Return to Vienna (17 page)

“We have guests. Bruno has been making music for some friends.” She looked at us shrewdly, taking in the grimy and jagged state of my blue slacks and cream sweater. Steve’s suit was a bit the worse for wear, too, from our escape down the drainpipe and through the prickly bushes. Klara nodded her graying head, and I knew she was considering our feelings, not her own, when she added, “I am believing perhaps you would wish not to be meeting our friends with such an appearance.”

“Klara,” said Steve thankfully, “you are believing dead right! What we badly need is a hiding place—and a bite to eat.”

“A hiding place?” She looked blank for a second. “
Ach
,
so!
I understand. Come first to my kitchen.”

She led us to a door at the end of a short passage, and clicking on lights, ushered us inside. “Take whatever you wish, my dear ones—there is much food in the ice chamber, and wine too. I must go now to our guests, but soon I will be returning.”

“Thanks a lot, Klara.”

“Not to thank me. It is a pleasure.”

Alone together, we stood for a moment looking around the bright, gay-painted kitchen, not speaking. I felt a bit dazed. Steve put his hand lightly on my shoulder, and immediately I spun around, clinging to him desperately. It was sheer relief, I suppose.

“Oh, Steve.”

He held me very gently. “Take it easy, love. You’ve been marvelous so far.” He smiled down at me, and I basked in the lovely warm feeling of safety, of being cherished. It was an effort to tear myself away from him.

“I guess a drink would do us both good,” I said shakily. Steve fetched two glasses and a bottle of wine. He poured.

“Here you are.”

The ice-cold wine did me a lot of good. I pulled myself together and started gathering ingredients for a meal—eggs and salami to make an omelet; bread rolls and cheese; some
apfelstrudel.
Steve gave himself the job of setting the small table, which was tucked neatly into an alcove beneath a large picture window. As he laid the knives and forks, he paused and stood staring out over the lights of the city.

“Bet they’re still hanging around outside my place. They must be mad as hell!” Then, leaning over the table, he drew across the ocher-striped curtains, shutting out the night. Shutting out the Hellwegs. Shutting out everything.

For the moment it was just Steve and I.

* * * *

It amazed me how few questions the Hutyens asked when they joined us a half-hour later. Bruno, a born Viennese like Klara, was a professor of physics at the university. He had contacted Max to ask for the firm’s assistance in some research project he was mounting, and despite the fact that they were such different types, a friendship had continued. Bruno was a gentle and soft-voiced man. He would never, I thought ruefully, understand the vicious world of the Hellwegs, yet without hesitation he was prepared to help us.

“Everyone has gone,” he said reassuringly as he shook hands. “A little sooner, perhaps, than they had planned to leave.” He glanced at his wife, sharing the quiet joke.

Klara made a pot of coffee, and we all sat companionably around the little table. Klara had a gift for making her guests feel at home, and she must have sensed that we’d be happier staying right there in the kitchen.

She said, very directly, “Now, then, my dears, what is it you are wanting us to do for you?”

“It’s Jessica,” said Steve. “She decided that she wasn’t too keen on staying with the Hellwegs after all, but they were against her leaving. I thought it best to fetch her.”

“Ach, so!”
Bruno’s expression was serious. “They are not good people, I think—not good at all.”

“And you wish that they should not find her again, yes?” asked Klara.

“That’s it—until we can work something out. Can she stay here for the time being, please?”

Klara stretched her plump hand across the table and patted mine. “You are welcome,
liebling,
of course you are welcome.” But her good-natured face had a troubled look, and though she continued speaking to me, her eyes were turned toward Steve. “Would it not be more better for you, more safer for you, to return to London?”

Steve shook his head. “I doubt if that would be any good, Klara. I suspect they’ve got long arms.”

“Jawohl!”
said Bruno emphatically. “It is a pity you returned to Vienna, Jessica, and got mixed up with such people,
nicht?”

“I wish I never had.”

He gave me a warm smile. “But now you are here, and we must take good care of you. That will be a pleasure, eh, Klara?”

As if the thought had just struck him, Steve cut in suddenly, “Have you ever heard of a man called Richard Wilson?”

