The Aquila Project (15 page)

‘Until what, Box? What are you expecting to happen?’

‘Let me tell you a little story, sir. A couple of years ago, we got word at the Yard that a celebrated smasher – by which we mean a high-class forger of coins – had gone to ground somewhere in Bermondsey. We made our usual enquiries, and alerted a few choice informers that there was money to be made. Within the day, we were given six definite leads, each one following from the one before, like a chain of events. Those leads told us that our quarry was holed up in a house in Black Swan Yard, near Crucifix Lane. Towards dawn, three of us went to this house, forced the door, and rushed in with the darbies at the ready.’

‘And what happened?’

‘We were rushed by a gang of ten real bruisers who were lying in wait for us. We were battered soft, the three of us, and the
smasher got clean away. And that’s how it feels like to me, sir. I wonder if we’re being helped on our way into a trap.’

Colonel Kershaw glanced at Box, and for a moment made no reply. He’s wondering whether to tell me something, Box thought, something unpleasant, I’ll be bound! Yes, he’s going to tell me.

‘Listen, Box,’ said Kershaw in a low voice, ‘I’ve no doubt
whatever
that we have been secretly observed ever since we docked at Danzig, observed, that is, by our enemies, and perhaps by our friends. When we were at Danzig station, I saw an agent of Count von und zu Thalberg boarding a train. It’s just possible that he had been sent to keep an eye on
us
.’

‘Count von und zu Thalberg’s a trusted friend, sir. No harm can come from being trailed by one of his people.’

‘True; but like you, I’m certain that our enemies will have seen us, too. Well, I planned this trip in such a way as to make
surveillance
by the enemy virtually inevitable. We are not dealing here with amateurs. The simplest way of coming face to face with poor Grunwalski and his captors – for that’s what they are – is to allow them to lead us to where he is. Let The Thirty do part of our work for us. It may be a counsel of desperation, or it may be a sound move on my part. Are you with me, or do you think I’ve made a wrong move?’

‘I’m with you, sir,’ Box replied. ‘I don’t mind telling you that I’m relieved to hear what you’ve just told me. For a while, I thought—’

‘You thought I’d lost my touch?’ Kershaw laughed. ‘Well, the fact that you thought so proves that I haven’t! Come, Mr Box, let us give all our attention now to the task at hand.’

The four men trudged along the dusty path of beaten earth, which wound between overgrown hedges on its way to Limburg. Eventually they rounded a curve and came quite suddenly into a small village, larger than Sheinberg, and boasting a stone church and a high-fronted timber inn. Across a large field of root crops they could see some railway buildings surrounded by a wooden stockade.

‘That’s the fortified railway station we’ve heard so much about,’ said Kershaw to Box. ‘From there, a single-track line crosses the border into Russia half a mile from here. It stops at a customs control post, and then makes its way to the Russian town of Brest-Litovsk. But that’s not the route for us. Ah! I rather think that our contact is already waiting for us.’

He motioned to a stocky man in the dress of a gamekeeper, who was standing near what seemed to be a market cross. He was smoking a curly pipe, and glanced from time to time at the church clock. As the four men emerged from the lane into the village street, the man joined them, and walked silently beside them, puffing away at his pipe, and looking fixedly ahead of him.

As soon as they had left the village, and entered a straggling beech wood, he spoke to them in halting English.

‘Good day,
Herr
Oberst
. Within another hour, you will have reached the spot where I can spirit you away from Germany and into the Polish territories of Russia. That is my task, you
understand
? It is for you to find a way to return when your business is done. Come.’

It soon became clear to Box that the beech wood was never tended by a forester. The few paths were overgrown, and from time to time their way was blocked by a fallen tree. The
atmosphere
was dry and fetid. They were plunging into one of those desolate areas where the line of demarcation between two nations led to the creation of an untenanted wilderness.

The guide all but ignored them. He had extinguished his pipe, and had taken to humming a rather mirthless tune to himself as he led them steadily to their destination. Box, by now tired himself, could sense the weariness of his companions. The
two-mile
walk from Sheinberg had been unlooked-for, and this further weary traipse through a wood added to the tedium of a journey that had begun early that day in far-off Danzig.

Presently, they emerged into a clearing in the wood, a lonely, deserted place, containing a ruined hut, and the overgrown
remains of a collapsed cottage. The ground was wild with sinuous creeper and rotting logs. The guide stooped low, and disappeared into the undergrowth. In a moment they heard him whispering to them to follow. They did so, pushing aside the clinging tendrils and massive dock plants, and found themselves all but crawling along a low tunnel hewn from the hard clay. It stank of foul water, which lay in yellow pools along its length.

In a few minutes they emerged into another beech wood, equally deserted and neglected, and the guide began to talk rapidly to Kershaw in German. Then he bowed briefly to the four men, and plunged back into the hidden tunnel.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Colonel Kershaw, ‘we are now standing on the Polish territory of the Russian Empire. Soon, God willing, we shall be in Polanska Gory.’

Although they had ventured no more than a few hundred yards east, they realized immediately that they had entered another country. Tilled fields seemed to stretch to the horizon across a flat, open plain. Lines of picturesque single-storey houses ran along the edges of some of the fields, forming what could be called linear villages. Here and there a church tower rose from a clump of trees, though near the centre of the plain they could see a typical Russian church, its gilded onion domes catching the rays of the declining sun. The Polish guide, Kolinsky, had seen it, too, and remarked that it was a symbol of Catholic Poland’s subjugation to Russia, and its Orthodox religion.

Groups of peasants were labouring in the fields, their backs bent to the earth. The men wore long, white smocks reaching to their ankles, and tied at the waist with a cord. Their heads were protected from the sun by round fur hats. The women were clad in drab black dresses, and their heads were covered by scarves. One or two of the peasants looked up at the travellers without curiosity, soon bending their heads once more to their toil.

‘Those folk look very poor to me,’ said Box to Kolinsky.

‘They’re tied to the land, Mr Box, because they come from families who have never been able to adjust to freedom. One day. perhaps, things will be different here.’

They had walked for nearly an hour along a rutted track when the landscape changed abruptly, and they found that they were walking along a defile between low, wooded hills. They could no longer see the wide fields and the toiling peasants, as the woods seemed to draw closer.

Was it fancy, or were there fleeting figures running silently beside them among those trees? There! thought Box. Surely that was a man, wearing a bandoleer, and carrying what appeared to be a musket? He glanced at Kershaw, and saw that the colonel, too, had seen the silent runners. He half opened the flap of his jacket, and Box saw the butt of an Army revolver nestling in a concealed holster.

The path began to climb upward, and soon they found
themselves
entering a kind of natural arena surrounded entirely on three sides by birch plantations. The fourth side of the clearing was occupied by one of the most fantastic buildings that Box had ever seen. At first sight, it seemed to be a fort, a crenellated tower with a narrow gate fronted by a drawbridge spanning a rushing stream. But merging into the tower was an ancient and massive Romanesque church, from the roof of which rose a great image in stone of an angel holding a shield, upon which a carved eagle could just be discerned. Was it a church, or a fortress? Or was it both?

By now, they were standing in a vast open space from which rose tall gravestones, some made of stone, and others of rusting iron. An enormous iron crucifix rose up among the tombs, leaning drunkenly towards the visitors.

‘St Mary of the Icon,’ Kershaw muttered, as though to himself, and at the same time several shots rang out. They flung themselves to the ground as one man, taking refuge in the long grass beside the tombs.

‘They’re firing high, Morrison,’ said Kershaw. ‘They’re warning shots.’

‘I agree, sir,’ the sergeant-armourer replied. ‘What shall we do?’

‘The best thing, I think, is for us to stand up, raise our hands in surrender, and back off. Kolinsky, if you tell them that we’ve simply lost our way, they may believe us. I don’t know who these people are – or who they think
we
are – but they’ve clearly got the advantage.’

The four men rose to their feet, hands raised. By now, at least a dozen men had appeared in the clearing before the
fortress-church
. They wore peasant dress, but they all carried ancient muskets, which they pointed at the intruders. Each man’s face seemed devoid of expression, as though their action had been orchestrated by an intelligence superior to their own.

Kolinsky addressed the men in Polish, but they angrily waved him away, and began to talk among themselves. A tall, fair-haired man, who seemed to be their leader, remained with his musket trained on Kershaw and his party.

Arnold Box suddenly had an idea so brilliant that it almost took his breath away. He cautiously felt in his waistcoat pocket, and his fingers closed round the Polish coin that Bobby Fitz had found among Grunwalski’s effects. Stepping boldly forward in front or the others, he held the coin up, for the fair-haired man with the musket to see.

The man started in surprise, and immediately bowed low. ‘
Magnat
,’ he muttered, then spoke rapidly to his companions before motioning to Box and the others to follow the band of defenders across the drawbridge.

‘Mr Box,’ said Kershaw in a voice that was tinged with awe, ‘you never cease to amaze me! They think you’re one of The Thirty.’

Together they crossed the drawbridge, and entered the strange edifice known as St Mary of the Icon. The man who had addressed Box preceded them along a short passage to the right of
the entrance, treating the inspector to little deferential bows, whilst scarcely acknowledging the presence of the others. He pushed open a door, and they found themselves entering an ancient, fantastic church.

It was dark and decayed inside St Mary of the Icon, with festoons of cobwebs draped across dull brass chandeliers. The floor space seemed to be filled with half-collapsed box tombs, and the broken remains of pews. Fragments of medieval stained glass glowed in the windows, though many of the panes had been replaced by squares of wood. At the far end of the church they could just glimpse a carved stone reredos rising above an altar, where a dim red light burned. In a side chapel stood an ancient, smoke-blackened icon of the Virgin and Child, before which a number of candles burned. Although partly ruinous, the place evidently still functioned as a church.

Their guide motioned to them to follow him through another door, which gave direct access to what was evidently the great hall of the fortress. It was a lofty room, with tall windows through which the late afternoon was pouring. Box glanced up at the high-pitched ceiling of elaborate carved beams, while noting the great coloured coats of arms, and images of the white eagle of Poland, arrayed along the walls. A long refectory table occupied the centre of the hall. The four men stood for a while to accustom their eyes to the brightness of the hall after the gloom of the adjacent church, and then they saw the figure of a man standing at one of the far windows, which overlooked a tangled garden. The man turned round, and greeted them in perfect English.

It was Baron Augustyniak.

D
RESSED IN A WELL-CUT
morning coat, worn with fashionable pinstripe trousers, Baron Augustyniak looked as though he was standing in the drawing-room of his house in St John’s Wood. His mane of blond hair was swept back from his brow, and his fine beard jutted forward as he confronted the four men with an understandable air of triumph. There was a mocking expression on his face that was not entirely unpleasant. Enemy or not, thought Box, he was a fine figure of a man.

‘So, gentlemen,’ he said, carefully fixing his rimmed monocle in his right eye, ‘you have obligingly walked into my parlour! Well, it is the safest place for you to be at present, as this particular corner of Poland can be a trifle wild, as you’ve already found out.’

‘I take it,’ said Colonel Kershaw coolly, ‘that I am addressing Baron Augustyniak? I thought you’d come to settle in England; evidently, I was mistaken.’

‘Colonel Kershaw,’ the baron replied courteously, ‘I am indeed Augustyniak. You and I have not been formally introduced, but your fame has preceded you. And you were not mistaken about my taking up residence in England, but for the moment I have been summoned here by urgent business.’

It was the turn of Arnold Box and his companions to be the subject of Baron Augustyniak’s wry humour. As he spoke, it became clear to all four men that all their movements since setting foot in Germany had been an open book to him.

‘Inspector Box,’ he said, ‘I believe I once glimpsed you through my little telescope while I was watching the stirring events on Tower Bridge last month. You were standing on top of some kind of warehouse. Mr Morrison – I hope that rifle you’re carrying has its safety catch on? Accidents can happen, you know. And finally, Mr Kolinsky – a fellow Pole.’

The baron switched effortlessly from English to Polish, and spoke a few words to the Polish interpreter.

‘I’m very well, thank you, Baron,’ said Kolinsky in reply. ‘But while I’m here I prefer to speak in English, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘Of course. I appreciate that you Englishmen will want to stick together. And now, gentlemen, as you have wished yourselves upon us, I suppose we shall have to accommodate and feed you. There are many rooms in this fortress, and if you will give me your parole not to make any silly attempts to escape, I will have my servants conduct you to your quarters. They will also bring you hot water, so that you can wash away the stains of your long trek through so many dusty lanes.’

It all sounds very fine, thought Box, but somehow none of it rings true. There’s something very odd about Baron Augustyniak. He was acting a part, but it was impossible to divine what that part was.

Colonel Kershaw said, ‘You are very kind, Baron, and I can speak for all of us when I say that there will be no foolish heroics. I take it that you knew we would come this way?’

‘You may indeed, Colonel. You were positively identified by one of my folk who’s a ticket collector at Posen Station. After that, there was always someone keeping a benevolent eye upon you. But I knew, before ever you left London, that you were on our trail.’

The baron laughed heartily, and moved away from the window. The movement seemed to draw some of the tension from the air.

‘It was very clever of you, Colonel Kershaw,’ he said, ‘to send
your little girl spy to watch my every move – I refer to Miss Susan Moore, my yellow-haired housemaid. Dear me, what a nice child! At first, I thought that Sir Charles Napier had sent her, but on reflection I realized that his agents aren’t normally assigned
long-term
tasks like infiltrating a gentleman’s household. A pretty maiden with a courageous heart was more in your line.’

