shook his head. “Not really. I should imagine he’s going through hell at the moment. Probably frightened of his own shadow. All I want to do is gain his confidence and make him believe I’m what I’m supposed to be. I don’t want to use you if I can help it, but if he turns awkward or gets suspicious then I might have to call on you. With any luck that should clinch things.”
“Do you think he’ll have the manuscript with him?”
“He’ll be a damned fool if he does,” Chavasse said. “I’ll try and make arrangements to meet him at some later date to see the manuscript. From that point anything can happen, but I’m hoping the trail will lead me to Caspar Schultz.”
“We’ll drink to that,” Sir George said and refilled his glass. After a moment’s silence he said enquiringly, “Chavasse—that’s a French name, isn’t it?”
Chavasse nodded. “My father was a lawyer in Paris, but my mother was English. He was an officer in the reserve—killed at Arras when the Panzers broke through in 1940. I was only eleven at the time. My mother and I came out through Dunkirk.”
“So you weren’t old enough to serve in the war?” Sir George carefully lit a small cigar and carried on, “I was in the first lot, you know. Lieutenant at twenty—Lieutenant-Colonel at twenty-four. Promotion was quick in those days.”
“It must have been pretty rough,” Chavasse said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sir George told him. “There was a wonderful spirit abroad. People still clung to the old values. It was after the war that the rot set in.”
“The lost generation,” Chavasse said softly.
Sir George stared back into the past and sighed. “Everything changed—nothing was ever quite the same again. I went into politics like many others, with the intention of doing something about it, but we were too late.”
“A civilization in decline,” Chavasse said.
“One could draw a remarkable parallel between the British and Roman Empires,” Sir George said. “Universal suffrage and the voice of the mob leading to an internal weakness and eventual collapse with the barbarians at the gates.” He got to his feet and smiled. “If I sound like an old-fashioned Imperialist, forgive me. Frankly, I look back on the days of Empire with nostalgia. However, we could talk in this vein all night and that won’t do at all.”
Chavasse glanced at his watch. In exactly twenty minutes they would be in Osnabruck. He opened the door and moved out into the corridor. “Whatever happens I’ll keep in touch. Where are you staying in Hamburg?”
“The Atlantic,” Sir George said. “By all means contact me there if you don’t need me tonight to help deal with Muller. I’ll be interested to know what happens.”
Chavasse closed the door and moved back along the corridor. As he paused outside his compartment he heard a faint sound of movement inside. He flung the door open and moved in quickly.
The American army sergeant turned from the bunk, an expression of alarm on his face. He lurched forward and stood swaying in front of Chavasse, one hand braced against the wall. He seemed completely befuddled.
“Guess I made a mistake,” he said thickly.
“It seems like it,” Chavasse replied.
The American started to squeeze past him. “I don’t feel so good. Travel sickness—it always gets me. I had to go to the can. I must be in the wrong coach.”
For a brief moment Chavasse stood in his way, gazing into the eyes that peered anxiously at him from behind thick lenses and then he moved to one side without a word. The American lurched past and staggered away along the corridor.
Chavasse closed the door and stood with his back to it. Everything looked normal enough and yet he felt vaguely uneasy. There was something wrong about the American, something larger than life. He was more like a figure from a cheap burlesque show—the pathetic clown who spent his life walking into bedrooms where showgirls were pulling on their underwear and then blundered around short-sightedly while the audience roared.
His suitcase was on the top bunk and he took it down and opened it. It was still neatly packed, just as he had left it except for one thing. His handkerchiefs had originally been at the bottom of the case. Now they were on top. It was the sort of mistake anyone might make, even an expert, especially when he was in a hurry.
He closed the case, put it back on the top bunk and checked his watch. The train would be in Osnabruck in fifteen minutes. It was impossible for him to do anything about the American until after he had seen Muller.
There was a discreet tap on the door and the attendant entered, a tray balanced on one hand. “Coffee, mein Herr?”
Chavasse nodded. “Yes, I think I will.” The man quickly filled a cup and handed it to him. Chavasse helped himself to sugar and said, “Are we on time?”
The attendant shook his head. “About five minutes late. Can I get you anything else?” Chavasse said no, the man bade him goodnight and went out, closing the door behind him.
The coffee wasn’t as hot as it could have been and Chavasse drained the cup quickly and sat on the edge of his bunk. It was warm in the compartment, too warm, and his throat had gone curiously dry. Beads of perspiration oozed from his forehead and trickled down into his eyes. He tried to get up, but his limbs seemed to be nailed to the bunk. Something was wrong—something was very wrong, but then the light bulb seemed to explode into a thousand fragments that whirled around the room in a glowing nebula, and as he fell back across the bunk, darkness flooded over him.
After a while the light seemed to come back again, to rush to meet him from the vortex of the darkness and then it became the light bulb swaying rhythmically from side to side. He blinked his eyes several times and it became stationary.
He was lying on his back on the floor of the compartment and he frowned and tried to remember what had happened, but his head ached and his brain refused to function. What am I doing here, he thought? What the hell am I doing here? He reached for the edge of the bunk and pulled himself up into a sitting position.
A man was sitting on the floor in the far corner of the room by the washbasin. Chavasse closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he opened them again, the man was still there. There was only one thing wrong. His eyes were fixed and staring into eternity. Where his jacket had fallen open, a ragged, smoke-blackened hole was visible on the left-hand side of the white shirt. He had been shot through the heart at close quarters.
Chavasse got to his feet and stood looking down at the body, his mind working sluggishly and then something seemed to surge up from his stomach and he leaned over the basin quickly and vomited. He poured water into a glass and drank it slowly and after a moment or two he felt better.
There was a bruise on his right cheek and a streak of blood where the skin had been torn. He examined it in the mirror with a frown and then glanced at his watch. It was twelve-fifteen. That meant the train had already passed through Osnabruck and was speeding through the night towards Bremen.
Even before he examined the body, Chavasse knew in his heart what he was going to find. The man was small and dark with thinning hair and his cheeks were cold and waxlike to the touch. The fingers of his right hand were curved like hooks reaching out towards a wad of banknotes which lay scattered under the
