World War Two Will Not Take Place (12 page)

‘That would be very kind,' Mount said.

‘At eleven o'clock?' the man said.

‘Excellent,' Mount replied.

‘It is the least we can do to show how much we appreciate our good fortune as residents,' the man said.

Mount went down to the grass patch outside, where he had stood before, and looked up at thirty-seven. Now, he couldn't make out that weak line of light over the living room curtains. He waited a timed five minutes. When he returned to the third floor there was nobody about and the child in thirty-four no longer screamed. He opened the door to thirty-seven, stepped inside and closed it quietly behind him again. The apartment seemed dark throughout. He switched on his torch and opened the door to the living room. ‘Toulmin,' he said, in a big whisper. ‘It's I, Stanley Charles Naughton.'

At first sight, the room looked more or less as it was before, except for the closed curtains: the pieces of newspaper, the single shoe, and a bottle scattered about the floor, the three sideboard drawers still open. He swung the torch beam slowly, systematically, left to right, right to left, looking for any changes, such as blood on the carpet and a body, from, say, a knifing or efficiently silenced pistols. No. He wondered if the woman from thirty-nine was right, and Toulmin had fallen into a deep sleep following . . . following what? Following whatever he had been doing. Mount entered the big bedroom. Toulmin was not there. The bed remained a mess. Mount looked under it and in a wardrobe. Again nothing. And nothing different in the guest bedroom or anywhere else in the apartment. He returned to the living room and put the torch beam on to the papers and books. Yes, family letters and a wedding invitation, plus official notification of the visit by housing experts. The books were
David Copperfield
in English, and an English-German dictionary.

When Mount returned to Steglitz a couple of hours later he found Toulmin waiting in one of the armchairs. ‘Stanley! Good,' he said. ‘I came at once. I knew you'd be concerned. I wasn't able to call lately because I've been in Moscow. It was decided very abruptly that we should send a reciprocal mission about the non-aggression pact – to show, and, indeed, to emphasize, Germany's continuing enthusiasm. I was drafted into the support team. I've had bodyguards with me the whole time. They even had to take me home tonight – sort of finally sign me back over to myself. All very secret. We came by car, but they parked it around the corner out of sight.'

Toulmin must have left the building through the main entrance immediately after the escorts had withdrawn. Mount realized he would have been on the way up those rear stairs then from his holly-tree post, hoping to talk to him in thirty-seven. ‘We've all been anxious,' Mount said. ‘I went over to have a look in your apartment.'

‘In case I was dead there?'

‘That sort of thing.'

‘Thanks for worrying.'

‘You're important.'

‘A whispering voice.'

‘An important whispering voice. And for the greater good.'

‘Which is that?'

‘You know, don't you?'

‘I called in on the girls at the Toledo to tell them I was fine,' Toulmin replied. ‘They both had pre-commitments for part of this evening, but they will be with us shortly.' Mount's front doorbell rang. ‘And here they are, the loves.'

‘They were concerned about your congestion,' Mount replied.

‘I bought a fur hat there. Also, I found the very cold Russian air suits me,' Toulmin said. ‘I have hardly coughed.'

‘I'm glad,' Mount said. He went to the door.

‘Hasn't he been a very naughty man, Stanley?' Olga asked. ‘He told none of us he would go on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, where it is said the remains of James, son of Zebedee, lie.'

‘True,' Mount said.

BOOK TWO

FIVE

Andreas Valk had already read the report twice. He rested and put it aside for a few minutes now. Obviously, he'd have to bring both of them in for a meeting, Mair and Schiff. And obviously, too, he'd have to congratulate them, though what they'd done, and described towards the end of the report, was well outside what they'd been told to do. You could call it initiative. You could call it insolence. On the whole, Valk thought he'd better call it initiative. Otherwise, he might look grudging, or even envious. He would be warm and sincere with his praise, but unextravagant. These two must not get to think themselves abnormally talented and sharper at the game than he was. If they spotted the flimsiest chance, people like this pair would try to take over.

Naturally, it was in periods of prolonged, unrelieved stress that leadership could falter and, having faltered, never recover. Valk had been at the Somme as a junior officer and in four or five months witnessed several of these sly,
de facto
mutinies. Eventually, he became involved in one himself: a tottering, useless senior man had to be replaced. Possibly the experience made him unduly wary of such dethronings today: that is, his own, Andreas Valk's. He went back to the report: