The Salzburg Connection E-Book

Helen MacInnes

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

He demanded the immediate dispatch of two suitably trained operatives to Salzburg. Extreme measures might be necessary. In 1945, with their thousand-year empire falling around them and the Allies on their heels, the Nazis hide a sealed chest in the dark, forbidding waters of the Finstersee - a lake surrounded by the brooding peaks of the Austrian Alps. There it lies for twenty-one years, almost forgotten, until a British agent decides to raise it from the depths. The secrets he uncovers are far-reaching and lethal, and in Salzburg, Bill Mathison, a New York attorney on the trail of a missing colleague, finds himself drawn into the shadowy underworld of international espionage. Not knowing who to trust amidst the chaos, he is drawn to two beautiful women, one of whom will betray him.

Leseprobe

ALSO BY HELEN MacINNES

AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Pray for a Brave Heart

Above Suspicion

Assignment in Brittany

North From Rome

Decision at Delphi

The Venetian Affair

The Salzburg Connection

Print edition ISBN: 9781781163290

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781164433

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: November 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

© 1968, 2012 by the Estate of Helen MacInnes. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group Ltd.

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To Gilbert, always

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

About the Author

1

The lake was cold, black, evil, no more than five hundred yards in length, scarcely two hundred in breadth, a crooked stretch of glassy calm shadowed by the mountainsides that slipped steeply into its dark waters and went plunging down. There were no roads, no marked paths around it; only a few tracks, narrow ribbons, wound crazily along its high sides, sometimes climbing up and around the rough crags, sometimes dropping to the sparse clumps of fir at its water line. The eastern tip of the lake was closed off by a ridge of precipices. The one approach was by its western end. Here, the land eased away into gentler folds, forming a stretch of fine alpine grass strewn with pitted boulders and groups of more firs. This was where the trail, branching up from the rough road that linked villages and farms on the lower hills, ended in a bang and whimper: a view of forbidding grandeur and a rough wooden table with two benches where the summer visitor could eat his hard-boiled eggs and caraway-sprinkled ham sandwiches.

But now it was the beginning of October, and the tourists had gone from this part of Austria. Each July and August, they came pouring through the Salzkammergut, the region of innumerable lakes that stretches eastward from Salzburg towards the towering mountains of Styria. Some were beginning to penetrate this remote section of the Styrian Salzkammergut although the other lakes offered more in ready-made pleasure: boats for hire, swimming pools and picture-pretty inns, petunias in window boxes, waitresses in dirndls, folk music and dancing and general Gemütlichkeit. A few visitors lingered into September. And a few is just too many, thought Richard Bryant as he came over the last rise in the trail and saw the dim outline of the picnic table near the edge of the water. September might have been safe enough; it certainly would have been warmer, made things easier for me. Still, I wanted no risk of even a single tourist camping out with some mad notion to see the sunrise. This is one dawn which I would like to have very much to myself.

So far, there had been nobody following. He had driven through the little village of Unterwald, his lights out, his engine running gently, and had left it as deep in its pre-dawn sleep as when he had entered it. Just beyond the last dark house he met the trail, at an almost right-angled turn, that climbed eastward to the lake. There, he had to put on power to get him up the steep grade past the inn—Waldesruh it was called appropriately, even if it was misspelled: its final e had been lost somewhere in the eighteenth century and never found its way back. And once past Waldesruh’s sloping meadow, he could switch on his parking lights to keep him from sideswiping the dense trees that now edged the narrow way. He had only hoped that the sound of his engine would be smothered enough by the forest of larch and beech through which he was travelling. Half a mile from the lake, he had parked the Volkswagen in a gap between the trees that the foresters had made to get the timber down to Bad Aussee’s lumber mills, drawing the small car under the drooping branches of some tall firs. He had swung his bulging rucksack onto his back and set out on foot. The rest of the trail was safer without a car.

Bryant halted before he reached the meadow, studied it carefully as he regained his breath, eased the heavy load on his back. Yes, he decided as he looked at the deserted picnic table and the dark loneliness of the lake, he had chosen the right time of year—perhaps a little earlier than he had first planned, but safe enough. No tourists. No woodcutters either, once daylight came. For the last month, they had stripped the bark off the trees they had felled in the early summer and left to dry out, but now the last chained load must have been trucked down to the valley; he had seen no signs of prepared timber lying on the forest floor. That was one worry cancelled. Even the logs that were only good for fuel had been already chopped into regular lengths and stacked neatly under roofs of bark; they’d be picked up later, once the piles of wood around the village houses began to thin out. So, no foresters. The climbers also were gone—they were of the summer variety, hoping for good weather; they would do better in this Styrian area to plan their climbing for autumn. The hunting season had started, but two days ago there had been an unexpected break in the crisp sunshine—a break for me too, Bryant thought. Wise hunters would wait another day, until the mists and drizzle lifted from those mountainsides. As for any fisherman, the lake itself eliminated that problem; it was too deep, too dark, had too many mysterious currents. (Trout preferred the other Styrian lakes that were fed by waterfalls and overflowed into small shallow streams with clear, pebbled bottoms. But here the outlets were the same as the water’s source: underground streams, hidden springs, a constant filling and emptying by invisible forces.) And skiers would find no packed snow until December at least. Yes, Bryant decided again, he had chosen the right time of year. And he had chosen the right time of day, too. Dawn was only a hint, night faded slowly, and the sun had some distance to travel, once it rose, before its light overreached the high precipices at the eastern point of the lake. By that time, two hours at most, his job must be finished.

