Goodbye Again (15 page)

And so it was. Every day or so, moored for an hour at some
village, she’d take her gun, direct us down to our cabin, throw Ben the handcuffs, and tell him to fix one cuff to his wrist and the other to mine. ‘That’s right, now click both cuffs shut.’ When she returned from shopping, and always keeping her distance, she’d throw Ben the handcuff key and the process would be reversed. With one difference. Before she threw him the key she always made sure both portholes were shut. I asked Ben why she did this. ‘So I won’t throw the key out later, after I’ve opened the cuffs. If I did, she’d be able to lock the cuffs again, but not to release us, to crew the boat.’

The handcuff business was painful. It meant Ben and I had to sit or lie on the bed right next to each other, for an hour or more, sweating in the heat. Otherwise the next week passed much as it had with Panama. We moved due east now, through wooded, hilly country, rising up the lower slopes of the Vosges, lock by lock, village by village, into Alsace.

Except that Headscarf was a good deal more vigilant than Panama, and far less interesting. She kept silent unless she had to speak, ordering us about on the boat, or down to our cabin. She asked no personal questions, was quite uninterested in us. She just wanted to get to Strasbourg and into Germany.

That afternoon, mooring at Chesnais-les-Eaux, she went out shopping, having gone through the handcuff routine and locked us in the cabin. We sat chained together on the bed.

‘She’s a tough cookie,’ Ben said.

‘She’s a fucking bitch.’ I was sweating, exhausted. I wanted to lie down, but Ben wanted a roll-up, as he always did after lunch, and normally he made a few beforehand, kept in reserve, for when we were locked together. This time he’d forgotten. He fiddled about with the paper, the tobacco pack, pulling my hand over to his as he worked at the cigarette.

‘Couldn’t you roll it with one hand?’

‘Christ – I’m not John Wayne!’

‘No. Been out of all this long ago if you were.’

‘All right – you play the heroine and make a run for it. I don’t want a bullet in my back. Then you’d have to tip me over the side, floating belly up – think of that.’

‘What I’m thinking is it was the worst moment of my life, meeting you.’ I rattled our chain furiously then, in frustration, so that his tobacco and paper fell on the floor.

‘For God’s sake! Just let me have my fag – a few puffs, and then we can lie down.’

He finally got his cigarette together, had a few puffs, and then we started to lie down. Quite a performance. His left hand was handcuffed to my right, so he had to lie on the inside. It was a struggle – careful positioning, levering about and leg swinging – but we were getting used to it. We made it, heads under the gilded cupids, lying as far apart as we could, arms outstretched, semi-naked, chained together – a thrilling picture, I’m sure.

‘You know something?’ he said when we were vaguely settled. ‘It’s just struck me – we wouldn’t have to go through all this manoeuvring, if we lay down the other way, heads at the end of the bed. Would we?’

‘Of course we would. Just the same bloody manoeuvrings, except I’d be on the inside then.’

He thought a moment. ‘You’re right. You would.’

‘Don’t you start losing your marbles.’

He said nothing. We dozed fitfully.

We reached Strasbourg port two days later, then through the huge Rhine-Marne connecting lock, and out onto the broad river. Ben asked which way she wanted to go – up or downstream, and where she wanted to be dropped off.

‘Upstream,’ she said shortly. ‘About ten miles, there’s a small town near the river, Erstein, and just after that there’s a marina and a riverside inn. We’ll stop there.’ Ben had got out another map in
the locker, of the upper Rhine. ‘I see the town, Erstein. About two hours away.’

I was relieved. We had a port in view, an end. The weather had changed. It was still hot, but also humid, with huge purple-bruised clouds on the horizon, slowly gathering from the south. The fine weather was changing.

‘You’ll leave us our bag and things,’ I said. ‘Our passports. We’ll need them to get back home.’

‘Yes, you can keep your bag and passports with you.’

‘And some money. Maybe you could give us a little of that £3000 Panama took from my bag – just enough to get home with.’

‘Okay, but economy class.’ She spoke so reasonably I almost smiled in thanks at her.

Two hours later, passing Erstein, nestled beneath a tree-covered bluff of land, we saw a quay, some sailing boats, a line of buildings to our left, a red-tiled, conical-towered inn facing the river.

Closer up, we saw three jetties and a sailing marina, but Headscarf directed us to a smaller quay beyond the marina. We pulled in here. There was a chandler’s shop, a fuel pump and rubbish disposal facilities for motor cruisers. We moored below two other untended boats there. A big Mercedes van was parked some way back from the quay with two men standing by it. After we’d moored, they came on board. Nothing special about them. By comparison with Panama and Headscarf they were very ordinary. In their thirties, smart-casual dress, one of them in an expensive blue designer windcheater.

