John Gardner - Seafire

He ate a dinner so light and frugal that the headwaiter raised his eyebrows and frowned, and by eleven was back in his room. He called Flicka to let her know that he was in Munich with no signs of Tarn watchers on his back, and she was so loving on the telephone that he went to bed decidedly frustrated. It did not stop him from sleeping though, for during his many years as an agent in the field, Bond had perfected the art of putting the world, and professional or personal problems, out of his mind. His head had scarcely touched the pillow before he dropped into a deep sleep from which he woke, totally refreshed, when the telephone rang with his wake-up call at five in the morning.

He was on the road by just after six-thirty, and by seven had left the outskirts of Munich far behind, heading out on the B-304. Before eight o'clock he came into Wasserburg, which seemed to rise from the light morning mists like a great, faded ancient galleon.

With its untouched, medieval atmosphere, the town appeared to be surrounded by water from the river Inn. Wasserburg was built within a few yards of a tight lazy curve in the river, which nuzzles the southern limits of the town's center and enfolds its eastern boundary with great crags of rock, plunging straight down to the gentle flowing water below.

He drove the Corrado into the large parking lot on the northern bank of the river and set off on foot for the traffic-free town center, his garment bag over his shoulder. He walked quickly through the narrow lanes until they spilled out into the Marienplatz, the very center of the town, with its Gothic brick town hall and the fourteenth-century Frauenkirche.

He stopped on the edge of the square, listening to the soft flush of the river less than a hundred yards away, while taking in the extraordinary timelessness of the view. He even caught sight of what remains of the castle, to the south, from which Wasserburg – Water Castle – takes its name.

The town was already bustling: a cassocked priest walked from the Frauenkirche, with its old watchtower, while the few old shops were open and local people could be seen hurrying to them, or leaving with baskets of fresh bread and other produce.

At the Paulanerstuben they showed no surprise at this guest arriving at eight in the morning, but welcomed him in, showed him his pleasant room overlooking the square, and offered him a second breakfast, which he accepted, ruminating on the many four-star hotels throughout the world where he had been treated as a pariah when arriving this early in the day.

Assenting to a second breakfast was not a matter of greed but a way to engage the one elderly waiter in conversation, so the meal passed with skirmishes of dialogue. Bond's German was excellent enough for him to pass as a native, and the exchanges yielded several useful pieces of information. The local people were slightly reserved when it came to foreigners, and he soon learned that this conservative trait had reached a high level during the week.

"It's the new owner of the Tarnenwerder estate," the waiter told him, shuffling around, constantly fiddling with slightly shaky hands. "It's said he's the last living relative of the old von Tarn family, and already he has over one hundred men and women restoring the house. There's no room for these people here in the town. How can there be? Anyway, the ancient boundaries of the estate stop a couple of kilometers from Wasserburg. We can't compete with these workmen as we have none with their skills, so we won't prosper from anything just yet."

"Surely, when things settle down -" Bond began to say, but the elderly man cut him off.

"Something funny's going on." He shook his head in marked disapproval. "Nobody knows how this claimant to the von Tarn name has survived. There's even a story that he's been living in places all over the world under the name Tarn, and this Tarn was supposed to have died, only recently, in a road accident in England. Can you believe any rumors these days?"

He went off to bring a plate of ham and eggs, which he set in front of his customer, carrying on his monologue as though uninterrupted. "Yet here he is. Large as life. Yesterday I saw him. He visited the lawyer Saal, over there," pointing to an old half-timbered building across the square, beside the door of which was a brass plate. "The Saals have managed the Tarn estate for six generations. Old Helmut Saal has blocked any purchase of the place since the end of Hitler's war. I'm not saying he's a liar or a cheat, but I think he would do anything to keep his hands on that estate. It's kept the Saal family in style for a very long time. This new von Tarn could be Saal's man, for all we know. Put there to keep the Saals in the style to which they have become accustomed over the years."

Bond told him that he wanted to see a lawyer with regard to purchasing property nearby, but was brushed aside with a "You should go to Fritz Saal, Helmut's brother. He deals with the purchase of property, but there are other things the town's not happy with."

"Such as?"

"Such as this new von Tarn allowing dubious young people to camp in the grounds of the estate. Some of them look to us like the skinheads who do terrible things in the cities – you know what I mean: attacking foreigners, burning buildings, parading in the streets. Let me tell you, I heard stories of people like that from my father. I can even remember some of them myself. Hitler's people, that's who these young ruffians behave like."

"How long has this been going on?"

"The skinheads? Only a couple of days, but some have come into the town to buy food, and they haven't always been too pleasant to the shopkeepers. We've turned them away from here. Anyway, they'll be gone tomorrow or the day after, I understand. They're here for some rally the master of Tarnenwerder's allowed them to have in his grounds. Don't hold with it myself." The old boy went off mumbling to himself about how it wasn't like this in his day.

No, Bond thought, you're of an age when it was, first, the survival of the fittest and utter obedience to the Nazi Party; then an age when the German people were trying to live down the excesses of Hitler's régime, which had brought your country to its knees. The old man, he thought, had also seen the upsurge of West Germany as the thriving industrial center of Europe, and now the toil and turmoil of a country restored and not split in two. The restoration of a single Germany had brought with it problems and a desperate search for a new identity – or, worse, a return to the old way of the Nazis. He could not blame the waiter for being edgy about foreigners, and these German skinheads were, particularly, foreigners here in Wasserburg am Inn, a town that had survived, almost unchanged, centuries of Sturm and Drang .

After breakfast he returned upstairs, surprised that such an old and beautiful building actually provided telephones in the few available rooms. The local directory was not large, and he found the number of Saal, Saal u. Rollen. Within seconds of dialing, he was speaking to Herr Fritz Saal, explaining that he was a British businessman looking for perhaps a large property in the area. An investment, you understand. For a consortium, you will follow. Naturally, Herr Boldman.

Saal was bright and friendly on the telephone, but gloomy about the prospects, though, eventually, he remembered that there were a couple of estates on his books. Perhaps Herr Boldman could call on him at the office, say in half an hour. Herr Boldman was pleased to accept the invitation.

Bond then rang Flicka in London, stressing that he was fine, had arrived and discovered some interesting facts already. He also said that he would call again after his meeting with what he called a property lawyer in the town.

The building from which the Saal brothers and Herr Rollen carried out their business, while obviously very old, had been constantly renovated over several centuries.