The Grave of Truth (22 page)

Franconi leaned over Kesler's shoulder and read what he had written. He looked at Kesler. ‘Walther's widow, and isn't that the journalist who was with him?'

‘Yes,' Stanislaus Kesler answered. ‘We've got a contract for them both. And this original one. He says we're to leave the convent alone.'

‘Thank God for that,' Franconi said. ‘The same money?'

‘Yes. He said so. He wants it all done as soon as possible. Come on, Maurice dear, let's start getting the plan worked out. We must decide which one to go for first and then make our travel arrangements. One thing that makes it easier, they don't mind whether it's accidental or not.'

‘That puts the contract into the high-risk category.' Franconi frowned. ‘We should have asked for more.'

‘Don't be greedy,' Kesler admonished. ‘It'll be fast and easy. Then we're retiring. Just be content with that. Now, get out the schedules and the map and let's make up our minds where we go first.'

‘It's funny,' Max said, ‘to think that it all started here. Munich's such a gay place.'

Minna smiled at him. ‘You sound like a tourist,' she said. ‘Light-hearted Bavaria, all drinking songs and
lederhosen
. There's more rubbish talked about South Germans than there is about Prussia. We're all militaristic brutes, and the Bavarians and the Austrians are delightful. The irony of it is that the Nazi Party really started in the South.'

‘You've really studied the subject, haven't you?' he said. They were dining at the Künstlerhaus, with its courtyard garden. She wore a pale green dress which suited her, and he almost told her how beautiful she was. He said many extravagant things when they made love but she maintained her aloofness outside the bedroom. The duality of her nature confused him; he was deeply in love with her, but no closer to understanding her than when they first met. They had arrived in Munich, booked into a quiet hotel on the outer perimeter of the city centre, and he had resisted the urge to go to bed and stay there. While he hesitated, Minna suggested they dined at the Künstlerhaus. ‘It's wonderful food,' she said. ‘And I love the atmosphere. Sigmund and I always went there when we came to Munich.'

He watched her now across the table; she was smiling at him over her glass of wine. He loved her so much that it was as much pain as joy when they were together. She spoke quite freely about her husband, as if he and his memory were on a different plane from her relationship with Max. He had begun to feel jealous of Sigmund Walther. ‘Yes, I suppose I have become quite an expert,' she said. ‘When I was very young, nobody mentioned the Nazis. It was just as if they hadn't existed as far as my family and our friends were concerned. I had quite a shock when Sigmund told me what they were really like.'

‘I think we all wanted to forget it,' Max said. ‘That's why I left Germany; I wanted to escape the war and everything that went with it. Looking back, I think I deliberately tried to shed being German. You know, neither my wife nor my children speak a word? We talked French or English at home.'

‘Where are your family? You've never mentioned them before.'

‘There didn't seem to be much point,' he said. ‘They've gone to stay with friends in England. I ought to telephone; I just haven't got round to doing it.'

Minna Walther said quietly, ‘Tell me about your wife, Max. And your children.'

‘Why?' he asked her.

‘Because I'm curious,' she said. ‘I knew you were married, but it was all quite vague. What's your wife like?'

‘Ellie?' He was surprised by his own reluctance to discuss Ellie with Minna Walther. He was suddenly on the defensive about his silly, irritating wife, and the way he was neglecting her. ‘She's American,' he said. ‘We met in London, and we've got two children, a boy and a girl. We've been married almost seventeen years.'

‘Is she pretty?' Minna asked. ‘I'm sure she is.'

‘Yes,' Max said, and there in his mind's eye was Ellie as he had last seen her, hurt and chillingly aloof as she took their children to the plane. ‘She's very attractive indeed,' he said. ‘Now let's talk about something else, shall we?'

‘You mustn't feel guilty,' Minna said gently. ‘So long as she never knows what's happened, it won't matter.'

