Pray for a Brave Heart (23 page)

“Paula—” He put an arm round her shoulders.

“We’re going, darling,” she said gently.

“Now’s the time to change your mind.” If I had only known about Max, he thought, I’d have made twice the resistance about going to Falken.

“Could you change yours? Could you turn your back and walk away?” She smiled and shook her head. “Darling, you’re the hardest man to persuade to do what you really want to do.”

“Paula,” he said, tightening his grip on her shoulder. He kissed her, long and hard, a tense kiss telling her all his worries and fears.

Then a discreet knock sounded on the door, a porter entered, Paula straightened her hat, Waysmith wiped the lipstick from his chin, and all became business-like once more.

* * *

And everything went so smoothly at the station—no delays, no difficulties—that their spirits began to lighten, as if they felt that this easy departure from Bern was a good omen. They sat packed together in the front seat of the inconspicuous Citroën which Waysmith had rented, a car similar to many they passed, even to its Bern licence plate. Waysmith was driving, relaxing little by little as he became sure that no car was following them. Paula had a map ready for reference if necessary, but her eyes were quick with memories: this was the same, that had altered, here were new houses, over there was a village she had always wanted to visit. And Denning, still pessimistic, still concealing it, began to feel at least a new sense of reassurance: the basic worries still remained, but the unnecessary fears were vanishing. Dangers, if you could see them clearly, were not unbeatable; if you could see them without blurring them in a mist of worry increasing worries, of fears compounding fear, of doubts adding to hesitations, you had a chance of winning. And even if the chance was small, it was still a chance.

“Feeling better?” Paula asked suddenly.

“Better enough to be hungry.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” she asked Andy, and produced the wrapped sandwiches from her outsize handbag.

“Peggy used to have a bag like that,” Denning said, “a kind of magician’s catchall.”

Paula looked at him quickly, before she could control her sudden amazement. But he was talking on, quite naturally, about Peggy, dipping into the past which they had all shared. Paula relaxed. Conversation, she thought, was like learning to ride a bicycle: when you worried about hitting a telephone pole you rode straight into it; but take away that fear, and you
never even noticed the telephone pole. The four years’ gap in their friendship no longer was a wide gulf: it closed over, gently, quietly, and gave the sure footing they needed to step into the present. They could talk freely about themselves and the new shapes their lives had taken.

They followed the road to Thun for less than sixteen miles. “A piece of cake,” said Waysmith as he turned the car at Paula’s direction into a narrower southbound road. “How on earth does it take forty-five minutes to reach Falken?”

“Villages keep passing at eleven miles an hour,” Paula reminded him. “Here’s another one. Slow down, Andy, or we’ll all be arrested.” She didn’t add that this mountain road had more twists and turns than the easy first half of the journey. Andy would find that out soon enough.

“There isn’t a policeman within sight,” Waysmith said. Then he thought, I wish there were, though; I wish there was a whole garrison of policemen strung along this peaceful road. They met no cars, either. But there were other hazards: horse-drawn carts, stacked with timber; a farmer’s wagon; several cyclists; three hikers; escaped chickens; a herd of surprised goats; the constant houses, with their balconies and broad red eaves, which would suddenly appear, among a clump of trees, around a curve of a hill; and children who ran out to look or a woman who interrupted her work to wave at the passing car.

“What’s going on, anyway?” Denning asked suddenly after they had seen four houses with uniforms hanging to air over the balconies, and two front doors where men sat on wooden benches and cleaned their rifles. “General mobilisation?”

“Reservists,” Paula said. “They are all in the army until they are sixty.”

Waysmith looked at his wife.

“But it’s true,” she insisted. “Francesca was talking about it yesterday. After basic training, all men spend three weeks each year in the army until they are thirty-six. After that, two weeks each year in the army until they are forty-eight. And then, they still keep their rifles and uniforms until they are sixty. General inspection once a year. Shooting practice once a week. What’s more,” Paula added, watching her husband’s face with sudden amusement, “they pay for the bullets they use each week. So they’re all expert shots.”

That’s comforting, Waysmith thought. “I’m glad I married a native, almost,” he said. “So helpful on safari.” His confidence began to rise. So did the speed of the car.

“Eleven miles an hour,” Paula reminded him. “There’s a village just around this corner.”