He knew the lie of this land well enough. He had been here in May, again in July, had taken photographs (his trade nowadays: camera studies of alpine scenes which filled large expensive calendars for Christmas giving), and had examined them over and over again, memorised the blow-ups. Even so, as sure as he was of the terrain, he had decided against the middle of the night and had chosen approaching dawn to make his move. Darkness might hide him from any keen eyes scanning the bare mountainsides edging the north side of the lake, but it could deceive his eyes, too: one false step, a slip, a stumble, and a loose stone would split the silence, perhaps start a small slide of splintered rocks. There was always the danger of that on a steep slope, naked of bushes or trees, such as the one he would have to cross for a short distance before the track would take him down to the water’s edge. So he had decided on the grey hour leading into dawn, when shapes were indistinct, patches of trees seemed dark blots, and only the sharp line of jagged peaks was etched clearly against a softening sky. He could move quickly, surely; reach his objective, do the job, and be back at his Volkswagen just as daybreak was complete.

He shouldered the rucksack once more, set out at the same quick pace, but he left the trail before he reached the open meadow, keeping to the edge of the forest that was now thinning out as it tried to climb the lower slopes of the mountain. From the last group of firs, he could step on to the mountainside, on to the narrow track that wandered eastward for a short distance before it divided and drooped one thin arm down towards the lake, vaguely pointing—so it had seemed from his photographs—to the one patch of green on that naked shoreline. And that was his target: the steep bank where the boulders were held together by the roots of contorted trees, straining to keep the whole mass from slipping into the deep waters. To the casual observer, the mountain’s plunge into the dark lake seemed endless. In fact, there was an outcrop of rock forming a ledge not more than twelve feet below the surface. It was a clever hiding place the Nazis had chosen.

He allowed himself another brief pause at the last group of trees before he stepped on to the track which would lead him over that desert of stone. A very tilted desert, at a good fifty-degree angle. He was too hot, much too hot for the task that lay before him. He laid aside the camera and tripod he carried, slid the heavy rucksack carefully from his back, peeled off his thick wool gloves, pulled off his green loden jacket and bundled it inconspicuously under the low branch of a fir. His motions were quick and neat. He was of medium height, sparely built but strong enough, certainly wiry. His brown hair was grizzled, his complexion ruddy, with high colour in his cheeks where their fine veins had been broken by wind and sun and snow. He could pass for an Austrian—his Salzburg accent was now indistinguishable from the genuine article. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure what he had become. An expatriate Englishman? He disliked that adjective. But he had never returned to England since he had quit his work with British Intelligence in Vienna in 1946. And here he was back on the job, of his own free will, unasked, unpaid, risking everything. A damn fool? Hardly. This was a job he should have done twenty years ago; and it still needed doing.

Besides, he thought as he stood under the cover of the trees while his eyes scanned the bleak mountainside ahead of him, you know more about that lake down there and what it hides than any of the bright boys in London or Washington. And if you tried to approach them now, giving them your information, letting them do the work and face the dangers, they might very well ask you why the devil you hadn’t reported all this in 1946? And that would be hard to explain to men who had never been in Vienna when it was filled with ruins, both of buildings and of people. You could tell them you had been tired of the whole bloody war; it had turned sour—for it kept going on in hidden ways. Now, an ally had become the enemy and the peace was splintering around you. You were tired of informants and their pieces of half-truths and rumours and improbable facts, dredged up to gain money and papers and escape. You were tired of frightened men’s hoarse whispers over sleazy café tables set up in ill-lit, ill-heated cellars where the sickly-sweet smell of death lingered behind their walls. There was one you did listen to; you strung him along, made him sweat a little because he must have been a Nazi, and a member of the SS at that, if his tale were true. (How else could he have talked about this little lake, given it the right name—Finstersee—although few people outside of this Styrian Salzkammergut region had even heard of it; how else could he have known what was buried there?) And when you had heard all of this fantastic story, you had the pleasure of telling him there would be no quid pro quo: you were a civilian now; he was two days too late in coming to you. As for his story, you did nothing about it. And he scarcely had time to take it to the Americans or the Russians or the French. He was found with his neck broken beside a pile of rubble, not far from the café where he had talked so much in the hope of passage money to Argentina.

Time to move, Bryant decided. Nothing had stirred on the dark mountainside or down at the lake, and the peaks on the opposite shore were developing a nice swirl of mist. He hoped it would spread. He picked up the tripod and camera, wondering if he could afford to discard them with the jacket. But no, he thought; if any stray hunter met him, he would need a self-explanatory excuse. Photographers were known to work at strange hours in odd places—it wasn’t the first time he had risen before dawn to capture a sunrise. So camera and tripod went with him, his passport to innocence. He swung the cumbersome rucksack on to his back, stepped on to the open mountainside, walking carefully but confidently. He noted that his heavy grey sweater and grey trousers blended perfectly with the jutting crags around him. He smiled briefly. That wasn’t any lucky accident; it was a necessary precaution.

It might seem ridiculous to expect that the Nazis—after all these years—were still posting guards around here, or that they had possibly installed a man in a nearby village like Unterwald to patrol Finstersee. And yet he had only to remember Lake Toplitz, some three miles to the south, and nothing seemed ridiculous about the patience and determination of a handful of totally committed men. Even as their army was surrendering in north Italy, with Berlin in flames and Hitler dead, a last stand in the Bavarian and Austrian Alps now impossible, they were planning for the future. Top-secret Intelligence files—the hard core of power for any resurgent force—were sealed in watertight chests and lowered into Lake Toplitz. The news of that had come out only years later when Toplitz proved there must be something worth guarding in its deep waters. Two British agents—but they could just as easily have been American or Russian or French—had been left to bleed to death on the crags above Toplitz, their bellies slit wide open.