‘I can assure you, Baron—’

‘I’m sure you can. Well, we’ll speak about Susan Moore later, after you’ve refreshed yourselves. I’ll give you half an hour, and then my men will come to summon you here for a meal. It won’t be quite like the Savoy, but it’ll be wholesome fare.’

Baron Augustyniak clapped his hands, and two of the surly retainers appeared at the door. He spoke to them in Polish, and they motioned to the prisoners to precede them from the great hall. Kershaw made to lead his party into the corridor, but one of the retainers pushed him curtly aside. The man turned to Arnold Box, bowed low, and muttered the single word, ‘
Magnat
’. Box bowed in return, and led the others out of the room.

‘Sir,’ said Box, ‘I can’t believe that this is happening. I don’t think we should relax our guard for a single moment. Baron Augustyniak is obviously a gentleman, but some of his colleagues in The Thirty are vicious thugs. Doctor Franz Kessler is a killer, and I’ve no doubt he’s about here, somewhere.’

It was half an hour after their dramatic confrontation with the baron. They had been led to a row of cell-like rooms on the ground floor, each containing an iron bedstead with a straw mattress. Servants had appeared with cans of hot water and basins, and they had all been able to make themselves presentable. The very act of washing had banished much of their weariness. Box had been able to walk into Kershaw’s room without anyone trying to prevent him.

‘I don’t quite understand the situation myself, Box,’ said Kershaw. ‘In fact, I’m completely bewildered. I think we must
continue to be polite and accommodating, as our apparent
acceptance
that we are prisoners here could possibly make the Baron talk. I’ve a shrewd feeling, from his performance back there, that he’s very fond of his own voice, and if we treat him in the right way, he’ll probably tell us all we want to know. It also helps a little that his servants are convinced that you are a baron. It was
providential
that you still had the magic talisman in your waistcoat pocket.’

‘If they think I’m a baron, sir,’ Box replied, ‘then they must be even dimmer than they look. Have you devised a secret plan to get us out of here, sir?’

Colonel Kershaw laughed, and regarded Box with something akin to affection.

‘No, I have not!’ he replied. ‘You always think I can pull rabbits out of my hat. Well, I can’t. We’ll just have to live by our wits, Box. Meanwhile, let’s contain ourselves in patience until we return to share the hospitality of the baron’s table.’

Soon afterwards, one of the servants came into the corridor and spoke to Box in halting English. ‘The food – it is prepared,’ he said, and motioned the four to follow him back into the great hall.

The long table had been covered in an embroidered cloth, and someone had set out cutlery, tankards, and pewter flagons of what looked like dark beer. The baron was sitting at the head of the table. His earlier gloating skittishness seemed to have disappeared, to be replaced by a quiet, collected seriousness. He told his guests to sit down along one side of the table to his right, where chairs had been placed. They noticed that two other places had been set at the table to the baron’s left.

Two of the retainers appeared with plates of what appeared to be a kind of stew, which they placed in front of each of the diners, bowing low to Baron Augustyniak and Mr Arnold Box. They returned in a moment with a wooden platter piled high with pieces of black bread, and a bowl of coarse salt. Bowing a second time, they withdrew from the hall, and quietly closed its door.

‘This is pork stew with spices, gentlemen,’ said the Baron, ‘a
local dish. In the tankards you will find a strong Polish beer. Let us eat, and then we can talk.’

The stew was hot and appetizing, if rather over-spiced. The beer was excellent, though Box estimated that it was probably three times as strong as anything served in The King Lud. It was quiet in the hall, and the last rays of the declining sun crept in through the remaining stained-glass panes of the tall windows. All that Box could hear was the occasional sound of spoons and forks delving around inside the deep pewter basins in which the stew had been served.

‘Baron Augustyniak,’ asked Kershaw, when he had finished his meal, ‘you will pardon me if I ask whether this fortified house is your property? You seem very much at home here.’

‘My property? No, Colonel. This place – St Mary of the Icon – belongs to an old but impoverished Polish-German family, the Hardenbergs. They live not far away. The Hardenbergs make this place available for the likes of me, when business brings me back to this part of Poland. I, too, come from this remote and rather dangerous area.’

‘And what business brings you here on this occasion, Baron?’ asked Kershaw boldly.

Baron Augustyniak smiled, and shook his head. He was clearly more amused than angry.

‘Let me remind you, Colonel Kershaw,’ he replied, ‘that I am a Polish nobleman, and, as such, a subject of the Russian Empire. I have every right to be here, and have made no secret of that fact. You and your companions, unfortunately, are here without papers, trespassers in our country….

