World War II Thriller Collection (136 page)

When Harald cooled down, he saw that Karen's decision to postpone their flight for a day was not completely mad. He put himself in her place by imagining that he had been offered the chance to perform an important experiment with the physicist Neils Bohr. He might have delayed the escape to England for the sake of such an opportunity. Perhaps he and Bohr together would change mankind's understanding of how the universe worked. If he were going to die, he would like to know he had done something like that.

Nevertheless he spent a tense day. He checked everything on the Hornet Moth twice. He studied the instrument panel, familiarizing himself with the gauges so that he could help Karen. The panel was not illuminated, for the aircraft was not designed to be used at night, so they would have to shine the torch on the dials to read the instruments. He practiced folding and unfolding the wings, improving his time. He tried out his in-flight refueling system, pouring a little petrol through the hose that led from the cabin, through the smashed-out window, into the tank. He watched the
weather, which was fine, with patchy cloud and a light breeze. A three-quarter moon rose late in the afternoon. He put on clean clothes.

He was lying on his ledge bed, stroking Pinetop the cat, when someone rattled the big church door.

Harald sat upright, putting Pinetop on the floor, and listened.

He heard the voice of Per Hansen. “I told you it was locked.”

A woman replied, “All the more reason to look inside.”

The voice was authoritative, Harald noted fearfully. He pictured a woman in her thirties, attractive but businesslike. Obviously she was with the police. Presumably she had sent Hansen to look for Harald at the castle yesterday. Clearly she had not been satisfied with Hansen's inquiries and had come herself today.

Harald cursed. She would probably be more thorough than Hansen. It would not take her long to find a way into the church. There was nowhere for him to hide except the trunk of the Rolls-Royce, and any serious searcher was sure to open that.

Harald was afraid he might already be too late to exit by his usual window, which was just around the corner from the main door. But there were windows all around the curved chancel, and he quickly made his escape through one of those.

When he hit the ground, he looked around warily. This end of the church was only partly concealed by trees, and he might have been seen by a soldier; but he was in luck, and no one was nearby.

He hesitated. He wanted to get away, but he needed to know what happened next. He flattened himself against the wall of the church and listened. He heard Hansen's voice say, “Mrs. Jespersen? If we stand on that log we could get through the window.”

“No doubt that's why the log is there,” the woman replied crisply. She was obviously a lot smarter than Hansen. Harald had a dreadful feeling she was going to learn everything.

He heard the scrape of feet on the wall, a grunt from Hansen as, presumably, he squeezed himself through the window, then a thud as he hit the tiled floor of the church. A lighter thud followed a few seconds afterward.

Harald crept around the side of the church, stood on the log, and peeped through the window.

Mrs. Jespersen was a pretty woman of about thirty, not fat but well rounded, smartly dressed in practical clothes, a blouse and skirt with flat shoes and a sky blue beret over her blond curls. As she was not in uniform, she must be a detective, Harald deduced. She carried a shoulder bag which presumably had a gun in it.

Hansen was red-faced from the exertion of getting through the window, and he looked harassed. Harald guessed the village policeman was finding it a strain dealing with the quick-thinking detective.

She looked first at the bike. “Well, here's the motorcycle you told me about. I see the steam engine. Ingenious.”

“He must have left it here,” Hansen said in a defensive tone. Obviously he had told the detective that Harald had gone away.

But she was not convinced. “Perhaps.” She moved to the car. “Very nice.”

“It belongs to the Jew.”

She ran a finger along the curve of a mudguard and looked at the dust. “He hasn't been out in it for a while.”

“Of course not—its wheels are off.” Hansen thought he had caught her out, and looked pleased.

“That doesn't mean much—wheels can be put on quickly. But it's difficult to fake a layer of dust.”

She crossed the room and picked up Harald's discarded shirt. He groaned inwardly. Why had he not put it away somewhere? She sniffed it.

Pinetop appeared from somewhere and rubbed his head against Mrs. Jespersen's leg. She stooped to stroke him. “What are you after?” she said to the cat. “Has someone been feeding you?”

Nothing could be hidden from this woman, Harald saw with dismay. She was too thorough. She moved to the ledge where Harald slept. She picked up his neatly folded blanket, then put it down again. “Someone's living here,” she said.

“Perhaps it's a vagrant.”

“And perhaps it's Harald fucking Olufsen.”

Hansen looked shocked.

She turned to the Hornet Moth. “What have we here?” Harald watched in despair as she pulled off the cover. “I do believe it's an airplane.”

That's the end, Harald thought. It's all over now.

Hansen said: “Duchwitz used to have a plane, I remember now. He hasn't flown it for years, though.”

“It's not in bad condition.”

“It's got no wings!”

“The wings are folded back—that's how they got it through the door.” She opened the cabin door. Reaching inside, she moved the control stick, looking at the tailplane at the same time, seeing the elevator move. “The controls seem to work.” She peered at the fuel gauge. “The tank is full.” Looking around the little cabin, she added, “And there's a four-gallon can behind the seat. And the locker contains two bottles of water and a packet of biscuits. Plus an axe, a ball of good strong cord, a flashlight, and an atlas—with no dust on any of them.”

