Tamar (39 page)

Dart moved then. He grabbed the medical bag and his coat and ran to Koop’s room. He wrenched at the key and shouldered the door open. Koop was standing, supporting himself on the footrail of the bed. Dart ran at him, stooped and lifted Koop’s good arm over his shoulder. Koop’s balance went and his weight fell onto his wounded leg. He screamed. Dart shoved Koop’s face into his shoulder to muffle the man’s mouth.

“Be quiet. The Germans are here, understand?
Understand?
”

Koop’s eyes were rolling, but he nodded.

They got as far as the door before Dart realized. “Shit,” he moaned, on the verge of panic, of tears. He dropped the bag and put Koop’s hand on the back of the chair. Koop leaned, trembling, his breathing hoarse. Dart flew across the room and ripped the sheets and blankets from the bed. He stuffed them into the bottom of the wardrobe, shoved the pillows on top of the bundle, and closed the wardrobe doors as gently as his fear would let him. He eased open the door onto the corridor. It was empty.

Dart half carried, half dragged Koop to the landing on the second floor. There he had to lean on the banister, already exhausted. From below he heard a woman’s voice — Agatha’s? — protesting, and then a louder German voice and something crashing to the floor. He adjusted his balance and elbowed open the door that led to the back corridor. Heavy boot steps were already on the lower flight of stairs. Shouts and wailing came from a perplexing number of directions. By the time they reached the dispensary, Koop’s breathing had become a low persistent moaning, and Dart’s terror was rising up in his chest like a thick bubble. When they were inside, he simply dropped Koop onto the floor because there was no other way he could lock the door behind them. Then he dragged Koop over to the cupboard. He saw that the leg of his pyjamas was blotched with blood and was terribly afraid that they had left a trail. If they had, they would die in the next few minutes, and it was too late to do anything about it. He thought of Marijke, had a sudden brilliant vision of her. To have got this close, and still have to die . . . The unfairness of it almost set him snivelling like a child. Koop’s head was lolling about now, and his eyes seemed to have come loose.

“Don’t pass out, you bastard,” Dart hissed, stepping over him to yank at the hook on the cupboard wall. The concealed door swung open.

He propped Koop on the couch, slid the wooden bar across the inside of the door, and stood, stooped, on shaking legs. He was drenched with sweat; he could feel it trickling down his legs and chest. He dragged in air. His lungs felt full of thorns.

Koop’s face was corpse white, but his eyes had steadied. He looked around the room and then at Dart. “It stinks in here,” he said faintly.

“Shut up!”

Dart emptied the bag onto the bureau and took out the Smith and Wesson revolver. He realized that he did not know where to stand. The place he chose might very well be the place where he would die, and such a choice was impossible for him. He would have sobbed if Koop hadn’t been there. In the end, he took the chair and sat on the far side of the door, opposite the couch. He put his elbows on his thighs and hung his head, the gun pointing at the floor. His gaze focused on the signet ring on his left hand. He laid the revolver between his feet and slid a fingernail into the ring, easing the engraved plate open just enough to see the tip of the cyanide capsule. The urge, the temptation, was so strong that it made him shudder. When he jerked his head up, he saw that Koop was watching him.

Dart stood and took the Luger from his coat pocket and laid it on Koop’s stomach. Koop wrapped his right hand around the gun but didn’t lift it. He looked up at Dart and grinned in an awful twisted way and then closed his eyes. Sprawled, bloody, holding the pistol, he looked like a police photograph of a suicide. Dart went back to his chair and picked up the Smith and Wesson. Five minutes passed like a year.

It was Koop who sensed them first. His eyes flicked open, and his wolfish face turned towards the cupboard. He moved the Luger down onto his right thigh and thumbed the safety catch off. Dart felt slight vibrations in the floorboards just before he heard a faint metallic clack. He stood up. As he did so, he heard the dispensary door crash open against the wall with extraordinary violence. He somehow stifled the cry that rose in his throat. There was utter silence for perhaps two seconds, then fast heavy footfalls. Voices. A question, in German. Another. Dart heard what he thought was Albert Veening’s voice, and then the door into the cupboard from the dispensary was wrenched open. A bright thread of light appeared along the bottom of the inner door. A torch was being shone into the cupboard. Dart raised the revolver, holding it with both hands, aiming at where he imagined the soldier’s chest to be. He was close to fainting; the edges of his vision were already dissolving. The thread of light faded, then returned, then vanished. Someone spoke in German, and then a different, louder voice gave an order. Boots hammered across the floor. The voices moved away. A second or two later the dispensary door slammed shut.

