Читать книгу: «The Beaufort Sisters», страница 2

Nina let in the gears with a crash and the jeep jerked forward. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Shasta grin again, but Major Davoren was behind her and she couldn’t see how he had reacted. She hoped she had snapped his head off.

Five minutes later they drew up outside a large block of apartments that had been converted into offices. Shrapnel marks pitted the walls and there was a huge black scorch mark stretching up a side wall, as if someone had tried to burn a hole in it with a giant blowtorch. The block had none of the dignity of the house they had just left.

‘Blame us English,’ said Davoren. ‘I’m afraid the army is claiming all the best for itself. As I said, the fruits of victory.’

‘You don’t believe in rehabilitation for the Germans?’ said Nina.

‘The young and idealistic,’ said Davoren, who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years older than Nina. ‘Could you spare me a few minutes with Miss Beaufort, Colonel?’

‘I’ll be inside.’ Shasta climbed out of the jeep. ‘Don’t scratch his eyes out. I think we’re still supposed to be allies.’

He went into the apartment block, carrying his valise, and Davoren slid into the vacated seat beside Nina. ‘Well, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot.’

‘You have, not me.’

‘I’ve been fighting these bloody Germans for five and a half years. I’m not naturally vindictive, but I haven’t yet got round to feeling magnanimous. I lost my parents and my only sister in an air raid on London, wiped out by a V-2. What are you doing for dinner this evening?’

She was surprised to hear herself say, ‘Nothing.’

That was Friday and he took her to dinner at the Atlantic Hotel. The dining-room was full of British officers in khaki, Control Commission personnel in blue and German women in tow. There appeared to be no German men and only a few British women, all of whom looked with hatred at the Fraulein, none of whom was less than good-looking and most of whom were beautiful.

‘Fraternization doesn’t seem to worry you men. What would happen if one of those English girls came in here with a German man?’

‘She’d be shown the back door. We have to have standards, you know.’

‘Double standards, you mean.’

‘Of course. What else makes the world go round?’ But he smiled as he said it and his charm almost persuaded her that he only half-meant what he had said.

He took her home early to the billet where she was staying for the weekend. ‘There’s a curfew on and some of the MP’s can get a bit bloody-minded if they catch an officer with a good-looking girl. Pity you’re not staying here at the Atlantic, you could have invited me up to your room.’

She let that pass. ‘I stayed here with my parents when I was a child.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You did it in style. I came to Hamburg for a week before the war. I stayed in a dreadful sleazy little room over behind the Reeperbahn. Girls kept knocking on my door all night.’

‘Poor you.’

Saturday night he took her to a cabaret in the cellar of a bombed-out theatre. This time there were plenty of Germans, men as well as women; some of them looked remarkably well-fed for people whose official food ration was supposed to be only 1000 calories a day. Nina peered through the cigar and cigarette smoke, listened with her Berlitz-acquired ear to the conversations going on around her.

‘They are making business deals!’

‘Black marketeers,’ said Davoren. ‘This cabaret is the sort of stock exchange for it all. If you want to make any money on your PX issue, this is the place to come.’

‘I don’t need money.’ He knew nothing about her or her family; she revelled for the first time in anonymity, as if it were some sort of vice. ‘Do you come here and sell things?’

‘No. I’m not really interested in money. I shouldn’t say no to a fortune, but I don’t care for this piecemeal way of getting rich. Oh, I daresay in ten or fifteen years’ time some of those jokers will be fat, rich pillars of society – that is, if Germany ever gets off the ground again. And some of our own chaps are making a nice little bundle. But it’s not for me.’

‘Don’t you have any ambition? I don’t mean for this sort of thing. But – ’

‘Not really. I’m a day-to-day type. I’ll probably stay on in the army and if I don’t blot my copy-book I’ll retire as at least a brigadier. All that without having to fight another war – I’ll be dead before there’s another one.’

‘My God, what a limited vision!’

‘Oh, it has its compensations. You, for instance. Would I have met you if I’d been back in some office in London trying to make my fortune?’

‘What did you do before the war? Had you any ambition then?’

‘I had just come down from Cambridge when my country called me. I started out to be an archaeologist, studied Arabic, was going to dig up all Tutankhamen’s relatives. But I grew tired of that and I read History instead. One of the things I learned from that was that ambitious men usually finished up dead ahead of their appointed time.’