They passed seven houses and a small white church with a narrow spire. “That was Gurgli,” Paula told them.

“No comment,” Denning observed.

“In about three minutes, we’ll go through Gurgli-Bad,” Paula went on. “And don’t ask me if that makes Gurgli good. I was a schoolgirl here, myself.”

They approached five houses and a miniature castle.

“Still no comment,” Waysmith said, and changed down from second into first. But if Paula thought he was going to travel this route each day, just to have the pleasure of passing Gurgli-Bad or better, then… He stopped thinking in order to concentrate on the twisting road with its steep drop, on one side, towards a rush of blue-white water.

Paula gave a last wave to the small castle. “That was where I went to school. And Francesca too.”

“Paolo and Francesca,” Denning said, with a grin. “Or was that a standing joke?”

“Of course—what else would you expect?” She half-smiled, as she looked back at the school and watched the hills changing into mountains, the steep sloping meadows bright with blue and white flowers, the scattered houses sheltering under their wide-spreading roofs. And how I hated it, she thought: all I wanted was a city street and noise and people, a sense that I was alive and a part of the world. “When we were young, how unsure of ourselves we were,” she said. “Always afraid we were missing something. But now—I’d like to live a few months each year deep in the country like this, where I could catch my breath and take stock of myself.”

“Without Andy?” Denning asked.

She looked at him quickly, but he was smiling. She smiled too, and shook her head.

“I’m all in favour of that kind of place for my wife’s school,” Waysmith said, looking back too for a moment as the road stopped climbing and straightened to run through a stretch of pine and birch trees.

“Nothing to do but pipe her woodnotes wild,” Denning agreed.

“Like an oboe player on an off-night,” Paula suggested.

“Can you tell me,” the unmusical Waysmith asked, once the joke was made even worse by having to be explained to him, “can you tell me why we should all be so damned hilarious?” And that reminder sobered all of them. Or perhaps it was the first sign of Falken, no more than a mile ahead of them.

The road had brought them through the small forest, and as the trees began to thin out, they could see the beginnings
of a broad valley, where the mountains had stepped back and Falken’s toy houses were scattered, like a handful of confetti, over the sloping meadows. It was a smiling village, lying open to the sun among green fields and tongues of forest, a place of innocence and peace. Even the torrent, which had rushed in cold fury to meet them for the last five miles, had become a placid stream flowing calmly through the meadows, a straight band of pale-blue crystal, to form the spine of the valley.

“Stop here, Andy,” Denning said as they reached the last fringe of trees. The road ahead followed the stream, and then bridged over it. There it divided, one branch continuing over the hills and far away, the other leading into the village of Falken itself. A cluster of white and brown houses. A church. Then more woods creeping down from the hillsides. Meadows interlaced with trees, sprinkled with more houses. And curving around, cupping the gentle valley, forming the background in depths, were rock-capped ridges, then white-crested peaks.

Waysmith drew the car to the side of the road, and cut off the engine. He watched Denning’s worried frown. “Yes?” he asked.

“It’s bigger than I imagined. Scattered.” A good place to hide in, a difficult place to search.

“Does
no one
like the view except me?” Paula asked.

“At the moment,” Denning said wryly, “I don’t like it one bit. Far too many houses.”

“But they aren’t close together—except in the village itself.”

“That’s the trouble. Where does Francesca live?”

“With her aunt, Fräulein Louisa Lüthi.”

“Yes, darling,” Waysmith asked, “but where?”

“I’m trying to tell you, if you’ll just let me.” She turned to Bill. “Don’t you want the complete picture? Briefly?”

“Might be an idea,” Denning admitted.

“Briefly,” Waysmith agreed, with emphasis. Perhaps to make sure of that, he began a quick account of the Falken Committee, of Francesca’s connection with it, of the real threat behind Rauch’s attempt last night, of Andrássy’s disappearance.

Denning sat very still, even after Waysmith had ended.

I told him something new, Waysmith thought with pleased surprise. He began to feel better, personally, about this whole visit to Falken. But it was Denning’s turn, now, to hand over any information he knew. “Anything to add to that?” Waysmith asked.