Dart slumped as if his spine had melted. He realized that his mouth was open and that he hadn’t drawn breath for some time. He licked his lips, which felt as coarse and dry as scoured bone, and turned to face Koop, who was looking back at him, shaking his head, telling him not to speak or move.

They remained motionless, staring at each other, for perhaps a whole minute. Then Koop gestured with his Luger and Dart went and pressed his ear to the door, but all he could hear was the thick, unsteady echo of his own heart.

The rain paused later in the morning, and an uncertain grey light found its way into the wireless room. Albert Veening finished his work on Koop and straightened up. He looked a hundred years old.

“You will stay in this room, Mr. de Vries,” he said. “It’s unlikely that the SS will be back, but I’m afraid I can’t take any chances. If Ernst has to go elsewhere, Sister Agatha will take care of your needs. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go downstairs. This morning’s visit by the German bloody army has set my patients back ten years at least. It’s bedlam down there.”

When he had gone, Koop looked up at the ceiling. “I can’t stay in this shithole. I’ve got things to do.”

Dart had just about managed to climb out of the pit that terror and exhaustion had dug for him. He’d taken four of the last Benzedrines, and he was waiting for them to begin their work. The early signs were there: his head was less full of clouds, and his right foot had started tapping on the floor without him telling it to. He studied Koop with an almost scientific curiosity. What the man had been through that morning should have taken him through death’s door; instead, it had perked him up. There shouldn’t have been any blood left in him; but there were spots of livid colour in his cheeks and a new quickness in his eyes. He fed on the things that killed other people.

Dart said, “Where’s the gun? The Luger.”

“Down the back of the couch. Don’t try to get it off me.”

“I don’t intend to. How’s the pain?”

Koop gave Dart a suspicious look. “I can handle it. I don’t want any more of your morphine.”

Dart shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

He stood up, full of a restless impatience. The room was closing in. It was much smaller now that Koop was in it. Dart’s mind, though, was as clear and sharp as a needle of ice and miles and years away from this claustrophobic space. He walked to the small window and stuffed his trembling hands into his pockets. He watched the rivulets of rain running down the glass, aware of Koop watching him.

Eventually he spoke. “I have a problem.”

The sound Koop made was somewhere between a snort and a laugh, which was more or less what Dart had expected. He didn’t turn round.

“It has to do with you.”

“Look,” Koop said, “I told you. I’ll be out of here soon. You don’t have to worry your pretty head about me.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. Where would you go, anyway?”

“None of your damn business.”

“I think it might be,” Dart said quietly. “You see, my problem is Tamar. What to do about Tamar.”

Koop said nothing.

“The fact is, Tamar is my superior officer. He is — or was — my friend. It’s also a fact that he has been acting, well, strange lately. Erratic. He says he’s sick of all this. He has accused me of . . . things. Maybe he’s having a nervous breakdown; we are operating under a lot of stress. But that’s not the point. The point is that when you leave here — if you leave here — you’ll try to kill him. So obviously I shouldn’t let you go.”

He heard Koop move on the couch now but waited a moment or two before he turned round. Koop had the Luger in his right hand, resting it against his chest, the muzzle pointing directly at Dart. Dart’s own pistol was lying on the bureau, and Koop knew it.

Dart gazed thoughtfully at the Luger for a couple of seconds and then shook his head, frowning slightly, rather like a schoolmaster deciding to ignore some piece of childish tomfoolery. He spoke in the same level tone of voice as before.

“My problem is that I believe you.”

“What?”

“I believe you. I think Tamar betrayed your group. Is it okay if I sit down?”