We were all in the wheelhouse. The barge rocked easily in the swell from the river. In a moment or two they’d all leave.

The man in the windcheater looked at us both quickly, then spoke to Headscarf in German. ‘The handcuffs?’ he asked her. They were in her bag. She handed them over. The other man took a gun out. Headscarf turned to us.

‘Now listen carefully – my friends don’t have much English.
You’ll walk off the boat with us, and no fuss, no shouting – to the car. You won’t try and escape, because you’ll be handcuffed. And –’

‘But you said!’ I burst out. ‘That once we were in Germany, you’d leave us, we could go back!’

‘Go ahead,’ she said to the windcheater man, in German. ‘Before she starts to make trouble.’

While the first man covered us with his gun, Windcheater stepped forward with the cuffs, took my wrist, then Ben’s, and clipped them on to both our wrists in a flash.

‘Ben!’ I shouted. ‘Can’t you …’

‘Can’t I what? I told you, I’m not John Wayne.’

‘Well, what about the cats?’ I turned to Headscarf. ‘You can’t just leave them here to starve.’

‘You must be joking.’ She turned to Windcheater, in German again. ‘The stuff’s in the galley, underneath the sink, six Persil cartons, and get their rucksack, in my cabin. The cash, their passports and so on.’ The man went below. Returned a minute later with the cartons, went down again for our Disney rucksack, emerged again. The other man took the rucksack.

Windcheater made a stack of the cartons on the table, then picked them up.

‘Okay, let’s go.’ Headscarf looked around the wheelhouse, then turned to us. ‘Right – remember, no fuss. You walk across to the van, holding hands. Right?’ She smiled then, or as much of a smile as the bitch could manage. ‘Yes, holding hands, just like lovers.’

They locked the wheelhouse door, paid a mooring fee, and we set off for the van – leaving the cats, the Modi nude and Katie’s journal behind us, hidden under Panama’s bunk.

TWELVE

‘Why take us?’ Ben asked, as we walked towards the van. ‘We’re not going to squeal on anybody.’ Silence. ‘Where are we going?’ Silence. The van had a sliding side door, facing away from the quay, against a wall. They bundled us in. It was dark. ‘Lie down and shut up,’ Headscarf said. We lay down. The van moved off. We were chained hand to hand anyway, but Ben gripped my hand now. He knew what I was thinking. He’d told me. Headscarf had killed her lover without a qualm. She could do the same to us.

I had the feeling we drove south first, for an hour or more, along the winding river road, before turning off, up a steep hill rising from the river valley. Then we were moving fast and straight, over a motorway at one point, for I heard the rush of heavy traffic beneath us. The three in front barely spoke, and I couldn’t make out what they said anyway, except once, when one of them said to Headscarf – in German, of course, which they didn’t know I spoke – ‘They weren’t pleased to hear about Kurt.’ Headscarf raised her voice in reply – ‘I don’t care a damn what they think
about Kurt,’ she said. ‘Kurt was my business. I loved him.’

After that I lost all sense of direction. We drove for about another hour, at speed, on a well-paved road, turned off onto a rougher road, in lower gears, continuing uphill. It started to rain, a hammering of rain drops on the roof of the van. Another turn and we stopped. A gate was opened. Then we bumped along a rough twisting track for about fifteen minutes, until we finally pulled up. They dragged us out of the van, and there, hidden in a clearing of thick forest, was a long ramshackle wooden lodge, raised off the ground on one side by a dozen pine trunks – since the lodge on that side straddled a roaring stream, rushing from a narrow defile in the rock behind. A long thatched roof, low sloping overhanging eaves, a witchy Hans and Gretel lodge, straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales.

So I was pretty certain I knew where we were – in the middle of the Black Forest. We were on higher ground. There was a smell of pine. It was still raining. There was a roll of thunder from beyond the trees.

Immediately behind the house the forest rose sharply, and it had clearly been raining hard in the woods for the stream was in full spate, running under the lodge before disappearing into the forest again lower down the slope.

An older man was at the door as we pulled up. Burly, in Bavarian lederhosen, long woolly socks, boots, braces, an embroidered shirt and a hat with a feather in it. A sour-looking man. We were dragged out of the van, then marched up some rough wooden steps to one side of the house, through an arched oak door and led into the hall. A large dark panelled hall set right over the flooding stream, a log-beamed ceiling high above, a long Gothic-style table in the middle, vast fireplace to one side, a rack of sporting rifles, and hunting trophies all round the walls. Deer, wild boar, the lot. It was an old hunting lodge. The air was warm and oppressive. I shivered.

