The Ends of the Earth (13 page)

‘So, Dulière won’t know anyone’s been through his files?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘And what did you learn?’

‘Enough to confirm Dombreux’s story – as far as it can be confirmed. Dulière has a file on Eugen Hanckel, a pupil at l’Institut Le Rosey, Rolle. Date of birth twenty-fifth of February, 1904. The school’s fees – and Dulière’s – are paid through a lawyer in Munich. There’s no information about the boy’s parentage. In fact, beyond bills submitted and settled, there’s no correspondence at all other than letters between the headmaster and Dulière, who’s the school’s only point of reference regarding the boy. That was laid down when he was enrolled. And he’s a permanent boarder. “
Compris les vacances scolaires.
” School holidays included.’

‘Surely Lemmer wants to see him from time to time.’

‘He probably arranges visits by telephone. The dearth of documentation is telling in its own right. Eugen Hanckel is no ordinary schoolboy. That’s clear.’

‘You believe he’s Lemmer’s son?’

Appleby considered the question over a long swallow of Scotch. Then said: ‘Yes. I do.’

THEY BREAKFASTED LATER
than most of the Meurice’s guests. Appleby had left Max wondering what their next move would be. He announced it over coffee and toast. ‘A trip on the lake, Max, before we go our separate ways. I’ve made some inquiries. An Italian liner, the
Perla
, sails from Genoa for Shanghai next Wednesday. You’ll be able to find a passage from there to Japan. So, it’s Genoa for you. And the sooner the better. We should be seen together as little as possible.’

‘What will you be doing?’

‘Groundwork.’

‘Beginning with a pleasure cruise?’

‘Who said anything about pleasure?’

The boat trip Appleby had in mind was a steamer crossing to Evian-les-Bains, on the French side of the lake. The weather was cool and cloudy, with specks of rain. Takers for the trip were few. And even fewer ventured on to the open deck to watch Lausanne receding behind them as they drew away. Max and Appleby had the stern rail to themselves.

‘I’m going to base the operation in Evian,’ Appleby explained between puffs on his pipe. ‘If anything goes wrong, the French will be more accommodating than the Swiss. The
Deuxième Bureau
wants Lemmer just as badly as we do. I’ll recruit a local boatman. And whoever else I think I’ll need.’

‘You intend to take the boy to France?’

‘I do. And hold him there while you present Lemmer with our terms.’

‘The key to the code of the Grey File?’

‘Exactly. The names of all his spies, checked and verified before we release the boy. After that I doubt the Japanese will have much use for Lemmer. But he can stay there if he wants.’

‘How do you propose to capture the boy?’

‘I’m not exactly sure yet. Leave me to worry about that. It’ll be best you don’t know the details. Rest assured I’ll be ready to strike when you give me the word. I’ll rent a box at the post office in Evian. Cable me there when you’re ready to move. I’m relying on you to judge the moment, Max. I’ll be on hand here from late June waiting to hear from you.’

‘What will you ask Brigham to do?’

‘Take the lease on a house near Evian where we can keep the boy. And anything else I think he’s suitable for.’

‘How will you convince Lemmer we have his son?’

‘Dulière will do that for us.’

‘Managing this when we’re thousands of miles apart isn’t going to be easy, Horace.’

‘No. It isn’t. But it’s our best chance of defeating Lemmer, so it has to be done.’

‘Have you ever met him?’

‘Lemmer? Yes. Once. If you can call it a meeting. One of his underlings tried to recruit me for his network. We met at a café in The Hague. October 1915, it would have been. His name was Bakker. He lured me there with an offer of information on German shipping movements out of Zeebrugge. But that wasn’t what he had to offer me at all. I turned him down, of course. It was only later I realized Lemmer had been at another table in the café, watching the whole thing. I barely noticed him.’

‘This would have been shortly after the Battle of Loos, yes?’

Appleby glanced at Max suspiciously. His son had been killed at Loos, as he had once divulged in a sentimental moment. Max wondered if Lemmer had known that and chosen to approach Appleby when grief might have weakened his defences.

‘Is Bakker still active?’

‘No.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He died.’

‘Natural causes?’

