Day of Judgment

‘Conlin?’ Vaughan said.

‘The League of the Resurrection. The Christian Underground movement. I understood they specialized in helping people who can’t help themselves.’

He sat staring at her. There was silence for a long moment. Meyer said, ‘So what’s the harm in it?’ Vaughan still didn’t speak and it was Meyer who turned to her. ‘Like Simon said earlier, cross the bridge at the end of the street and straight on, maybe a quarter of a mile, to the underground station. Just before it, there’s a Catholic church – the Immaculate Heart. He’ll be hearing confessions round about now.’

‘At four o’clock in the morning?’

‘Night workers, whores, people like that. It makes them feel better before going to bed,’ Vaughan said. ‘He’s that kind of man, you see, Miss Campbell. What some people would term a holy fool.’

She stood there, hands in pockets, a slight frown on her face, then turned and went out without a word.

Meyer said, ‘A nice girl like that. What she must have gone through. A miracle she got this far.’

‘Exactly,’ Vaughan said. ‘And I gave up believing in those long ago.’

‘My God,’ Meyer said. ‘Have you always got to look for something under every stone you see? Don’t you trust anybody?’

‘Not even me,’ Vaughan said amiably.

The judas gate banged. Meyer said, ‘So you’re just going to stand there and let a young girl walk all that way on her own and in a district like this?’

Vaughan sighed, picked up his cap and went out. Meyer listened to the echo of his footsteps below. The door banged again.

‘Holy fool.’ He chuckled to himself and poured another glass of Scotch.

Vaughan could see Margaret Campbell pass through the light of a street lamp thirty or forty yards in front of him. As she crossed the road to the bridge and started across, a man in slouch hat and dark overcoat moved out of the shadows on the far side and barred her way.

The girl paused uncertainly and he spoke to her and put a hand on her arm. Vaughan took a .38 Smith & Wesson from his inside pocket, cocked it and held it against his right thigh.

‘No way to treat a lady,’ he called in German as he mounted the half-dozen steps leading to the bridge.

The man was already turning very fast, his hand coming up holding a Walther. Vaughan shot him in the right forearm, driving him back against the rail, the Walther jumping into the dark waters below.

He made no sound, simply gripped his arm tightly, blood oozing between his fingers, lips compressed, a young man with a hard, tough face and high Slavic cheekbones. Vaughan turned him around, rammed him against the handrail and searched him quickly.

‘What did he say to you?’ he asked Margaret Campbell.

Her voice shook a little as she replied. ‘He wanted to see my papers. He said he was a policeman.’

Vaughan had the man’s wallet open now and produced a green identity card. ‘Which, in a manner of speaking he is. SSD. East German State Security Service. Name of Röder, if you’re interested.’

She seemed genuinely bewildered. ‘But he couldn’t have followed me. Nobody could. I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I. Maybe our little friend here can help us.’

‘Go to hell,’ Röder said.

Vaughan hit him across the face with the barrel of the Smith & Wesson, splitting flesh, and Margaret Campbell cried out and grabbed him by the arm.

‘Stop it!’

She was surprisingly strong and during the brief struggle, Röder ran to the end of the bridge and stumbled down the steps into the darkness. Vaughan finally managed to throw her off and turned in time to see Röder pass under a lamp at the end of the street, still running, and turn the corner.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘I mean, that really does help a lot, doesn’t it?’

Her voice was the merest whisper. ‘You’d have killed him, wouldn’t you?’

‘Probably.’

‘I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.’

‘I know. Very humanitarian of you and a great help to your father, I’m sure.’ She flinched at that, her eyes wide, and he slipped the Smith & Wesson into his inside pocket. ‘I’ll take you to see Father Conlin now. Another one big on the noble gesture. You and he should do rather well together.’

He took her arm and together they started across the bridge.

Father Sean Conlin had, with Pastor Niemoller, survived the hell of both Sachsenhausen and Dachau. Afterwards, five years in Poland had made him realize that nothing had really changed. That he was still fighting the enemy under a different name.

But a tendency to do things in his own way and a total disregard for any kind of authority had made him a thorn in the side of the Vatican for years, on one famous occasion censured by the Pope himself, which perhaps accounted for the fact that a man who was a legend in his own lifetime should still be a humble priest at the age of sixty-three.

He sat in the confessional box, a frail, white-haired man in steel-rimmed spectacles, dressed in alb, a violet stole about his neck, tired and cold for there had been more than usual that morning.

What he very much hoped was his last client, a local streetwalker, departed. He waited for a while, then started to get up.

There was a movement on the other side of the screen and a familiar voice said, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking. Maybe people decide to give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.’

‘Simon, is that you?’ the old man replied.

‘Together with a true penitent. A young woman whose confession runs something like this. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am Gregory Campbell’s daughter.’

Conlin said quietly, ‘I think you’d better bring her into the sacristy and we’ll have a cup of tea and see what she’s got to say for herself.’

* * *

The sacristy was almost as cold as the church itself. Conlin sat at the small deal table with a cup of tea, smoking a cigarette while the girl told him about herself. She was, it seemed, a doctor by profession; had only taken her finals at Dresden the previous year.

‘And your father? Where is he now?’

‘Near Stendal, in the country. A village called Neustadt. A very small village.’

‘I know it,’ he told her. ‘There’s a Franciscan monastery there.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that, but then I don’t know the place well at all. There is an old castle by the river.’

‘That will be Schloss Neustadt. It was presented to the Franciscans by some baron or other at the beginning of the century. They’re Lutherans, by the way, not Catholic.’

‘I see.’

He said to Vaughan, ‘And what do you have to say?’