‘You should have met my grandfather. He was ambitious at ten and he lived till he was eighty.’

‘Ah, but did he succeed in his ambitions?’

‘Up to a point,’ she said and he smiled, mistaking her caution.

Then a man came to their table, bowed to Nina, clicked his heels and shook hands with Davoren. He was small, blond, tanned, athletic: ten years ago Nina could see him springing off vaulting-horses into posters extolling the Youth Movement. Or spurting out of starting-blocks in pursuit of Jesse Owens and the other black Americans at the Berlin Olympic Games. Davoren named him as Oberleutnant Schnatz, late of the Luftwaffe.

‘A good German, aren’t you, Rudi? Well, not a Nazi. But his morals aren’t the best.’

Schnatz smiled, unoffended. ‘Morality is only a matter of degree, Tim, you know that. After what we have been doing to each other for the past six years, what is a little black market?’

‘Rudi went to Oxford,’ Davoren explained. ‘They always had less concern for morality there than we at Cambridge. We played tennis against each other, each of us got a Blue. Baron von Cramm once tried to seduce him at Wimbledon, but I never got that far. What can I do for you, Rudi, though the answer is no, in advance.’

Not even Vassar, let alone Kansas City and the Barstow School, had prepared Nina for the decadence she was witnessing. Two girls went dancing by, arms wrapped round each other, oblivious of the sneers of the men watching them. Three whores came in, sat down and were in business at once; three pink-cheeked British subalterns fell on them like choirboy rapists. Four men sat at a corner table, heads close together, greed giving them a family resemblance. Evil, or anyway sin, hung in the air as thick as the cigar and cigarette smoke and Nina shivered with the thrill of it. She knew that back in the Thirties Kansas City had been known as America’s Sin City, but it could never have been like this. Without knowing it she was suffering from the tourist’s astigmatism, seeing foreign evil as worse and much more interesting than the home-grown variety.

‘I understand your lady friend is an American. I’m looking for contacts in the American zone.’

Nina saw Tim Davoren sit up a little straighter in his chair, felt his legs brush against hers under the table as they tensed. A thin blonde girl with a clown’s face had come out on to the small stage at the end of the cellar and was singing Little Sir Echo in German; or so Nina thought, till she caught some of the words and realized it was an obscene parody that had the audience who understood it holding their sides. But she was listening with only half an ear, more intent on Tim Davoren and Rudi Schnatz.

‘Rudi old chap, you’re asking for a poke in the nose. British heavyweights have never been much good, but I think I could flatten you.’

‘You are twice my size, old chap. I’m not Max Schmeling.’

‘I shouldn’t have threatened you if you were.’

‘You may not be brave,’ said Nina, ‘but I’ll poke anyone in the nose who says you’re not gallant.’

Schnatz smiled, taking her remark as encouragement for himself. ‘Miss Beaufort, I would not wish to get you in trouble either with Major Davoren or your American authorities. But there is a lot of unrest in the American zone, I’m told. A lot of GI’s wish to go home. Some of them may like to make some money to take home with them. If you should hear – ’

‘Go away, Rudi,’ said Davoren, ‘and don’t trouble the lady. I mean it.’

Schnatz looked at him, then at Nina: neither of them was smiling. The rest of the room laughed its head off at the clown singer; the lesbians rose behind Schnatz, hand in hand, heading for their bed. He bowed to Nina, nodded to Davoren and went away, disappearing behind the lesbians into the smoke and laughter.

Davoren took Nina’s hand, pressed it. ‘I know Rudi wasn’t a Nazi and I don’t think he’s a criminal, not at heart. But if he should try to get in touch with you again, give him – I think you call it the bum’s rush. Those chaps are going to get into an awful lot of trouble one day.’

Sunday night he took her to bed, in his room in the big house where he was billeted with seven other officers. He was surprised when she told him she was a virgin and he lay back on the pillow and scratched his head as if puzzled and worried.

‘You mean you’ve never had a lover?’

‘Depends what you mean by lover. I don’t think I’ve actually been in love. I had crushes on several boys I met at college and I had what I suppose you call affairs. But all I did was some heavy petting. I never went all the way.’

‘All the way. It sounds like jumping off a cliff.’

‘To a girl, losing her virginity is like jumping off a cliff. You only do it once. Lose your virginity, I mean. After that I suppose it becomes, um, a habit.’