‘An accident. In the docks at Rotterdam.’ A distant look came into Appleby’s eyes. ‘Dangerous places, docks.’

All was quiet in Evian-les-Bains. They walked from the jetty past imposing buildings dedicated to its spa town economy: Palais Lumière, Theatre, Casino. At the post office, Appleby took a three-month rental on a box. Their next call was a house agent, where Appleby set out his – officially, Brigham’s – requirement for a small, secluded dwelling near but not in the town. The gentle implication that money was no object had an electrifying effect on the agent, who expressed his confidence that several possibilities would be available for viewing within days. Would the gentlemen be taking the waters while they were in Evian? Appleby assured him they would.

Lunch at the Grand Hotel and a train ride west to Thonon-les-Bains was what actually followed, with Appleby’s attention switching between a map he had bought and the topography of the lakeside. They took a late afternoon steamer back to Lausanne from Thonon.

‘Everything falling into place, Horace?’ Max asked as they sat this time in the warmth of the passenger cabin.

Appleby nodded. ‘Success in something like this turns on logistics.’ He lowered his voice confidentially, though there was no one within earshot. ‘Remember that when you’re in Japan, Max. Don’t rush in. Prepare the ground. Assess the possibilities. And have an escape route in place. You may need one.’

‘You think so?’

‘I do. Though whether you’d use it if the need arose …’

‘I’m certainly not going all that way just to turn tail and run for it at the first sign of trouble.’

Appleby sighed and shook his head despairingly. ‘If you live to be my age, Max, you’ll understand not every risk is worth taking.’

‘How d’you tell the difference between those that are and those that aren’t?’

‘Experience.’

‘Well, I’ll come back with plenty of that, I imagine.’

Neither of them added the obvious corollary:
if
he came back.

Max had held out the unspoken hope that Dombreux might still put in an appearance. But the lapse of another day with neither word nor sign of him told its own story. He was not coming. As Appleby made it clear he had all along suspected would be the case.

‘Fortunately,’ he added, ‘he’s already given us something far more valuable than his presence.’

They parted the following morning with a handshake and a growled ‘Good hunting’ on Appleby’s part in the ticket hall of Lausanne’s Gare Centrale. Appleby was heading for Geneva, to confer with Brigham; Max for Milan and thence Genoa – and Japan.

THE VOYAGE EAST
was suspended animation for Max. He existed in a condition of enforced idleness, overlain by the uncertainty of what awaited him at journey’s end. He largely shunned shipboard society, aside from a few late-night poker games, which left him, rather to his surprise, marginally in profit. He several times yielded to temptation in the attractive form of an unhappily married woman who joined the ship at Port Said and left it at Colombo to be reunited with her husband. He dealt deftly with a few other minor difficulties. He read his way assiduously through the ship’s library of detective novels. And he paid regular visits to the ship’s gymnasium, overseen by the prodigiously muscular Massimo, whose advances he courteously declined.

All did not go smoothly, however. The
Perla
limped into Singapore several days behind schedule on half-power, thanks to mechanical problems which it took several more days to solve. They eventually reached Shanghai over a week late.

It was from a newspaper bought within minutes of leaving the ship that Max learnt of the final signing of the peace treaty amid much ceremony at Versailles on June 28 – and of the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow a week before. All the struggles and intrigues in Paris had led at last to signatures on a piece of paper that would shape the post-war world, for good or bad. While somewhere in Scotland – or England – Lothar Schmidt, former captain of the SMS
Herzog
, one of the ships listed as sunk, was contemplating that world as a prisoner of war, no doubt satisfied he had done his patriotic duty.

But Max had more immediate issues to worry about. He was concerned Morahan and his crew would already be in Yokohama, waiting for him. There was nothing he could do but press on.

It was the concièrge of the Astor House Hotel who advised him that the quickest way to reach Yokohama was to take a berth on one of the many cargo ships heading for Japan, disembark at Nagasaki and travel on from there by train.

So it was that early in the morning of Saturday 5th July 1919 Max returned to the country of his birth: the homecoming of a stranger, standing alone on the small passenger deck of the merchantman
Groundsel
as it nosed into Nagasaki harbour. He looked at the houses and the hills of an alien land and felt relief mixed with exhilaration. The waiting was very nearly over.