Koop tracked him with the gun, but his harrowed face looked slack and stupefied.

Dart said, “I want to show you something.” He reached into his pocket and took out the creased and folded sheet of paper. He held it out to Koop. Koop flicked his eyes at it and then back to Dart’s face.

“What is it?”

“Have a look at it. Take it. Put the gun down. We both know you’re not going to kill me.”

Koop eventually lowered the pistol and laid it on his stomach. He took the paper but had trouble unfolding it one-handed, so Dart did it for him. Koop stared at the meaningless sequence of pencilled letters.

“It’s in code,” Dart said helpfully.

“I can bloody see that,” Koop spat. “So what’s it supposed to be?”

“It’s a signal Tamar ordered me to send to London the day after you shot Rauter. We knew more or less what reprisals the Germans were planning by then. We knew about The Hague and Amsterdam and Amersfoort too, but we didn’t know the numbers then, of course.”

Koop looked at him.

“Ah,” Dart murmured. “Sorry. You don’t know, do you?”

“So tell me, damn you.”

“At least another hundred people. Probably more. Almost certainly more.”

The paper shook in Koop’s hand, so Dart steadied it for him.

“That’s basically what the first half of this is about. Down to here, see? Although to tell you the truth, I didn’t understand why Tamar wanted me to send it. We’d already sent more or less the same information a few hours earlier. But he insisted. Said we had to confirm it. He was . . . beside himself. Almost out of control. I’d never seen him like that before.”

Dart paused thoughtfully, like a man remembering sadness. “But it’s the other part of the signal that matters. I refused to send it at first. Tried to talk him out of it. But like I said, he was out of control. Shouting and swearing and so forth. He said that if I didn’t send it, he’d shoot me for insubordination and send it himself. I don’t think he would have done, though. Shoot me, I mean. As you said, it’s not really his style, is it?”

Koop was now glaring silently at Dart. His eyes were moist and feverish.

“The signal goes on to say that your group is a serious and continuing hazard. It says that you personally refuse to obey orders, no matter where they’re from. It says that in his opinion, Tamar’s opinion, your group’s reckless action may well cause deep divisions in the resistance. That much is true, by the way. Delta Centrum was baying for your blood. The last two lines of the signal are his request for authorization to disband your group using ‘extreme emergency procedures’ if necessary. That’s what the two sequences PBUXY and RRGYQ mean.”

Koop switched his hot gaze to the paper but still didn’t speak. Dart waited.

“In other words, kill us,” Koop said. “Without the bullshit, that’s what it means, right?”

Dart nodded. Koop turned the paper over and examined it, as if expecting to find the print of the devil’s thumb in blood. “Why’s it all crumpled up?”

“I was supposed to burn it,” Dart said.

“Why didn’t you?”

Dart looked at the floor. “I don’t really know.”

Koop was breathing deeply and steadily through his nose, making a faint bubbling that Dart found repulsive. “Did London reply to this?”

“Eventually,” Dart said. “It came in just after four in the morning.”

“And?”

“They said no. Authorization denied. They told us to await further instructions.”

“Did they, by Christ? They said no? And what did pretty boy have to say about that?”

“Not much, funnily enough. He read the message twice and then burned it.”

“Come on,” Koop said. “You just told me he was all worked up. It must’ve really pissed him off.”

“He’d grabbed an hour or two’s sleep by then. He’d calmed down a bit.”

“So he didn’t say anything?”

Dart looked Koop in the eyes.

“He said something like, ‘Well, things happen on the front line that London can’t do anything about.’ I didn’t think much about it until I came down the other night and found you bleeding all over the scullery. Then I knew.”

Koop stared at the wall for a full minute. There was something resembling a smile on his face when he turned to Dart again. “Veening reckons I might be able to walk unaided in a couple of days. What do you think?”

Dart thought about it. “He wants you out of here.”

“I’m happy to oblige.”

“I don’t know,” Dart said. “Your blood count must be terrible. What you really need is plenty of food. And we don’t have it.”

Koop grinned. “I eat like a bird,” he said.

Yes, Dart thought. A vulture.