‘Don’t ever think of love-making as a habit. The postures of it are ludicrous, but it’s still a beautiful experience. And beautiful experiences are not the result of habit.’

‘How many girls have you made love to? You sound like Casanova. Where are you going?’

‘To get the international defence weapon – a French letter. You obviously haven’t come prepared.’

‘I think my father would die if I got pregnant.’

‘I don’t see the connection, unless American fathers have some sort of umbilical union with their daughters.’

‘Would you marry me if you got me pregnant?’

‘Are you proposing to me?’

‘I don’t know – am I? Good God, how things sneak up on you! I think I am in love with you.’

He kissed her gently. ‘You’re far too honest, darling heart. And too forward. You should have let me speak first.’

‘Shut up and get back into bed.’

But as he entered her she knew she had indeed spoken too soon, that he was not in love with her.

She went back to Frankfurt next morning with Colonel Shasta who asked her no questions but looked as if he had the answers anyway. All he said when they got back to Frankfurt was, ‘Take care, Nina. Germany right now is no place to make commitments. You’re very young.’

‘You sound like my father, Colonel.’

‘I’m trying to. I have a daughter your age back home.’ Then he asked his only question: ‘Does Major Davoren know who your family are?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You’d better tell him, then. It may tell you, one way or the other, whether his intentions are honourable or not.’

But she didn’t tell Tim, at least not for a couple of months. They met each weekend in villages and towns between Frankfurt and Hamburg, finding accommodation in inns and small hotels that had not been requisitioned by the Military Government. By the time she found she was pregnant he had told her he loved her and she believed him. Or wanted to.

They were in a village on the border of the American and British zones. From the inn they could see the white empty fields stretching away under the grey sky; the dark green river appeared unmoving as it curved below the village. Beyond the river a small copse looked like stacked firewood, black and leafless; two blackbirds sat motionless on a fence, like ebony ornaments. It seemed to Nina that all the seasons had stopped forever in an eternal winter. Despite the fire in the grate in their bedroom she felt cold, colder and more miserable than she had ever felt in her life before.

‘I didn’t expect you to be pleased. But I hoped you’d – understand. At least that.’

He stood beside her at the window, but not touching her. From the side of the inn came shouts and laughter as some children fought their own war with snowballs.

‘I do understand – if that’s the word you want. I’m not an utter bastard, darling. And I’d be pleased, too – in other circumstances.’

‘What other circumstances?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me your family is rich? Really rich?’

‘Who told you?’ she demanded.

‘Simmer down. Wasn’t I supposed to know? Rudi Schnatz told me – evidently he made his contacts in the American zone after all. I suppose my English insularity is to blame – if I were really educated I should have known that you are right up there with Barbara Hutton and that other American heiress – Dorothy Duke? Doris Duke. But I’m not educated. I obviously took the wrong subjects at Cambridge.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake stop it! None of that’s important – ’

‘You thought it was or you would have told me. Were you afraid I’d fall in love with your money instead of you? You didn’t trust me, that’s the important point.’

She knew he was right. But she was too worried and upset to make concessions; unaccustomed to crises, she reacted selfishly. ‘What are we going to do then? I’m not going to have an abortion.’

‘Well, that leaves only one alternative, doesn’t it?’ He sounded disappointed that she had vetoed an abortion; or perhaps her angry and frightened ear only made him sound that way. ‘We’ll have to get married.’

‘Have to? Good God!’

The children had given up their snowball fight and gone elsewhere. The inn was suddenly quiet, listening. She bit her knuckles, stifling any further outburst. Ladies never made a show of themselves: her mother stood invisible in the corner of the room, telling her how to behave. But her mother would never have got herself into this situation and there was no knowing how she would have reacted if she had. All the decorum Nina had been taught in Kansas City meant nothing in a cold room in an inn in faraway Germany.

‘I think we’d better spend the rest of the weekend talking this over. I’m sorry I got you into this, darling. Really.’ He moved to take her in his arms, but she pulled away.

‘No, I want time to think. Don’t touch me – please. I can’t stay the weekend – Colonel Shasta wants me back in Frankfurt tonight. They are expecting trouble from the GI’s – there’s a lot of talk about demonstrations. They want to go home. Colonel Shasta wants us all off the streets, just in case.’

‘Do you want to go home, too?’

