He was not the only one feeling tired, though. Dr. Lehmann was clearly flagging. "I hope you won't think me terribly ill-mannered if I bring our interview to a close," he said, stifling a yawn. "I shall ask my son to drive you back to the station, if that is where you're going."
As little as Sam relished the prospect of half an hour in the car with Steven Lehmann, he was not in a position to turn down the lift. He waited beside the family Volvo while the two Lehmann men conversed in hushed tones in the doorway. Sam was prepared to bet that they were not discussing feeding times for little Lavinia. As he waited, his phone began to ring. He slipped it out of his pocket and went to answer it, then thought better of it. What if it's Nina? Sam wondered. That's a can of worms I'd be best not to open right now. He rejected the call and put the phone away again.
At last they were on their way. Steven's face was inscrutable, but his dislike for Sam was palpable. Sam sneaked a look at him out of the corner of his eye. Steven was a man in the early stages of losing his looks. Mid-forties, with the excesses of his earlier years starting to tell on him. Dissatisfied with life, as his father had said. Sam wondered what his relationship with Nina had been like.
"I hope you got everything you needed from your talk with my father, Mr. Cleave," Steven spoke for the first time as they approached the station. "Because I would appreciate it if you didn't come back. As a matter of fact, I don't want you contacting him again. Under any circumstances. My father does not need to relive his Nazi days. My family does not need to be reminded of where it comes from. And my wife and I certainly do not need anything else to do with Nina Gould. She had her chance. "
He pulled up outside the station. Sam, who could not think of a satisfactory response to Steven's strange outburst, simply climbed out of the car and thanked him for the lift.
"One more thing," Steven leaned out of the car window, the engine purring. "I'd advise you to stay away from Nina too. Both of you would be better off keeping your heads down. Best not let her drag you in too deep. Just a friendly warning."
"Errr… right." Sam said, wondering just how much of a weirdo this man really was. "Thanks."
Once Steven's car had disappeared around the corner, Sam remembered the phone call. He decided to find out whether his assumption that it had been Nina was correct.
"Nina Gould." Her voice was cool, professional. Maybe she doesn't have caller ID either, Sam thought.
"Nina," he greeted her. "Nice bunch of crazies you sent me to see."
"Hello Sam," she said. "Well, if I'd told you that my ex was a weirdo, would you have believed me?"
"Probably not. Did you call me earlier?"
"Yes, and it wasn't good news. Sam, I'm so sorry… it's the notebooks. I was looking after them, I promise, but I was out this afternoon and when I got home, someone had broken into my flat. The police have been around and they think it was just bad luck. Someone who knew what they were doing saw me going out, forced the lock and went for my computer. It looks like it was very clean and efficient, like they just shoved everything on my desk into a bag. And that… that included the notebooks. I'm really sorry. I can't believe this happened, right after everything I said about how I'd look after them."
Sam made shushing noises. "It's ok," he reassured her. "It's fine. Are you ok?"
"Yes."
"Then that's the important thing."
"If it's any consolation, I got a lot of work done on them over the past couple of days. That first night, I barely even slept. All of that work is in my notebooks, not my laptop. They weren't on my desk, I've still got them. And I had scanned a few bits and pieces and emailed them to myself, so I can retrieve them. Look, I have to go just now — I'm expecting the police to call me back any time now. Can we meet up once you're back?"
"No problem," Sam said. "I'll be home tomorrow. I'll give you a shout."
Then, since the last train for London had already left and he was not sure that the emergency credit card would stretch to cover a hotel room, Sam slunk into the station's waiting room, found a bench and settled down for the night.
Chapter 5
"We should probably just pack this in," Sam said, setting down a round of drinks. Nina accepted her rum and Coke gratefully.
"You think?" she said.
"Well, we seem to be drawing a blank. Dr. Lehmann clammed up when I mentioned the notebooks and the ice station, and now the notebooks are gone, so it seems to me that we don't really have much to go on." Sam took a sip of his whisky, letting the bitter, malty taste spread across his tongue. "Unless you found something useful before the notebooks got stolen."
In the fifteen minutes since they had met in the pub, Nina had done nothing but apologize for failing to protect the notebooks. Now, for the first time, her remorseful expression was replaced by a slow smile spreading across her face. "You know, I think I might have," she said.
"You remember those little number puzzles in the margins?" Nina asked, "the ones that showed up in the typed sheets too? Well, I figured out what they are. Some of the people working at Peenemünde used them as a way of referring to places that couldn't be mentioned by name. When Kruger jots these little puzzles in the margin, it's a reminder of where the events he's writing about took place. He takes the coordinates of the place and multiplies the number by the age he was when he began working for the Reich Air Ministry. So if you know what age he was, you have the key to working out the coordinates."
Sam was impressed. He clinked his glass against Nina's in a brief salute. "How the hell did you figure that out?"
"Kruger might have been a brilliant scientist — and he was, because you didn't get recruited straight out of university if you weren't — but literary subtlety wasn't his thing. I put the notebooks in chronological order and started at the beginning. The first entry in the first book consists of Kruger writing about how amazing it was to be chosen for the team at Peenemünde at the early age of 22, and how 22 would always be his lucky number. So I started playing around with the numbers in the margins. I must admit, I was expecting it to be a bit more complicated than this, but I suppose Kruger wasn't anticipating that anyone would read his notebooks. Or perhaps he wanted anyone who read them to be able to figure it out. I don't know.
"He writes from time to time about how he loves mystery novels, so I could believe that leaving clues would appeal to his imagination. Anyway, the first set of coordinates was for Peenemünde. Then later, when Kruger took a couple of trips to Kummersdorf, its coordinates start showing up. There were a few other places — Berlin, La Coupole in northern France, Kohnstein. All the coordinates checked out. Except one."
Nina pulled her own notebook from her bag and flipped it open to show Sam a page covered in scribbled numbers. Her writing grew less neat and more frustrated as it progressed down the page. Near the bottom, where her patience had run out, the strokes of the pen nearly tore through the paper. "I just couldn't figure this one out," she sighed. "It only shows up toward the end of the notebooks, from around 1943. So eventually I just divided by 22 and searched online." She took a folded sheet of paper from the back of the book and spread it open for Sam to see.