‘But let me give you one reason for my presence here. On the twenty-first of this month, the Tsar comes to Polanska Gory to open the new bridge. It will be a festive occasion, at which many of the local Russian and Polish nobility have been invited out of courtesy. So I shall be there when the Tsar sets foot on the stones of the Catherine Bridge.’

I bet you will, thought Box, and so will your friends Kessler and his mates, and the half-crazed Grunwalski. Well, we’ll see what fate sends in the next few days.

‘There are other things that I must tell you, gentlemen,’ the baron continued, ‘but I cannot do so until two of my friends have appeared. They will be here within minutes, if I’m not mistaken, and they will join us here at the table.’

He glanced at the two empty places on his left. Who would his two friends be? thought Box. One would certainly be Doctor Franz Kessler. Perhaps the other would be Gerdler, quartermaster of The Aquila Project, or Eidenschenk, whom Colonel Kershaw had described as a second Kessler. Germans…. And when they came, all hell would be let loose.

The door of the hall opened, and the two remaining guests were ushered in to the hall. It was Colonel Kershaw’s gasp of surprise that caused Box to look up sharply. The guests were Count von und zu Thalberg, and his faithful tactician, Sergeant-Major Schmidt.

In a single dramatic moment, Box’s whole world seemed to revolve dizzily, and then settle into an entirely new and
unexpected
pattern. He knew from personal experience that these two men were staunch allies of Colonel Kershaw, and devotees of the Balance of Power concept. Therefore, Baron Augustyniak could only be another ally, another devoted worker in the cause of peace and stability in Europe. He looked at the baron, and saw from the broad smile on his face, that his assumptions were true.

‘How nice to see you again, Kershaw,’ said Count von und zu Thalberg, sitting down at the table. ‘And you, Mr Box. You remember
Oberfeldwebel
Schmidt, of course? Now, Baron,’ he continued, leaving the four Englishmen temporarily speechless, ‘our friends are completely in the dark about what’s going on. Will you enlighten them, or shall I?’

‘I think it’s a task for you, Thalberg,’ the baron replied. ‘Tell
them everything, including Morrison and Kolinsky. Where this matter is concerned, the more they know, the more effective they will be as allies. I’ll only interrupt if I think it’s advisable to do so.’

‘Gentlemen,’ Thalberg began, ‘you must know at once that Baron Augustyniak is a senior officer of the Okhrana, the secret intelligence department of the Russian Imperial Police. For some years he was based at the Foreign Bureau of the organization in Paris, where he was able to monitor the activities of various
dissidents
who had escaped from Russia in order to continue their nefarious activities from France—’

‘The Okhrana?’ cried Colonel Kershaw. ‘Good God, you might have told me, Thalberg! I’d not the slightest idea…. But there, I must stay quiet until you’ve done. I’m completely confused: in a moment, I’ll doubt my sanity. The
Okhrana
?’

Baron Augustyniak threw back his head and laughed.

‘An unlooked-for complication, hey, Kershaw? Yes, my chief vocation is to protect the life of the Tsar and his family from terrorists – what we call “bombists” – socialists, anarchists, and other malignants. But I digress. Please continue your narrative, Thalberg.’

‘Baron Augustyniak and I have worked closely together for many years, giving our joint attention to matters effecting the security and stability of Central and Eastern Europe. We have had many successes, and a number of reversals, but between us we have forged an organization that is highly regarded both in Russia and Germany.

‘And then, about three years ago, we began to detect the
presence
of a new dissident group, a group which gradually developed into what is now called The Thirty. Its aims were to assassinate the Tsar, Alexander III, and to see that the blame would be laid at the door of the Tsar’s Polish subjects. Do I need to elaborate, Kershaw, or do you know all this?’

‘I know it well enough. Russia would launch a punitive military invasion of its Polish lands, bringing its troops so perilously near
to the Prussian border that military engagement between the two empires would be inevitable. It was the fear of that happening, Thalberg, that brought the four of us here today.’

‘Yes, I know it was. I do wish you’d leave these Central European matters to us! Now, Baron Augustyniak there, and the Okhrana in general, are skilled and subtle opponents, and it was the baron who proposed getting himself accepted into The Thirty by a combination of bribery and principle—’

‘I am a Polish patriot, gentlemen,’ Augustyniak interrupted, ‘but I believe that a viable Polish nation can only be achieved by the political expediency of creating it as a wholesome buffer state between the German and Russian empires. That’s why I can work for both countries at once. But I have no time for dissident groups of murderers and anarchists. The Thirty are the same kind of people as the Eidgenossenschaft, that nest of German vipers that almost succeeded in plunging all Europe into the dark night of war. The destruction of that gang, Colonel, was one of your signal victories: the annihilation of The Thirty will be one of ours.’