The Prize (128 page)

‘I will tell you what,’ Krantz resumed. ‘I want to make your inquiry easier. Here, we have ten persons to be looked into, but because of what we already know, perhaps more attention should be given four of them. In your place, I would expend maximum effort on—let us say—Dr. John Garrett and Dr. Carlo Farelli, the laureates in medicine—their wives are of lesser moment, although one never knows—on those two gentlemen, and—let us say—Professor Max Stratman, also—Professor Stratman and his niece, whose name is Emily Stratman. You will keep this in mind, Daranyi?’

‘My memory is unfailing.’

‘Yes, Garrett, Farelli, the Stratmans.’ He examined the papers in his hand. ‘As for the others—the Marceaus—Andrew Craig—’

Daranyi’s bland face almost gave away its first surprise. ‘Andrew Craig?’ he echoed.

Krantz looked up. ‘The literary laureate,’ he said. ‘You know him?’

Daranyi’s mind had gone back to the tall, gaunt American in Lilly Hedqvist’s bed, to their breakfast, to his monologue on sex life in Sweden with Craig in the restaurant. There could not be two Andrew Craigs, both writers, in Stockholm in one winter. The heavy-drinking man—my God, he had even been to the nudist society with Lilly, the puritanical, troubled, attractive man who was Lilly’s lover—was no more a wanderer, tourist on the run, but he was one of the world’s great authors, a Nobel laureate, no less. And Daranyi remembered that he had lectured this giant as he might a farm lad. Suddenly, he felt foolish and weak, and tried to pin his mind to Krantz’s question, and with effort succeeded.

‘Know him? No, no, of course not. I had been reading some books by an American named Craig—’

‘Undoubtedly the same, but we have no time for literary digressions, Daranyi.’

Daranyi’s mind leaped to Lilly: did she know the august position of her paramour? Probably not, or she would have mentioned it. Certainly not, he decided. Lilly, for all her alertness and native wisdom, was widely unread. She was a delightful little animal of the senses, whose frankness sometimes passed for knowledge and erudition. Daranyi, as her fatherly mentor, knew her better. Except for occasional periodicals devoted to health and nature and popular psychology for mothers, she read next to nothing, certainly not books, in fact, not even newspapers. She would know neither Craig’s creative work nor his new reputation. Was there an advantage for her, in knowing? Craig enjoyed her, it was evident, and had interest in her and sympathy for her. What a catch he might make for Lilly.

Daranyi realized that he would have to give the problem further thought when he was alone. Now his duty was to Krantz, and the physicist’s obvious red herring. The interior titillation was—which of the four emphasized was the one that Krantz was trying to hide from him, and yet learn the most about? Dr. Garrett? Dr. Farelli? Professor Stratman? Miss Stratman? Well, that was the fun of it, above and beyond the kronor involved.

‘—can give them less time,’ Krantz was saying. ‘Mind you I want something on the Marceaus and Craig, indeed I do, and the wives and the Decker lady—one never knows—but I want you to use your time where it counts the most. I will trust your judgment.’

‘You have made everything clear, as ever, Dr. Krantz. Now as to the time—’

‘The time limitation is immutable,’ said Krantz firmly. ‘I must have your data by the early evening of December ninth, and if you can bring us the research earlier, I might arrange a bonus. But the ninth—’

Daranyi whistled. ‘Impossible.’

Krantz recited Eckart’s words to him. ‘Nothing is impossible, Daranyi. I do not ask you to move mountains. A few facts from here, from there—’

Daranyi had been calculating. ‘You are giving me forty-eight hours—sixty at most.’

‘I am fully cognizant of the difficulties, and I come prepared.’ He took out his wallet, removed a wad of notes held together with a paper clip. ‘Two thousand five hundred kronor for expenses alone,’ he said.

Daranyi picked up the notes and weighed them with satisfaction. ‘This will help.’

‘I presume you are going to do as you have always done—?’

‘How is that?’

‘Buy information from foreign correspondents, among other sources?’

‘That is likely.’

‘The timing is fortunate. Reporters are here from all over the world—the Grand, Hotel Stockholm, Eden Terrace, Foresta, Carlton are teeming with them. Many need extra money. The sum I have given you should go far.’

‘Except with the Americans.’

‘True,’ said Krantz. ‘But you will find other means with them. For one lead, I might mention a young woman named Miss Sue Wiley, who represents Consolidated Newspapers of New York—you will remember her name?’

‘Sue Wiley.’

‘I happen to know that she is preparing an exposé, on the sensational side, of the Nobel history and its many winners, past, present. I suspect she would do anything for new information.’

‘Are you suggesting, Dr. Krantz, that she might give me specific information I need, in return for such gossip as I can supply for her stories?’

‘No question about it. But I would not pretend for her that I was a journalist. She might worry about the competition—Americans are so conscious of exclusivity—whatever the word is they use.’

‘Scoop.’

‘Yes, yes, idiotic word. But give yourself another identity.’

‘You can leave that to me, Dr. Krantz.’