Suddenly she did want to go home. She felt miserable, frightened and selfish; the poor of the world would have to wait. Unconsciously she put a hand on her belly, as if the baby were already apparent. ‘I’ll have to. I don’t think UNRRA would want this sort of bundle for Europe.’

‘Stop that sort of talk! Cheapening yourself isn’t going to help.’

She did up her camel hair coat, pulled on her gloves. ‘We can’t talk to each other in this mood.’

‘I’d better see you back to Frankfurt.’

‘I’ll be all right. I’m not the helpless little mother just yet. I’ll call you during the week, when I’ve thought some more. No, don’t kiss me – ’ She was close to tears: to have him kiss her would be like turning a key in a dam.

‘I’ll marry you,’ he said quickly. ‘Despite your family.’

He had made a mistake in adding the last sentence. She shook her head, realizing how much she belonged to those back home. She hadn’t escaped by coming to Germany: she needed now, possibly always would, the security in which she had been brought up.

‘I’m part of our family and they’re part of me. That’s something we’d have to understand right from the beginning. They won’t be against you – why should you be against them?’

He sighed. ‘I wasn’t drawing battle lines. But if we marry, I’m marrying you, not them. I’d say the same whether they were rich or poor. I’ll ring tonight to see if you got back all right.’

Driving back to Frankfurt in the jeep Colonel Shasta had lent her, Nina was only half-aware of the traffic. She did not see the US Army truck that stayed behind her all the way from the village north of Kassel right through to the outskirts of Frankfurt. As she came into the city she had to slow; traffic had thickened and after a few blocks came to a halt. She leaned out of the jeep and up ahead caught glimpses of soldiers spread out in a thick human barricade across the road. She could hear chanting, loud and angry: she had never thought the word Home could have any threat to it. At once she felt frightened and looked about for a way to get out of the traffic jam. She was not normally nervous and she wondered if approaching motherhood made one so; then she ridiculed the thought, laughing at herself. The row with Tim had just upset her, all she really wanted was to get back to her billet and burst into tears.

‘We’ll get you out of this, Miss Beaufort.’ The GI, earflaps of his cap pulled down, thick woollen scarf wrapped round the lower half of his face so that his voice was muffled, had come up quietly beside the jeep. ‘It looks pretty ugly up ahead. Just back up and follow us.’

She wondered who the soldier was, that he knew her name. Probably someone she had met on one of her visits to a military office; it was impossible to recognize him behind the scarf and earflaps. She put the jeep into reverse and followed the army truck as it backed up and swung into a side street. The sound of the chanting demonstrators was drowned now by truck horns being punched to the rhythm of the chant. Then a shot rang out and the blaring horns and chanting suddenly stopped. A moment later there were angry shouts and the sound of breaking glass. In a moment of imagination she wondered if she was hearing echoes of the Thirties: had the streets of Frankfurt clamoured like this when the SS had been rounding up the Jews? Street lights came on in the gloomy afternoon and the scene all at once became theatrical, a little unreal, a grey newsreel from the past. But the angry, yelling soldiers streaming down through the stalled traffic were real enough, frighteningly so.

She looked back and saw the GI gesticulating to her from the back of the army truck, which had turned round and was facing down the side street. She slammed on the brakes of the jeep, jumped out and ran to the truck. The GI reached down, grabbed her hand and lifted her easily, as if she were no more than a small child, into the back of the truck. The canvas flaps were pulled down and abruptly she was in darkness.

‘Thanks. I’m glad you came – ’

Then a hand smothered her face and she smelled chloroform on the rag that was pressed against her nose and mouth. She struggled, but an arm held her, hurting her. Then the darkness turned to blackness.

2

‘My name is McKea, Magnus McKea,’ said the tall American major in a voice that sounded slightly English; Davoren wondered if he had been an actor before he had joined the army. ‘I’m with the legal staff down at Nuremberg on the War Crimes thing. Colonel Shasta suggested I should come up and see you. It’s about Miss Beaufort.’

Davoren laughed, leaning so far back in his chair to let the laugh out that he looked in danger of falling over backwards. He was in his office in the big house on the Kasselallee, the walls papered with maps that he no longer looked at. Orderlies came and went in the corridor beyond the open door, all of them armed with the piece of paper that made them look as if they were too busy to be asked to do something by an officer or NCO. He was safe in British Army occupied territory and here was some Yank come to accuse him of something that was the best joke he had heard in ages.

‘You mean Miss Beaufort’s condition is a war crime?’

