, it was pretty awful,” she said. “I’m not sure Mummy and Daddy have ever got over it, really.” She met his eyes again. “I try to fill the gap, but it’s no use.”

“You look so like her,” he said.

“So they say,” she replied. “Lot to live up to.”

“No,” said Forrester. “That’s not the way to think about it. You’ve just got to be you.”

“Thank you,” she said. There was a pause. Then she said: “You must miss her.”

“I do,” said Forrester. And could not continue.

“Listen, why don’t you come down to Cranbourne some time? I know Mummy and Daddy would be glad to see you again.”

“I’d have thought I brought back some painful memories.”

“But some good ones too,” said the girl. “And we don’t want her to just… vanish. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” said Forrester.

“Then you’ll come?”

“Yes, I’ll come,” he said. She smiled as if he’d just given her a great gift.

“That’s wonderful, thank you.” Forrester watched her disappear into the crowd, as if he was watching Barbara that last time at Waterloo Station.

Then there was a hand on his arm. “Captain F as I live and breathe!” said a voice from six inches above his head, and Forrester looked up to see Major Archibald MacLean. The red hair was tinged with grey now, but the jutting cheekbones still stood out like the rocks of some highland crag.

“MacLean!” said Forrester, with genuine pleasure. “What are you doing here?”

“Picking up gossip,” said MacLean. “And women, when I can get them. That was a nice wee piece giving you the glad eye there.”

“Barbara Lytton’s sister.”

“Ah,” said MacLean, his voice softening. He knew the story.

“Bit of a shock seeing her, actually,” said Forrester.

“It would be,” said MacLean, and taking Forrester’s empty glass, placed it on the tray carried by a passing waiter, took a fresh one and handed it to Forrester before guiding him into a less crowded part of the room.

“I gather you’ve been making enquiries about Peter Dorfmann,” he said.

“How did you know that?”

“You don’t imagine anything you tell Ian Fleming stays private for very long, do you? That man is incapable of keeping anything to himself for more than five minutes. But it’s good that he told me, because it seems to me we might be able to give each other a wee bit of help.”

“How do you mean? What have you got to do with Dorfmann?”

“I’m at the War Ministry,” he said. “Keeping an eye on the Control Commission.”

Forrester looked at him in surprise. “Running Germany?”

“Well, trying to make sense out of the shambles,” said MacLean. “And as I think you know Dorfmann is one of the laddies the Allies have decided to raise to great heights. When I say ‘the Allies’ I mean the Americans, of course.”

“Ah.”

“And you know how much reliance I tend to place on their judgment.”

“You were always prejudiced.”

“I was. I am. As far as I’m concerned all they bring to international politics is naivety and apple pie. Good souls, most of them. But not very canny, you know? Anyway I personally think we could be letting ourselves in for a lot of trouble if we let Herr Dorfmann loose on the new Germany.”

“To be honest his politics don’t particularly concern me. The reason I’m interested in him is because he was there the night David Lyall was killed. Have you heard about that?”

“I have, oddly enough.”

“Well I want to know if Dorfmann had anything to do with it.”

“So perhaps our interests run together.”

“In what way?”

“I’d like to know more about him too.”

“Well, if you’re involved with the Allied Control Commission you’re in the perfect position to find out anything you want, aren’t you?” said Forrester. “I mean, the whole country’s at your feet.”

“I’m not in as good a position as you’d imagine,” said MacLean. “The Yanks have given Dorfmann a clean bill of health and it would be very undiplomatic right now for me or any of our chaps to go second-guessing them. You, on the other hand, trying to get your friend off a murder charge, have a perfectly good non-official motivation for digging around in Dorfmann’s past. If I get you over there would you be up for spending a day or two asking around?”

“Has he gone back already?”

“This morning.”

Forrester shook his head with rueful admiration.

