Алистер Маклин - Circus

As they walked along the boat-deck they passed and greeted Roebuck. Bruno made an unobtrusive follow-me gesture with his hand. Roebuck stopped, turned and sauntered along about ten paces behind them.

Wrinfield was finally located in the radio office, arranging for the dispatch of cablegrams to Henry’s parents and relatives. Now that the initial shock was over Wrinfield was calm and self-composed and in the event had to spend considerably more time in comforting Maria than she him. They left him there and found Roebuck waiting outside.

Bruno said: ‘Where’s Kan Dahn?’

‘In the lounge. You’d think there’s a seven-year famine of beer just round the corner.’

‘Would you take this young lady down to her cabin, please?’

‘Why?’ Maria wasn’t annoyed, just puzzled. ‘Am I not capable–’

Roebuck took a firm grip on her arm. ‘Mutineers walk the plank, young lady.’

Bruno said: ‘And you lock your door. How long will it take you to get to bed?’

‘Ten minutes.’

‘I’ll be along in fifteen.’

Maria unlocked the door at the sound of Bruno’s voice. He entered, followed by Kan Dahn, who was carrying a couple of blankets under his arm. Kan Dahn smiled genially at her, then wedged his massive bulk into the armchair and carefully arranged the blankets over his knees.

Bruno said: ‘Kan Dahn finds his own quarters a bit cramped. He thought he’d take a rest down here.’

Maria looked at them, first in protest, then in perplexity, then shook her head helplessly, smiled and said nothing. Bruno said his good night and left.

Kan Dahn reached out, turned down the rheostat on the flexible bedside light and angled the remaining dim glow so that it was away from the girl’s face and leaving him in deep shadow. He took her hand in his massive paw.

‘Sleep well, my little one. I don’t want to make a thing out of this but Kan Dahn is here.’

‘You can’t sleep in that awful chair?’

‘Not can’t. Won’t. I’ll sleep tomorrow.’

‘You haven’t locked the door.’

‘No,’ he said happily. ‘I haven’t, have I?’

She was asleep in minutes and no one, most fortunately for the state of his continued good health, came calling on her that night.

The arrival, unloading and disembarkation at Genoa was smooth and uneventful and took place in a remarkably short space of time. Wrinfield was his usual calm, efficient and all-overseeing self and to look at him as he went about his business it would have been impossible to guess that his favourite nephew, who had been much more like a son to him, had died the previous night. Wrinfield was a showman first, last and all the way between: in the hackneyed parlance the show had to go on, and as long as Wrinfield was there that it would most certainly do.

The train, with the help of a small shunting engine, was assembled and hauled to a shunting yard about a mile away where some empty coaches and provisions for animals and humans were already waiting. By late afternoon the last of the preparations were complete, the small diesel shunter disengaged itself and was replaced by the giant Italian freight locomotive that was to haul them over the many mountains that lay in their way. In the gathering dusk they pulled out for Milan.

The swing through Europe, which was to cover ten countries – three in western Europe, seven in eastern Europe – turned out to be something more than a resounding success. It resembled a triumphant progress and as the circus’s fame travelled before it the welcome, the enthusiasm, the adulation became positively embarrassing until the stage was reached that there were half a dozen applications for each seat available for any performance – and some of the auditoriums were huge, some bigger than any in the United States. At dingy sidings in big cities they were greeted and seen off by crowds bigger than those paying homage to the latest fabulous group of singers – or cup-winning football teams – at international airports.

Tesco Wrinfield, determinedly and with a conscious effort of will, had put the past behind him. Here he was in his element. He revelled in solution of the complexities of the vast logistical problems involved. He knew Europe, especially eastern Europe, where he had recruited most of his outstanding acts, as well as any European on the train and certainly far better than any of his executives or American-born artistes and workers. He knew that those audiences were more sophisticated about and more appreciative of the finer arts of the circus than American and Canadian audiences, and when those people’s papers increasingly referred to his pride and joy as the greatest circus of all time it was undiluted balm to his showman’s heart: even more heady, were that possible, were the increasing references to himself as the greatest showman on earth. Nor was he displeased with the pragmatic side of it all: the packed houses and the very high profits made ledger books a positive pleasure to peruse: one cannot be a great showman without being a great businessman as well. It came to the stage that he began calculating that, even without the United States government backing, he could still, America to America, have made a handsome profit on the tour. Not, of course, that the United States government would be apprised of this.

At least as happy were those of his artistes – over half of them – who came from eastern Europe. For them, especially for the Hungarians, Bulgarians and Romanians, whose circus training schools were the best in Europe and probably in the world, this was the long-promised homecoming. In front of their own people they excelled themselves, reaching heights of professional brilliance never attained before. The morale in a top circus is always high: even so, Wrinfield had never seen those people so happy and contented.

They swung through northern Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary then across the Curtain back into Austria. It was after the final show of their first day in Vienna, the finale of which had been greeted with the now standard rapturous ovation, that Harper – who had kept their contacts on the Continent to the barest minimum – approached Bruno. He said: ‘Come to my compartment when you are ready.’

When Bruno arrived, Harper said without preamble: ‘I promised you I’d show you three things in one night. Here they are.’ He unclipped the bottom of his medical bag and drew out a metal container smaller even than a box of Kleenex tissues. ‘A little transistorized beauty. Earphones and mike. This switch is for power. This button is for a combination of pre-selected wavelengths and call-up – the receiver in Washington is manned twenty-four hours a day. This spring-loaded lever is for speak-transmit. Simple.’

‘You said something about a code.’

‘I won’t burden you with that. I know if I wrote it out you could commit it to memory in nothing flat but the CIA has a thing about committing codes to paper, however temporarily. Anyway, if you do have to use this machine – which would mean, unfortunately for me, that I would no longer be around – you wouldn’t want to bother with code anyway. You just shout “Help!” in plain English.

‘It’s on this machine that I received confirmation of our escape route instructions today – this evening, in fact. There’s a NATO exercise taking place in the Baltic in about ten days’ time. An unspecified naval vessel – they’re a very cagey lot in Washington; I assume it’s American but I don’t even know what type of craft it is – will be standing by or cruising off the coast from the Friday night until the following Friday. It carries an Air-Sea Rescue helicopter. It will land at a place I’ll show you when we get there – I don’t consider it wise to carry maps on me and, besides, I can’t properly locate it until we get there. The ship is tuned to the same wavelength as Washington. We press this top button on the transceiver here – just as simple as that – and the helicopter comes a-running.’