She withdrew her head from the cabin and looked at Hansen. “Harald is planning to fly.”

“Well, I'm damned,” said Hansen.

The wild thought of killing them both occurred to Harald. He was not sure he could kill another human being in any circumstances, but he immediately realized he could not overpower two armed police officers with his bare hands, and he dismissed the thought.

Mrs. Jespersen became very brisk. “I have to go into Copenhagen. Inspector Flemming, who's in charge of this case, is coming in by train. Given the way the railways are nowadays, he could arrive any time in the next twelve hours. When he does, we'll come back. We'll arrest Harald, if he's here, and set a trap for him if he's not.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Stay here. Find a vantage point in the woods, and watch the church. If Harald appears, don't speak to him, just phone the Politigaarden.”

“Aren't you going to send someone to help me?”

“No. We mustn't do anything to scare Harald off. If he sees you, he won't panic—you're just the village policeman. But a couple of strange
cops might spook him. I don't want him to run away and hide somewhere. Now that we've tracked him down, we mustn't lose him again. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“On the other hand, if he tries to fly that plane, stop him.”

“Arrest him?”

“Shoot him, if you have to—but don't for God's sake let him take off.”

Harald found her matter-of-fact tone absolutely terrifying. If she had been overdramatic, he might not have felt so scared. But she was an attractive woman speaking calmly about practicalities—and she had just told Hansen to shoot him if necessary. Until this moment, Harald had not confronted the possibility that the police might simply kill him. Mrs. Jespersen's quiet mercilessness shook him.

“You can open this door, to save me scrambling through the window again,” she said. “Lock it up when I've gone, so that Harald won't suspect anything.”

Hansen turned the key and removed the bar, and they went out.

Harald jumped to the ground and retreated around the end of the church. Moving away from the building, he stood behind a tree and watched from a distance as Mrs. Jespersen walked to her car, a black Buick. She looked at her reflection in the car's window and adjusted her sky blue beret in a very feminine gesture. Then she reverted to cop mode, shook hands briskly with Hansen, got into the car, and drove away fast.

Hansen came back, and disappeared from Harald's view, screened by the church.

Harald leaned against the trunk of the tree for a moment, thinking. Karen had promised to come to the church as soon as she got home from the ballet. If she did that she might find the police waiting for her. And how would she explain what she was doing? Her guilt would be obvious.

Harald had to head her off somehow. Thinking about the best way to intercept her and warn her, he decided the simplest thing would be to go to the theater. That way he could be sure he would not miss her.

He felt a moment of anger toward her. If they had taken off last night they might be in England now. He had warned her that she was putting
them both in danger, and now he had been proved right. But recriminations were fruitless. It was done, and he had to deal with the consequences.

Unexpectedly, Hansen came walking around the corner of the church. He saw Harald and stopped dead.

They were both astonished. Harald had thought Hansen had gone back into the church to lock up. Hansen, for his part, could not have imagined that his quarry was so close. They stared at each other for a paralyzed moment.

Then Hansen reached for his gun.

Mrs. Jespersen's words flashed through Harald's mind: “Shoot him, if you have to.” Hansen, a village constable, had probably never shot at anyone in his life. But he might jump at the chance.

Harald reacted instinctively. Without thought for the consequences, he rushed at Hansen. As Hansen drew his pistol from the holster, Harald cannoned into him. Hansen was thrown back, and hit the church wall with a thud, but he did not lose his grip on the gun.

He raised the gun to point it. Harald knew he had only a fraction of a second to save himself. He drew back his fist and hit Hansen on the point of the chin. The blow had the force of desperation behind it. Hansen's head jerked back and hit the brickwork with a sound like the crack of a rifle. His eyes rolled up, his body slumped, and he fell to the ground.

Harald was dreadfully afraid the man was dead. He knelt beside the unconscious body. He saw immediately that Hansen was breathing. Thank God, he thought. It was horrifying to think he might have killed a man—even a vicious fool such as Hansen.

The fight had lasted only a few seconds, but had it been observed? He looked across the park to the soldiers' encampment. A few men were walking around, but no one was looking Harald's way.

He stuffed Hansen's gun into his pocket then lifted the limp body. Slinging it over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, he hurried around the church to the main door, which was still open. His luck held, and no one saw him.

He put Hansen down, then quickly closed and locked the church door. He got the cord out of the cabin of the Hornet Moth and tied Hansen's feet
together. He rolled the man over and tied his hands behind his back. Then he picked up his discarded shirt, stuffed half of it in Hansen's mouth so the man could not cry out, and tied string around Hansen's head so that the gag would not fall out.

Finally he put Hansen in the trunk of the Rolls-Royce and closed the lid.

He looked at his watch. He still had time to get to the city and warn Karen.

He lit the boiler on his motorcycle. He might well be seen driving out of the church, but there was no longer any time for caution.

However, he could get into trouble with a policeman's gun making a bulge in his pocket. Not knowing what to do with the pistol, he opened the right door of the Hornet Moth and put it on the floor, where no one would see it unless they got in the aircraft and trod on it.

When the motorcycle engine had a head of steam he opened the doors, drove the bike out, locked up from inside, and exited by the window. He was lucky, and saw no one.