McBride felt a thin, needle-like sense of satisfaction that Goessler seemed ignorant — and a disappointment at the work in front of him. Needles in haystacks.
"I see — but you'll give me freedom of access?"
"Naturlich — oh, I'm sorry. No, but you speak German, of course. My friend, perhaps we can have dinner together this evening?"
McBride looked at his watch. Six, almost.
"Sure. Here any good, Professor?"
"A rather bland cuisine, but it will not hurt us. Yes — shall we say eight?"
"Sure. Ring my room when you arrive, Professor, and I'll meet you in the bar."
"Excellent. Goodbye."
McBride put down the telephone, and crossed thoughtfully to the window, recognizing the process of revising prejudices going on inside him. How could he complain at the treatment? He stared at the cathedral, blackening in the shadows and the low streaming sun.
He suddenly received a curious image of himself crawling over the face of that cathedral, checking each of the figures and gargoyles carved on it, looking for a piece of paper with its secret message stuffed up one stone nostril of one of the hundreds of stone saints and devils. He laughed. If Smaragdenhalskette had dropped a couple of its stones in East Berlin, then he would find them.
McBride hunched down between two rocks, jammed in as if afraid he might lose some precarious hold. The greatcoat — which he had wanted to abandon half a dozen times — now kept out the searching wind that moaned off the sea, moaned against the low cliffs of the cove. The tide had just turned, and the sea — because the wind was from the north and against the tide — was choppier than when he had rowed in. It would be harder for him to pick out the submarine when it surfaced bow-on to the cove. The deflated carlin float was hidden only yards from him.
He'd returned the way he had come, avoiding the guard-posts since, despite his uniform, he had no movement order or excused-duty chit. It had taken him almost three hours. He looked at his watch again, then took up the signal-lamp. If the submarine was out there, he wouldn't know it until it surfaced; He was early, and all he could do was to signal periodically and hope they were using the periscope.
He flashed the morse-signal, M, put down the lamp, and listened. He'd heard a couple of cars and a truck pass along the road above him, but nothing had stopped. Yet he knew that by now they must be searching for him — someone would have found either Willi or Friedrich or both of them long before, and they would have been able to describe him and what he'd been doing when Friedrich surprised him. And they'd want to finish him off, deducing that he'd be taken off by submarine before light. And from one of the narrow, sheltered coves at the northern tip of the island, near l" Ancresse Bay.
He listened. Impatient, he picked up the signal-lamp again, hesitated more out of pride than caution, then flashed his morse dash-dash identification out to sea. The rain had stopped, but the wind was colder now, angering the sea as if to provide another barrier to his escape. He hugged the lamp to his chest while despising its use as a comforter.
Then, almost involuntarily, he flashed out the ident once more, gripped by a panic he could not laugh at or depress. He put back his head, and breathed as deeply as he could, inhaling and exhaling regularly for a minute or more. When he looked at the choppy, threatening, empty sea again, he could hear the sound of engines; identified them almost at once, and waited until the German S-boat rounded the low headland, its searchlight sweeping the tossed surface of the water, then — more in hope than expectation — flickering and dancing along the cliff-face, off the huddled groups of rocks. The tide on which he had come in had removed all traces of his arrival.
The S-boat — he watched it in helpless fascination — moved inshore and he could just make out the toy-like figures in caps and duffel-coats behind the coaming, the sailors at the bow operating the searchlight, or waiting armed with rifles and machine-guns.
He thought he detected the sounds of vehicles from the cliff-top even as the searchlight bounced away above his head, but the noise of the S-boat's twin diesels boomed off the cliffs, magnified and drowning any other noise. He felt his body-temperature drop, the wet rocks press on him. Then the searchlight moved on, sweeping back out to sea. The S-boat moved away, and in less than another minute had rounded the opposite headland, and its engine-noise died away.
Then he heard the shouted orders from above him. He had heard a truck stopping. He fumbled with the signal-lamp, adding to its shielding with his cupped hand as he flashed his signal on and off, again and again. The S-boat would be back, or another might be following, and in minutes — when the troops sent to search the cove had descended the cliff-path — he would be unable to signal.
"Come on, come on — for Christ's sake, come on," he muttered over and over like an incantation, flashing the ident out to the rough, empty sea, listening to the banging of the truck's tailboard, the scuffling of boots and the clink of metal which some freak of the wind brought to him clearly. He might even hear them click on their torches. "Come on, come on, come on—"
McBride wondered whether the crepes suzette after the richly sauced venison was for his benefit, or whether Professor Goessler was indulging himself in the surroundings of the Hotel Spree's dining-room and its cuisine. McBride felt full, and impatient. Goessler — florid, large, beaming, grey hair swept back into wings at the peripheries of a bald pink dome, bulbous nose and full lips — was someone who spoke little while he ate, except for pleasantries concerning the meal. Who would settle the bill had not been decided, but McBride — with some quiet amusement — considered it was more likely to be American Express than the University Bursary.
When Goessler had finished his crepe, he sat back, dabbed his mouth with his napkin in a tidy little gesture that would have suited a smaller head and more delicate hand, and beamed once more on the American.
"Not for your goodwill, you understand," Goessler said with unexpected perception. "This is what they serve here every night, not just when Americans are resident."
McBride laughed, put down his fork. The crepes were beginning to pall on him, possessing a certain unmistakable Germanic heaviness, richness.
"Coffee?" Goessler nodded, and McBride summoned the waiter. "Schnapps?"
"Bring me an Asbach brandy," Goessler told the waiter without replying to McBride, as if he had been irritated. There was also a barely masked casualness of authority, as if it had been long-accustomed, about the way he addressed the waiter. "And you, my friend?"
"I'll pass — just coffee."
"Bring a pot, and leave it," Goessler instructed, and the waiter nodded. "Large cups," Goessler called after him. He beamed on McBride, as if reassuming a role. "Now, of course, you wish to talk. Go ahead."
Permission to speak? McBride was puzzled by Goessler, and resolved the German academic must be interested in his work. Perhaps too interested — then again Goessler, interrupting him as he was about to speak, said: "Do not worry, my friend, I am not concerned to steal your work—" Again the broad smile, and the mouth almost overfilled with dentures. "No, I can imagine what you must think of me. Softening you up, mm?" He indicated the plates before them, looked with passing regret at the remains of McBride's crepes. "No, I am at present at work on more dialectical material — the official history of the German Communist Party, from the beginnings. I don't think any work of yours is likely to throw up new material for me, eh?" He put back his head, laughed, then smoothed the wings of grey hair flat against his head. "No, no, not that I would not perhaps change places with you—" He leaned forward confidentially. "To be truthful, much of my research is extremely dull. I do not suppose yours is, mm? What is it — what invasion plans are you wishing to discover?"