The Age of Treachery (20 page)

He got a lift into the city, found his way to the picturesque old Nyhavn district docks, had a breakfast of pickled herrings, and caught a ferry to Norway.

A century ago Oslo had burned down and the Norwegians, then poor and lacking in self-confidence, had unwisely hired the most pompous architects in Germany to mastermind the rebuilding of their capital. The result was street after street of heavy-browed Victorian edifices which would have justified the title of the ugliest capital in northern Europe had it not been for a backdrop of fir-covered hills and a fjord full of little islands that reminded Forrester irresistibly – as he walked along the Rådhusgata from the ferry terminal – of Christmas shop-window displays.

Not surprisingly, the inhabitants left the city whenever they had the chance, packed up their skis and headed off into the forests, leaving the streets deserted.

To his right, on a rocky outcrop overlooking the fjord, he could see the copper spires of the Akershus, the sturdy castle that had been the headquarters of the Wehrmacht during the occupation. From there he turned onto Karl Johans gate, the busiest street in Norway, with the royal palace – until recently the home of the Nazi governor – behind him, and the national theatre to his right, all looking much the worse for wear after years of neglect under the occupiers.

And then there was the university, with its magnificent Greek portico and row upon row of windows – behind one of which lurked Arne Haraldson.

Forrester contemplated it for a long moment, and wondered whether to confront him in his lair. But he was almost certain by now that Haraldson had not killed David Lyall; that he had been his dupe, lured to London by promises of occult revelations Lyall may or may not have been able to sustain. Haraldson had returned, Forrester was certain, to find the knowledge he had been promised, but Forrester knew in his gut he had not found it – that the answer to the mystery lay elsewhere.

And now he thought he knew where. He turned away from the university and asked directions to the Central Post Office.

The Post Office proved to be as battered and forlorn as the rest of Oslo, and when he asked for the telephone number he was seeking he was told that services to that part of the country had not yet been restored.

This was much as he had expected, so he left the building and returned to Karl Johans gate in search of a bookshop. He was not surprised that so many were doing business; the Norwegians were the most avid readers in Europe, and he soon found the map and guidebook he was looking for – though they had been published well before the war.

So equipped, he walked to Oslo Central Station and sat down in a nearby café to study the books he had bought, piecing together what Ollie Sepalla had told him of Lyall’s movements after his abortive wartime mission, to identify first the home of the aristocrat with whom Lyall had taken shelter – the Grevinne Sophie Arnfeldt-Laurvig of Bjornsfjord and then the nearest railway station.

With the aid of a man in the ticket office he found the train he needed, and an hour later he was seated in a railway carriage breathing in the distinctive smell of Norwegian coal as the train headed north through a landscape of endless pine trees.

Sitting opposite him was a man he knew he’d seen before somewhere. A stranger who took covert glances at him during the first half hour of their journey, and then suddenly shook his fist under his nose. “False!” he said in English. “False fist!”

Forrester gaped for a moment, and then remembered. “You were rotten,” he said. “And your name was Thor… something. I remember because I sometimes thought you were using Thor’s hammer on the keys.”

The man laughed. “I was bored,” he said, “bored out of my mind – but it was not your fault: you were a good teacher.”

Forrester could smell the peculiar ozone odour of the little shed in Hertfordshire where, for several months in 1942, he had taught would-be commandos how to disguise the signature of their radio transmissions for when they were parachuted into occupied Europe. Among them, a group of tall, lanky Norwegian exiles; including, it seemed, this man.

“They forgot us, you know,” said the Norwegian. “Promised to send us back to fight, managed to lose us in the system. I spent three
years
training and three
months
actually fighting.”

“I wouldn’t complain about that
too
bitterly if I were you,” said Forrester.

“You know, when I wanted to get into the army they didn’t need me,” said Thor. “But the minute I wanted to get out I was suddenly indispensable. Couldn’t get permission to go home. You know what I did? I walked into army headquarters, found an empty office and typed out my own discharge papers.”

Forrester grinned. He remembered how the passionate young Norwegian had brought a sense of vast possibilities with him to that cramped, uncomfortable little communications hut, a sense of wonder about the world most people never experienced.