The physicist combed his goatee with his fingertips. ‘You might pay heed to the programme that the laureates have been following. You will find they have been drunk at the Royal Palace and at Hammarlund’s villa—’

‘Do not worry,’ Daranyi reassured his visitor, ‘I have my sources everywhere—and with two thousand five hundred kronor—’ He hesitated. ‘All that bothers me is the time limitation.’

‘You will do your best. I ask no more.’

‘Very well. You can depend on me.’ There was the final matter. Daranyi coughed and cleared his throat. ‘Now, as to my services—’

Krantz came to his feet and pulled his jacket straight. ‘Your fee is not yet settled, Daranyi. I am having another meeting with my colleagues. You will have to trust my judgment. Have I ever failed you in this respect? I have not. It will be good pay for forty-eight hours’ work. It will be more than adequate recompense, more than you received on your last assignment, that I pledge. And I repeat, if you can deliver material earlier, there will be a bonus.’

‘In financial affairs, I trust your generosity, your knowledge of my usefulness, entirely.’

Krantz had taken his overcoat, and now Daranyi was on his feet and helping his employer into it.

At the door, Krantz paused. ‘Utmost discretion, Daranyi, I warn you.’

A smile enlivened Daranyi’s face. He made his joke. ‘I have a neck, too. I like it.’

Krantz grunted. ‘Then it is settled. At any hour of the ninth, when you are ready, telephone my private number. I will be waiting in the apartment until you call. Then I will expect you right over.’

‘I hope I have something,’ said Daranyi.

‘I expect you will,’ said Krantz.

He left. The meeting was over. Daranyi stared absently at the closed door. He wondered what was behind all this. Soon enough, he might know. That was the sport of it, that and the money.

He returned to the end table and took up the biographies that Krantz had left behind. Slowly, he read. His forty-eight hours of voyeurism had begun.

At exactly 11.05 on the same morning—the air still as frozen as it had been in the earlier hours, but with the landscape of Djurg
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rden now painted zinc-grey rather than black—Denise Marceau had been driven through a rear gate behind
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skslottet, and had seen Dr. Oscar Lindblom through the windshield, slapping his arms and waiting at the forest path ahead.

As he assisted her from Hammarlund’s Bentley, a luxury that she enjoyed, so fitting for her mood, she was pleased to observe that Lindblom appeared more handsome, more definite, more manly than she had remembered. His hair has been caught by the wind, and rumpled, and the weather had made his cheeks ruddy and alive. The woollen muffler he had bound about his neck and shoulders—the muffler with no overcoat—gave him an indefinable dash. He looked less like a cavity, praise the Lord, she decided, and she went cheerfully on his arm through the rows of stripped trees. Lindblom said that there were some tame deer in the forest, but Denise saw none.

The private laboratory, a one-storey cement building, thirty by sixty feet, stood in a clearing, isolated from all other construction and habitation. Although the inside of the laboratory—two rooms and a bath—had the familiar appearance of a dozen laboratories Denise had known in France, this one proved infinitely more up-to-date.

Lindblom, attentive as a military school junior, had helped her off with her heavy grey strolling coat. She had been pleased, certain that she had not imagined it, that he had furtively admired her new silk shantung dress, low-cut and stylishly short for daytime wear.

After lighting her cigarette, he had guided her proudly through the larger room, the work section of the laboratory, meticulously pointing out and discussing each glass still and its contents, each high vacuum pump, the temperature gauges and heaters and flasks and beakers, the spectrophotometer, the high-speed centrifuge, the experimental rodents in stainless steel cages. Despite her lack of interest in science at the moment, Denise was impressed at the cash outlay the private laboratory represented.

As they marched up and down, past the counters, Lindblom discoursed with nervous enthusiasm about the work in progress. His love for algae strains and soyabean nodules and Rhodophyceae and Chlorella dinned on her eardrums. His hatred for the chemicals of natural food, his devotion to synthetics, were passionate. What interested Denise was not the knowledge that Lindblom imparted, but rather that he possessed any range of emotion at all. She wondered if only the chemistry of food stimulated him. She wondered if he would react, similarly, to the chemistry of woman.

She listened occasionally, but for the most part she did not listen at all. It was one of her gifts: the ability to shut off almost all human sound, yet to know intuitively when to nod and when to give assent and when to interject a comment of praise or displeasure. She had employed this ability through the laboratory tour and lecture. She had more momentous things in her head.

From the moment of her decision at the Hammarlund party last night, until the moment Claude had left her this morning, she had been of cheerful disposition, secure with her secret inner hope. This sudden change in her temperament had confused and dismayed Claude, and she had seen it in him. She had even guessed that he might be suspicious of her. At the end of breakfast, in the hotel suite, he had interrogated her carefully about her activity and enjoyment of the Hammarlund meeting. He had probed, and for the first time since her humiliation, she had felt real superiority.

The odds, she had known, despite her secret inner hope, were against her still. Gisèle’s imminent coming from Copenhagen might obliterate her entire effort. Still, she had made up her mind to do something, to make a fight of it, and that was heartening.

But her effort, she had known, was yet to be launched. Last night, she had made the crucial initial decision. In this laboratory, this morning, she would have to make the ultimate decision. And, once it was made, she would have to see it through.