Jack Higgins - The Bormann Testament (The Testament of Caspar Schultz)

Chavasse unbuttoned his hunting jacket slowly. “How did you manage to get away from them?”

Hardt shrugged. “It was easy enough. Once I’d led them away from you, I stopped making such a damned noise. The dogs couldn’t pick up my scent in the heavy rain. I crossed the main road and hid in the loft of a barn for two or three hours. Then I thumbed a lift from a passing truck driver. I told him I’d been camping and got washed out by the heavy rain. I don’t think he believed me, but he gave me this coat and dropped me off in Hamburg.”

“How’s the arm?” Chavasse said.

“Bloody awful!” Hardt replied with a tired grin. “But I’ll survive. Where’s Anna?”

Chavasse said slowly, “I think you’d better sit down, Mark. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you.”

Hardt frowned. “What are you trying to say?”

“She’s dead,” Chavasse said quietly. “Steiner and his friends got hold of her.”

Hardt swayed slightly, and then reached blindly for a chair and sat down. After a while, he said in a dead voice, “How did it happen?”

Chavasse told him. When he had finished, he hesitated and went on. “If it’s any comfort, both Steiner and Nagel are dead. I was waiting in the garden of Nagel ’s house in Blankenese with a German intelligence man when Steiner arrived to assassinate Hauptmann.”

Hardt got to his feet slowly. “It’s no consolation at all,” he said. “Steiner, Nagel, and Martin Bormann might have crawled out from under a stone, but Anna…” He smiled sadly. “Suddenly, it all seems so silly. I wonder what we’ve come to.”

He walked across to the table by the window and gently touched one of the Hebrew books. “She always did her homework, as she called it. It doesn’t seem possible, does it, Chavasse?”

And then his shoulders started to shake and the fine face crumpled. He slumped down into the chair and bowed his head upon his arms and wept.

For a little while, Chavasse stood there watching him with pity in his heart, and then he turned and went out, closing the door gently behind him.

It was bitterly cold at the Hook of Holland as the ship nosed her way out of the harbor, and fog was rolling in steadily from the North Sea, pushed by a slight wind.

Chavasse leaned over the rail and smoked a cigarette and watched the lights disappear into the darkness. Somewhere in the distance, a bugle sounded faintly on the wind from one of the Dutch Army camps, touching something deep inside him and filling him with a curious sadness. For a brief moment, he remembered Anna’s words in the hunting lodge at Berndorf: Lights out, you’re through, it’s all over, and as Holland disappeared into the night behind them, he flicked his cigarette down into the fog and went below.

He had a cabin to himself, and stripped to the waist and washed and shaved. Afterward, he dressed slowly, putting on a fresh shirt, and went up to the bar.

He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, but after the first double whiskey he felt a little better. He lit a cigarette and looked about him. Sir George Harvey was sitting in a corner with two other men, and he waved across the room. Chavasse nodded slightly and turned back to his drink.

He rested an elbow on the bar and stared blindly into space, his mind going back over everything that had taken place during the last few days, preparing for the report he would have to give the Chief.

But it was very difficult. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate, it was unimportant things that persisted in pushing the other things, the things the Chief would want to know, into the background.

It was a touch of brain fatigue, that was all, and he sighed and gave up the struggle. He closed his eyes, and her face seemed to float in the darkness before him. There was a sweet, grave smile on her lips, and he was suddenly reminded that this was how she had looked in the hunting lodge at Berndorf when they had waited for Sir George’s car.

He remembered what she had said. One day, you’ll look back on it all and it will simply be something that happened a long time ago. And then she’d quoted from one of Marlowe’s plays. But that was long ago and in another country.

For a moment, he sat there, eyes closed, a slight frown on his face, and then he remembered the quotation in full and shivered violently, coldness seeping through him. But that was long ago and in another country, and besides – the wench is dead.

Had she perhaps had, for a brief moment only, a sudden foreknowledge of what was to happen? But his brain refused to function efficiently, and he reached for his glass and emptied it.

As he started to rise, Sir George Harvey sat on the stool beside him. “Got time for a nightcap?” he said.

Chavasse nodded and sat down again. “Just one if you don’t mind. I’m desperately tired. Haven’t slept since the day before yesterday.”

Sir George nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry we couldn’t meet on the train. Unfortunately, several of the delegates decided at the last minute to spend a day or two in London before breaking up. Naturally, I was compelled to travel with them.”

“That’s all right,” Chavasse said as the barman placed two large whiskies before them.

Sir George offered him a cigarette and shook his head. “I felt particularly bad about it under the circumstances. I wanted time to discuss things with you.”

“There isn’t anything to discuss,” Chavasse told him.

“But there is,” Sir George said. “I get the definite impression that you’re feeling pretty grim about everything. Your original mission a failure, Miss Hartmann’s unfortunate death. But there is another side to things, you know. After all, you did manage to save Hauptmann. Who knows what effect that may have on the future of Germany?”

Chavasse nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose one could look at it that way.” There was a dull, throbbing pain behind his eyes and he felt curiously light-headed. He got to his feet and said, “I hope you’ll excuse me now. I’m desperately tired.”

Sir George hastily finished his drink, his face full of concern. “Stupid of me to keep you here at all, Chavasse. You look terrible.”

They walked out of the lounge and paused at the top of the companionway. “I’ll leave you here,” Sir George said. “I feel like a turn around the deck. I can never sleep during this particular crossing.” He held out his hand. “If I don’t see you again, good luck. If you should ever feel like returning to a more normal life, come and see me. I’ve a great deal of influence in business circles.”

Chavasse went along the corridor to his cabin, thinking about Sir George’s offer. He wondered what the Chief would say if he walked into his office and handed over his resignation along with the report on the Bormann affair. It was tempting – very tempting.

He opened the door of the cabin and went inside, yawning as the tiredness seemed to melt into his very bones, turning them to jelly. He stood in front of the mirror and started to take off his tie, and images and thoughts circled endlessly in his brain, disjointed and meaningless, and then something erupted out of his subconscious to scream one name at him through the silence.

He gripped the edge of the washbasin with both hands and stared into the mirror, the shock of it like a bucket of ice water thrown in the face. And then he no longer felt tired and he pulled on his raincoat quickly and left the cabin.

The ship was moving through a silent world of thick fog when he came out onto the top deck, and a light rain was falling. He lit a cigarette and moved forward, his eyes probing every corner.

He found Sir George leaning over the stern rail, a cigar burning between his teeth, one hand thrust deep into the pocket of a heavy overcoat. A seaman in knitted cap and reefer jacket was coiling a rope nearby, and he moved away into the fog as Chavasse approached.