“I’m beginning to remember,” he said. “Didn’t you live on a desert island before the war, in the Pacific or somewhere?”

“Good memory. Yes, I did. It was paradise. My wife and I made a hut out of plaited bamboo and ate breadfruit and coconuts and bananas. Every day we swam in a rock pool. It was like the Garden of Eden.”

“You felt as if you were part of nature,” said Forrester. “That was how you described it.”

“Exactly,” said the Norwegian. “If people fight their environment, they can win every battle except the last, and then there will be an end to them. On that island nature wasn’t there for us, it
was
us.”

“You plan to go back,” asked Forrester, “now the madness is over?”

The man glanced into the train’s corridor, as if making sure they weren’t being overheard. “I discovered a great mystery on that island,” he said. “And I must solve it.”

“What kind of mystery?”

“It concerned a stone fish. You see, one day a native, a good friend of mine, took us far inland, to a rocky promontory, and there it was: over six feet long, head, tail, fins and all, outlined in the rock. The first petroglyph ever discovered on that island. It was covered in little hollows like cups, and sun symbols. I cut away the vegetation and as more and more of these petroglyphs appeared, the man who had brought us there said ‘
Tiki, Menui Tiki
’.”

Thor grinned triumphantly at him and Forrester knew his cue. “Which meant?”

“Gods, many gods. Those carvings seemed to stare at us, with huge eyes.”

“Must have been quite a moment.”

“It was – and then I saw a petroglyph that sent a shiver down my spine. It was a ship shaped like a crescent moon. Curved hull, high bow and stern, a double mast and rows of oars, completely different from the rafts these people used. You know what it reminded me of? The vessels used in ancient Peru.”

“Most people think Polynesia was settled from Asia.”

“I think most people are wrong. I believe it was South America, and I intend to prove it.”

“How?”

Thor leant forward and spoke softly, but his eyes glittered as he spoke. “I intend to build a raft out of Peruvian balsa wood and sail it across the Pacific to Polynesia.”

Forrester looked at him with respect. “Quite an undertaking,” he said.

Thor smiled conspiratorially. “I think you and I have both become accustomed to risky operations, Captain Forrester. It is Captain Forrester, isn’t it?”

“It is,” said Forrester. “Remind me of your second name, so I can say ‘I knew him when you’re famous.”

“Heyerdahl,” said the Norwegian. “Thor Heyerdahl.”

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the comforting clatter of the train on the tracks, and then Heyerdahl asked him what he was doing in Norway, and Forrester told him. Heyerdahl raised an eyebrow when Forrester mentioned the countess. “I met her once, before the war.”

“And?”

“She was a fine-looking woman,” said Heyerdahl. “But very haughty. Her husband the count was then a senior army officer.”

“And now?”

“Now he is dead,” said Heyerdahl, “but I imagine the countess is still haughty.”

Forrester laughed. “Can you tell me anything else about them?”

Heyerdahl’s face darkened. “Only gossip,” he said.

“Gossip will do,” said Forrester. “I’m clutching at straws here.”

Heyerdahl considered. “The rumour was that the count drank heavily,” he said at last. “And did not keep good company.”

“What does that mean?”

“There was a man called Alistair.”

“Alistair?”

“He was some kind of magician. He had a sinister name: Crawling or something.”

“Do you mean Crowley, Aleister Crowley?”

“Yes! That’s it.”

“The wickedest man in the world. Or so he claimed.”

“I believe he dabbled in the occult.”

“More than dabbled – he swam in it. He was accused of the most appalling depravities, including human sacrifice. He called himself the Great Beast. And the count associated with
him
?”

“So they said. I don’t know if it’s true.”

Suddenly all Haraldson’s hints and prevarications came back to him. Had Lyall’s claims about the secrets contained in the manuscript been based on something that had taken place while he was hiding on the count’s estate?

“Was the countess part of these goings on?”

“I can’t tell you,” said Heyerdahl. “Though they say she is a very strong-minded woman.”

Forrester stared at him as the train lurched over a high bridge crossing an abyss. He looked down into its snowy depths, and felt a shiver of unease.

