Waiting for Sunrise (16 page)

‘Therefore,’ he added, ‘if you left us you would be missed very swiftly. You’re being watched all the time, even though it doesn’t seem like it. Someone would alert the police.’

Fyfe-Miller spoke up. ‘Also, as your gaolers, as it were, we would be honour-bound to report your absence to the authorities. And, of course, your bail would be forfeit.’

Lysander decided to ignore this last point. ‘But what if I slipped away in the middle of the night? It’d be hours before I was noticed.’

‘Not so. The middle of the night would be the worst possible time. The watchmen, the police at the gate, the night staff – everyone’s more alert at night. I’m pretty sure there are a couple of police plainclothesmen out there, sitting in a motor, twenty-four hours, waiting, watching. The middle of a working day is far more discreet.’ Munro smiled. ‘Paradoxically.’

‘If you left,’ Fyfe-Miller said, speculatively, ‘you’d have the maximum of an hour’s start, I’d say. If no one else had reported you then we would have to – after an hour.’

‘Better to assume a fifteen-minute start,’ Munro said. ‘They’re not fools.’

‘Where would
you
head for, Alwyn?’ Fyfe-Miller asked, disingenuously.

‘Trieste. It’s practically Italian anyway – they hate the Austro-Hungarians. Head for Trieste, take a steamer to Italy. That’s what I’d do.’

Lysander picked up the sub-textual message. He was by now fully aware of what was taking place here; Munro and Fyfe-Miller were laying out a course of action, almost a set of instructions for him to follow. Do what we tell you, they were saying, and you will be safe.

‘What station serves Trieste, by the way?’ Lysander asked in the same spirit of innocent enquiry.

‘The
Südbahnhof
. Change at Graz. Ten-, twelve-hour journey,’ Fyfe-Miller said.

‘I’d go straight to the Lloyds office in Trieste and buy a steamer ticket to . . .’ Munro frowned, thinking.

‘Not Venice.’

‘No. Too obvious. Maybe Bari – somewhere much further south than anyone would expect.’

Lysander said nothing, content to listen, aware of what was going on in this duologue.

Munro held up a warning finger. ‘You’d have to assume that the police would go straight to every station.’

‘Yes. So you might need some form of disguise. Of course, they’d also presume you’d be heading north, back to England. So heading south would be the right option.’

‘You’d need money,’ Munro said, taking out his wallet and counting out 200 crowns, laying the notes on the table in a fan. ‘What’s today? Tuesday. Tomorrow afternoon, I’d say. Be in Trieste by dawn on Thursday.’

‘Bob’s your uncle.’

The two men looked at Lysander candidly, no hint of conspiracy or collusion in their eyes. Their pointed absence of guile carried its own message – we’ve been having a conversation here, pure and simple. A conversation about a hypothetical journey – read nothing more into it. We take no responsibility.

‘The risks are grave,’ Munro said, as if to underline this last fact.

‘If you were caught it would rather look like an admission of guilt,’ Fyfe-Miller added.

‘You’d need to be clever. Think ahead. Imagine what it would be like – what to do in any eventuality.‘

‘Use your ingenuity.’

Munro stood and headed for the door, Fyfe-Miller following. The money was left lying on the table.

Lysander went to the door and opened it for them. He knew exactly what was expected of him, now.

‘Most interesting,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ Munro said. Fyfe-Miller gave a smart salute and Lysander watched them stride briskly back to the consulate through the falling snow.

At the end of the afternoon, the snow having abated, leaving the low box-hedges of the parterre with an inch of white icing, Lysander went for a stroll around the garden, thinking hard. He had the money in his pocket, Munro and Fyfe-Miller had outlined the best route out of Austria. Once he was in Trieste he would be safe – Italians outnumbered Austrians there twenty-to-one. Some tramp-steamer or cargo ship would take him to Italy for a few crowns. Then his eye was caught by something unfamiliar – a glint, a gleam of light. He wandered over.

