The ferry was hung with the flags of the German Federation. The crest of Königswinter was nailed to the bridge. Militia packed the bow. Their steel helmets were square, their faces pale and sad. They were very quiet for such young men and their rubber boots made no sound on the steel deck, and they stared at the river as if they had been told to remember it. Turner stood apart from them, watching the crew cast away, and he perceived everything very clearly because he was tired and frightened and because it was still early morning: the heavy vibration of the iron deck as the cars thumped over the ramp and pressed forward to the best berth; the howl of the engines and the clatter of chains as the men shouted and cast away, the strident bell that put out the fading chimes of the town’s churches, the uniform hostility of the drivers as they rose from their cars and picked the change from their pigskin purses as if men were a secret society and could not acknowledge each other in public; and the pedestrians, the bronzed and the poor, coveting the cars from which they were kept apart. The river bank receded; the little town drew its spires back into the hills like scenery at the opera. Gradually they described their awkward course, steering a long arc with the current to avoid the sister ferry from the opposite bank. Now they slowed almost to a halt, drifting down river as the John F Kennedy, loaded with equal pyramids of fine coal, bore swiftly down upon them, the children’s washing sloping in the wet air. Then they were rocking in its wake and the women passengers were calling in amusement.
‘He told you something else. About a woman. I heard him say Frau and Auto. Something about a woman and a car.’
‘Sorry, old boy,’ de Lisle said coolly, ‘it’s the Rhineland accent. Sometimes it simply defeats me.’
Turner stared back at the Königswinter bank, shielding his eyes with his gloved hand because even in that miserable spring the light came sharply off the water. At last he saw what he was looking for: to each side, like mailed hands pointing to the Seven Hills of Siegfried, turreted brown villas built witn the wealth of the Ruhr; between them a splash ofwhite against the trees of the esplanade. It was Harting’s house receding in the mist.
‘I’m chasing a ghost,’ he muttered. ‘A bloody shadow.’
‘Your own,’ de Lisle retorted, his voice rich with disgust. ‘Oh, sure, sure.’
‘I shall drive you back to the Embassy,’ de Lisle continued. ‘From then on, you find your own transport.’
‘Why the hell did you bring me if you’re so squeamish?’ And suddenly he laughed. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘What a bloody fool I am! I’m going to sleep! You were frightened I might find the Green File and you thought you’d wait in the wings. Unsuitable for temporaries. Christ!’
Cork had just heard the eight o’clock news. The German delegation had withdrawn from Brussels during the night. Officially the Federal Government wished to ‘reconsider certain technical problems which had arisen in the course of discussions’. Unofficially, as Cork put it, they had run away from school. Blankly he watched the coloured paper stutter out of the rollers and fall into the wire basket. It was about ten minutes before the summons came. There was a knock on the door and Miss Peate’s stupid head appeared at the little trap. Mr Bradfield would see him at once. Her mean eyes were alive with pleasure. Once and for all, she meant. As he followed her into the corridor, he caught sight of Cork’s brochure on plots of land in the Bahamas and he thought: that’s going to be useful by the time he’s done with me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘And There was Leo. In the Second Class’
‘I have already spoken to Lumley. You go home tonight. Travel Section will attend to your tickets.’ Bradfield’s desk was piled high with telegrams. ‘And I have apologised in your name to Siebkron.’
‘Apologised?’
Bradfield dropped the latch on the door. ‘Shall I spell it out for you? Like Harting, you are evidently something of a political primitive. You are here on a temporary diplomatic footing; if you were not, you would undoubtedly be in prison.’ He was pale with anger. ‘God alone knows what de Lisle thought he was up to. I shall speak to him separately. You have deliberately disobeyed my instruction; well, you people have your own code, I suppose, and I am as suspect as the next man.’