Stained Glass (24 page)

“Well, hardly his fault,” Amundsen said, just the least bit reluctantly, hung up the telephone, and looked up into his own office door and into the barrel of a .44 automatic. At the same time, from behind, he felt steel on his neck and the man behind him said:

“Put your hands behind your back, Amundsen. And hear this: As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather kill you than get from you what we are here to get from you, so I beg you to give me the opportunity.”

Amundsen moved back his hands, which were then handcuffed with professional dispatch, and he was shoved into his own office, onto the couch where he would seat special buyers when they came to him.

The same man said: “You had two appointments this morning. Your assistant thoughtfully wrote down their telephone numbers. We telephoned to say you were called away for the day. In fact, your absence may prove to be permanent. Your buddy across the street doesn't expect to see you till five. Ingemar is north on a wild-goose chase. A small sign outside the door says ‘Closed for the Day.' We will not be interrupted.”

Amundsen said nothing. The two men had made no effort to disguise themselves. The one who was doing the talking he recognized without difficulty. Dana Neilson. He too had been in the resistance. On two occasions they had worked briefly together. Like Amundsen, he was about thirty years old. Unlike Amundsen, Neilson was still lean; he was strong-jawed, with a splotchy face that showed the ravages of frostbite, and dark-red curly hair. His companion was younger, intense; his pistol, to which he had now affixed a silencer, was aimed once again at Amundsen's head, from which it never moved.

Neilson sat down at Amundsen's desk and tilted back the chair, looking across the room at Amundsen, sitting on the couch, his arms behind him, his eyes on the floor, his once flat stomach paunching over his belt.

“There is no time, Amundsen, as you must realize. So where are we? Your business is very nearly bankrupt, your wife is tubercular, your son is with his grandparents. You badly needed money. You did not know Axel Wintergrin, so what you did to him you did impersonally. That makes it a little easier to swallow—I suppose. But I
did
know Axel Wintergrin. He saved my life at Vemork, and he very nearly gave his life on more than one occasion to help my country. Incidentally, your country too, Amundsen. But we are here now to extricate ourselves from this mess you got us into.” He got up and walked to the end of the room, leaning now against the door.

Amundsen did not move his head or his eyes to follow him.

“First let me tell you what we
don't
require of you, and that is your exposure as a fraud-for-hire. That's
your
problem, and if you live, you can live with it.

“The story will be as follows: An unidentified man telephoned you ten days ago and said that unless you cooperated with him he would kill either your wife or your son, and moreover would kill them sooner or later if you turned to the police for help.

“He told you the story you were instructed to carry to the press. And he sent you by mail the forged page from the Gestapo records, with the story that you had snatched it from Gestapo Headquarters when you participated in the assault on V-Day.

“Since then you have had a bad bout of conscience, and you asked a former friend in the resistance—that's me—for help. I did some sleuthing in the ideological underground and got a lead on the man who phoned you—that's Hans, sitting over there. I ‘almost nailed him,' but he slipped through my fingers on a flight to Paris. I will have given a complete description of him to the police. I have that description here. It will coincide with the flight out of Oslo to Paris at two p.m. today, which Hans here plans to take. No ideological clues. It does not serve our interests to link this operation either to the CIA or to the Communists, or to Wintergrin's political enemies in Germany.

“The money, however much it was, and wherever it is, you get to keep. I wouldn't worry about your contact moving in on you. I intend to take you to the north country right now, and there you will hold a secluded press conference tomorrow before three invited and highly respected journalists so as to disguise your whereabouts until Hans here is ‘run down.' Your wife and son will be under protective surveillance till November fifteenth. The German elections are a week from tomorrow, after which whatever the damage in Germany it will have been done, and you'll be safe. You have my word that if you need protection in the future, I and my friends—and Wintergrin's friends—will give it.”

Amundsen spoke for the first time.

“The man outside. You are aware he is from the police?”

