Текст книги "The Copenhagen Affair"

Автор книги: John Oram

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There was answering fire from Viggo’s Mauser.

“Can you see him?” Solo called.

“Not a chance. He’s tucked away neatly. Viggo was potting at the muzzle flashes.”

Solo raised his head cautiously. The gun on the ridge chattered again. A slug tore through his jacket sleeve and pain seared his right arm. He flattened hurriedly.

Viggo shouted, “He’s got a Tommy gun up there.”

“So I noticed,” Solo said. “How’s your cover?”

“Not too bad. If we kick up a fuss, can you make it over here?”

He had little option. If he stayed where he was, he would either freeze to death or, sooner or later, collect a bullet in the skull. But a quick dash might get him safely to the hollow where Illya and Viggo were sheltering. He called, “Okay! Start kicking!”

The Luger and Mauser opened up together. Solo got to his feet and scrambled toward the sound. Despite the cold, he was sweating by the time he reached the hollow and dropped down beside Illya. The inside of his sleeve was sticky with blood. He said, “What a lovely way to spend an evening.”

“Well, we can’t stay here all night,” Illya said. “The neighbors would talk. I think it’s time we tried a little bluff.”

He made a trumpet of his hands and called, “Garbridge! Give up! You don’t have a chance.”

High above them a thin, stabbing tongue of red flame cut the darkness. Slugs whined and ricocheted unpleasantly. There was no other answer.

“This,” Illya observed, “would appear to be what is meant by stalemate. We can’t go up, and he can’t come down. The question is which of us is going to freeze first.”

“He must run out of ammunition soon,” Solo said.

“You want to bet?”

“Wait! Something’s moving up there.” Viggo was staring intently out over the snow, his countryman’s eyes better attuned to the darkness than those of his companions. He raised his pistol, aimed deliberately, and fired twice.

This time there was no answering burst.

Viggo said contentedly, “I got him.”

They waited, then after a few minutes left the hollow and began to climb. In awhile they could see ahead a black, still figure sprawled spread-eagled in the snow.

“That,” said Illya, “seems to wrap everything up. What now?”

“We’d better go on and bring him in,” Solo said. “He may only be wounded.”

Viggo said, “Not a chance. When they fall like that, they’re dead. Leave him. He’ll be there in the morning. Meanwhile, my friend, the sooner we attend to your own wound, the better.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Solo turned, and they began the descent.

Then suddenly it happened.

The whole hillside shuddered as if with an earthquake, throwing them off balance so that they had to grab each other to keep from falling. Intense white light, brighter than the sun, momentarily blinded them. A wave of heat seared their faces and melted the thick snow around their feet as if it had never been. Clouds of steam rose from the crest of the hill like the plume of an active volcano.

Solo gasped, “Look!”

Silently, incredibly swiftly, the great disc of the flying saucer soared from the hilltop into the black night sky. For a second it hovered, luminously silver, above them; then it canted and made off seaward.

Before a man could have counted five the monstrous machine had diminished in size to no more than a dime seen edgewise. Then, as the three men watched, its course became erratic. It seemed to dance like a crazy firefly.

Illya said, “It’s out of control.”

The dime edge became a red glow that widened into a brilliant sunburst, making the night like day. A stark pillar of iridescent light and smoke built like magic into a titanic mushroom.

Viggo said quietly, “Garbridge, farvel!”

Wordless, they watched the sinister cloud drift, swirling and curling, out over the Kattegat, its ghastly light slowly dimming.

Then Illya said, “If Garbridge was really piloting that thing, who was the man with the Tommy gun?”

“The morning will tell us,” Viggo responded. He led the way back to the road.

Dawn was breaking when they climbed into Viggo’s car to make their last journey to the chalk mine. A thin mist softened the outlines of the leafless trees standing stark against the whiteness of the snow blanket. The big farmer said, as he got behind the wheel, “My friends, I think it will be a fine day.”

They halted the car beside the shattered ruin of the blockhouse. A crust of ice crackled under their feet as they tramped across the space where the cranes and trucks stood idle.