‘Along here,’ Headscarf said to us.

‘What are we here for? What are you up to?’ Ben still had a dash of his old cheeky self.

‘You’ll see. Come on.’

Windcheater went behind us, upstairs, along a corridor. He opened a room at the end. A bedroom. A window looking over the front. A large bed with huge bolsters and a duvet with a folksy canopy. Chairs, a table, wardrobe, all in the heavy Bavarian style. The man slammed the door and locked it.

Ben pulled me over to the window.

‘For Christ’s sake! Stop dragging me about the place. I’m not a horse.’

‘Oh shut up. Want to see if there’s any way out.’

There wasn’t. The window had an iron grille outside. The rain was heavier now, so heavy that the water made a silvery curtain, almost blotting out the view. Beneath us the noise of the rushing stream increased. Ben pulled me over to the wardrobe, then the chest of drawers and the bedside table. He opened doors, drawers. There was nothing inside anything.

‘People sometimes leave interesting things in old cupboards and drawers,’ he said.

‘Like what? Hacksaws? Loaded revolvers?’

‘You never know till you try. You’re always bloody giving up.’ He bent down, pulling me with him, peering under the bed.

‘A chamber pot?’ I asked.

‘No.’ He pulled out a pair of old leather slippers. Flapped one in the air, glared at me. ‘Like to give you a good whack on the backside.’

‘Oh, so it’s macho-man woman-bashing now, is it?’ I started to struggle with him.

‘If I wasn’t chained to you I’d dump you, here and now, and you could go back to New York and stuff yourself with cheesecake ‘till it comes out of your ears.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m only trying to save our lives, or aren’t you bothered?’

‘Yes, but I’m scared.’

‘So am I!’ He was shouting now.

We heard a car draw up outside. From the window we saw a Mercedes four-wheel-drive. Two well-dressed men in their forties got out, dark suits and ties. One carried a black briefcase. They went inside quickly.

Another minute, and we heard raised voices in the big hall immediately beneath us; Headscarf’s voice the loudest.

‘What’s she saying?’

‘Can’t get it – something about “deserved it”.’

‘Who?’

‘Must be about Kurt. In the car – the driver told her someone wouldn’t be pleased about her bumping Kurt off.’

‘I thought Kurt was Mr Big in this drug-running business?’

‘No. That guy with the briefcase more likely.’

We said nothing more, until I turned to Ben and said what must have been on both our minds. We were quite possibly going to die. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry for all these bad things we’ve both got each other into, and things I’ve said. I just wanted to say –’

‘No. Don’t say it.’ He put his cheek on mine, and kept it there, warming the skin. ‘God, you smell good.’

‘What?’

‘Like lemons. Lemony.’

‘You smell good, too. Like vanilla.’

We lifted our arms, and chained together, we did our best to hug each other. We hugged hard.

He drew back, our chained arms dropped, and he smiled. ‘Lemon and vanilla!’ His tone was surprised. He was charmed by the idea. ‘Well … they can’t take that away from us.’

‘No, they can’t.’ I felt better. If there was to be an end for us in a minute, it would matter plenty, but for those long moments,
hugging and looking at each other, it didn’t.

A few minutes later the door was unlocked. One of the minders came in with a gun, and prodded us downstairs to the big hall. Headscarf and the other thug weren’t there. Still handcuffed, we sat down at the long table, opposite the older of the two smart-suited men. He had wispy reddish hair. His briefcase was open in front of him. He looked at us carefully, then down into his briefcase where he clearly had something relevant hidden.

‘Yes,’ he said to his companion in German. ‘It’s certainly them.’ He closed the briefcase. He must have been looking at a photograph.

He looked up and started to speak in barely accented English. His tone was quite flat. ‘So, a dangerous couple. You nearly kill one of our men and drown another in that Turkish bath in Paris. You avoided us again at your boat, then jumped on that barge and made a clean getaway. And but for the fact that two of our other friends followed you and caught up with you, we’d have lost you altogether.’

‘I don’t follow,’ Ben said.

‘The paintings, Mr Contini, all those Renaissance masterpieces, gold chalices, illuminated manuscripts. Your father knew where they were hidden.’ He turned to me. ‘As did your father, Miss Bergen, and you will remember what happened to him in Dublin.’ He looked at Ben. ‘You know where the paintings are hidden, too.’

We both knew what it was all about now. We were back to square one, with the art crooks, drug-runners, neo-Nazis – whoever they were, and however they were all in it together.

‘We need to find those paintings.’ The man scratched his wispy hair. He had a long thin face, the air of a pedant, a schoolmaster, perplexed for the moment with two difficult pupils, frustrated and just waiting for an excuse to get the cane at them.

