The Dragonfly Pool (26 page)

“Certainly we want him alive,” snapped Stiefelbreich. “Unless . . .” He walked over to the window and stood looking out. “He mustn't get across the Channel,” he said. “But yes, if possible, we want him alive.”

Left alone again, Stiefelbreich sent a message to the commandant at Colditz.

“Expect prisoner hourly. Inform time of arrival,” it said, and it was signed with his code name, which was Iron Fist. It was a good name, thought Stiefelbreich; he had chosen it himself.

T
he train was traveling more slowly now. The stops grew more frequent; convoys of army trucks passed on the road. The time for Bergania to be “protected” by the brave soldiers of the German Reich was coming very close.

In their compartment the children waited anxiously. The ordeal that faced them was not far away now. At the border with Switzerland there was a checkpoint where passports and permits were examined. The Deldertonians were traveling on a group passport. It contained photographs of Matteo and Magda; the rest were mentioned only by name: four girls, four boys . . .

Only now there were four girls and five boys. Somehow they would have to lose a boy or confuse the customs officials and persuade them that the numbers were right.

As the train reached the beginning of the Altheimer Pass, which crossed the last mountain range into Switzerland, it stopped in a final sort of way and the guard came down the corridor and said everyone was to get out. The rest of the journey was to be completed by bus.

Everyone grabbed their belongings and piled out of the train. At the other end of the platform, keeping her back to them, they saw the Countess Frederica standing with the other first-class passengers.

They waited for nearly an hour and then three buses appeared labeled ZURICH. The first-class passengers were led to one of them, the children scrambled into the others and they set off.

The pass was dramatically beautiful; the bus climbed and snaked and climbed again. The land below them was neutral and safe as it had been for centuries. Switzerland had kept out of the last war; it had given sanctuary to thousands of refugees in the centuries that had gone by. It wasn't just chocolate and cuckoo clocks and cheese that the Swiss were famous for, but safety and peace.

Then as they approached the top of the pass the buses drew into a lay-by and stopped. The drivers got out and stretched and lit cigarettes. They seemed to be waiting for orders.

Inside the bus, Matteo suddenly spoke. “Out,” he said. “All the Deldertonians out. Quick.”

The children stood up. This was how their biology lessons began—with Matteo ordering them out. Matteo strung his binoculars around his neck and said a few words to the driver, who shrugged and turned back to his colleagues. Then he turned to the children.

“We're going up the path to that rocky ledge. No one must make a sound.”

“What is it?” whispered Barney.

“Probably nothing,” said Matteo below his breath, “but possibly—just possibly—one of the rarest mammals in Europe: the Berganian mountain cat.”

The wind at this height was piercing; the quartz in the rock sparkled; the sun beat down. Tally was completely bewildered. Was this part of the prince's escape or was it a biology lesson?

It was a biology lesson. Nobody was allowed to talk, anyone not picking up their feet was glared at, and strangely, all of them, in spite of what they had gone through, were focused on one thing and one thing only: the snow leopard of the Alps, the Berganian mountain cat. Matteo had described it. Fur pale as honey, black tufted ears like a lynx . . . a predator that could leap a hundred meters down on to its prey . . .

They climbed until the buses below them had turned into toys. Tally and Julia tried to keep Karil between them—shielding him had become a habit—but the boy moved at speed. Even in his exhausted state he knew exactly where to put his feet; the mountains were his home—and when Augusta stumbled it was he who steadied her.

They saw marmots and goats and an ibex—and found the nest of a kestrel from which the young had just flown—but they did not see a Berganian mountain cat.

They had reached the top of the pass now with a clear view of the valley they had driven through. Matteo, who had been raking the mountainside with his binoculars, suddenly became very still and they all froze, trained as they had been not to interrupt his moments of concentration. But whatever Matteo had seen it was not something he meant to show them, and down below they could see the tiny figure of their driver waving his arms and heard the tooting of horns.

As they ran down the hill Karil stopped for a moment and bent down to pick up something from the path. Not a valuable stone or a rare plant . . . just an ordinary pebble of Berganian quartz.

“Is it to remind you?” asked Tally.

“I shan't need reminding,” said Karil.

It was not until they were back in the bus and had been driving for several kilometers that Barney spoke.

“How is it you never mentioned the Berganian mountain cat to us all the time we were there? Or before we went? And how come it's not mentioned anywhere in the guidebooks if it's so famous?”

Matteo did not answer. When they were safely over the border he would explain, but to confess now that the noble and rare animal had come out of his own head would be to explain why he had invented it, and he was not ready for that. He had needed a chance to reconnoiter and what he had seen through his binoculars had relieved his mind. The road behind them had been clear; there was no sign of a black Mercedes of the kind that the Germans had brought to Bergania. He would never relax his vigilance, but so far at least there was nobody on their tail.