The Hutyens glanced at one another; then Bruno shook his head. “I think not. Describe him, if you please.”

Steve turned to me, and I began hesitatingly, “He’s fairly tall, with dark hair brushed back from his forehead. And he’s got a long thin face, and it always looks pale. Somehow I never really liked him, though it’s difficult to say why.” I tried to think of something more definite, and added lamely, “Each time I’ve seen him he was wearing a belted trench coat….”

They waited; then, realizing I had finished, Bruno said slowly, “That description could fit a thousand men in Vienna. Can you tell us nothing else?”

Steve put in quickly, “He claims to be in the British intelligence service.”

“The way you say that, my friend, I think you do not believe it.”

“And do you, Bruno?”

In answer he spread his hands on the table and shrugged.

Klara pressed more coffee on us, but I refused— I’d had two cups already. Steve shook his head too, saying that he’d better be going. Suddenly I was terribly afraid for him.

“Steve! Is it really safe for you to go home?”

He grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right. When they see me turn up solo, they’ll reckon they must have made a mistake.” He stood up to go. “I’ll call in the morning and arrange to come by sometime. Okay, Klara?”

“You shall have access to Jessica day or night whenever you wish, Steve. A free house, this is!” She smiled at him, proud of her English, blithely unaware of the
double-entendre.

At the thought of Steve going, I felt a lump in my throat. What could I say to him before an interested audience of two? I muttered inadequately, “Good night, Steve,” conscious that just across the little table Klara was smiling archly, her head on one side.

“Sleep tight, love,” he said, and dropped a quick kiss on the top of my head. It was done deliberately, I thought, for Klara and Bruno’s benefit, to please their romantic hearts. But it warmed me more than the cups of coffee had done, more than the wine.

Bruno went to see Steve out. As the door closed on them, Klara said softly, “He is a good man, that Steve.”

“I know he is!”

She became suddenly businesslike. “Well, now, you have no night clothes, nothing to wear?”

“I’m afraid not, Klara.”

“It is no matter, I can lend you.” She glanced down ruefully at her large bosom, which overflowed the tabletop. “You never sleep before in a ... what is
ein Zeltr?”

I laughed. “A tent, I believe.”

“
Ach
, yes—a large tent! But in the morning I will be going and buying you some nice things. You have not a coat even.”

At least I’d got my handbag, I thought thankfully, doing a quick estimate of my finances. The money had all come from Richard, but this wasn’t the time to worry about the ethics of using it. I could do that later.

“Thanks, Klara. It would help a lot if you could just buy me enough to keep me going. I ... I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get my own things back.”

When we went through the hall on our way to the spare bedroom, the two men were still standing at the front door, talking earnestly. Steve gave me an encouraging grin and a flip of the hand.

Getting undressed, I was dreading a restless night. But I went to sleep like a snuffed-out candle.

I didn’t wake until morning. It was already nine o’clock, as I discovered when Klara came to tell me that Steve was on the phone. I slipped into the jumbo-sized dressing gown she’d laid out for me, and went scurrying to the hall. There was a slight taste in my mouth, clean but bitter, evocative of my days in the hospital. Perhaps, with the coffee, Klara had made sure that I slept well.

“Hallo, love!” The sound of Steve’s steady voice sent my temperature climbing.

“Are you all right?” I asked him urgently. “They didn’t. . .
?”

He laughed. “That pretty car of theirs was still around when I got home. But when they saw I was alone, they departed.”

“Still, they might easily have someone keeping an eye on you. Do be careful, Steve!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care. And I’m going to make darned sure I shake off any tail before coming around to see you.”

“When will you be here?”

“Around noon. I’ve had an idea I want to talk to you about,”

“What is it?”

“No,” he said flatly, “not over the phone.”

So I had to hold in my impatience.

Klara, after seeing I had everything I wanted, set out for the shops armed with my sizes. Jotting them down, she had clucked her tongue with envy. I’d left it to her to get whatever she thought best, and was keeping my fingers crossed.