Major McKea looked puzzled. ‘Don’t joke, Davoren. Kidnapping is a crime, period.’

Davoren sat up straight, suddenly sober. ‘Good Christ – she’s been kidnapped?’

‘Yesterday some time. She didn’t return to her billet last night – ’

‘I know. I rang the billet, but some girl said she thought she’d seen Miss Beaufort come in and go out again.’

‘She was mistaken. Miss Beaufort never got to her billet. Her jeep was found abandoned in a Frankfurt suburb last night. An hour later Colonel Shasta got a ransom note to be passed on as quickly as possible to her father. He signalled Washington and they got in touch with Kansas City. I was brought in to represent Mr Beaufort till he gets here – my father is the Beaufort family lawyer. Nina’s father is being flown over by the Air Force. He’s expected in Frankfurt sometime tomorrow.’

Davoren was silent, but his face was expressive enough; he was too close to the war, to the cheapness of life, to be hopeful. Then he looked across at McKea. ‘I’m sorry I laughed. It was a stupid private joke.’

‘You said something about Miss Beaufort’s condition. Is she pregnant?’

Davoren nodded. ‘Does her father know about me?’

‘I don’t know, unless Nina wrote him. I don’t think anyone knows about you, except Jack Shasta. He thought you should be told.’

‘Why didn’t he tell me last night?’

‘I don’t know. I guess he was too concerned with getting in touch with Nina’s father.’ He lit a pipe, puffed on it. ‘I’ve known Nina since she was just a kid. We were never close, she’s about ten or twelve years younger than I, but I always liked her.’

Davoren saw the enquiring look through the haze of pipe smoke. ‘I love her, if that’s what you’re asking me. I didn’t think of her as just someone to jump into bed with.’

McKea ran a hand over his crew-cut, thinning red hair. ‘I didn’t mean to imply – sorry.’

Davoren got up, closed the door against the traffic in the corridor. This was no longer British Army occupied territory: it was his own and very personal, too. He remained standing, his back to the maps on the wall. The maps were pre-war, marked with towns that now were only rubble: they only seemed to deepen the lack of hope he felt. Nina could be buried anywhere in the havoc.

‘Is there any hint of who’s kidnapped her?’

‘Nothing definite. We think it’s probably Krauts. God knows, they have enough reason to be asking for money.’ It was difficult to tell whether McKea was critical of or sympathetic to Germans. But then he said, ‘The country’s full of communists and socialists, you know.’

Magnus McKea came from one of the oldest families in Kansas City, Missouri, a family whose conservatism had a certain hoariness to it. The army, and Europe itself, had opened up his tolerance, but he still tended to suspect any liberal thought that fell into his head, as if it might be the beginning of a brain tumour. He had a slightly fruity voice that almost disguised his Middle West twang. He had been fortunate or unfortunate enough, depending on one’s point of view and ear, to have had an English grandmother who had refused to speak to him if he spoke to her in what she described as a nasal infection. His grandmother, in earlier times, would have been scalped for her arrogance towards the natives. He had not enjoyed Europe, neither the war, the Nuremberg trials nor the havoc and misery that passed for conquered territory. All he wanted was to go home, but he had too much sense of duty to demonstrate towards that end.

‘Oh? I thought they’d all been killed off by the Nazis.’

McKea wasn’t sure whether Davoren meant to sound sardonic or not. ‘Not all of them. Half a million dollars, which is what they’re asking – what’s the matter?’

‘The Beauforts are that rich?’

‘I shouldn’t imagine Lucas Beaufort would miss half a million dollars. Finding the money is no problem – I believe he is bringing it with him this evening. In the meantime we’re looking for leads to the kidnappers, just in case – ’

‘Just in case they don’t hand Nina back to her father?’ Davoren tried to keep any emotion out of his voice; but he was suddenly afraid for Nina’s safety. ‘Are you expecting me to give you a lead?’

‘We thought you might have a suggestion – ’

Davoren clicked his fingers. ‘Rudi Schnatz! Do you have transport?’

‘I have a jeep and driver outside – ’

‘Let’s use it!’

McKea, a man accustomed to taking his time, had to hurry to keep up with Davoren as the Englishman led the way out of the house. They got into the jeep, Davoren gave the driver directions and twenty minutes later they pulled up outside a decrepit old house just off the Elbchaussee. On the other side of the street a row of bombed-out houses, like jagged gravestones, was an ugly testimony to the recent past. On a broken wall was scrawled a plea for the future: Let Communism Re-Build These!