The buses stopped at the checkpoint and everyone scrambled out. They had expected to go all the way to Zurich in the same transport but now there was a change of plan again. The buses were required by the army in Bergania, so they would travel on in charabancs provided by the Swiss on the other side of the border post.

“So for goodness sake make sure you have all your belongings,” the teachers instructed their charges. “We can't go back once we're through.”

The children grabbed their bags and books and scarves and the souvenirs they had bought in the market and made their way to the customs shed. It was a small building, not accustomed to receiving hordes of people, and the officials manning the three gates looked startled at the mass of children rushing in.

This was the last chance that all the different groups would have to say good-bye properly; after that they would be driven to different destinations: some to trains going west or north, some to bus stations for the journey south.

And it was the last chance for the children who had danced the prince down from the hill to give their help.

The first-class passengers were allowed through straightaway, and Countess Frederica marched off with her ramrod back and got on to the waiting bus. Then came the folk dancers.

The Deldertonians were by Gate 2. Magda and Matteo stood in front, the rest bunched behind them. Matteo showed his group passport. The official counted the children.

“It says here, four boys and four girls. You only have three boys,” he said in his strong Swiss German dialect.

Magda looked around. There were black rings under her eyes from thinking about Schopenhauer in the night and she blinked at the customs official like a troubled owl.

“Oh dear,” she said. “We have lost a boy. Tally, see if you can find him.”

Tally came back with Barney and Karil.

“Here they are,” she said.

“That is two boys,” said the customs official. “Which one is with you?”

Magda pointed to Karil. “This one,” she said. “Look, here is his name.” And she pointed to Tod's name on the list.

One of the Swedish boys now came running up and took Barney's arm.

“Hurry up, Lars,” he said in his own language. “We're just about to go through.”

Barney went with him, but now there was a fuss at Gate 3, where there were too many Yugoslavs. Two of the boys from Italy had got into the wrong queue.

The teachers were getting rattled.

“Keep still,” they shouted. “Stand by your group.”

But the children did not stand still. Verity broke away and rushed at Lorenzo, throwing her arms around him. Two French girls came hurrying up to Tally, waving address books. A Spanish girl started to cry noisily and abandoned her group to hug a girl from Norway.

The Swedish boy who had fetched Barney away called, “Lars! Where are you, Lars? Come over here,” but “Lars” was nowhere to be seen.

The Italians now had too many children whereas the Dutch had too few, and still the children swirled about and merged and parted while the harassed customs officials counted and recounted.

The Deldertonians, by Gate 2, at least had the right number—four boys, four girls.

“All right, you can go through,” said the man in charge of the gate. He lifted the barrier and they rushed out and climbed into the nearest of the waiting charabancs.

One by one the children in the other groups gathered themselves together and passed through into Switzerland.

The customs officials wiped their brows and closed the gates. It was the end of their shift and they were going for a beer.

And at that moment a boy with long hair and desperately untidy clothes came running into the shed from the Berganian side.

“Wait!” he called. “Wait for me! Don't close the gates. I had to go back to the bus—I left my camera.”

He held out a Brownie box camera, and the customs men glared at him.

“Who do you belong to?” they asked.

Barney, disheveled and distraught, said, “I'm British. I come from England. Look, I belong to those people over there—they're waiting for me. Please let me through. His face puckered up; he looked as though he was going to cry.

The men muttered together. “I counted the British,” said one.

“You can't have done.”

The men conferred. Should they call everybody back and count them again?

From the buses waiting to depart came the tooting of a horn, and now a man leaned out of the nearest one and yelled angrily.

“What do you think you're up to, Barney?” Matteo sounded like a public schoolmaster of the sternest sort. “Get over here at once. I told you you couldn't go back to the buses. You're holding everybody up.”

The customs men gave up. They opened the gate.

“Yes, sir, I'm coming, sir,” called Barney and scrambled on to the bus. It was the first time he had called anybody sir and he thought it sounded rather good.

“We did it,” said Tally exultantly when they had been driving for some time, and they patted Barney on the back, because it had been his idea to get left behind and confuse the guards still further.

“Everybody did it,” said Barney.

“Yes.”

Karil was silent. He had expected to feel devastated as he left his country behind, perhaps forever, but what he felt was gratitude and wonder that all these strange children had conspired to help him.

They drove on steadily toward the clean and shining city lying beneath them in the valley. Their thoughts were with the future; no one looked back, not even Matteo, who was busy planning the next stage of their journey.

So no one noticed the black Mercedes, with smoked windows, snaking behind them down the hill.

W
hat a good job I learned about having feasts in the dorm,” said Tally, “because this seems to be what we are having. The important thing is not to step on the sardines.”