“Now, I hope, the place is out of business for good,” Viggo said. “It has already cost too many lives.”

Solo said, “Don’t worry. We’ll send along a demolition squad. This time they’ll plant the charges inside the workshop.”

Heavy walking sticks made their climb to the crest easier. In little more than ten minutes they were staring at the body of the man sprawled face downward in the snow. A sub-machine gun lay near his frozen right hand.

He was wearing a long, padded blue nylon coat and his head was covered by a fur cap. The back of the coat was stained darkly red and punctured by two black holes.

“That explains the bloodstains in the Mercedes,” Solo said. “He must have been driving the car.”

“But who is he?” Illya asked. “He’s too small and too slight to be Garbridge.”

“We’ll soon know,” Viggo said. “Give me a hand here.” With some difficulty they rolled the stiff body onto its back.

Illya said softly, “Well, I’m damned!”

They were looking into the face of the maternity home’s general factotum.

“When he skipped out, he must have gone straight to the underground garage,” Illya said. “He probably had the car warmed up by the time the major did his disappearing act.”

Viggo shook his head wonderingly. “Poor little man! Who would have thought he had so much guts?”

Solo covered the sightless blue eyes with a handkerchief.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SOLO LOOKED OUT of the window of their suite in the Royal Hotel. Vesterbrogade, sixteen stories below, was almost deserted. The traffic lights winked WAIT and GO without customers.

He said, “A quarter after four, and it might as well be three in the morning. In fact, I’ve seen the place livelier in the small hours.”

“What else would you expect in Copenhagen on Christmas Eve?” Illya asked. “ Everybody’s in church: That’s the drill: Church, 4:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M., then home to Christmas dinner. Rice porridge, goose, red cabbage, and all the trimmings. Then everybody lends a hand with the washing-up. After that, the dancing around the tree, and the carols, and the present-giving, and the games. That’s the way it goes. And all in the bosom of the family. All but relatives, avaunt!”

“That’s nice,” Solo said. “If you’re in a family. Not so good for the stranger within the gate—like us. Switch on the radio and ring for drinks. Maybe after a couple you’ll get to look like Santa Claus.”

He walked over to the table and looked again at the dailies lying there.

“‘FIREBALL OVER JUTLAND’,” he read aloud. “‘WAS IT A METEOR?’ ‘LOST SPUTNIK THEORY’. Well, at least we gave them a more original Christmas story than the Jingle Bells bit—even if none of them got near the truth. “By the way, what about the after-effects? What this lad”—he tapped the front page of Politiken—“calls a ‘nucleic pillar of smoke’?”

Illya said, “Whatever destroyed the saucer wasn’t an atomic explosion. I’ve been in touch with Department XX3. They say no trace of fallout has been reported anywhere. The cloud dispersed completely about ten miles off Jutland.”

“Any wreckage found?

“Nothing. It—”

“Wait!” Solo grabbed his arm and pointed to the door. The handle was turning gently.

Illya drew his Luger and flattened himself against the wall. Solo, gun in hand, crossed swiftly to the bedroom.

The door opened.

There was a second’s pause; then Solo heard Illya gasp, “Well! If it isn’t the fairy off the Christmas tree.”

Solo stepped back into sight.

“Two!” he echoed delightedly. “And one complete with magic wand.”

Karen was lovely in a black cocktail dress under a short Danish mink coat. Her pallor, the only visible evidence of her experience in the “maternity home,” accentuated the glory of her red hair. She held up the slim ivory stick on which she had been leaning.

“I’m sorry,” she smiled. “It doesn’t fire bullets or take pictures or transmit. It’s not even a swordstick. I just need a little artificial support, still.”

Gütte’s dress was in silver lame, with a scarlet rose tucked into the point of the low-cut bodice. Her ermine wrap might have started life on a rabbit farm, but she wore it like a Birger Christensen exclusive. Her gloves were silver and she carried a little scarlet bag.