“Nothing ever changes, does it?” he said wryly. “How many times during the war did you take me aside in some bar and say there was a wee job it would be a great favour to you if I could do, and there was no question but that the whole thing would be wrapped up before the weekend? And forty-eight hours later I’d find myself pounding through some pine forest with a Jäger battalion on my tail?”

“Plenty of times,” said MacLean, “and you loved every minute of it.”

“You poor deluded fool!”

“And you were very good at it, Duncan, one of the best, if not
the
best,” said MacLean, “and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Forrester remembered how skilfully MacLean had been able to deploy tiny drops of flattery to make the wheels of his complex machines turn.

“But this isn’t anything like that,” he went on reassuringly, “it’s a complete doddle, just a day or two chatting to people about some obscure academic. And there’ll be nobody after you – after all, we won the war, and as you say, we’re in charge. And I’ll get you a book of chits; you can get pretty much anything for the right bit of paper in Germany these days, you know.”

“Why do I find your words strangely un-reassuring?” asked Forrester.

“Because you haven’t finished that drink, Duncan,” said MacLean. “Get it down you and you’ll see just how lucky you were to have run into me again.”

Forrester did as he was told. The champagne was good and for a moment he let himself enjoy the feeling of the alcohol going to his head.

“I can’t go till the weekend,” he said. “I’ve got tutorials to give and essays to mark.”

“I’ll have you fixed up with a flight from Northolt tomorrow night,” said MacLean decisively. “And what’s more – this time it’ll actually be able to put you down on the ground in Germany.”

Forrester finished his drink.

“I won’t have to jump out with a parachute?”

“No,” said MacLean. “Not unless you really want to.”

Forrester had no idea how long the journey back to Oxford took, because he was in a world when Barbara had still been alive and their future still lay before them. As the train rattled through the snow-bound countryside he walked with her again in the woods above Cranbourne, the sunlight slanting down between the leaves onto their faces. He had been alive then; he wasn’t sure he had really been since.

When the train finally reached Oxford and he trudged unseeing across the greasy wood of the platform and out into the grubby snow of the streets, a hundred yards from Barnard, Harrison pounced on him in a state of high excitement.

“You up for a meeting?” he asked.

“With whom?”

“Ollie Sepalla – one of the Norwegians from the Eagle and Child. Seems he knows what happened to Lyall when his mission went up the spout.”

“And he’ll talk about it?”

“He’s dead keen to. He’ll come to your rooms if you like.”

“Wheel him in,” said Forrester.

Half an hour later Ollie Sepalla was sitting beside Forrester’s tiny fire looking at him with large, earnest eyes. In his early twenties, fresh-faced, eager, he seemed to epitomise uncomplicated honesty. “This was happening near my village,” he said. “The commandos were coming ashore in our fjord.”

“What had they come to do?” asked Forrester.

“You know about heavy water?” asked Sepalla.

“I do,” said Forrester. “It’s water with a higher proportion of some isotope than normal, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Sepalla. “The Germans believed that they could use it to control the fission process and make an atomic bomb.”

“They were making the heavy water up in Norway, weren’t they?” said Harrison. “Didn’t our chaps go in and blow up the plant?”

“Several expeditions tried,” said Sepalla, “and Captain Lyall’s was one of them. But they were betrayed before they could do anything at all.”

“Betrayed by whom?”

“By a farmer. It was unfortunate: they had been told to contact a certain farmer near my village, Lenvik, and they went to that farm, but it had a new owner – the first man, the original contact, had died. They told the new man where they had hidden their boat and he promised to come to them that night. But instead he called the police, who told the Germans.”

“What happened?”

“The Germans sent a gunboat into the fjord, trapping them. Captain Lyall and the other commandos fired at the gunboat and then when it was clear they could not escape tried to ram it. The Germans fired every gun they had and there was a great explosion on the British boat. The water was full of bodies and the Germans believed that everyone was killed.”

“But Lyall survived?” said Forrester.