He averted his eyes from the crags through which the track was leading him, thinking that there was at least one difference between Toplitz and Finstersee: the Intelligence agencies of the big powers hadn’t learned about this little lake; and the Nazis, for that reason, might not be expecting trouble. His chances were fair to good, especially with the mists spreading on the opposite shore. It was going to be a fine morning of clouds and drizzle. He increased his pace on the last few yards of downslope, leaving the track which had decided to start climbing again, and almost slid into the clump of twisted trees at the water’s edge. He sat down thankfully among the rough boulders. Phase one was over.

Not too bad an effort, he conceded as he glanced at his watch. After all, he was reaching forty-six, and that was twenty-two more years than he had carried in 1944 when he had parachuted into the Tyrol and organised his Austrian agents among its mountains. It was surprising, though, how the old tricks came back. Reassuring, too. He chose the flattest part of the rough ground for laying out his equipment, braced his feet against the roots of a tree so that he would not slide into the lake before he was ready, and began unpacking the rucksack. Phase two would not take so long: checking and donning of gear. He had practised constantly in this last week, making sure of the routine, recalling everything he had learned last summer when he had bought his equipment and tested it, over and over again, in the same depths of water he would have to face here. The hidden ledge did exist, some twelve feet under the surface. He had made sure of that, too, last summer, with the help of Johann. Johann would be in a sour mood when he learned he had been left out of the action, but one man was less conspicuous than two, and why risk two lives when one was more than enough? With that, Bryant pushed his brother-in-law out of his mind—not quite admitting he didn’t trust Johann’s judgment once the chest had been recovered—and concentrated on unpacking and checking.

He laid out the suit—a dry suit it was called, made of thin sheet rubber in contrast to the newer wet suit type of foam-neoprene that fitted the body like a second skin. But the dry suit, hood attached, came in one piece instead of five; it had been simpler to pack, lighter to carry, and with the front opening he had chosen, it was fairly easy to put on and quick to take off. And for his purposes, it was speed at the end of his job that was absolutely imperative—if necessary, once he was out of the water, he could rip the suit off. It should be warm enough over the long wool underwear he was wearing specially: he did not intend to stay more than thirty minutes in that cold lake, the maximum safety time for forty-degree temperature. The summer months must have taken some of the bite out of Finstersee, but he had had to plan for what might be possible, not for what he hoped would be probable.

Next, he drew out the contraption known by the ungainly name of single-hose regulator, one end fitted with a mouthpiece, the other to be screwed into the small valve of his scuba tank. Now the tank itself, a junior model chosen for easy handling but with sufficient compressed air for fully thirty minutes at the depths he would have to work in, was pulled gently from the rucksack. He had decided on this small size of scuba tank (“kid stuff” his instructor in Zürich last summer had called it) because it was considerably lighter to carry and less bulky inside the rucksack. He didn’t need the regular scuba: he wasn’t a sportsman going into deep waters; he was sticking on that ledge, twelve feet below. And he had better, he told himself grimly.

He unpacked a weighted belt which would let him drop down from the surface. Dark blue sneakers, something to give his feet a grip on the ledge and yet not cause added difficulties when the time came to rise to the surface. Mitts of foam-neoprene, tight but easily pulled on if he first wet his hands. A knife, one blade serrated. A strong wire cutter. (Both of these would be strapped to his leg.) A thirty-foot stretch of quarter-inch nylon cord, braided to prevent fouling, and a clamp to fasten one end of the cord that he would coil around the tree nearest the water, a second clamp, with quick release, to fasten the other end around his waist. A piece of rubber tyre to protect the tree’s bark from any friction. An underwater light. A waterproof watch with illuminated numerals. A slab of chocolate and a flask of brandy to be left beside his camera and tripod, all covered by his clothes which he was now stripping off. He secured the neat pile with a heavy stone. Methodically, he began donning his gear.

He was ready. He pulled sharply on the rope coiled on its cushion of rubber around the base of the tree, testing the clamp. It would hold. The other end of the rope was already firmly around his waist, the remaining loops neatly gathered in the crook of his left arm. He glanced at his watch strapped over the mitt on his right hand, making sure that nothing interfered with the wrist seal of his suit. He checked the light hooked securely to his belt, adjusted the mask which would let him see sideways as well as above and below, and started regular breathing. Then, gripping the rope in his left hand, with a twist around the wrist for extra security, playing it slowly out, keeping it taut with his right hand, he took a step backwards into the lake. Its bank went straight down. As the water reached his shoulders, he remembered to check his descent and raise his right arm above his head so that his left hand could open the wrist seal briefly and let the air in his suit be pushed out. Then he gripped the rope with both hands again, removing the strain from his left wrist, and sank slowly down into a black-green world.

It was worse than he had imagined. Cold shock, as his face went under, and blind slow motion; a feeling of being trapped in darkness. With an effort, he forced down the split-second panic that attacked him, and kept his breathing regular. His feet touched something solid under slimy mud. He could stand on it, he could turn slowly, carefully. His right hand could free its rigid grip on the rope for a moment and fumble for the flashlight at his belt. He switched on its powerful beam. By stooping, and that was the way he would have to move, he could direct the light in front of his feet. Yes, he had found the ledge.

