Stained Glass (27 page)

He knocked softly on Hallam Spring's door. In a minute it was open and Blackford, still breathing heavily, let himself in.

“Get Pulling,” he whispered.

Spring went to the adjacent room through the connecting door and in a moment came back with Bruce Pulling, looking apprehensive but, like Spring, wholly alert.

Blackford sat on the couch and made motions requesting a scratch pad. Spring snatched one from the desk, giving it to Oakes with a pencil.

Blackford wrote,
Is this room clean?

Spring read the pad and broke silence. “Yes,” he said in a normal tone of voice. “We sweep it every couple of days. Go ahead, but keep your voice down anyway.”

“I just came from the chapel. I killed Jürgen Wagner. He sawed his way into the provisions box. When I came in he had a bundle of dynamite in his hand. He had sawed open the back of the box and pulled out the walkie-talkie and, screwing around with it, buzzed my unit. I got the signal and tore over there. I got there, I figure, just after he finished sawing a big section out of the rear, so I went in. He let out a godawful scream, so I gave it to him in the throat with a wine bottle. Just in time. When he went down he had a pistol in his hand.”

“How'd you get out?” Spring reverted to a whisper.

“I yelled and screamed where Jürgen left off. Pretended I was drunk—no sweat with the sentries, who heard the yowling and ran in. Now: You two have got to get there in the morning ahead of Overstreet and the gang. They check in at eight. How long do you figure it would take you to put the body in the box or in a tarpaulin, clean up whatever is suspicious, and load it on the half-ton?”

“Not long,” Spring said. “Figure an hour to be safe.”

“Okay. The faster you can do it the better. It wouldn't look good driving the half-ton in there too early. So—get there at seven. Now, what's the point in keeping the gear in the box you know you're not going to need, no matter what?… For God's sake, Bruce, will you stop taking notes on that fucking pad? Can't you memorize:
Seven a.m. remove corpse, remove TNT?
”

Hallam ignored the blast, motioning Pulling to put away the pad. “No point. Bruce and I were talking about that yesterday when we finished sizing up the job. But we figured a supply of explosives in a chapel being rebuilt is less suspicious than a supply of explosives in a sleepy medieval inn, if somebody stumbled into them.”

“Well, somebody did, and came out shooting. Get them out. Take them to Bonn with you in the morning and deposit them with Sergeant Gold. We don't know what they're going to start searching when Wagner stays lost. Now on that problem. He'll fit in the box if you take out the junk and put it in the tarpaulin. But you'll have to nail back the section Wagner sawed off.”

“What do we do with the box?” Pulling asked.

“The long-term objective is to keep it from being discovered, ever. The immediate objective is to keep it from being discovered before the elections.”

“That's one week. What kind of … condition is he in?”

“The neck will be black where the trachea was fractured. But there's no blood. I'll tell you what. I'll check this out with my guy in Bonn, but let's assume it'll go this way: Take it in the box to Gold at Engineers, and have them put in for a coffin. I'll suggest we fly him out with papers as a U.S. Army casualty, and bury him at Arlington or someplace. My people will attend to the paperwork, you get him into a coffin as soon as possible and remove all identifying material.”

“When do we get the final word?”

“On what, the coffin?”

“No. The elimination.”

“Tomorrow. When I come back from Bonn I'll have it. Now, I'll be getting to the chapel tomorrow at the usual hour. Have the truck loaded up, but don't bring it out past the sentries until the working gang is in. If there is any reason to call me, don't use the walkie-talkie. Ring me in
this
room—give me your extra room key, Hallam. Erika's bug is out, but I don't trust her or Bolgin. I'll be in this room between seven and eight. Then I'll head for the chapel.

“Goodnight,” he said.

Back in his room, he undressed, showered, and put on fresh pajamas. His dreams were tormenting, confused. He was at Yale, entering an examination room without having read any of the books, but when he reached for them they quicksilvered their way through his fingers. He was in Washington, surreptitiously dropping the addresses of the safe houses to the Soviet ambassador, when a hand clapped him on the shoulder: it was J. Edgar Hoover. He was in Buckingham Palace at a ball when suddenly his trousers slipped down, and he was wearing no underwear. Suddenly he was the Dutch boy back at the dike. He looked down, to find that Holland was being kept from flooding by—a wine bottle pressed into the dike. Now he was taking Holy Orders in a reconstituted chapel at St. Anselm's, and felt peace at last, and slept.