I spent a lot of that morning by the big window in the kitchen, staring out over the city. There was a soft autumn haze laid over everything like I’d never seen before. It was hard to realize that twelve months ago I’d not known Vienna at all.

Somewhere out there, lost in the gigantic jumble of buildings—ancient churches, baroque palaces, and stark modern tower buildings—were the people linked into my present life. There was Steve, probably at the office in Stubenring. And Bruno at the university. Klara would be shopping for me in one of the big stores in Mariahilfer Strasse. Then the Hellwegs, furious at my escape and planning my recapture— where were they? And Richard Wilson—the enigma?

I shivered and stepped back from the window. It was nonsense, of course, up here on the sixth floor, but I suddenly felt exposed, too much on view. I wanted to hide myself away.

Klara arrived home with a profusion of boxes and bags. She dumped the lot in the hall, laughing and breathless.

“Now you will be pretty again, Jessica. I have some nice things. I hope the shoes will fit you, but it is difficult to be sure.”

I unpacked the parcels at once with an eager birthdayish feeling. Klara looked on anxiously. She really had done well by me, and I knew it must have been an effort to put aside her own taste for feminine frillery. When Steve came I looked quite good.

There was a sort of jumpy excitement about him, and I knew he badly wanted to talk to me alone. Dear Klara made it easy for us.

“I must the lunch begin to make,” she insisted, and discreetly withdrew to her kitchen.

I took Steve into the big oblong sitting room that was full of Bruno’s beloved musical possessions—a huge grand piano, his cello, even a Spanish guitar.

Steve said at once, not sitting down, “Last night things began slotting into place. That holiday you had with Max—he’d mentioned nothing about it to me beforehand. Was it just a spur-of-the-moment thing?”

“Absolutely! He said the Hungarian trip had been a big success and that we ought to celebrate it.”

Steve frowned. “It wasn’t a success at all! Quite the reverse, because the Hungarians were fed up about late deliveries of some of our components. I had to go over there later to soothe them down.”

I was bewildered. “So what did Max mean?”

“Maybe he was talking about success in another direction. Maybe he really did bring those Kutani Scrolls back with him, hoping to sell them direct and pocket the cash.”

This was the sort of possibility I had to live with. I took a grip on myself. “But if that’s the case, where are they now?”

“It’s a question we’d all like answered—including, I wouldn’t mind betting, your friend Richard Wilson.” He gave me a straight look, then, in his typical way, shot off at a confusing tangent. “Since when did Max take up fishing?”

“Fishing? I don’t get you.”

“When I collected your belongings from the police after the smash, there was a full kit of angling gear in the car. I disposed of it, along with his other things, like you told me to. But it surprised me at the time—to my knowledge, Max was never the slightest bit interested in fishing.”

He’d brought that stuff home the day before we set out, bursting with the notion that fishing was an obvious tiling to do when holidaying in the Salzkam-mergut. Being Max, all the equipment was of super quality—a lovely American split-cane rod in a leather-trimmed carryall, and accessories. I’d been rather tickled and couldn’t help teasing him about it, but somehow Max hadn’t seen the joke.

I said slowly to Steve, “He thought it would be fun to try his hand.”

“And did he?”

“Well—a bit. He didn’t have much luck, though, and that disheartened him. But he went on carrying all the gear around with him, meaning to try again....” I trailed off, hating having to make excuses for Max.

Steve asked, “Did you ever take a good look at that equipment of his?”

“Well, of course I did! The night Max brought it home he showed me everything and explained what each bit was for.”

“And afterward, on your holiday—did you ever examine it then?”

“Why should I do that? I’d already seen it. For heaven’s sake, Steve, what’s this all about?”

He had turned away and was looking but the window. “It struck me that a fishing holdall would be tailor-made for hiding those scrolls if they were rolled up—the perfect way to carry around something valuable without arousing anyone’s suspicions. Not even yours.”

I stared at Steve’s back. “You mean ... ?”

He swung around to look at me again. “Unless Max unloaded those scrolls almost at once—and it’s unlikely he’d have a buyer lined up before he’d even got his hands on the things—I reckon they must have been carted around with you on that holiday.”

“But why? What would have been the point?”