It was about two feet wide at this point. How long? The beam showed a short stretch of ten feet, no more, before the ledge vanished. Nothing on that section. He turned slowly, remembering not to dislodge any silt by a quick or careless movement—muddied waters could take hours to settle again, and his job would be made impossible even before it had properly begun—and looked along the other stretch of ledge. It was just about the same length; the trees above him had marked almost the middle of this outcrop of rock. And near its end he saw a heavy mass, blacker than the waters around it.

It’s too big, he thought at first; I’ll never raise that weight by myself. And then, as he came closer, leaning forward—slowly does it, small sure steps, keep a grip on the rope and the breathing regular—he decided it wasn’t a chest at all, but a lump of stone that had fallen down the mountainside and ended here with a thud. It was only when he was close to it and could stoop over with his flashlight full on it that he saw it was really a huge lump of mud and moss-like growths. He unsheathed his knife and went to work on the deposit of twenty-one years, cutting and scraping gently, always mindful of the danger of disturbed silt, until he struck something hard. It glinted under the light. His depression vanished. It was a chest made of some bright metal that did not rust. Not iron, thank God. If it was aluminium, it would be all the more easily raised. (After all, the Nazis who had lowered it here wouldn’t want any difficulties in salvage. They planned ahead, those boys.) His one problem now was to get it free of the mud, and then ease it along to the spot where he had descended.

He began scraping cautiously at the encrustation until he found that, if he got his hands against the box and pushed up against the caked deposit, it peeled off like a matted carpet and floated away in broken chunks. There were long fraying fragments of hemp on the side handles of the chest, all that was left of the cords that had lowered it. He pulled them off quickly. Too quickly. There were shreds of thin wire embedded in the cord, and their broken edges ripped the palms of his gloves. Lucky his suit hadn’t been torn by one of these thin jags of wire—that would have been real trouble. He worked more carefully, using wire cutters, and at last released the chest completely. Now to secure it, his way.

He released the clamp at his waist and started twisting the freed rope around the chest and through its handles. Under water, its weight was no problem, and once he had it freed from the mud it had settled into, the task was only a matter of care and quiet movements. He used all the rope he could spare, and then clamped it to hold. The hardest job, because it was most worrying, was to find the place where he had descended. But by tugging on the rope overhead every few steps back along the ledge, lifting the chest with him as he moved so that it lay always beside his feet when he paused, he found the spot where the rope no longer strained at an angle between his hand and the tree, but fell straight as a plumb line.

Quickly, he released the buckle of his weighted belt, the flashlight hooked to it, and let them drop away. The wire cutter, which he had been too late to use when his mitts had been torn, went too. He started to float. Keep a firm grip on the rope, he warned himself, and don’t hold your breath; move slowly; don’t hold your breath! He rose to the surface, half swimming, half pulling upwards on the rope, and hauled himself on to land. He staggered towards the cover of the tree. He tore off the mask, wrenched free from the rest of his equipment. The fresh air twisted his lungs. Twenty-seven, he noted with difficulty, twenty-seven minutes all told. The box... Better rest before he salvaged the box.

He did more than rest. He collapsed, face down, his cheek against the tree’s root. When he became conscious again, he had lost a valuable twenty minutes. Daylight was spreading from over the eastern ridge.

He rolled slowly over on his back, and lay there, unable to rise, his body heavy with fatigue. He was chilled to the bone. He shivered violently, remembering the last few minutes under water when the cold started to penetrate his body; colder, colder, the embrace of death. He sat up with an effort. Everything seemed out of control. He wanted to fall back again, let himself drift into deep, deep sleep. He rubbed the back of his neck, gently; that was where the headache began that encircled his brow. The box could wait. He had made sure it was lying safely on the ledge, well wrapped in tight coils of rope. First, he must drag himself to his clothes, get some brandy down his throat, get this suit off, get his flannel shirt and sweater and thick trousers on to his body. Something warm, for Christ’s sake, something warm and light. His body felt as if it were encased in a ton weight.

It took him another half hour to accomplish these simple things. And then, suddenly, he began to feel more in command. His chin, which had been exposed under water, felt frozen. And his hands were stiff. Their palms had been scored by the rope when his grasp had slipped. Now that he could see the sun and breathe the fresh air, he would admit the worst moment down in that pit of darkness—the moment when he had rid himself of the weighted belt and the flashlight, sensing them go over the edge and sink into the depths; and he was left with only his grip on a quarter-inch thickness of rope to keep him from drifting out over the abyss too.

He had drunk all the brandy—its only effect was to bring him up to normal—and eaten some of the slab of chocolate to give him energy. He was far behind schedule now. He ought to have been back at the Volkswagen by this time, heading down into the valley where the highway would take him back home to Salzburg for breakfast. But as he worried, he worked. He removed the knife from its sheath and bundled the rest of his gear around the tank, empty now and heavier, and added the stone that had anchored his clothes. That should be weight enough. He would tie the package firmly with the rope once his use for it was over, and drop it all into the lake. Four feet out from the bank wouldn’t cause too much of a splash, he hoped; the bundle should sink as far as his belt had travelled.

He was ready to haul up the chest. He had bandaged his hands with a shredded handkerchief, and was preparing to dampen his wool gloves to give them some grip (the torn mitts were now bundled with the suit), when the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone right along this side of the lake. He took cover among the trees and boulders, staring through the branches at the opposite shore thick in fog with the mountainsides above it shrouded in low-lying clouds. And they were stationary. So I’ll have to wait, he thought gloomily, I may have to wait until dusk this evening. Where was that prevailing wind, damn it, that brought mists and rain from the huge mass of storm-breeding mountains far to the south? But at the moment, Finstersee looked like a stretch of dark-green glass. It was almost too still. That could mean bad weather. Perhaps, he thought, hope surging again, I may not have to wait in this trap until evening. For trap it was, with this side of the lake washed in early-morning light.