CHAPTER 20

At a quarter to eight the phone rang in Spring's room and Blackford picked it up.

“Everything is going well. Anything at your end?”

“No, I'll be there in a little while. So long.”

He walked out and looked more intently than usual to see who, if anyone, might be looking at him. The street had only normal traffic, mostly Volkswagens and Fiats and bicycles, carrying the people of St. Anselm's to their shops and offices and to the leather factory and distillery. Blackford walked across the street to the Westfalenkrug and ordered coffee. He looked about again at the three or four figures usually there at that hour and was satisfied no one was covering him. He bought the morning paper and read an account of Axel Wintergrin's speech the afternoon before at Stuttgart, of the crowds, the ovation. Paper in hand, he walked casually back to the pay phone. He was grateful for the German propensity to massiveness. The telephone closet was virtually soundproof. Having carefully rehearsed his message, he rang the number for Singer Callaway.

“Hello, Singer. How are you? Good. I got bad news from home. Montenegro broke his leg. Jockey's fault, same guy I trained. They're taking the remains to Corpus Christi; be there in a couple of hours, I guess, local time. But anyway, I'll be seeing you on schedule. Anything for me?” Blackford had communicated:
I killed Jürgen Wagner and his corpse is being taken to our drop at the Corps of Engineers and will arrive in a couple of hours
.

There was tension in Callaway's voice.

“No, nothing. Great then, I'll be seeing you.”

At the courtyard everything appeared normal, though he noticed that the sentry looked at him a little impishly. No doubt the story of the evening's debauch had made the rounds and the morning shift knew all about the vinous behavior of Blackford Oakes the night before. Or was he deluding himself? He managed with his eye something an innocent outsider would dismiss as a tic, but an insider would take as a genial wink. The sentry winked back, and Blackford moved into the parking area. As he left the car he was approached by Kurt Grossmann.

“Have you seen Jürgen Wagner, Blackford?”

“No. At least, not since yesterday afternoon. What's up?”

“Stiller and I were with him until ten last night. He wasn't at the seven-thirty staff meeting this morning. We checked the inn. He's not there and didn't spend the night there.”

“You don't suppose our Jürgen has been revelling?”

“He'd have had to revel with Mother Margaret”—the reference was to the 300-pound barmaid at the Anselmsklaus—“because the sentries don't have him checked out of the courtyard. That means he spent the night here—occasionally he does, usually on the couch in the banquet hall. Well, just checking. If the sentry made a mistake, he sure picked the wrong guy to make a mistake about. Wagner will have his ass when he shows up. See you.”

Blackford took his advantage.

“Oh, Kurt, is the count still planning to be here tomorrow?”

“Yes, during the day. He's here now, and going tonight to Hamburg, back late, then Freiburg tomorrow night. Monday night there's the big final rally in West Berlin—that's the one we're really going to need Wagner for!—then back here Tuesday to vote, and listen to the returns. The TV people begged him to set up shop in larger quarters Tuesday night, so we're going back to Königshof in Bonn.”

“Good,” Blackford said. “He may want to see me tomorrow.” He waved and walked to the chapel. The half-ton truck was parked, as it so often was, just outside the church door, and Blackford, without turning his head, managed to scrutinize the inside of the truck as he passed by. The box was well forward. Behind it was assorted material, including a large cardboard barrel filled with papers and crating materials sticking up from its mouth. He walked inside, up the aisle and left to his office, beckoning to Hallam Spring. He shut the door and sat down at his desk.

“I got the word to Bonn. They'll be expecting you. Take the truck just the way it is. Any problems?”

“We had a hell of a time trying to lift the box into the truck. Finally ramped it up on a board. But it was loaded away well before Overstreet and the gang got here.”

“Did the sentries question you coming in?”

“Only the usual.”

“Okay, take off.”

Blackford walked out to the courtyard from which he could follow with his eyes the truck to the sentry post. The guards waved it on its way.