In the lock of the small door in the back wall was a new brass key, bright and untarnished, shining in the weak afternoon sun. Lysander slipped it in his pocket. So, that was it – tomorrow afternoon, after lunch, he thought. The dash for freedom.

24. Ingenuity

Lysander deliberately left half his lunch – stewed pork with horseradish – uneaten. He told the surly fellow with buck teeth who came to take it away that he wasn’t feeling well and was going to bed. As soon as he was alone again he slipped on his coat, gathered up a few essential belongings that could be distributed amongst his various pockets, lifted his hat off the hook on the back of the door and stepped outside.

It was a breezy day of scudding clouds and almost all the snow had melted. He took a turn around the garden to make it seem he was on his usual post-prandial walk and, as he reached the small door in the back wall, unlocked it and was through in a second, pulling it to and locking it again from the outside. He threw the key back over the wall into the garden. He looked around him – an anonymous side street in the Landstrasse district, not a part of Vienna he was familiar with. He walked up to a main road and saw that it was named Rennweg – now his bearings returned. He was about five minutes walk from the South Railway Station where he could catch his train to Trieste – but he knew he had to use his ingenuity, first. He saw two cabs waiting outside the State Printing Works and ran across Rennweg to hail one.

He was at Mariahilfer Strasse in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes was the start that Munro and Fyfe-Miller said he should allow himself. He could be sitting in the
Südbahnhof
now with a ticket to Trieste in his hand. Was he making a mistake? Use your ingenuity, Munro had said. It wasn’t so much advice as a warning, he thought.

Lysander rang the bell at the landing door of the Pension Kriwanek, saying a small prayer. Let Frau K be out (she was usually out after lunch, shopping or visiting) and let Herr Barth be in.

The door opened and Traudl stood there – her face rapidly pantomiming surprise and shock. Her blush rose to her hairline.

‘Oh my god!’ she said. ‘Herr Rief! No!’

‘Hello, Traudl. Yes, it’s me. Is Frau Kriwanek in?’

‘No. Please, what are you doing here, sir?’

‘Is Herr Barth in?’

‘No, he’s not in, either.’

Good and damn, Lysander said to himself and gently pushed his way past Traudl into the hall. There were the two bergères and the stuffed owl under its glass dome, relics of his former happy life, Lysander thought, feeling a spasm of anger that he’d been forced to relinquish it.

‘Would you open Herr Barth’s room, please, Traudl?’

‘I don’t have a key, sir.’

‘Of course you have a key.’

Meekly, she turned and headed down the corridor to Herr Barth’s room, removing the bunch of house keys from her apron pocket, and unlocked the door.

‘Don’t tell anyone I was here, Traudl. Understand? I’ll explain everything to Herr Barth later – but you mustn’t say a word to anyone else.’

‘Frau Kriwanek will know, Herr Rief. She knows everything.’

‘She doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know about you and Lieutenant Rozman . . .’

Traudl hung her head.

‘I would hate to have to tell Frau Kriwanek what you and the lieutenant got up to.’

‘Thank you, Herr Rief. I would be most grateful for your silence on this matter.’

‘And remember you owe me twenty crowns, Traudl.’

‘I’ll tell no one. Not a soul. I swear.’

Lysander gestured for Traudl to enter Herr Barth’s little room. ‘After you,’ he said, and followed her in.

25. Trieste

Lysander sat looking out of the window of the Graz express, watching the early morning sunlight glance and shimmer off the Golfo di Trieste as he caught glimpses of the sea in between the numerous tunnels the train barrelled through on its descent to the coast and the city. These vistas of the Adriatic and its rocky coastline were symbolic of his salvation, he told himself; he should store them away in his memory-archive. Here he was, arriving at the very edge of Austria-Hungary and he would be leaving it for ever in a matter of hours. He was hungry – he hadn’t eaten since his abandoned lunch the day before and he promised himself a decent breakfast at the station restaurant as soon as they arrived. He had just over 100 crowns left, more than enough to book passage on a steamer to Ancona – no need to go as far south as Bari. Once in Ancona he would go to Florence and have money wired to him there, then he would make his way home through France. Now he was almost in Trieste all these plans seemed entirely feasible and logical.

