The Great Game (11 page)

             
Cecily closed the magazine and allowed the young waitress who hovered about their table to pour her a cup of coffee. She watched as Frau Schimmer escorted a couple into the breakfast room, brushing aside their apologies for being so late, and seated them at a table directly across from the Barnetts. Judging by their dress, it was the couple they had last seen docking a sailboat. And, now that she saw him at a reasonable distance, Cecily recognized the man. "Look," she said softly to Barnett. "The mystery is solved."

             
Barnett looked over at the table Cecily indicated. "Aha!" he said, acknowledging the nod of the newly seated gentleman. "It's our friend Signor Buleforte. And the lovely lady must be his wife. I didn't know he was a master mariner, along with his other talents."

             
Ariste Buleforte had been at the villa for the past two days, awaiting the arrival of his wife. He had met Cecily and Benjamin over the bridge table the night of his arrival. He was well traveled, a pleasant conversationalist, and a keen bridge player.

             
Deciding that a mere nod was insufficient greeting, Signor Buleforte rose and bowed to Benjamin and Cecily. "A pleasure to see you this morning," he said in his precise English. "Allow me to present to you my wife, Diane Buleforte. My dear, these are the Barnetts; that English couple I mentioned to you. They are avid bridge players."

             
Barnett rose in turn and bowed slightly over Signora Buleforte's hand. "Delighted," he said, deciding not to dispute Buleforte's belief that he was English. "We watched you arrive on the sloop a little while ago. It made a charming picture. You are an excellent sailor, Signor Buleforte."

             
"Please," Buleforte said.
"Ariste.
I insist.
Ariste and Diane.
And we will call you Benjamin and Cecily." He said it as though he were conveying a special favor on them instead of being slightly rude. But somehow, when he said it, it was charming.

             
Benjamin found deep within his soul a touch of jealousy at this man whose mastery of the social graces was so smooth that he could smilingly ignore them. Barnett was sure that if he walked up to some comparative stranger and said, "Ho Mr. Smith—let me just call you 'George' from now on," the stranger would reply "not on your life," and stalk off. But if Buleforte did it, George would feel grateful and hand him a cigar. There was something about the man. Barnett did feel grateful, even as he was annoyed at himself for doing so.

             
"Ariste, then," Barnett agreed. "And is your lovely wife as avid a bridge player as you are?
If so, perhaps we could get in a couple of rubbers after dinner."

             
"What could be nicer than a bit of mental stimulation after a day's physical stimulation?" Ariste Buleforte asked. "A morning of tennis,
an afternoon dip
in the lake, and an evening's auction bridge. Surely no prince could spend a better day. Or princess, either. What do you say to that, my princess?"

             
"It will be most relaxing," Diane Buleforte replied, smiling a winsome smile. "Mr. and Mrs. Barnett—Benjamin and Cecily— would perhaps like to join us for tennis. We could perhaps play doubles."

             
And so they did.

-

             
Herr Lindner left the breakfast room while the Barnetts and the Bulefortes were discussing their future. Thoughtfully, as though considering a matter of the greatest importance, he made his way up to his room. Once inside, he locked the door and opened wide his window, which faced out upon the lake. The last of the haze had lifted, burned off by the late morning sun, and there on the lake, as far out as he could see, was a black dot that, with the aid of a pair of binoculars that he kept on the window ledge, resolved itself into a small boat with its single sail furled. Lindner was gratified by the sight, but it was not with the eye of an artist that he regarded it.

             
He went to the bottom drawer of his bureau and withdrew from it an elaborate apparatus of brass and wood, folded about itself into a compact mass. Slowly and methodically, still deep in thought, Lindner unfolded the parts and fastened them together, until the apparatus was revealed as a portable heliograph sitting on a short, sturdy tripod.

             
Whistling tunelessly as he worked, Lindner set the device up on the far left-hand corner of the window sill, where it would best catch the direct rays of the sun. Then he carefully aimed its mirror so it would send flashes of sunlight to the distant boat.

             
Now, for a moment, Lindner paused and stared thoughtfully at a fading print of
Beauty Unveiled
on the wall next to the wardrobe. Then he opened his portmanteau and drew out a sheet of foolscap. Laboriously, using a thick leaded artist's pencil, he composed his message:
"Der Herr Barnett und seine frau ..."

             
He carefully left a space between each line as he wrote it. He
could have made the message shorter, leaving out the articles and the honorifics and such, but he had a strong distaste for the telegraphic style. When the whole was done, he went back and, with the aid of a thin length of brass and ivory that looked like a six-inch slide rule, but was scribed with letters instead of numbers, wrote an encrypted version of the message in the space between the lines.

             
Without haste, as the sun rose to its zenith in the noon skies, Lindner clicked out his recognition signal and waited for the boat's reply—just the merest brief sparkle of the Morse letters DK to assure him that he had the right target. Then, slowly and methodically, he tapped
out his message to the waiting boat. When he had finished, and sent the final "SSS" that indicated "end of message," the boat raised its triangular sail and went on its way.

