EVENTUALLY they reached an agreement. Nightingale would meet Charlie on the steps of the Great Hall at five minutes to nine. Assuming Luther turned up, they would hustle him quickly into a car which March would drive. Nightingale would listen to Luther’s story and decide on the basis of what he heard whether to take him to the Embassy. He would not tell the Ambassador, Washington, or anyone else what he was planning to do. Once they were inside the Embassy compound, it would be up to what he called “higher authorities” to decide Luther’s fate — but they would have to act in the knowledge that Charlie had the whole story, and would print it. Charlie was confident the State Department would not dare turn Luther away.
Exactly how they would smuggle him out of Germany was another matter.
“We have methods,” said Nightingale. “We have handled defectors before. But I’m not discussing it. Not in front of an SS officer. However trustworthy.” It was Charlie, he said, whom he was most worried about. “You’re going to come under a lot of pressure to keep your mouth shut.”
“I can handle it.”
“Don’t be so sure. Kennedy’s people-they fight dirty. All right. Let’s suppose Luther has got something. Let’s say it stirs everybody up — speeches in Congress, demonstrations, editorials — this is election year, remember? So suddenly the White House is in trouble over the summit. What do you think they’re going to do?”
“I can handle it.”
They’re going to tip a truckful of shit over your head, Charlie, and over this old Nazi of yours. They’ll say: what’s he got that’s new? The same old story we’ve heard for twenty years, plus a few documents, probably forged by the communists. Kennedy’11 go on TV and he’ll say: ‘My fellow Americans, ask yourselves: why has all this come up now? In whose interest is it to disrupt the summit?’ ” Nightingale leaned close to her, his face a few centimetres from hers. “First off, they’ll put Hoover and the FBI on to it. Know any left-wingers, Charlie? Any Jewish militants? Slept with any? Because, sure as hell, they’ll find a few who say you have, whether you’ve ever met them or not.”
“Screw you, Nightingale.” She shoved him away with her fist. “Screw you.”
NIGHTINGALE really was in love with her, thought March. Lost in love, hopeless in love. And she knew it, and she played on it. He remembered that first night he saw them together in the bar: how she had shrugged off his restraining hand. Tonight: how he had looked at March when he saw him kissing her; how he had absorbed her temper, watching her with his moony eyes. In Zurich, her whisper: “You asked if he was my lover …He’d like to be…”
And now, on her doorstep, in his raincoat: hovering, uncertain, reluctant to leave them behind together, then finally disappearing into the night.
He would be there to meet Luther tomorrow, thought March, if only to make sure she was safe.
AFTER the American had gone they lay side by side on her narrow bed. For a long time neither spoke. The street lights cast long shadows, the window frame slanted across the ceiling like cell bars. In the slight breeze the curtains trembled. Once, there were the sounds of shouts and car doors slamming — revellers returning from watching the fireworks.
They listened to the voices fade along the street, then March whispered: “Last night on the telephone — you said you had found something.”
She touched his hand, climbed off the bed. In the sitting room he could hear her rummaging among the heaps of paper. She returned half a minute later carrying a large coffee-table book. “I bought this on the way back from the airport.” She sat on the edge of the bed, switched on the lamp, turned the pages. “There.” She handed March the open book.
It was a reproduction, in black and white, of the painting in the Swiss bank vault. The monochrome did not do it justice. He marked the page with his finger and closed the book to read its title. The Art of Leonardo da Vinci, by Professor Arno Braun of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin.
“My God.”
“I know. I thought I recognised it. Read it.”