Max leaned back in his chair; candlelight enhanced her beauty, softening the Prussian bone structure. Her eyes reflected the green of her dress. Ellie and his children. It was the wrong moment, but he couldn't help himself. What had to be said would have no meaning if it was just part of their sexual relationship. ‘I'm in love with you, Minna,' he said. ‘And my marriage is finished. You didn't break it up, it was over anyway before I met you. That's why I don't want to talk about my wife, or my children. And if I feel guilty, that's too bad.' He reached down to the ice bucket and poured wine into her glass.

She didn't look at him. ‘You mustn't love me, Max,' she said suddenly.

‘No? Then what the hell am I doing with you every night?'

‘Making love,' she said. ‘That's different.'

‘Different for you, you mean.' They were facing each other now, and he was very angry. He thought for a moment that there were tears in her eyes and then dismissed it as a trick of the candlelight.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I didn't mean to hurt you. I need you so much, and everything we have together is very valuable to me. But I don't want to interfere in your life. I don't want to involve you too deeply. Please, don't be angry.'

‘You don't want to involve me? Minna, from the first moment we met, we were
both
involved. I don't know what you're running away from but it's time you stopped. You're trying to be two people: the woman I make love to, and the wife of the hero Sigmund Walther. You're his widow, darling; he's not there any more. You couldn't sleep with his memory, could you?'

‘That's cruel,' she said. ‘But I deserve it.'

He nodded. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘you do. You need to be loved, and you need a man who loves you. Otherwise what we're doing is having a marvellous screw.' He saw her wince at the crudity, and he went on, ‘That's what you're pretending, isn't it? That's why you put up the barriers with me as soon as you step out of bed. I didn't mean to force the issue now; I wanted to get the other business settled first and then say all this. But it's done, so we may as well face it. I love you, and I want to know if you love me.'

She wanted to cry out to him to stop, stop before it all went wrong.…

‘I can't tell you that,' she said. ‘I don't know the answer myself.'

‘All right,' Max said. ‘That's honest, for a start. I'll be satisfied with that. It's up to me to make you love me, isn't it?'

She shook her head, and the lights danced in her hair, ‘I wish you wouldn't,' she said. ‘I wish you'd leave well alone.'

He laughed, but it was not a happy sound. ‘It isn't well for me,' he said. ‘Do you want coffee, or shall I get the bill?'

‘The bill,' she said. She took a mirror and looked at herself; it was the first time he had seen her do so, and he knew it was a ruse to avoid saying any more.

They found a cruising taxi and went back to the hotel. He took her hand and she didn't resist. They didn't say anything until he brought her to her bedroom door. He turned her towards him. ‘Do you want me to come in?'

He saw the defeat in her face, and then the lowered eyelids and the parted lips. Her arms went round his neck.

‘You know I do,' she said.

Curt Andrews got a reply to his telex late that night. Gunther Mühlhauser was safe in the Consulate, with his wife and child. The wife had tried to leave, taking Beatrix with her, but without actually putting her under guard Andrews managed to dissuade her from doing anything in a hurry. She had looked at him with hatred, her eyes red from crying.

‘I don't want to stay with that murderer,' she said. ‘I'm going back to my mother and I'm taking Beatrix with me.'

‘You've no right to accuse your husband, Frau Mühlhauser,' Andrews reproached her. Inwardly he damned the vehemence of the young German conscience. If she was going to be a nuisance then he would get really tough.… ‘You haven't heard his side of the story. I can promise you, many of the SS were perfectly decent men. They've all been painted as sadists and killers by persistent Jewish propaganda. You owe it to your daughter to give her father a chance to explain himself.' He had sounded sanctimonious enough to turn his own stomach, but at least it quietened her for the time. His Director's telex was terse; typical of the man's economy of mind:
Congratulations on discovery of extreme importance. Deal with it personally
.

Deal with it personally. That was the kind of instruction Andrews liked. He could tell Heinrich Holler to take a running jump at himself with that telex in his pocket. He made arrangements for Mühlhauser to be flown out with his wife and child on the first flight available the next morning, then he checked out of the hotel without telling Holler, and set out for Munich. There was no internal flight till the morning and he didn't want to wait that long. He hired a car and began the long journey by road.