‘You see?’ said McKea. ‘They’re not all dead.’

‘It’s in English. Maybe some of our chaps put that there.’

McKea said nothing, dismayed that communists might have fought on the wrong side; he had already decided that the Russians at Nuremberg were the enemy of the future. Even the British, usually so reliable, had tossed out Churchill for Attlee and his socialists.

Davoren led the way up the chipped and cracked marble steps to the house. This had once been one of the best areas of the city, but all its smug dignity and prosperity had gone with the bombs. Davoren thought of the ruined sections of London and wondered which would be re-built first. The Yanks were already talking of re-building Europe before the Russians got too strong.

Rudi Schnatz was in a worn woollen dressing-gown with some sort of crest on the pocket: his day was just beginning. ‘I say, old chap, it’s a bit strong, isn’t it, busting in on a chap like this?’

Davoren pushed into the two-roomed flat, away from the prying frightened faces that had already appeared at the other doors in the hallway and on the landing above. McKea, more polite, less belligerent, followed him, closing the door against the curious.

‘Rudi, I don’t have any time for manners.’ Through the open door to the bedroom Davoren saw a naked girl sit up in a big brass-railed bed; then she lay down quickly again, pulling the blankets up over her. ‘We’re looking for Miss Beaufort – she’s been kidnapped.’

Schnatz pulled his dressing-gown closer round his throat, almost a feminine gesture. ‘Please, Tim – you don’t think I’ve kidnapped her, do you?’

‘If I thought that, you’d be out in the jeep now and on your way to the Provosts. No, I want to know who your contacts are in the American zone. The ones who told you who Miss Beaufort was. Is.’ He corrected himself, like touching wood.

‘Are they the ones who have kidnapped her?’

‘We don’t know. For Christ’s sake stop wasting time with bloody questions – this has got nothing to do with you! Tell me who your contacts are, where we can find them!’

‘I don’t know that I can do that, old chap. Honour among thieves, you know – ’

Davoren grabbed him by the front of the dressing-gown and lifted him off the floor. The Englishman’s face was dark with anger, heightened by his bared teeth: he looked on the verge of a fit. ‘Tell me who they are, Schnatz, or I’ll break every bone in your body!’

There was a muffled scream from the other room. McKea crossed to the door and closed that one, too. He didn’t have the true spirit of the conqueror, he was too much the lawyer. He just hoped Davoren wouldn’t try to kill the little German, though it looked very possible. But he wouldn’t interfere, not in the British zone.

Schnatz struggled, unafraid, ready to fight the bigger man. He gasped something in German and Davoren let him go so that he fell back on his heels.

‘Who are they? Their names, bugger you, their names!’

Schnatz pushed back his long blond hair, shook his head. ‘You’re acting just like the Gestapo, old chap – ’

‘Their names!’

‘Burns and Hiscox. They are with the Supply outfit just outside Frankfurt on the road to Fulda – ’ Davoren was already on his way out of the room and Schnatz shouted after him: ‘Don’t tell them I sent you! If they’re not the ones, I’ll still need them – ’

Outside in the jeep Davoren said, ‘Drive me back to my office, I’ll get my own car and driver.’

‘I think you can safely leave it to us. After all, it’s in our zone – ’

‘Don’t start drawing bloody boundaries! Back to my office, driver, and get a move on!’

The driver looked at McKea: who did this goddam limey think he was? But McKea just nodded and the driver let in the gears and they sped back through the city.

Davoren picked up his own driver and the commandeered Mercedes which was his staff car. He invited McKea to ride with him in the more comfortable car and the American, after a moment’s hesitation, accepted. They sat in the back seat while the Mercedes sped down the autobahn after the jeep. Davoren had calmed down, seemed almost morosely quiet. McKea stared out at the passing countryside, now fading into the thickening dusk. He preferred Germany at night, when so much was hidden by darkness. It was a relief from what he read and listened to at Nuremberg during the day.

At last Davoren said, ‘What’s Old Man Beaufort like?’

‘Autocratic. Devoted to Nina – she’s his favourite. Until we find the kidnappers, he’ll probably choose you to blame for what’s happened. We’ll have to tell him, of course. I mean, about – ’ McKea could see the driver in front of them half-turn his head, one ear cocked to follow the conversation.