“It’s new to me,” Denning admitted. But not new to Keppler, he realised. Last night, when Francesca had been mentioned, “Do you know anything about her?” Keppler had asked. So innocently, casually. And then, with the same simple curiosity, “Have you ever heard of Falken?” One thing I do know, Denning thought as he looked at the village in the valley: there, we’ll find Keppler waiting for us. He’s probably been there since eight o’clock this morning, and that’s why he had to telephone “Elizabeth’s” message. In which case the porter was trustworthy. You can stop worrying about him at least. And my message about Nicholas of Cap d’Hercule—that’s probably in Keppler’s hands too.

“Francesca—” began Paula.

“Why doesn’t she leave?” Denning asked irritably. “There’s enough trouble in Falken without having to worry over Francesca.” Yet, he knew it was a foolish question the moment it slipped out. There were others on the Committee, too: how could they all leave? And for where? And for how long? Wherever they went, there would be danger from hired men like Rauch. The only end to the danger would be to find the man who did the hiring.

“I asked her that question when I phoned this morning,” Paula said. “She said, ‘And keep on running? Where do I stop? And when?’ That silenced me, I must admit.”

Denning looked at Paula. It silenced him, too, to hear his own thoughts put into words by a girl he didn’t even know. Suddenly he felt his deep pessimism about this new trouble in Falken begin to lift. Where there was courage, there was a chance. “There’s a point of no retreat for all of us,” he said at last. When you reached that, you turned, and fought back.

Waysmith nodded. “Had enough view?” he asked. He looked at the wide valley of flowering meadows, at the stream which came running to meet them. In the still air, the sound of children’s voices carried over the fields from a farm; there was an echo of a woodsman’s axe from a forested hillside, the gentle murmur of bells as the cows moved slowly through the deep pasture. “Let’s move,” he said, “or else I’ll find myself promising to come and live here.” He grinned and ruffled Paula’s hair. “And how do we find Francesca?”

“Over the bridge, through the village, first turning on the right after we reach the church, keep on going for about half a mile,” Paula said abstractedly as she searched in her handbag.

“Brief enough?” Denning asked, with a smile for Waysmith’s astonished face.

Paula had pulled a small map, page-size, from the bag. “Yes,” she said with some satisfaction, “I thought that was
Waldesruhe.”
She pointed to a red roof, some distance to their left, that was almost hidden by the trees on its small hill. “The
man was right: it is sheltered from the road. But it is said to have a perfect view.”

“What man?” Waysmith asked.

“The real-estate man. In Bern.” She held out the map, and they could see it was a diagram of the valley with all the houses marked by black squares. The square just at this point on the road was circled with red pencil. Another red circle was drawn around a house near the village itself. “They are the only two houses for rent,” Paula explained. “This one, here, and—”

“For heaven’s sake, Paula,” Andy said, “we aren’t—”

“I didn’t say we were looking at houses
now.
All I wanted to do was to save time. Here’s the view you get from
Waldesruhe.
Do you like it? Shall we even bother to come back and look at the house? That’s all.”

Waysmith started the engine. Women, he was thinking… What a genius they had for picking prize moments.

But Denning was saying, “Paula, when you have finished with that map, I could use it.” He smiled. “Just to keep me from losing my way.”

“Have it,” Paula said. “I’ve found
Waldesruhe.
That’s all I—” She halted. “Someone from the house is coming down to see who is admiring their view so much.”

It was true. Two men were walking slowly through the trees, down towards the road.

Denning stared at them. “Then admire it,” he said quickly. “Paula, Andy, get out and admire it.”

Afterwards, Waysmith wondered why they had obeyed Bill so quickly. The urgency in his voice? The note of warning? Whatever it was, Waysmith was standing on the road beside the car, and Paula was beside him, pointing a hand towards the
valley, saying very clearly, “It is lovely, isn’t it?”

One of the men came forward, away from the trees, almost to the edge of the road, his city shoes slipping on the sloping grass, and paused there, one hand out-stretched to rest against the silver bark of a solitary birch tree and balance him more securely on the green bank. He stood there above them, silent for a minute, studying the car, his thin long feet buried in a thick cluster of blue harebells. From behind him, from the last group of trees, his hidden companion spoke to him urgently. He replied in the same language, still watching the two Americans standing beside their car. Then, in German, he asked loudly, “Having trouble?”