Сэм Истлэнд - The Elegant Lie

‘Your father is doing all right,’ said Ottway. Reaching into his pocket, the lawyer pulled out a telegram message typed on a thin, yellowy-brown piece of paper. ‘I cabled him two days ago, after the story broke. I explained that there were extenuating circumstances that would be made clear in time. His reply came in this morning.’

Carter took the telegram and stared at it, struggling to focus, as if the letters were rearranging themselves as he tried to read them.

YOU HAVE MY TRUST AND CONFIDENCE STOP REMEMBER THIRD RULE STOP

‘What is the third rule?’ asked Ottway.

Carter lowered the page. ‘To survive,’ he said quietly. ‘You got any suggestions for that?’

‘I do have a plan,’ said Ottway, ‘which I think, under the circumstances, might be your only course of action.’

Carter struggled to hear the man over the thundering Niagara in his brain, in which his body turned and twisted, almost lifeless now, down and down onto the anvil of the rocks below.

‘The war will be over in a few months,’ continued Ottway, ‘and most of these soldiers are going home. But the American Army is still going to maintain bases here in Germany◦– in fact all over Europe◦– and civilian contractors will be needed to help keep those bases running. The wages are decent and, since you’re getting paid in dollars, that money will go a lot further over here than it would back home. You’ll get housing, food if you can stand to eat off mess hall trays indefinitely, and some day, when this whole thing has settled down, you can go home and start over if you want to. People might be angry now, but they won’t stay that way. Other stories will come along to distract them. The day will come when they won’t even remember what happened here.’

‘How long is that going to take?’ asked Carter.

‘I’m not sure,’ answered Ottway, ‘but for now, I think this is the only chance you’ve got.’

That night, he went to visit Riveira in the hospital ward, which was located in what had once been the servants’ dining room. The ceiling was low and the room was poorly lit, but the red tile floors were clean and smelled of carbolic and, of the six beds in the room, only two were occupied now.

The break in Riveira’s leg had been worse than the doctors originally thought, and the delay in his treatment had caused infection to set in. In the end, his left foot had to be amputated at the ankle. He lay in a corner of the ward, his leg in a sling that kept it raised above the level of his head.

‘Lieutenant!’ he shouted, when Carter walked into the room. He slapped his hands on the clean white sheets, like a child who wanted to play. He had lost a lot of weight and his face looked drawn and shadowy. Nevertheless, he seemed happy, not only to see Carter but at the news he had just been told. ‘They’re sending me home!’

The other man in the room, his head bandaged so that only his face was showing, sighed and put down the book he was reading. ‘Are you ever going to shut up about that?’ he asked. ‘You already told me a hundred times.’

‘And now I’m telling him,’ said Riveira, pointing at Carter as if to single him out from a dozen other strangers in the room.

‘You can still drive a jeep with one foot,’ said Riveira. ‘Did you know that? They fix your leg into some kind of a stirrup and you can work the clutch like that. And you know what I’m going to do when I get home? I’m going to buy myself a taxi. I’m set. I’m all set. I wish they’d damned well send me home today!’

‘Sounds like you got it all worked out,’ said Carter.

‘I do,’ he replied. ‘That’s a fact.’

The other wounded man sighed again. With his face haloed in bandages, he looked like a nun. ‘I got all my hair burned off,’ he said, ‘and my ears just melted like wax so that there was nothing left. And I don’t think they’re sending me back. Can you believe it?’

‘You should have burned your foot,’ said Riveira.

‘I know it,’ muttered the nun.

‘I came to say that you were right,’ Carter told Riveira.

Riveira blinked at him. ‘About what, Lieutenant?’

‘About everything you said when we were driving out of the Ardennes. It all came true, more or less.’

Riveira shook his head. ‘I don’t recollect any of it, sir. That morphine does a number on your brain.’

Carter wondered if Riveira was telling the truth. It didn’t matter now. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you’re smarter than you look.’

Riveira grinned. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ he said.

‘That’s for damned sure,’ laughed the nun.

Carter raised one hand to say goodbye.

As Riveira did the same, the smile disappeared from his face. It was only for a moment, but there was something in Riveira’s expression that told Carter the man remembered every word he’d said.

As Carter cycled through the Höningerplatz, he noticed that the makeshift store where the legless man sold razor blades was gone now, and the place seemed strangely desolate. The sun had just set and the murky lavender of twilight filled the air. Pedalling towards the fenced-in sprawl of Dasch’s compound, Carter could smell the white blossoms on a crooked old apple tree which had somehow escaped the war. In a patch of tall and reedy grass the tree clung stubbornly to life, its coarse bark scabbed with moss and its branches arthritically twisted.

He arrived at the front gate just as the guard was opening it for Ritter to drive through in his Tatra. Ritter made no move to greet Carter as he sped past, raising the dust.

The guard let Carter through. ‘You might not want to go in there,’ he said, gesturing towards the office.

In the half-light, Carter could see broken glass strewn in front of the building. Its window was shattered and the chair that had flown through it only a short time ago lay splintered on the ground outside. ‘What happened?’ he asked the guard. ‘Was there a police raid or something?’

The guard shook his head, eyes hidden under the brim of his cap. ‘Mr Dasch did that all by himself, and I think it’s even worse inside.’

‘But why?’ demanded Carter.

‘I’m damned if I know,’ said the guard, ‘but whatever it is, I have a feeling we’re all going to take the blame, one way or another.’

Carter made his way across the dusty expanse of the compound. The garage was closed up now, and a warm night breeze muttered through the overlapping slats of corrugated iron that made up the roof of the building. For an instant, it reminded him of the warehouses back on the docks of Elizabeth, and he half expected to smell the brackish, muddy water of the Hudson.

Cautiously, he stepped through the open doorway of the office. His boots crunched on broken glass. It was dark in there, and it took him a moment to realise there was someone else in the room.

A figure sat at a desk in the corner, head in his hands, hunched over like a bear. ‘I said get out!’ roared the man.

In that moment, Carter realised it was Dasch. Without a word, he turned to leave.

‘Carter, is that you?’ Dasch’s voice sounded strained and unfamiliar.

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but I’ll leave you alone.’

‘Nonsense!’ With a sweep of one hand, Dasch beckoned to Carter. With the other, he clicked on the desk light, which had somehow remained unbroken. ‘Come in,’ he said, ‘and marvel at my handiwork.’

In amazement, Carter looked around. The large map of Europe had been torn down and kicked into a corner of the room. A filing cabinet had been tipped over and lay like a coffin on the floor. A smell of old cigarettes from an overloaded ashtray, whose contents had been hurled against the wall, mixed with the blossom-scented air sifting in through the broken window.