He sat there for almost an hour, kneading his body to keep the circulation moving, rubbing his legs, watching the lake. And at last the wind was rising, sweeping clouds from the south, packing heavy mists down over the treetops. The sky was shrouded, the sun obliterated, and all the bare slopes of crag behind him were swathed in grey. Visibility was scarcely ten feet. I’ll manage it yet, he thought, and moved quickly.

He unfastened the rope but left its coil around the tree, safely padded with the tyre, and pulled on its end until he had taken up the slack on the ledge below and he could feel the chest resist. Now let’s say you are bringing in a thirty-pound salmon, he told himself. He stood a little to one side of the tree, again made sure the piece of rubber was in place, and began to haul. His hands hurt like hell, but the less attention he paid to them the sooner the chest would be raised. With four short pauses, letting the tree take the brunt of the dangling weight, he made it. The chest broke the surface, tilting dangerously. Rapidly, he cinched the rope around the tree. He reached for the box with both hands and lifted it safely on to solid ground. It had become much heavier to handle. He carried it into the small encampment of boulders and trees, placed it beside his rucksack. He kept staring at it. It was heavier but smaller. It seemed to have shrunk. Then he remembered that the glass face on his mask, by underwater refraction, had magnified everything.

He was smiling as he carefully peeled the piece of tyre from the tree, slashed the rope, to free the chest, added all those bits and pieces to his weighted gear, keeping one length of cord to tie the package securely. He carried the bundle to the water’s edge. It sank reassuringly. He threw the knife after it. He eased the chest into the rucksack, a tight fit made more difficult by a padlock. The flap couldn’t be fastened over its top but at least he could carry the weight on his back, leaving his hand free for camera and tripod. His hands... The woollen gloves were in shreds over the palms, but he kept them on. The cold air was shrewd and damp. Better wet gloves than nothing. They’d offer some protection when he came to the job of hiding the chest.

He must hurry. Every second counted more than ever now. He moved out from the small group of boulders and trees, with a last glance around to make sure that he had left nothing behind. He was so pressed for time—this shore of the lake was blanketed in mist, but the wind from the south had blown too strongly and the high edges of the peaks opposite him were beginning to be cleared of cloud—that he didn’t use the track that had brought him here, but struck along the lower slope of the mountainside, following the shore line as his guide through the white fog towards the picnic ground. It was one of those times when the feeling of urgency drove every pain out of his body and made the impossible seem simple. Tomorrow he would ask himself, How in hell did you manage that? Today he was too intent on reaching the edge of the meadow even to doubt he could make it. And he reached it. The mist at the western end of the lake was so thick that he couldn’t see the picnic table or the trees that had covered his climb up on to the mountainside almost four hours ago. His timing had been shot to pieces but at least he had some luck now, just when he needed it most, with the weather. He almost walked past the three ungainly boulders that lay some twelve feet from the water’s edge.

They were piled together roughly, as if some giant hand had thrown them from the mountain, aiming for the lake, and missed. Bryant found the gap at ground level between two of them where one had tilted against the other, and eased the rucksack off his shoulders. Gently, he pulled back the dry grasses and the thorny branches of a wild rose bush that were part of the circle of growth that surrounded the boulders. (In summer, this spot had been a mass of colour.) He laid his tripod on top of the stalks and stems to keep them down for the brief moment he needed, and used a knee to hold the branches aside. He lifted the chest, rucksack and all, and pushed them sideways into the gap as far as he could stretch. He was careful to leave the straps pointing towards him. When the time came to remove the chest, he would need them for haulage. There was no way of reaching down into the gap from the top of the boulders, for they met together in a tipsy embrace. And they were the height of a man, well grounded in the soil, as if they had taken root there. It would need a bulldozer or dynamite to force them apart. When he lifted his tripod and helped the grasses and dried twigs to stand upright again, the gap was screened. The rose bush bobbed back into place, leaving a few hard thorns piercing his trouser leg, and covered everything.

He backed away, his eyes looking with satisfaction at the naturally disguised gap. It didn’t exist. As the mist blocked it from his view, he made for the dim shadow of the nearest tree and reached the forest that had led him early this morning on to the mountainside. Here, visibility was better—the massed firs seemed to be balancing the clouds on top of their heads. His quick pace slackened to a slow march; he could now let himself admit he was just about at the end of his strength. But he was careful enough to avoid the direct uphill route to the tree where he had hidden his jacket. Instead, he circled widely to the north to approach it downhill. He’d known it at once, with its low sloping branches and the track starting eastward only a few feet away.

He took off his sodden gloves, shredded and torn, and dropped them into the first piece of underbrush he passed. It was better to do that and tell Anna he had lost them than let her see the damage and start imagining the kind of dangers he had been through. He would be home for breakfast, after all, a late ten o’clock breakfast. An eleven o’clock breakfast, he amended, noticing the time on his watch. It was now twenty minutes to nine. He would tell Anna just enough to keep her from asking questions—last night, he had only disclosed what was absolutely necessary for her to know in case something went wrong. Even that had terrified her. He remembered the sudden whiteness of her face, the thin drawn look of her cheeks, the droop to her lips, the blank stare as if she could see no future at all. She didn’t weep, she didn’t exclaim. But the touch of her hands had been ice-cold with fear. As cold as he felt now in spite of the shelter of the forest. He would be glad to button that jacket right up to his chin. And there was the tree he was looking for, with its thick, low-slung branches.

