Jack Higgins – Night of the Fox

She was immediately interested. “How old was he?”

“Forty-four.”

“What they call a child of the century, my dear,” Munro told her. “Born on the seventh of April, nineteen hundred. That must seem terribly old to you.”

“Aries,” she said.

Munro smiled. “That’s right. Before the advent of our so-called enlightened times astrology was a science. Did you know that?”

“Not really.”

“The ancient Egyptians always chose their generals from Leos, for example.”

“I’m a Leo,” she said. “July twenty-seventh.”

“Then you are in for a complicated life. Something of a hobby of mine. Take Harry, for instance. Very gifted, brilliant analytical mind. A professor in the greatest university in the world at thirty-eight. Then look at what he became in middle life.”

“How do you explain that?” she demanded.

“Astrology explains it for us. Aries is a warrior sign, but very commonly those born around the same time as Harry are one thing on the surface, something else underneath. Mars decanate in Gemini, you see, and Gemini is the sign of the twins.”

“So?”

“People like that can be very schizophrenic. On one level, you’re Harry Martineau, scholar, philosopher, poet, full of sweet reason, but on the dark side…” He shrugged. “A cold and ruthless killer. Yes, there’s a curious lack of emotion to him, wouldn’t you agree, Jack? Of course, all this has been extremely useful in the job he’s been doing for the past four years. Suppose that’s what’s kept him alive when most of the others have died.”

Carter said, “Just in case you’re getting a rather bad impression of Harry Martineau, two things, Sarah. Although his mother was born in the States, she was of German parentage, and Harry spent a lot of time with them in Dresden and Heidelberg as he grew up. His grandfather, a professor of surgery, was an active Socialist. He died in a fall from the balcony of his apartment. A nasty accident.”

“Aided by two Gestapo thugs taking an arm and a leg each to help him on his way,” Munro put in.

“And then there was a Jewish girl named Rosa Bernstein.”

“Yes,” Sarah put in. “I was beginning to wonder whether females had ever entered into his life. No mention of mar-riage.”

“He met Rosa Bernstein when she did a year at an Oxford College, St. Hugh’s, in nineteen thirty-two. He was spending increasing time in Europe by then. Both his parents were dead. His father had left him reasonably well off, and as an only child, he had no close relatives.”

“But he and Rosa never married?”

“No,” Munro said, and added bluntly: “You’ll often find prejudice on both sides of the fence, my dear. Rosa’s parents were Orthodox Jews, and they didn’t like the idea of their daughter marrying a Gentile. She and Harry pursued what you might term a vigorous affair for some years. I knew them both well. I was at Oxford myself in those days.”

“What happened?”

It was Carter who answered her. “She was active in the Socialist underground. Went backward and forward from England to Germany as a courier. In May, nineteen thirty-eight, she was apprehended, taken to Gestapo Headquarters at Prince Albrechtstrasse in Berlin. A good address for a very bad place. There, she was interrogated with extreme brutality and, according to our information, executed.”

There was a long silence. She seemed abstracted, staring out of the window into the distance. Munro said, “You don’t seem shocked? I find that strange in one so young.”

She shook her head. “IVe been nursing for two years now. I deal with death every day of my life. So Harry Mar-tineau doesn’t particularly care for Germans?”

“No,” Carter said. “He doesn’t like Nazis. There’s a difference.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

She stared out of the window again, feeling restless, on edge, and it was all to do with Martineau, this man she had never met. He filled her mind. Would not go away.

Carter said, “One thing we didn’t ask. I hope you don’t mind my being personal, but is there anyone in your life at the moment? Anyone who would miss you?”

“A man?” She laughed harshly. “Good heavens, no! I never work less than a twelve-hour daily shift at the Cromwell. That leaves one just about enough time to have a bath and a meal before falling into bed.” She shook her head. “No time for men. My father’s in a Japanese prison camp. I Ve an old aunt in Sussex, his elder sister, and that’s about it. No one to miss me at all. I’m all yours, gentlemen.”

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