With complaining groans of braking metal the Graz express slowed to a halt at Trieste’s Stazione Meridionale and Lysander stepped out on to the platform. Seeing signs in Italian was already enough for him. He had made it, he was free –

‘Rief?’

He turned very slowly to see Jack Fyfe-Miller stepping down from the first-class carriage with a small leather grip in his hand.

Lysander felt his bowels ease with this small deliverance.

‘Bravo,’ Fyfe-Miller said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Bet you’re hungry. Let me buy you breakfast.’

They went to the Café Orientale in the Lloyds building on the Piazza Grande where Lysander ordered and ate a six-egg omelette with a ham steak and consumed many small sweet bread rolls. Fyfe-Miller drank a spritzer and smoked a cigarette.

‘We were very impressed,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Munro and I were there at the
Südbahnhof
looking out for you. We thought you were never coming, I must say – thought you’d left it too late. They had the police there very quickly. We were beginning to get worried – then along you came, swearing in Italian, carrying a double bass.’

‘I was using my ingenuity, as instructed.’

Lysander had stuffed a pillow from Herr Barth’s bed under his shirt and buttoned his overcoat around this new pot-belly. He had taken Herr Barth’s ancient hard-felt top hat and punched a dent in it. The big double bass in its leather container was surprisingly light, though bulky. He had locked Traudl in Herr Barth’s room and had hailed a cab on Mariahilfer Strasse for the station. Once there, he bought his ticket for Trieste (third class) and with many a ‘
Mi scusi
’, ‘
Attenzione
’ and ‘
Lasciami passare
’ had made his way noisily to the platform. People looked round, he saw children smiling and pointing, policemen glanced at him. A station porter helped him heave the double bass on board. No one was looking for a plump Italian double-bass player in a greasy topper. He found a seat by the window and waited, as calmly as he could, for the whistle-blast announcing their departure.

‘Sometimes being ostentatious is the best disguise,’ Lysander said.

‘So we saw . . . What happened to the double bass?’

‘I left it on the train when we changed at Gratz. Feel a bit guilty about that.’

‘We were very impressed, Munro and I. We had a good laugh before I jumped on the train after you.’

‘Did you report me missing?’

‘Of course. After an hour – but they already knew. The informers in the embassy were miles ahead of us. However, we were suitably outraged and very apologetic. Very shamefaced.’

After breakfast Fyfe-Miller bought him his ticket to Ancona and they walked along to the new port to find the mole where the mail-steamer was berthed.

Fyfe-Miller shook his hand at the foot of the gangway.

‘Goodbye, Rief. And damned well done. I’m sure you’ve made the right decision.’

‘I’m sorry to leave,’ Lysander said. ‘There’s a lot of unfinished business in Vienna.’

‘Well, you won’t be able to go back, that’s for sure,’ Fyfe-Miller said with his usual bluntness. ‘Now you’re a fugitive from Austro-Hungarian justice.’

The thought depressed him. There was a toot from the steam whistle on the smoke-stack.

‘Thanks for all your help – you and Munro,’ Lysander said. ‘I won’t forget.’

‘Neither will we,’ Fyfe-Miller said, with a broad smile. ‘You owe His Majesty’s Government a considerable sum of money.’

They shook hands, Fyfe-Miller wished him
bon voyage
and Lysander boarded the scruffy coastal cargo vessel. Steam was got up and the mooring ropes were cast off, thrown on board and the little ship left the busy harbour of Trieste. Lysander stood on the rear deck, leaning on the balustrade, watching the city recede, with its castle on its modest hill, admiring the splendour of the rocky Dalmatian coastline. All very beautiful in the winter sunshine, he acknowledged, feeling a melancholy peace overwhelm him and wondering if he would ever see this country again, thinking ruefully that his business with it – Hettie and their child – had every chance of remaining unfinished for ever.