“Of course. His name is Olaf Erlingssen, and he works out of the Bogstadveien Police Station.”

“Is he supposed to believe all this?”

“You know him better than we do. But we have plans for Hans to leave a meaty enough trail to make the police believe he is a central figure.”

“I suppose I should ask: the alternative?”

“We will kill you right here, at noon when those bells up there go off. And, this afternoon, four members of the resistance—including Dr. Rosenkrantz—will go as a delegation to the press and give our opinion that Wintergrin has been gravely libeled, that you were mixed up in an intricate international power play, and that maybe you got your just deserts.”

Amundsen's jaw jutted out and he lowered his head. He thought about his wrecked life and wondered fleetingly whether he mightn't just as well accept the bullet, which he had not an instant's hesitation believing would enter his skull at the stroke of noon. But he thought then of the pale face of Margrit, who the day before had said to him with that sadness that always overpowered him: Would he truly wait for her, even if the cure required a whole year? And he had answered huskily that he would, that he would wait however long it took.

“Very well,” he said.

CHAPTER 18

Over the weekend tension heightened. The announcement on Saturday that Wintergrin would hold a full-scale press conference in Bonn on Tuesday at eleven created a rendezvous on the international calendar. All Monday the television crews were at work. Finally Kurt Grossmann announced that facilities would need to be pooled and a drawing was held to decide whose cameras would be permitted into the 150-seat chamber, admission to which had been solicited on behalf of three hundred reporters, cameramen, and photographers. That morning,
Die Welt
had said editorially that Count Wintergrin's answers to the myriad questions, personal as well as political, would influence many voters still on the fence. “A people have the right to know their leaders. Some of the questions that will be put to Count Wintergrin are concededly extrapolitical, but the fate of Germany is a total concern. We need to know not only the policies of our leaders but something about their habits, their morals. The country is entitled to ask, and weigh the answers to, any question that might throw a light on the character of a man who seeks to guide that nation toward what some see as perdition, others as the first step toward a reunified republic.”

Blackford Oakes read the editorial that morning and wondered whether its author had apprenticed in the New York
Times
. What makes them all sound so orotund? he wondered. Perhaps the editorial writers' anonymity.

He would be watching of course—over the television, at the Anselmsklaus in the courtyard. Overstreet and Conditti had said they too wanted to watch, and asked Black if he would translate for them. Erika had taken her staff to Bonn so as to go to work instantly after the press conference. She could not translate Wintergrin's answers to the questions ahead because he declined to write his answers out or, for that matter, even to give out the substance of most of them. Blackford knew that the rational thing was to hope that the press conference would go poorly for him, causing a precipitous drop in Wintergrin's standing in the polls. But he could not quite bring himself to root for the successful victimization of Wintergrin by that great psywar machine the new cartel had put together.

By Tuesday morning, under the battering of the weekend's events, Wintergrin's rating took a dive. He was down to twenty-six per cent, with Adenauer holding firm at thirty-six per cent. Blackford knew—a fatalistic intuition told him so—that that ten-point spread, which was a Safe Conduct pass for Wintergrin from November 11 to old age, would contract. But by how much? He dared to hope the spread would stay big enough to relieve him of his awful assignment. After all, that there was
movement
over the weekend—Wintergrin down eight points in five days—confirmed that his standing was volatile and that there was in fact something of an expertise in the manipulation of public opinion. Blackford switched on the power at the fuse box, walked over to the stool and bent over the chromoscope, manipulated the levers, and lost himself in concentration on the hues that filtered through six different tinctures of blue glass. Sliding the right-hand lever forward, he could see how the blue he had come up with would appear at dusk on a sunny day, on a cloudy day, at high noon on a sunny day. His researches persuaded him that the legendary Gerard must have experimented with different lights in different locations, before specifying the final, perfect composition. He was still sitting on the stool, bent over the viewing port, when he was interrupted by Overstreet, raising his voice to be heard over the machine's whir.

“It's ten to eleven. Shouldn't we go?”

Blackford raised his head and walked back to the wall to switch off the machine.

At the Anselmsklaus the saloon was crowded. Every villager and off-duty sentry was on hand, there being no other television sets around save for one in the castle, before which Countess Wintergrin, entirely alone, sat after the butler had tuned the set and pronounced it ready. Thirty-five people pressed about the bar and listened, in the minutes before Wintergrin would make his appearance, to a commentator discussing the gravity of the questions that would be put to the candidate of the Reunification Party.

In Bonn, in the little office outside the large reception room, Wintergrin looked at fresh clippings supplied by Heinrich Stiller. He reached out to capture the full
flavor
of the assault—the particulars he knew well enough—and as he dropped one clipping after another neatly to one side after reading it, his face was without expression, though once or twice he fastened, and then unfastened, the lower buttons on his jacket. He looked very young, gentle, unassuming—and determined. Since the program would be broadcast live on television, at two minutes to eleven Grossmann, who had come in from the platform, addressed the scattered staff and began the countdown.

“TWO MINUTES. God what a mob, Axel. They're sitting on the radiators. It's hot as hell. You'll have to face a little to the right. The lights on the left are blinding. ONE MINUTE THIRTY SECONDS. Hot as
hell!
I've tried to open some windows. Siegfried Schlamm is sitting right in front of you. He's looking real mean. Looking natural. ONE MINUTE. Did you see
Der Spiegel
gave him a big raise? He was offered a job by the Cologne-Düsseldorf-Bonn group. I think you can count on his getting in the first question. I'll
have
to recognize him. Adenauer had a press conference this morning THIRTY SECONDS and said he thought it quite possible that you would pull out of the race, leaving the leadership of—get this—quote our common cause unquote in quote more seasoned hands unquote. He's playing that FIFTEEN SECONDS ‘seasoned hands' stuff so much you would think he went to school with FIVE SECONDS Moses. Good luck, Axel.” Kurt Grossmann opened the door and, following him, Axel Wintergrin went out on the stage and walked directly to the podium. Grossmann edged Wintergrin gently to one side and took the microphone himself:

“Ladies and gentlemen, Count Wintergrin will not be making a prepared statement. As most of you are aware, he will be delivering an address tonight in Frankfurt. The floor is therefore open to questions.”

Unlike most public figures, Wintergrin did not like to recognize a raised hand himself. He felt this practice objectionable on two counts. First, he could be accused of favoritism—of neglecting one hand in favor of another that had been raised earlier. Second, he disliked the schoolmasterish symbolism—humiliating, he had always thought, to the press's image and to its august function. The suppression of a free press, he had frequently said, made Hitler possible. So Grossmann took the responsibility and, in resigned recognition of the anticipated initiative by Schlamm (who had raised his hand before Grossmann even began talking), he nodded to him, and twenty other raised hands went down.

“Count Wintergrin, it was alleged last Thursday in the
Daily Mirror
that you have a son living in London. Indeed his name was given, and his alleged mother with whom he is living was identified. Do you have a comment on this?”

“Yes,” said Wintergrin. “I have available, for those of you who feel the matter germane, photo copies of a letter from the lawyer of my son's mother dated January 12, 1948, and a second letter from that lawyer dated approximately one year later. In the first he acknowledges in behalf of the boy's mother my willingness to adopt him, but advises that his client desires to defer any action on the matter until the baby is a little older.

“The second letter, written sometime after the Heidelberg Manifesto, advises me that the child's mother wished to put off renaming the child until political matters in Germany quieted down. One week after receiving the letter I executed a notarized will naming him as my heir. Copies of the will are also here. The boy's mother is married, and if she permits him to come here when the situation is stabilized, my heir will return, I trust, to a united Germany.” Grossmann's timing was deft. Without a second's hesitation he recognized the next questioner in the rear, the representative of
Die Welt
.