As they drew nearer to the city centre the traffic thickened, and Matteous stopped looking outside. He said something Kate did not understand. Perhaps he was not addressing her, for it was more of an invocation, or a short prayer in a language she did not recognise, the language of his parents. The other passengers stared at them, and especially at him. A bird of paradise from overseas, a soldier with a wicker suitcase, a displaced person. Kate helped him down from the bus; his wounded foot was not yet properly healed. Following him up the stairs to his room she could see how poorly it functioned, whereas out on the street he had been able to hide his limp. Well, at least they wouldn’t be wanting him back in the army for the foreseeable future, she told herself.
The room with a bed and a kitchen in the corner was not much bigger than his cubicle at the hospital. Matteous left his luggage on the bed and walked to the window. Kate followed him with her eyes, hearing the soft hiss of a gas geyser at her back. His shoulders, the window, the traffic, the worn carpet on the floor, the melancholy of it all. They had come a long way. She from a life among clever diplomats and well-educated folk, he from the raw Congo heartlands.
“Why?” he said.
Now it was Kate who failed to respond. It was a question she was unable to answer. Why had she taken the trouble all these months to visit him daily, to listen to him, collect him when he was discharged, find him lodgings? Of all the soldiers she had offered assistance to in the hospital, Matteous was the only one to have affected her so deeply. A dreamed-of son, someone who needed her, a lost child, a boy holding out his hand? There was no explanation, she reckoned, and anyway she did not need one. Looking past Matteous out of the window, Kate saw that it had begun to rain, and his question dissolved in the patter on the glass.
Oscar wore a dark-grey coat, a dark-grey hat and dark-grey trousers, beneath which his tan shoes struck a jarring note.
He walked hurriedly under the arcades of the Gerechtigkeitsgasse. Seven p.m., the city was all but deserted. Sunshine had been predicted, but it was raining, and the tourists, such as there were, stayed away. Oscar heard the echo of his footsteps: a pleasing sound, breaking his own small sound barrier. Reflecting on this, he slowed his pace, his haste receding. The shop windows slid past him. He paid no heed, he saw nothing and no-one.
Oscar Verschuur, aged fifty-six, was on his way to the first secretary of the Swedish legation. It was the second day of June 1941, and it was raining in Berne, capital of sun and snow and flower-filled Alpine meadows. Welcome to the heart of Europe, welcome to an oasis of tranquillity and rectitude.
He knew who else would be present. David Kelly, the British resident minister. Pinto, the Portuguese military attaché. Horst Feller, a Swiss diplomat. Walter Irving, the American chargé d’affaires. Ismet Fahri, the Turkish envoy. And the American journalist Howard Smith, just arrived from Berlin. It was to be an informal dinner party, all protocol having been waived. Ambassadors mixing with lower-ranking diplomats was generally frowned on, and having a journalist present always carried an element of risk. And risk-taking was not normal ambassadorial practice, but in Berne, on that particular day in June, other considerations applied. Over the past weeks of gathering menace in a world already in the grip of fear, everything had come to be viewed in a new light.
Verschuur had recently learned the date. It was quite soon: June 22, just under three weeks from now. But he knew he had to keep the information to himself, there was no other option. He was a past master at keeping secrets, it had become second nature to him. He enjoyed it, it was food and drink to him. It was what he did for a living, his brief being to uncover what lay hidden, and to cover up such tracks as had been inadvertently exposed. He was a cover-up artist. A diplomat, on secondment to the Dutch legation, with a covert mission.
But this secret was different. In an unguarded moment, he had been hurled out of his orbit by a message to which he could not shut his ears, even as his lips had to remain sealed. The ramifications were immeasurably vast and terrifying. Three more weeks to go, and it was impossible to breathe a word. Yet there was every reason to give out warnings, telephone government ministers, sound the alarm, raise a great hue and cry.