They were winding west through Telemark, where the Norwegian and Allied commandos, some time after Lyall’s aborted mission, had skied in to blow up the German heavy water plant. They had succeeded, at great cost, and effectively prevented Hitler from getting the atomic bomb: one of the major victories of the war. Forrester looked at the slate-grey river winding through the snow, seeing that night in his mind’s eye as the flames devouring the plant reflected off the snow and the commandos sped away into the darkness.

He dozed then, and when he awoke Heyerdahl had gone and the train was pulling into a tiny railway station with elaborately carved wooden canopies like something out of Tolstoy’s Russia. He disembarked hurriedly, and as the train vanished around a bend in the track and the noise of the engine died away, the silence enveloped him like a blanket.

He took a long breath of chilled, clean air and raised his head to look around the valley. Thick pine forests, broken only by tiny farm clearings, marched up into the mountains. It was mid afternoon, and already the sun cast a dusty rose-coloured light on the peaks.

From the station he took an ancient, hearse-like taxi up the road towards the head of the valley, which finally turned into a private drive leading into deep forest. Snow slipped from the pine trees on either side, falling in clumps as the vehicle finally approached not the castle of Forrester’s imaginings but a collection of log buildings clustered around a sloping lawn. There was a flagpole in the middle of the lawn and a barn on either side, and it was a moment before Forrester took in their sheer size: each must have been more than a hundred feet long.

The taxi pulled up in front of the main house, a simple three-storey wooden building with two wings joined by a balcony and steeply pitched roofs. Forrester got out, paid his fare and indicated that the cab driver was dismissed. The man looked at him doubtfully, but Forrester was firm. Without any obvious means of transport back to the station, it would be harder for Countess Arnfeldt-Laurvig to send him on his way.

As the taxi vanished down the drive, Forrester pulled at a wrought-iron chain in the massive weathered door. After a long moment a bell tolled somewhere far off in the house, and when the door opened he found himself facing a dignified old woman dressed in traditional costume. Guessing she was the housekeeper, he read out his carefully rehearsed Norwegian words of introduction. She stared at him for a long moment before vanishing into the house. As Forrester stood on the massive stone steps he felt the silence again, stretching away to eternity.

Finally the housekeeper came back and beckoned him to follow her through a tall panelled hall with a vast Turkish rug covering the floorboards and medieval images of angels and demons on the massive roof beams. In the middle of the hall there was an ancient sleigh. Everything was spotless, and smelt strongly of furniture polish.

The housekeeper said something he did not catch before leaving him at the door to a small dimly lit drawing room where the walls were hung with dark landscape paintings. In the far corner of the room was an armchair and it was a moment or two before Forrester realised there was someone in it. Then the occupant raised her head. Her hair was blonde, but faded a little; she was about five years older than Forrester.

“Grevinne Arnfeldt-Laurvig? My name is Duncan Forrester. From Oxford.”

“Oxford?” she said, puzzled, as if he’d said Zanzibar.

“Yes. I hope you’ll forgive me for arriving unannounced. I tried to telephone from Oslo but they said there was no service.”

She looked at him steadily, as if the pieces of a jigsaw were falling into place.

“You are a friend of Captain Lyall,” she said, and it was a statement, not a question. Her English was formal, as if remembered from a long-ago governess, and lightly accented. Before he could reply, she rose to her feet. “Something has happened to him. You have come to tell me.”

“Yes,” said Forrester. He came towards her. “I’m afraid he’s been killed.” Her eyes did not leave his. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this.”

She reached for the tall chair-back to steady herself, and then turned and walked through a door on the far side of the room. Her back was very straight; she held her head high. Forrester hesitated for a second, and then followed her. The afternoon light was already leaking away and for a moment it seemed as if she had vanished.

But when he followed her into the next room he stopped, astonished. The front of the manor house had been hemmed in by trees beyond the lawn. But the windows of this room gave onto the fjord that dropped away behind, a deep, dramatic fissure in the earth where a vast arm of the sea reached up into the land. Bjornsfjord. Of course, this must be Bjornsfjord.