“There are some small islands in the fjord,” said Sepalla. “Apparently Captain Lyall reached one of those islands – it was just a rock really – and stayed on the edge of it, keeping himself mainly underwater, until the Germans gave up searching and went away. That night he swam from the island to the village.”

“I’m surprised the Germans gave up the search so easily,” said Forrester, who knew something of the thoroughness of German occupation forces.

“Their boat was damaged and had to return to their base,” said Sepalla. “Garrison troops were sent up by road, but it was a few hours before they arrived. It was during that time Captain Lyall arrived at our village.”

“Where there would have been tremendous danger for anyone sheltering him,” said Forrester.

“Yes, it was a risk, although at the time none of us knew that the farmer was a collaborator – that only came out afterwards. But anyway, my people got Lyall out of the village and into the countryside as fast as possible. When the Germans arrived and searched the houses he was gone and there was no sign he had been there.”

“Where did he go?”

“His plan was to get over the mountains into Sweden,” said Sepalla. “He could ski and we gave him some equipment and directions to a shepherd’s house some distance away. Captain Lyall stayed with him for a few hours, and then set off for the mountains on his skis. In fact he set off just in time: the Germans searched the shepherd’s house only hours after he had left – but luckily the shepherd had removed all traces of his visitor.”

“And Lyall had a straight run to Sweden?”

“No,” said Sepalla. “This we did not know for a very long time, but on his way up into the mountains he was caught in a storm.”

Harrison and Forrester looked at each other. It was all too easy to picture the scene.

“He lost his skis and became snowblind. He wandered for a very long time before he was found near Bjornsfjord.”

“Found by whom?”

“The Grevinne Sophie Arnfeldt-Laurvig,” said Ollie Sepalla.

“Could you spell that?” asked Harrison, and as he wrote the name down Sepalla explained.

“There are not so many nobles in Norway,” he said. “Most of them disappeared in the male line during the sixteenth century. But there are still many who descend in the female line, and the Grevinne is one of them. I think the title is like your ‘countess’.”

Harrison was clearly taken by the romance of it all. “Did she have a castle?”

“Well, a fortified dwelling overlooking Bjornsfjord. The family is very ancient.”

“And this countess sheltered Lyall till he could get away?”

“She did.”

“Did the Germans ever find out?”

“I do not believe so.”

“And she survived the war?”

“As far as I know, she is still there.”

There was silence in the room for a moment as Forrester and Harrison digested the information.

“Listen,” said Forrester. “You know we’re trying to find out if anyone other than Dr. Clark might have been responsible for Lyall’s murder. Is it possible that any of the Scandinavian students here in Oxford might have had some motivation to do away with him, perhaps stemming from this betrayal? Perhaps trying to cover it up?”

Sepalla shrugged. “That I cannot say, but I think it not so likely. Within a few months it was discovered that the farmer had told the Germans about the commandos, and he is now in jail. I am proud of what my family did – it was my father who gave Captain Lyall the skis he used to escape. None of the other students here come from that part of Norway so they couldn’t have had anything to do with that betrayal.”

Forrester looked thoughtfully at Sepalla and decided he was telling the truth. Indeed, if he had had anything to hide, there was no reason for him to have come forward like this at all; he would have just kept quiet. Then another question occurred to him.

“I gather Lyall discussed a manuscript with you. Something with Old Norse words in it. What did he tell you about it?”

“He said he had seen it, during the war,” replied Sepalla. “He remembered some of it and was curious about certain words.”

“He didn’t show it to you, then?”

“No.”

“Did he say where he’d seen it?”

“No,” said Sepalla.

“Could it have been at the Grevinne’s?”

“It is possible. He certainly did not see it in our village and I am sure the shepherd who sheltered him had no medieval manuscripts – he was a very simple man.”

“Did he seem fearful about this manuscript in any way? As if someone might be after it?”

“No,” said Sepalla. “He was just curious about some of the old-fashioned words it contained.”