“Aren’t you going to send someone to help me?”
“No. We mustn’t do anything to scare Harald off. If he sees you, he won’t panic-you’re just the village policeman. But a couple of strange cops might spook him. I don’t want him to run away and hide somewhere. Now that we’ve tracked him down, we mustn’t lose him again. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“On the other hand, if he tries to fly that plane, stop him.”
“Arrest him?”
“Shoot him, if you have to-but don’t for God’s sake let him take off.”
Harald found her matter-of-fact tone absolutely terrifying. If she had been overdramatic, he might not have felt so scared. But she was an attractive woman speaking calmly about practicalities-and she had just told Hansen to shoot him if necessary. Until this moment, Harald had not confronted the possibility that the police might simply kill him. Mrs. Jespersen’s quiet mercilessness shook him.
“You can open this door, to save me scrambling through the window again,” she said. “Lock it up when I’ve gone, so that Harald won’t suspect anything.”
Hansen turned the key and removed the bar, and they went out.
Harald jumped to the ground and retreated around the end of the church. Moving away from the building, he stood behind a tree and watched from a distance as Mrs. Jespersen walked to her car, a black Buick. She looked at her reflection in the car’s window and adjusted her sky blue beret in a very feminine gesture. Then she reverted to cop mode, shook hands briskly with Hansen, got into the car, and drove away fast.
Hansen came back, and disappeared from Harald’s view, screened by the church.
Harald leaned against the trunk of the tree for a moment, thinking. Karen had promised to come to the church as soon as she got home from the ballet. If she did that she might find the police waiting for her. And how would she explain what she was doing? Her guilt would be obvious.
Harald had to head her off somehow. Thinking about the best way to intercept her and warn her, he decided the simplest thing would be to go to the theater. That way he could be sure he would not miss her.
He felt a moment of anger toward her. If they had taken off last night they might be in England now. He had warned her that she was putting them both in danger, and now he had been proved right. But recriminations were fruitless. It was done, and he had to deal with the consequences.
Unexpectedly, Hansen came walking around the corner of the church. He saw Harald and stopped dead.
They were both astonished. Harald had thought Hansen had gone back into the church to lock up. Hansen, for his part, could not have imagined that his quarry was so close. They stared at each other for a paralyzed moment.
Then Hansen reached for his gun.
Mrs. Jespersen’s words flashed through Harald’s mind: “Shoot him, if you have to.” Hansen, a village constable, had probably never shot at anyone in his life. But he might jump at the chance.
Harald reacted instinctively. Without thought for the consequences, he rushed at Hansen. As Hansen drew his pistol from the holster, Harald cannoned into him. Hansen was thrown back, and hit the church wall with a thud, but he did not lose his grip on the gun.
He raised the gun to point it. Harald knew he had only a fraction of a second to save himself. He drew back his fist and hit Hansen on the point of the chin. The blow had the force of desperation behind it. Hansen’s head jerked back and hit the brickwork with a sound like the crack of a rifle. His eyes rolled up, his body slumped, and he fell to the ground.
Harald was dreadfully afraid the man was dead. He knelt beside the unconscious body. He saw immediately that Hansen was breathing. Thank God, he thought. It was horrifying to think he might have killed a man-even a vicious fool such as Hansen.
The fight had lasted only a few seconds, but had it been observed? He looked across the park to the soldiers’ encampment. A few men were walking around, but no one was looking Harald’s way.
He stuffed Hansen’s gun into his pocket then lifted the limp body. Slinging it over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, he hurried around the church to the main door, which was still open. His luck held, and no one saw him.
He put Hansen down, then quickly closed and locked the church door. He got the cord out of the cabin of the Hornet Moth and tied Hansen’s feet together. He rolled the man over and tied his hands behind his back. Then he picked up his discarded shirt, stuffed half of it in Hansen’s mouth so the man could not cry out, and tied string around Hansen’s head so that the gag would not fall out.
Finally he put Hansen in the trunk of the Rolls-Royce and closed the lid.
He looked at his watch. He still had time to get to the city and warn Karen.
He lit the boiler on his motorcycle. He might well be seen driving out of the church, but there was no longer any time for caution.
However, he could get into trouble with a policeman’s gun making a bulge in his pocket. Not knowing what to do with the pistol, he opened the right door of the Hornet Moth and put it on the floor, where no one would see it unless they got in the aircraft and trod on it.
When the motorcycle engine had a head of steam he opened the doors, drove the bike out, locked up from inside, and exited by the window. He was lucky, and saw no one.
He drove into the city, keeping a nervous eye out for policemen, and parked at the side of the Royal Theatre. A red carpet led up to the entrance, and he recalled that the King was attending this performance. A notice informed him that Les Sylphides was the last of three ballets on the program. A crowd of well-dressed people stood on the steps with drinks, and Harald gathered that he had arrived during the interval.
He went to the stage door, where he encountered an obstacle. The entrance was guarded by a uniformed commissionaire. “I need to speak to Karen Duchwitz,” Harald said.
“Out of the question,” the commissionaire told him. “She’s about to go on stage.”
“It’s really important.”
“You’ll have to wait until afterward.”
Harald could see that the man was immovable. “How long is the ballet?”
“About half an hour, depending how fast the orchestra plays.”
Harald remembered that Karen had left a ticket for him at the box office. He decided he would watch her dance.
He went into the marble foyer, got his ticket, and entered the auditorium. He had never been in a theater before, and he gazed in wonder at the lavish gilded decoration, the rising tiers of the circle, and the rows of red plush seats. He found his place in the fourth row and sat down. There were two German officers in uniform immediately in front of him. He checked his watch. Why did the ballet not start? Every minute brought Peter Flemming nearer.
He picked up a program that had been left on the seat beside him and flicked through it, looking for Karen’s name. She was not on the cast list, but a slip of paper which fell out of the booklet said that the prima ballerina was indisposed and her place would be taken by Karen Duchwitz. It also revealed that the lone male dancer in the ballet would also be played by an understudy, Jan Anders, presumably because the principal man had also fallen victim to the gastric illness that had spread through the cast. This must be a worrying moment for the company, Harald thought, the leading roles being taken by students when the King was in the audience.
A few moments later he was startled to see Mr. and Mrs. Duchwitz take their seats two rows in front of him. He should have known they would not miss their daughter’s big moment. At first he worried that they would see him. Then he realized it no longer mattered. Now that the police had found his hiding place, he did not need to keep it secret from anyone else.
He remembered guiltily that he was wearing Mr. Duchwitz’s American sports jacket. It was fifteen years old, according to the tailor’s label in the inside pocket, but Karen had not actually asked her father’s permission to take it. Would Pa Duchwitz recognize it? Harald told himself he was foolish even to think about it. Being accused of stealing a jacket was the least thing he had to worry about.