Jack Higgins - Day of Judgment

But a tendency to do things in his own way and a total disregard for any kind of authority had made him a thorn in the side of the Vatican for years, on one famous occasion censured by the Pope himself, which perhaps accounted for the fact that a man who was a legend in his own lifetime should still be a humble priest at the age of sixty-three.

He sat in the confessional box, a frail, white-haired man in steel-rimmed spectacles, dressed in alb, a violet stole about his neck, tired and cold for there had been more than usual that morning.

What he very much hoped was his last client, a local streetwalker, departed. He waited for a while, then started to get up.

There was a movement on the other side of the screen and a familiar voice said, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking. Maybe people decide to give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.’

‘Simon, is that you?’ the old man replied.

‘Together with a true penitent. A young woman whose confession runs something like this. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am Gregory Campbell’s daughter.’

Conlin said quietly, ‘I think you’d better bring her into the sacristy and we’ll have a cup of tea and see what she’s got to say for herself.’

* * *

The sacristy was almost as cold as the church itself. Conlin sat at the small deal table with a cup of tea, smoking a cigarette while the girl told him about herself. She was, it seemed, a doctor by profession; had only taken her finals at Dresden the previous year.

‘And your father? Where is he now?’

‘Near Stendal, in the country. A village called Neustadt. A very small village.’

‘I know it,’ he told her. ‘There’s a Franciscan monastery there.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that, but then I don’t know the place well at all. There is an old castle by the river.’

‘That will be Schloss Neustadt. It was presented to the Franciscans by some baron or other at the beginning of the century. They’re Lutherans, by the way, not Catholic.’

‘I see.’

He said to Vaughan, ‘And what do you have to say?’

‘I’d give this one a miss.’

‘Why?’

‘The SSD man at the bridge. What was he doing there?’

‘It could be that they are on to you and Julius. Bound to happen after a while.’

‘Excuse me, but is Major Vaughan’s opinion relevant?’ Margaret Campbell asked.

The old man smiled. ‘You could have a point there.’

Vaughan got up. ‘I think I’ll take a little walk, just to see how things stand.’

‘You think there could be others?’ she asked.

‘It’s been known.’

He went out. She said to Conlin, ‘He scares me, that one.’

Conlin nodded. ‘A very efficient and deadly weapon, our Simon. You see, Miss Campbell, in the kind of game he plays he has a very real advantage over his opponents.’

‘What is that?’

‘That it is a matter of supreme indifference to him whether he lives or dies.’

‘But why?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t understand.’

So he told her.

* * *

When Vaughan went back into the sacristy they were talking quietly, heads together. The old priest glanced up and smiled. ‘I’d like you to see Miss Campbell safely back into East Berlin later today. You’ll do that for me, won’t you, boy?’

Vaughan hesitated. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but that’s as far as I go.’

‘No need for more.’ Conlin turned to Margaret Campbell. ‘Once back on their side, return to Neustadt and wait for me. I’ll be there the day after tomorrow.’

‘Yourself?’

‘But of course.’ He smiled almost mischievously. ‘Why should others have all the fun?’ He stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Never fear, my love. The League of the Resurrection has something of a reputation in this line of work. We won’t let you down.’

She turned and went out. The old man sighed and shook his head. Vaughan said, ‘What are you thinking about?’

‘A child of twelve who, with only her father’s hand to hold on to, was suddenly spirited away by night from everything warm and secure and recognizable, to a strange and rather frightening country with an alien people whose language she didn’t even understand. I think now that in some ways she is still that lost and frightened little girl.’

‘Very touching,’ Vaughan said. ‘But I still think you’re wrong.’

‘O, ye of little faith.’

‘Exactly.’

Margaret Campbell was at the church gate when Vaughan caught up with her.

The street was deserted, grim and forbidding in the grey morning light. As they started along the pavement she said, ‘Why do you live like this, a man like you? Is it because of what happened out there in Borneo?’

‘Conlin and you have been improving the shining hour,’ he said calmly.

‘Do you mind?’

‘I seldom mind anything.’

‘Yes, that was the impression I got.’

He paused in a doorway to light a cigarette and she leaned against the wall and watched him.

Vaughan said, ‘The old man was very taken.’

He very carefully tucked a wet strand of hair under her headscarf. She closed her eyes and took a hesitant step forward. His arm slipped around her waist and she rested her head against his shoulder.

‘I’m so tired. I wish everything would stand up and walk away and leave me alone to sleep for a year and a day.’

‘I know the feeling,’ he said. ‘But when you open those eyes of yours, you’ll find nothing’s changed. It never does.’

She looked up at him blankly. ‘Not even for you, Vaughan? But I thought from what Father Conlin said you were the kind of man for whom the impossible only takes a little longer?’

‘Even the Devil has his off-days, didn’t he tell you that as well?’

He kissed her gently on the mouth. She was suddenly filled with a kind of panic and pulled away from him, turned and continued along the pavement. He fell in beside her, whistling cheerfully.

There was an all-night café by the bridge. As they neared it, it started to rain. He reached for her hand and they ran, arriving in the entrance slightly breathless and very wet.

The café was a small, sad place, half a dozen wooden tables and chairs, no more. A man in a dark blue overcoat was fast asleep in a corner. He was the only customer. The barman sat at the zinc-topped counter reading a newspaper.

She waited at a table by a window overlooking the river. Behind her, she could hear Vaughan ordering coffee and cognac.

As he sat down she said, ‘You speak excellent German.’

‘My grandmother came from Hamburg. She grew up by the Elbe, I was raised on the Thames. She lived with us when I was a boy. Raised me after my mother died. Made me speak German with her all the time. Said it made her feel at home.’

‘And where was this?’

‘Isle of Dogs near the West India Docks. My old man was captain of a sailing barge on the Thames for years. I used to go with him when I was a kid. Down to Gravesend and back. Even went as far as Yarmouth once.’

He lit a cigarette, the eyes dark, as if looking back across an unbridgeable gulf. She said, ‘Where is he now?’

‘Dead,’ he said. ‘A long time ago.’

‘And your grandmother?’

‘Flying bomb, November ’forty-four. There’s irony for you.’

The barman appeared with a tray, placed a cup of coffee and a glass of cognac in front of each of them and withdrew. Vaughan took his cognac in one easy swallow.

‘A little early in the day, I should have thought,’ she commented.

‘Or too late, depending on your point of view.’

He reached for her glass, she put a hand on his. ‘Please?’

There was something close to surprise in his eyes and then he laughed softly. ‘Definitely too late, Maggie. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you? In fact, very definitely far too far gone. You know that poem of Eliot’s where he says that the end of our exploring is to arrive where we started and recognize the place for the first time?’