Day of Judgment

‘That’s kind of you,’ Konrad said, ‘but a little early in the day for me.’ He turned to Berg. ‘What’s all this about Vopos up at the Schloss? I don’t understand. What are they doing?’

‘Guarding a prisoner they brought in the night before last. Twenty of them plus a sergeant and captain for one man. I ask you.’

Konrad accepted the cup of coffee Sigrid passed him with a smile of thanks. ‘Someone important, obviously.’

‘That’s not for me to say, is it?’ Berg said. ‘I only follow orders like we all have to these days.’ He leaned forward, the hoarse whisper of his voice dropping even lower. ‘I’ll tell you one thing you’ll never believe. You know where they’re holding him? In a cell on the third level. Solitary confinement to start with. A full seven days before we even open the door on him again. That’s what the man from Berlin said and off he went with the key in his pocket. Van Buren, his name is. Professor Van Buren.’

Konrad frowned. ‘Merciful heaven! I would have thought that even the rats might have difficulty surviving down there.’

‘Exactly.’ Berg emptied his glass. ‘I’d better be getting back with that milk now. They’ll be wanting their breakfasts up there.’

He went out. Ehrlich took down his pipe and started to fill it. Konrad said, ‘Some political prisoner or other, I imagine.’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Ehrlich said. ‘In times like these it pays to mind your own business. He talks too much, that one.’

‘He always did.’

The innkeeper applied a match to his pipe. ‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’

‘Ah yes,’ Konrad said. ‘I’d like a travel permit, to go to Berlin to see my sister. I think I mentioned when we last spoke that she’d had a heart attack.’

‘Yes, I was sorry to hear that,’ Ehrlich said. ‘When do you want to go?’

‘This morning, if possible. I’d like to stay a week. I’ll remember, of course’ – here he smiled – ‘to wear civilian clothes.’

Ehrlich said, ‘I’ll make you a permit out now.’ He reached for the bottle. ‘But first, that brandy I mentioned, just to start the day right.’

‘If you insist,’ Konrad relented. ‘But just a small one.’ When he raised the glass to his lips, he was smiling.

Margaret Campbell had spent a restless night. Her leg ached and she had fallen into a sleep of total exhaustion just before dawn. She was awakened at eight-fifteen by a knock at her door and Konrad entered with a breakfast tray. She had a splitting headache and her mouth was dry.

He took her temperature and shook his head. ‘Up again. How do you feel?’

‘Terrible. It’s the leg mainly. The pain makes it difficult to sleep. The pills you gave me last night didn’t do much good.’

He nodded. ‘I’ve something stronger in the dispensary, I think. I’ll leave them out for Urban to give you while I’m away.’

He placed the tray across her knees. She looked up in surprise. ‘You’re going somewhere?’

‘But of course,’ he said. ‘West Berlin, to see this Major Vaughan of yours. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?’

There was an expression of utter astonishment on her face. ‘But that’s impossible.’

‘Not at all. The cooperative produce truck leaves the square at nine for Stendal, from which there are regular buses to Berlin. I’ll be there by noon.’

‘But how will you get across?’

‘The League will help me.’

‘The League of the Resurrection? But when I asked if you and your friends had ever assisted with its work, you said . . .’

‘That we are an enclosed order. That the contemplative life is our aim.’

She laughed suddenly and for the first time since he had known her, so that for the moment it was as if she had become a different person.

‘You are a devious man, Brother Konrad. I can see that now.’

‘So I’ve been told,’ he said, smiling, and poured her coffee.

In West Berlin, Bruno Teusen stood at the open window leading to the terrace of his apartment in one of the new blocks overlooking the Tiergarten and sipped black coffee. He was at that time fifty, a tall, handsome man with a pleasant, rather diffident manner, that concealed an iron will and a razor-sharp mind.

A lieutenant-colonel of ski troops on the Russian Front at twenty-five, a serious leg wound had earned him a transfer to Abwehr headquarters at Tirpitz Ufer in Berlin, where he had worked for the great Canaris himself.

His wife and infant son had been killed in an air raid in nineteen-forty-four and he had never remarried. In nineteen-fifty when the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, popularly known as the BfV, was formed, he was one of the first recruits.

The function of the BfV was primarily to deal with any attempted undermining of the constitutional order, which, in practice, came down to a constant and daily battle of wits with the thousands of Communist agents operating in West Germany. Teusen was Director of the Berlin office, a difficult task in a city whose inhabitants still tended to equate any kind of secret service with the Gestapo or SD.

It had been a hard day and he was considering the merits of dining on his own and having an early night or phoning a young lady of his acquaintance when his bell rang. He cursed softly, went to the door, and peered through the security bullseye.

Simon Vaughan was standing there, Brother Konrad behind him, wearing corduroy trousers, a reefer jacket and tweed cap.

Teusen opened the door.

‘Hello, Bruno.’

‘Simon.’ Teusen looked Konrad over briefly. ‘Business?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘You’d better come in, then.’

He closed the door and turned to face them. Konrad took off his cap. Vaughan said, ‘This is Colonel Bruno Teusen. Bruno, Brother Konrad of the Franciscan Order of Jesus and Mary at Neustadt on the other side. I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say.’

He walked across to the drinks cabinet, poured himself a Scotch and went out on the terrace. It was really very pretty, the lights of the city down there, but for some reason all he could think of was Margaret Campbell, trapped at Neustadt with her injured leg and probably frightened to death.

‘Poor stupid little bitch,’ he said softly. ‘You shouldn’t have joined, should you?’

It was perhaps fifteen minutes later that

Teusen and Konrad came out on the terrace.

‘Not so good,’ the Colonel said.

‘Can you do anything?’

‘For Conlin?’ Teusen shrugged, ‘I don’t hold out much hope. I’ll get in touch with the Federal Intelligence Service in Munich, but I don’t see what they can do, other than inform interested parties.’

‘And who might they be?’