Inside he went to the fatal spot and dropped his pen. He bent down as if looking for it, and scrutinized the area. There was nothing. He got up and walked to where Overstreet was expostulating with a German carpenter. After reconciling them, he addressed Overstreet:

“I'll be leaving for Bonn after lunch. I've requisitioned a couple of extra electric heaters. Hallam has set it up so that we can handle the extra load. Maybe I'll be able to bring them back from Bonn after I do my own business.”

“Sooner the better,” said Overstreet, rubbing his arms for circulation.

Blackford went to the office and spent five joyous hours in the womb of amoral science, checking inclines, templates, cut lines, the mechanical preliminaries to the art of stained glass; he never loved science, with all its engrossing, bloodless concerns, more. Then, carrying a cheese sandwich in a hard roll in a paper bag, he walked to his car and set out for Bonn.

In Westphalia the meadows stay obstinately green into November, and the tall poplars give up their leaves grudgingly. The air was sweet and cold, and he marveled that he was never out of sight of the most distinctive characteristic of that countryside, the sharp spire of a church, reaching surefootedly, knowing confidently its station in life, higher than any surrounding building. The barns, for the most part painted a rich brown red, looked as if they had been retouched to withstand the coming of winter. On the highway, though not yet transformed into the autobahn under construction, the drivers took their cars at speeds for which, in the general consumers' abandon after the war, Europeans had become celebrated. Blackford let them pass, regretting it when the telltale signs of urban concentration began.

During the drive he prayed.
Lord, let the German people spare the life of Thy servant Axel by rejecting him in the popularity polls
. Blackford had never desired anything so much. He tried praying to St. Anselm.
Dear St. Anselm: Intercede in behalf of the lord of St. Anselm's. You, who proved the existence of God, help prevent others from playing the role of God.…
The sandwich untouched, he parked the car three blocks from Rufus's flat, which he reached at the designated minute, 5:03.

The moment he walked into the room, he knew.

He had
always
known. Known right from the beginning. An Axel Wintergrin
could not be permitted to live
in this world. That wasn't the way he would put it to Rufus, but that was the way it was. When he looked at their faces he could tell by a kind of human refraction that he must have turned very pale. Quietly, lest his stomach turn, or his head feel giddy, he sat down on the couch and addressed Rufus.

“We go?”

“We go.”

“How bad is it? I mean how …”

“The poll we tabulated at two shows Axel Wintergrin with thirty-seven per cent of the vote, four points
ahead
of Adenauer, and only seven ahead of Ollenhauer. So—we are to go ahead.”

From now on for Rufus it was all business. “Have you definitely established he will be there tomorrow?”

“Yes, I asked this morning.”

“Are you certain you can get him into the chapel?”

“Hell, Rufus, how can I be
certain?
All I can tell you is he's never refused to come before; he's made maybe fifty trips to the chapel in the last three months. But certain, shit. I mean suppose before he gets there the Russians declare war or something?”

“Tomorrow is the one day the Russians definitely won't declare war.”

Blackford changed the subject. He would have talked about the World Series to stay away from the one remaining question he knew Rufus had to ask him. “Did you get Wagner taken care of?”

“Yeah,” Singer said. “He's lying in a coffin in the warehouse, with the American flag over it and an honor guard. He'll fly out tonight on the regular milk run. We pulled an emergency set of papers we keep here. He'll be buried tomorrow.”

“Where?… What the hell. What do I care
where
he's buried?” Blackford raised his hand. “Don't tell me. Thank God he's a bachelor. From now on, Rufus, promise to make me kill only bachelors, okay? I've developed a taste for killing bachelors.”

Rufus observed him sharply. He understood. But Rufus did not make room for imponderables. He needed to probe Blackford's emotional state, and proposed to stay with him until he had done so. There was always the alternative plan, but it was far riskier. This plan, centering on Oakes, was sound, he felt. He, Rufus, must see it through. That, Rufus permitted himself a moment's introspection, was what his life had come to mean to him. The thinking gets done: and then action consistent with that thinking is taken. Otherwise thought is vapid, meaningless, frivolous.