And there, also, were two men.

2

August Grell had been wakened by a sound. His mind, half-thick with sleep, couldn’t place it. A car travelling up the hill to Finstersee? But in that case he ought to have heard it travelling through the village. His small inn stood on a rising meadow just above Unterwald, its back close against the woods that covered the lower slopes of the mountain. He pushed aside the bulky eiderdown and left the warmth of his bed. He crossed over the scrubbed-wood floor to the window. If there was a car taking the hill trail, he could see no lights. There was only the thick blackness of the forest, a thinner blackness of the sky. Dawn was slow in coming at this time of year. There wasn’t a light in the village, so they had heard nothing. A bunch of peasants, he thought as he climbed back into the high bed. You could rely on them to pay no attention except to their own lives. Twenty years of being the owner of the Gasthof Waldesruh had convinced him of that.

He hadn’t even got his head back on the pillow when the telephone rang. He moved quickly, slipping his feet into wool-lined slippers, pulling his old coat over his nightshirt as he crashed through his bedroom into the front hall where the telephone stood on the reception desk. Perhaps it had been the telephone that had wakened him and not the sound of a car. In any case, Anton was up at the lookout on Finstersee; if any car drove up to the lake, he’d hear and see it.

Without switching on the light, Grell fumbled for the receiver and found it. A man’s voice asked, “How’s the weather up there?”

Grell said guardedly, “There has been some mist and heavy cloud.” The man could be a hunter, making sure that the mountains were clear enough for a day’s shooting before he drove up all the way from the valley.

“You might listen to the weather reports.”

“I’ll do that.” Grell smiled as the line went dead. That had been no ordinary hunter. He closed the inside shutters before he switched on the light and looked at the clock on the wall, which had never missed a minute in the twenty years he had lived here. It told him the time was 4:36 exactly. The “weather report” would be transmitted one hour later than the telephone call. He would be ready for it.

But first, even before he started heating some coffee or getting dressed, he had better make contact with Anton and learn whether anything had been heard or seen at the lake. The lookout was actually a cave with a narrow entrance at the foot of a high cliff on the south shore of Finstersee, which a detail of German sappers had transformed into a weatherproof, drip-proof room with a gallery leading through the rugged stone to a much larger room commanding the southern hillsides right down to the valley. They had even installed a field telephone between this blockhouse and Waldesruh, which had been taken over as company headquarters by the German occupying forces. It had been part of a vast plan for hundreds of strong points to make a last stand feasible. But all the frantic labour in March and April of 1945 had come to nothing. The secrecy of it had been useful, though: the peasants had been trucked down to the valley, only a few men with useful skills kept here to work as they were told, no explanations given; they had never guessed the full extent of these fortifications. And if the gallery and larger room had never been filled with ammunition or gun emplacements, the small room facing Finstersee had justified its existence. The heavy door closing the narrow entrance to the original cave was completely hidden by the tops of the trees that grew right up to the cliff face; some branches even brushed the door’s natural timber. An apparent fissure in the rock, well to the side of the door, had been carefully fashioned to give the room enough air and—just as important—to allow a telescope to keep its sharp eye on the opposite side of the lake. Anton wasn’t always stationed up there, of course. But there had been an alert last week, and Anton had spent the last four nights and days in his eyrie.

August Grell re-entered his bedroom, closed the shutters before he turned on the light near his desk, unlocked its top, and rolled it up. Now he reached in to pull out the pigeonholes; they came away in one piece, a screen to block the gap that lay behind. Carefully, he placed this unit against the wall, keeping the pigeonholes upright so that they held their pieces of writing paper and envelopes and bills intact. The desk was old-fashioned and deep; the disclosed gap easily held his communication equipment. It was a strange mixture: the latest in short-wave radio transmitters with tape attached for high-speed receiving and sending (Russian model); a schedule for transmission—kilocycles changed according to the month as well as to the day of the week (an adaptation of the Russian methods that had worked very well in America); the usual one-time cipher pads, with their lists of the false numbers that had been inserted into the code for the sake of security, each small tissue-thin page easily destroyed after it had guided the decoding; a small decoding machine (American), seemingly accurate but which he often double-checked with his own methods; a two-way radio, the size of his palm, with which he could make contact with Anton (British invention, Japanese manufacture), but which he rarely used—open communications without being coded would be extremely dangerous if the Austrians really started having suspicions about this district; and the old but infallible field telephone (German), which always gave him pleasure to use. It was a good piece of workmanship, and would last another twenty years if necessary.

He lifted it gently out of its hiding place, and rang Anton, less than two kilometres away. They talked in quick German, accurate and literate, dropping the slow dialect of the South Tyrol from which they were supposed to have come.

Anton sounded brisk enough even if he hadn’t had much sleep; the cold was penetrating, but he wasn’t grumbling. He was too excited by August’s call—a sign that something might be brewing. “Then that alert last week really meant business?”

“I’ll know soon,” August told him guardedly. “What’s the outlook up there?”

“Nothing ten minutes ago.”

“Look again.”

There was a long pause. “The light is poor as yet, but I can see nothing moving either at the lake, or on the slopes, or at the picnic ground. Nothing.”

“Keep watching.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the weather?”

“The lake is clear so far, but some streaks of mist are beginning to drop down on this side. Might be bad.”

“Even so, keep watching.” Bad weather could come quickly in these mountains, but it could clear just as unexpectedly. “And don’t call me for any reason after five-thirty.”

“Not if I see—?”

“It will have to wait. I’ll call you the first moment I can. Got that?” The message from control came first. And it could be delayed; that had happened before. He would be given a standby signal, and stand by was what he had to do.