Max saw more of Japan than he might have wished over the next three days. He took a slow train across the island of Kyushu to the port of Moji, then a ferry to Shimonoseki on the main island of Honshu and an overnight train from there to Kyoto.

Steam-bath heat prevailed by day and night. The overnight train was crammed with travellers. Max had to share a sleeping compartment with a garrulous businessman who spoke not a word of English. The corridor seemed the coolest part of the train and Max spent a good deal of time standing in it, gazing out at the passing scenery: forested hills and mountains; rice-fields; bamboo groves; glimpses of the Inland Sea, studded with islands; pagodas; temples; huddled townships of wood-and-paper houses; men and women in kimonos, glancing up as the train sped by. The strangeness of the country – and its beauty, especially in the pink, fading light of evening – disclosed itself to him as the journey proceeded. He had been born there, true enough. But he did not belong. And those who did paid him no heed.

The only book about Japan he had found in the
Perla
’s library had told him Kyoto was the former capital, supplanted by Tokyo when the Emperor was restored to direct rule at the end of the Shogunate in 1868. The vagaries of the timetable meant he had several hours to wander its streets, marvelling at the abundance of temples, before resuming his journey. He reached Nagoya that night and experienced the unfamiliar but agreeable customs of a
ryokan
, communicated to him in mime by the smiling owner. Sharing a bath with two women who appeared amused by his embarrassment was only one of its novelties.

He slept so well and so late on the
ryokan
’s floor-level bed, without the slightest twinge from the old wound in his side, that he missed the first train to Tokyo next morning. When he finally reached Yokohama at close to ten o’clock that evening, he instructed the taxi driver to take him to the best hotel: the Grand. No one called Morahan or Hollander was staying there, which did not surprise Max, given Morahan’s cautious ways. But he was confident his friends would not be far away. He was tired and hungry. His only food since breakfast had been bought from a platform vendor during one of the train’s many lengthy stops. He decided to have supper and a night in a Western-style bed before going in search of them.

Tuesday morning revealed the hotel’s setting to Max as soon as he pulled back the curtains of his room. It faced Yokohama harbour, thronged with shipping, sunlight sparkling on the wavetops out in the bay. The air carried gull shrieks and ships’ horns and the distant shouts of stevedores. He had reached the rendezvous at last. The search for his father’s secret in the land where it had long lain buried was about to begin.

The Eastbourne was the third hotel he tried. He noticed something odd about the atmosphere of the place as soon as he entered the foyer. The staff looked distracted and several were huddled behind the counter, where a man with a managerial cast to him was answering questions on their behalf put by a small, insistent individual Max instinctively identified as a policeman.

A couple of uniformed policemen descended the stairs from the upper floors while Max lingered just inside the door. He had no clue as to what might be going on, nor any reason to think it concerned his friends. On balance, though, he reckoned it would be wise to call again later.

As he walked back out, he felt a twitch at his sleeve and turned to find a smiling bellboy, who looked more Hispanic than Japanese, close behind him.

‘You friend of Miss Hollander?’

‘What if I am?’

‘I think you are friend she waited for. You look for her now?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Bad time, meester. Police look for her too. Also Meester Twentyman.’

‘Twentyman?’ Max was taken aback. Sam was not in Japan. He could not be. Max had explicitly told Morahan to leave Sam out of it. And yet … ‘What’s your name, son?’

‘João.’

‘So, what can you tell me, João?’ Max fished a few yen out of his pocket, but João waved them away and shot an apprehensive glance over his shoulder.

‘Post Office, Nihon-odori, half hour,’ he whispered. ‘
Sim?
’

‘
Sim
,’ Max found himself saying. ‘Yes. I’ll be there.’

Max was loitering by the telegram form counter when João entered the post office, still in his bellboy’s uniform, clutching several parcels. He joined a queue at one of the windows. Max stepped in behind him and opened a murmured conversation.

‘I’m Max, João. Did Malory – Miss Hollander – ever mention me?’

‘I heard her say your name to Meester Twentyman. They wait for you. Since Wednesday. Miss Hollander nice lady. All this with police not right.’