             
Lindner packed up the heliograph and put it away, and turned to his paints and easel. Perhaps, today, he would attempt a landscape on the rear lawn. He rather fancied himself as an artist.

All'meine Pulse schlagen, und das Herz walk
ungest
ü
m ...

(How every pulse is flying, and my heart beats loud and fast ...)

— Friedrich Kind,

from
the libretto to

DER FREISCH
Ü
TZ

             
On Thursday evening Paul took Giselle to the opera. It was her first chance to wear the new pink dress that she had just picked up from her dressmaker's. It was from a design that she had created herself, cutting and pinning it on one of her dolls until it looked just the way she wanted. Frau Ardbaum, the dressmaker, had realized the miniature in full, with the skirt flounced just so, and the bodice tightened just so. Giselle looked like a princess, lovely and pure, with just a hint of—well, no need to go into what there was just a hint of.

             
Paul had purchased tickets for aisle seats in the sixth row of the orchestra, feeling vaguely guilty, as though he were spending his food money for the month, as he did so. So well was he into his new bohemian persona that he had to remind himself that, as Charles Bredlon Summerdane, he could have bought out the entire orchestra every show and still dined well.

             
"I love this place," Giselle told Paul as they approached their seats. "Just think
,
we just walked up the Imperial Staircase. The emperor himself uses that staircase."

             
"As does everyone else," Paul pointed out, but Giselle didn't care.

             
The opera that evening was
Der Freisch
ü
tz,
by Carl Maria von Weber, based on a German ghost story about magic and shooting, and the "Black Huntsman," who would give a hunter six perfect shots in return for his soul. It had a handsome hero and a lovely heroine and an evil villain and an occasional glimpse of the devil himself; who could ask for more?

             
Giselle clutched Paul's hand through the performance and was enthralled by the music and the magic. "You may take me to the opera any time," she murmured to him during
the a
scene change in the first act.

             
"I shall take you to the opera many times," he told her. "But it is very expensive!"

             
Paul laughed. "I have a friend who can afford it."

             
Giselle raised his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckle. "I do love opera," she told him. "I come here on occasion and get a standing room ticket. That is very cheap, but not as enjoyable as it could be; the opera police are very strict."

             
"The opera police?"
Paul looked quizzically at her.

             
"Oh, yes. Those who stand must do so behind that railing," she pointed to the side at the rear, "and there are men with little opera patches on their coats who watch you to make sure you don't sneak in to take a seat, or even sit on the steps."

             
"For the whole three or four hours?"
Paul asked.

             
"Even so.
They are very firm."

             
"And they are not swayed by your beauty or the piteous glances that I'm sure you give them? They must be strict indeed."

             
At the second intermission Paul took Giselle back for a cold chocolate at the refreshment stand. He found a chair for her and then excused himself. "There is someone I must speak to for a minute," he explained.

             
Paul worked his way through the press of well-dressed people to where the man he had selected as the next subject to be approached was standing with his daughter. The man, a portly, balding gentleman with thick graying eyebrows over close-set eyes, a toothbrush mustache, and bristly beard that almost concealed a receding chin, was Hermann Loge, a middle-level official in the Foreign Ministry. His daughter, who appeared to be about seventeen, wore an expensive, fashionable gown in a shade of green that made her white skin look motley and diseased, cut so that it emphasized her thick waist and undeveloped bust. Her hair was coiffed to look as though it concealed a dinner plate carefully balanced on her head.

             
Hermann was in need of money. Keeping a wife and two mistresses on a minor minister's salary was a constant juggling act, and Hermann was beginning to lose control of the balls. Or so Paul had been told by Levi Davoud. Paul paused to look Hermann over. He looked weak and indecisive, not like the sort of man who would cultivate a wife and two mistresses. But perhaps many of us lead secret lives that would astound even our closest friends.

             
Paul approached his quarry and pulled a sealed envelope from an inside pocket. "Herr Loge?" he asked softly.

             
Loge swiveled to face Paul. "Yes?"

             
"My patron sympathizes with your need," Paul said, "and he asked me to give you this." He thrust the envelope into Loge's hand and turned around.

             
"Wait!"

             
Paul paused.

             
"Is this all?"

             
Paul turned back to Loge. The man had ripped open the envelope and was riffling through the bills inside. Obviously he could add up sums of money very quickly. There was five
hundred kronen in the envelope. What did this high-living bureaucrat expect, and, come to think of it, why did he expect it?

             
"All?"

             
"There
is,
what, five hundred kronen in here. I was promised a thousand!" The words came sharply, but in an undertone that did not carry above the noise of the surrounding crowd. No one, as far as Paul could tell, turned to look at them to see what he was talking about.