“Understood,” Anton said, not debating the point.

Anton was a good lad, August Grell thought as he replaced the telephone, then the disguising front of pigeonholes, before he rolled down the lid of the desk and locked it. He was a cautious man; extra trouble was no bother at all if it ensured success, and it usually did. He shaved and washed in ice-cold water from the ewer in his room, dressed in heavy clothing, locked his old grey coat safely in the wardrobe—the marks on its shoulders and collar, where he had cut off his insignia, barely showed after all these years; and although it was now faded and tight, it was a comforting reminder of the best years of his life. SS Oberstandartenführer, equal and more to a lieutenant colonel in the army. Not bad for a man thirty-two years old. Only three years older than Anton was now. And what was Anton? A corporal in the East German army. Well, that was hardly fair, even if it was comic. Anton had “defected” to West Germany, picked up a new identity in Stuttgart which got him into Switzerland, received a new set of papers in Lucerne which took him to Milan, set off from there for the Dolomites, and then, with all the documents needed to establish him as the “son” of August Grell, he had made the usual surreptitious trip from the old South Tyrol over the mountains into Austria as a “refugee” from Italian domination. The politics and power struggles of Europe had been a great help to Anton and the young men like him in disguising the purpose of their various journeys. They were all good lads, if the stories Grell heard were true, and he had heard plenty of quiet stories. He wasn’t completely isolated up in Unterwald. In the summer, along with the usual mixture of climbers and hikers, he had his special visitors. When skiing started in late December, he had more. This grapevine was important: not just reports and rumours, but something to keep hope alive and morale high.

What was Anton’s real name? Grell had often wondered, just as Anton must have wondered about his name. It made no matter. The important thing was that they got on better than Grell had expected when Anton had arrived here five years ago to replace Grell’s “brother”. He missed Anton’s help in getting a good hot breakfast ready on the kitchen table. (In between seasons, there were few visitors; the two men managed by themselves, with a local woman—who was reliable in the sense that she was too stupid about politics and too much in need of extra money—to cook a solid dinner and scrub the floors.) He had to settle for a slab of cheese on a hunk of bread and some heated-up coffee, which he carried through to his cold bedroom. He locked its stout door, got both his radio transmitter and his schedule for transmission out of their hiding place along with his decoding equipment, had time to put another call through to Anton (mist thickening steadily all along this south side of the lake; visibility probably zero in five minutes; nothing seen on the mountainside opposite), switched on a small electric heater near his legs, drank the coffee as he checked the schedule for the exact wave length according to the day (this was Monday) and month (October).

The first signal came through exactly on time. The message was brief. He knew before he decoded it that either the alert was over or there was more to come. And that was what the message told him: Stand by for second weather report. Utmost importance. “Second weather report” meant another hour of waiting. I here must have been additional information to add to the message, and it was being evaluated or checked. He destroyed the top flimsy of the cipher pad, so small it was less in size than a book of matches. The next little page was ready for the next transmission, when a new series of false numerals, scattered through the body of the message, would have to be eliminated before he could start transcribing the columns of digits into letters and words.

Utmost importance. Then something was stirring. He called Anton, and got no answer. He called again in five minutes. No answer. Worry now smothering his anger, he waited five more minutes. This time, Anton answered. Grell was so relieved that he forgot to lash out with a few well-chosen curses.

Anton was cheerful if somewhat breathless. “I took a quick scramble down to the lake.”

“You’re a damned fool—”

“But I’m blind up here. The mist is draped over me like a white curtain.”

“How is the lake?”

“Clear of mist so far, but the light is still poor.”

“So you had a perfect view of nothing.” Grell’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“I took binoculars with me. There was nothing.” (Richard Bryant, at that moment checking over his gear, would have been delighted.)

“Don’t leave your post again! I had to call you three times. And don’t contact me around six-thirty. I want no interruption then.”

“There has been a delay?”

“Yes.”

“That might mean something.” Anton was excited.

And I hope it doesn’t, thought Grell. He would prefer no trouble around Finstersee. He didn’t want Austrian Security to be attracted to his domain. If there was trouble, it would have to be handled with caution and skill and maximum concealment. “It might,” he agreed with little enthusiasm. “Stay at your post!”

“Yes, sir.”

There were no more delays on the six-thirty transmission from control. The message was lengthy and explicit. Control seemed to be giving Grell as much information as possible, as if they did not want him acting blindly should an emergency develop. Yet they were as careful and cautious as his strong sense of security could wish. They had even used code names for places and days of the week, so that he had two jobs to do: first, decode the message; second, further decode the names in the text. Then, with all the information fixed in his mind, he burned the evidence, replaced his equipment, locked the desk and bedroom door. He took the coffee cup through to the kitchen, made sure the lights were off, picked up his loden cape from where it had been drying near the stove, before he left the inn by its back entrance and stepped into the wood.

The mist lay heavily over the tops of the trees, and the open spaces were filled with it. He cut across the trail, saw nothing but thick white cloud where the picnic ground should have been, and made his way through the trees on the southern side of the lake towards Anton’s lookout. As he plodded up through the forest at the steady pace of an expert climber, he reviewed in his mind the information he had decoded. (Some aspects of it puzzled him in spite of its clarity. He would think about them later.)

The message he had received could be divided into seven parts.

One: A report, mentioning Finstersee, had been intercepted last Wednesday when it was being transmitted to Warsaw by an Intelligence agent stationed in Zürich. It dealt with the documents that had been sunk in certain Austrian and Bohemian lakes. The Zürich agent stated he had excellent reason to believe that Finstersee should be added to the list of Austrian lakes.