‘I don’t know where the paintings are.’ Ben was still cocky.

‘No? I think you do. And we simply ask you to share that knowledge with us.’

‘Do you think I could have a cigarette?’ Ben asked. ‘I left my tobacco on the barge.’

‘Nobody smokes here. A filthy habit.’ Ben sighed. ‘Two ways we can go about this,’ the man continued abruptly. ‘You can tell us, willingly collaborate, or we can go the other way. Think about it. I have some business to see to here. We’ll meet again this evening.’

‘Food,’ Ben said. ‘Do you think we could have something to eat meanwhile?’

‘This evening.’

‘Well, these handcuffs – could you take them off? They’re beginning to rub our wrists badly.’ Ben jangled our chains in front of him.

‘At six, Mr Contini, after you have helped us, they’ll be taken off.’

The minder took us back to the bedroom. It was nearly five o’clock, and still raining hard.

Ben looked around the bedroom. ‘Probably bugged,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t talk. Whisper. And not by the bed. Bound to have something there, for the pillow talk.’ He went over to the window, then turned. ‘We’re back with the same lot. The ones you said were everywhere. You’re right. They are.’

‘So it’s a pretty simple choice, isn’t it? We tell them what we know. We don’t want those damn pictures, wherever they’re hidden, we just want our lives.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Come on, don’t be a fool. We’ll tell them, or I will.’

There was another roll of thunder from the south. The rain hadn’t stopped. The clearing in front of the house was partly flooded now, the stream a raging torrent of noise beneath us: a whole sea of water falling all at once.

Suddenly there was an ear-splitting crack below us, then a crash of splintering timber rocked the room. A succession of splintering
sounds, as the whole side of the building began to sway on its wooden stilts. The stream, bursting out of its narrow course, must have torn away some of the pine trunks that held the lodge up on that side. The bedroom door buckled, and the wall to either side folded like cardboard, leaving just the door and its frame standing. The vaulted ceiling cracked. We dived for cover by the bed. A shower of thatch, broken rafters and lathes fell all round us. Then the floorboards began to creak and tilt, and in a few seconds the whole lodge was lurching to one side, tilting on its collapsing stilts like a boat sinking, and we were sliding down the slope of disintegrating walls and floorboards, clinging desperately to the wreckage.

There was no chance of holding onto anything. We were falling fast, along with great roof timbers and walls and beds and furniture, as the lodge and its contents tipped right over. Then we were out in the pouring rain, still sliding, the handcuffs biting viciously at our wrists as we fell together.

I was lying on a pile of rubble. Ben was almost on top of me. I had the taste of blood in my mouth.

‘Are you okay?’ I could just hear Ben’s voice.

I nodded. I could feel blood trickling around my neck. Ben wiped it away with his arm. ‘Your chin,’ he said. ‘Just a small cut.’

‘Thanks.’ I tried to sit up. But I couldn’t, with him almost lying on me. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then, get the hell off and let me breathe!’

He struggled away from me. ‘My foot’s caught.’ He struggled some more. I could see his leg caught beneath a plank. I tried to help him pull himself away, but chained as we were I couldn’t get to him properly.

The rubble we were lying on suddenly tilted, and then we were sliding down the mess of timber and plaster again, until we hit the ground some way out from the front of the lodge.

Or what was left of the lodge. Only the far end of it, away from the hall and the roaring stream, was still standing. The middle, and the other end where the hall had been, was just a mound of rubble with the water frothing out from beneath it. Something moved from behind the rubble. A figure emerged. It was the burly guy in lederhosen: the hat was gone and his clothes were torn and covered in white powder, but he had one of the sporting rifles in his hand. He saw us, half-raised the gun, then stumbled and fell.

Ben pulled me to my feet. ‘Come on. Run!’

We ran, as fast as two people handcuffed together can, charging through deep pools in the clearing, falling into torrents of muddy water, picking ourselves up, making for the forest fifty yards away to the side of the lodge.

A shot rang out behind us, but we made it to the cover of the fir trees. And kept on running, uphill now, the going more difficult, the undergrowth thicker. Twisting and turning, the handcuffs really cutting into our wrists, pulling one way and another, falling into rushing drains of water that flowed down between the rows of trees.

It was dark in the forest, dank, dripping dark. The thunder rolled above us but it growing more distant, and after ten minutes we had to stop for breath.

Our wrists were bleeding. We had no handkerchiefs to staunch the blood. We had nothing. No money, passports, no rollup tobacco and no Modi nude. It was nearly seven o’clock. It would be getting dark and cold in an hour or so and I was shivering again.