She said, “Glaedelig Jul. Do you always greet your girlfriends with heavy artillery?” She peeled off the wrap and flung it onto a chair. “When do the drinks arrive?”

“They’re on their way,” Illya said.

“Good! You want to know why we’re here? Simple. The doctors said okay for Karen to travel, so why should she spend Juleaften in a hospital? I went and got her. We both know this can be a lonely town for visitors on Christmas Eve, so—naturligt!—we come to cheer you up. We shall eat Christmas dinner together.”

Solo said, “Great! But shouldn’t you be with your own families?”

A shadow passed across Gütte’s face, to be superseded at once by a wider smile. “We travel light,” she said.

A waiter appeared with a cart bearing bottles, ice and glasses. Illya busied himself with the cocktail shaker. He asked, “You want to eat here? The food is excellent.”

“Here? In a hotel?” Gütte looked shocked. “Of course you come to our apartment. You think we have slaved all day for nothing? Right now, I hope, Knud is laying the table.”

“Sorensen is there?”

“Of course. Could we leave him out? A bachelor all by himself in that creepy old town of his?” She grinned. “Karen, you think we were wise to leave him alone in the apartment with Lise?”

“Don’t worry. They’ll cook the dinner first.” Karen explained to Solo. “Lise is a ceramic artist. She lives in the apartment below. Her family lives abroad, so we asked her into make up the number. You will like her—but not too much, I hope.”

The apartment was in an ancient, pink-brick house in a tiny square tucked away behind Nyhavn. Above the door of the house hung a sheaf of wheat.

“In Denmark we like the birds to have their Christmas, too,” Gütte explained. “You think that’s crazy?”

They climbed the stairs to the second floor and Gütte turned the key in the apartment door. She and Karen went first into the little hall, turned and suddenly formal, shook hands with the men. They said, “Glaedelig Jul og velkom!”

Sorensen appeared in the sitting-room doorway, incongruously domesticated in a woman’s frilly apron and waving a basting spoon.

“Come in! Come in!” he shouted. “You must meet the charming Lise. Would you believe it, Karen? She has even provided a marzipan pig. I tell you, she is wonderful.”

They shook hands with a pretty, black-haired girl whose skin and eyes hinted Eastern ancestry.

Solo asked, “What’s with the pig? I thought goose was the main dish.

She laughed musically. “This is for the risengrod—the rice porridge. In families where there are children, it is the custom to hide a single almond in the dish. The one who finds it in his portion wins the marzipan pig…Somehow, it always happens it is the littlest child who finds it.”

Illya nodded. “I know. We’ve played in such joints. The wheel is crooked.”

“Please?” She looked puzzled.

“That,” said Solo, “was a subtle Russian joke. Ignore it.”

The goose, stuffed with apples and prunes, was a masterpiece. There were lager and akvavit and cheeses and pastries and little torpedo-shaped cakes of almond paste. With the coffee Gütte poured a golden liqueur that held the glow of summer suns and filled the room with the fragrance of orange groves.

“This,” she told Solo, “can have a devastating effect on ones inhibitions. As they say in England: Drink hearty!”

Later they switched off the electric light, lit the red candles and danced around the tree while the three girls sang the old traditional Christmas songs.

“It is perhaps as well,” Illya said, “that Mr. Waverly cannot see us now. I doubt if he would approve of such flagrant sentimentality.”

Gütte said, “Come and help me find some nice music.” She led Solo over to the record player. Sorting through discs in the dim glow of the candles took a little time. Gütte put a Henry Mancini LP on the turntable and the orchestra began to give softly with Moon River.

Gütte patted the cushions invitingly on the long divan, and put the orange liqueur and glasses within easy reach. “Come,” she said. “Now we can be comfortable together.”

Somehow, suddenly, they were alone in the room. Solo took her in his arms. His hand caressed the rounded curve of her cheek.

And outside, in the hall, a telephone shrilled. Gütte sighed and disengaged herself.

“Don’t tell me,” she said bitterly. “Your Mr. Waverly chooses the damnedest times…”