Two: Another report from Zürich to Warsaw had been intercepted yesterday (Sunday). It had been transmitted by the same agent, who now had reason to believe that he would have definite information on Finstersee by this coming Friday.

Three: At 4:45 A.M. this morning, a third message from Zürich to Warsaw had been intercepted. It was a communication of high urgency. The Zürich agent was convinced that the Finstersee operation had been advanced by several days and might even now be under way. He demanded the immediate dispatch of two suitably trained operatives to Salzburg, there to await his arrival. Extreme measures might be necessary.

Four: The Zürich agent had been seized, as of 6:00 A.M. this morning, and was now being held. Examination in progress. Further information was expected about his employer in Warsaw, the importance—if any—of Salzburg itself, and the threat to Finstersee.

Five: Reinforcements were being sent at once to the Gasthof Waldesruh. Two men would arrive late this afternoon or early this evening. Others would follow, if required. Usual identifications.

Six: In the interest of speed, any urgent news or questions from Waldesruh should be directed to Zürich. Telephone to be used only in most extreme emergency; call must be thoroughly disguised and brief. Otherwise, usual radio contact with regular code must be used.

Seven: Definite orders to handle this situation with care. There must be no repeat of the events at Lake Toplitz. Austrian Security must in no way be alerted.

Not by me, thought Grell, I’ll make sure of that. But why the general reference to Warsaw? The Zürich agent couldn’t be in the pay of the Poles, or why was “further information expected”, even needed? And that eliminated the Russians, too, for they knew everything Polish Intelligence planned or accomplished; the Poles had become merely another arm of the KGB. Or were the Americans being ultra-devious? Or the British, or the French? Germany, either East or West? He might as well add every nation to the list; there wasn’t one of them that wouldn’t take wild chances to discover the secret of Finstersee. We are fighting the whole damned world, he thought, not without pride, as he reached the lookout. He signalled, and Anton opened the narrow door.

Anton was wrapped in army blankets, his sleeping bag neatly folded on the low wooden platform covered with dried fir that stood in the warmest corner of the room. Food supplies were on a high shelf. Two small kerosene stoves were producing some heat. He had fixed a lamp to give him some light, and had shaded it so that its glow wouldn’t be seen from the outside. He had books and magazines, a set of chessmen, a couple of decks of cards. Anton knew how to get along.

Grell nodded approvingly and went over to the telescope. The mists were clearing on the peak above him—that much he had been able to notice on his way up here—but they were heavy over the lake and mountainside opposite. The telescope might be blind for another hour, even two. He changed his plans. “We’ll have to go down,” he told Anton. “It’s the only way we’ll have a chance of seeing them.”

“Expecting visitors?” Anton was busy putting out the stoves, folding his blankets, adding his cape to his heavy grey suit. He lifted his hunting knife and rifle, held them up for confirmation. Grell nodded, drawing back his own cape to show he was equally armed.

“Any idea of what we’ll meet?” Anton asked as he blew out the lamp and Grell opened the door.

“None.”

“What do we know then?”

“That we have broken someone’s code and we have got him for questioning. Come on! There’s no time to waste.” It was now half-past eight.

It took them only ten minutes by the direct route to come down to the picnic ground. They crossed it at a run, relying on the mist to conceal them. Swiftly they climbed through the forest, following the path to its eastern boundary where the mountain track began. Anton set off across the open slope to see if anyone was actually down by that important cluster of boulders and trees by the water’s edge. Grell waited, regained his breath, kept an eye on the forest trail they had just climbed in case any unwelcome visitors, delayed by the bad weather, were now making their way up. Not everyone had Anton’s ability to lope along a cloud-streaked mountain track. He had the confidence and the instincts of a chamois; and he knew every metre of ground.

Grell edged into the cover of a thickly branched tree. Everything seemed peaceful. Yet, the agent who had been caught in Zürich had sent that message to Warsaw: the Finstersee operation might even now be under way. If so, thought Grell, they’ll be using two men. Three would increase the difficulty of concealment, although it had taken three to lower the chest into the lake—himself and a couple of lieutenants, while a squad of five had guarded the picnic ground. He never stood here without remembering that night. And its almost failure.

They had lowered the chest, expecting it to sink to the depth of fifty metres at that part of the shoreline. (Finstersee was estimated to be a hundred and twelve metres, just about the same as Toplitz, at its central depths.) Barely four metres down, the chest had come to rest on something solid. And could not be eased off. It was firm on some underwater ledge. And just at that moment, as they prepared to haul the chest up and try some place else, a light had been flashed across the lake from the picnic ground, warning them to move out. He had one of the lieutenants cut the chest free, well below water line so that no strands would be seen floating under the surface, and they had left with two large coils of unused rope and a pneumonia case. The other lieutenant had died, too, but much later; he was suspected of trying to buy his way out of Vienna with his story of that night. For twenty-one years it seemed as if the traitor had been eliminated before he had a chance to talk or be believed. But now? It began to look as if the execution had been too late. Someone must have listened, someone must have believed. And waited.

Anton was coming back. Grell stepped out of cover to show himself, looked down as his foot brushed something in the underbrush. He pulled aside a low branch and picked up a green loden jacket. It had a Salzburg label, but no name.

“Nothing at all,” Anton reported, keeping his voice low. “I searched among the boulders and trees. No sign that anyone has been there.”

“Someone has been here.” Grell held out the jacket, folded it again, and replaced it. “He must be somewhere out on that mountain.”

“Only one man?”