But if he was anxious to avoid Holler, the chief of West German Intelligence was equally determined not to be found by him. After leaving the Consulate, Holler had driven back to his hotel, and there to the city police headquarters where there was a series of messages waiting for him. One posed an urgent question about the influx of terrorists from France in the guise of students: two had already been detained as a result of information, and were found to be carrying grenades and plastic explosive. The target was an Israeli orchestra making a tour of the major towns. Holler dealt with that quickly, and skimmed through the rest; a leak through Norway which was bringing one of the Embassy staff under suspicion, and armed robbery which became his province because one the criminals had been linked to the Baader-Meinhof … and a report from Munich concerning an incident at the Convent of the Immaculate Conception. Holler stopped leafing through the reports and began to concentrate. Munich police were instructed to contact his department if that particular convent was involved in anything out of the ordinary. He was reading very carefully; the priest attached to the convent had been knocked out and robbed; he was recovering in hospital. The Reverend Mother had reported a priest arriving in his place, who simply walked out and disappeared. Holler knew the reputation of the Reverend Mother of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception. If she had felt the need to go to the police, then there was something seriously wrong.…

Unlike Andrews, who was busy making arrangements for the reception of Mühlhauser in New York, Heinrich Holler caught the evening plane to Munich.

Early the next morning he was going through the reports in a private office in the central police station. He listened quietly as a nervous officer gave an account of his interview with the Reverend Mother. The black homburg hat lay on his desk with a tag stapled to it.

‘Father Rittermann, eh? And you've checked with all the Catholic parishes on any priest of that name?'

‘Yes, sir. We did that straight away. There were two Rittermanns, but neither corresponded with the man who went to the convent. One was about twenty-five, and the other was in hospital after an operation. There was no trace of any priest called Rittermann or anyone knowing about the attack on Father Grunwald and being sent as his replacement. In fact, the timing makes it impossible, unless the so-called priest was responsible for the assault and robbery.' Holler looked down at the typed page. ‘I see you found a wallet and a watch belonging to Grunwald. No fingerprints?'

‘Nothing, sir, just a lot of smudges. He wore gloves.'

‘Very professional for a backstreet mugger,' Holler said. ‘And of course the priest didn't see who hit him. Is he well enough to interview? Check with the hospital. And telephone Reverend Mother Katherine. I'd like to see her. And don't take any nonsense; this is a criminal charge.'

He went to see Father Grunwald first. The older man was in a side ward in the Augsburg Hospital; he looked pinched and grey. Holler sat down with a police inspector to take notes. He recognized the signs of shock in the bad colour and the quick breathing. He apologized very gently to the priest for troubling him with questions, but the convent was also concerned. He did hope the Father would be able to help.

‘You didn't see your attacker, or notice anyone near before you were struck down?'

‘I don't think so,' Father Grunwald muttered. ‘I was just going round to my car to go to the convent as usual, when the next thing I felt was a terrible blow and then I knew nothing till I woke up in the ambulance.…'

‘And there was nobody about before it happened? Try to think, Father.'

The old man's forehead creased in the effort to concentrate. ‘I think there was someone getting out of a car … I can't be sure.… But there was no one else in the street.'

‘What sort of car—did you notice the colour or the make?'

Father Grunwald picked fretfully at the top sheet. ‘Yes, I did. I'm interested in cars, you know. I've had mine for ten years and there's never been a thing wrong with it.… It's a Volkswagen, and they're so reliable'

‘They are indeed,' Holler nodded. ‘Was this car you saw a VW?'

‘Oh, no. It was an Opel; dark green.'

‘And a man got out of it?'

‘Yes, he did, I'm sure he did.'

‘And what impression did you get of him—old, young, fat, thin—anything that struck you?'

‘I don't know,' the priest mumbled. ‘I didn't look at them properly, you see. I just noticed the car.'

‘You said, “them”,' Holler reminded him. ‘Were there two men, perhaps?'