He heard his voice. ‘Dr. Öhman, whatever your committee member thinks, I’m not going to stand by-I have too much conscience-and let this war criminal strut around Stockholm like a Caesar. I’m not going to let him sit on the same platform with me at the Ceremony.’
Öhman scratched his scalp nervously. ‘What are you proposing?’
For the first time this day, Garrett smiled. ‘I have my ideas.’
He threw off his blanket, and crawled off the bed, and stood up, a man rejuvenated, hitching and tightening his pyjamas.
Öhman jumped to his feet. ‘I brought you this, because we are friends. I hoped you would take time to digest this, think about it, and then proceed with utmost care. I hoped, when you returned to America next week, you might bring this up-somehow-with-uhhh-friends in your Pentagon Building, and let them see if they could check further. In that way, you might learn every fact. If Farelli were then proved innocent, you could forget the matter. And if you truly found him guilty, it would become known-’
‘No!’
‘Dr. Garrett-’
‘I’m not letting a war criminal escape. I’m not letting condemning information like this die in channels. Now is the time-now, when the whole world is here in Stockholm. Now is the time to make Farelli go on trial, before he makes fools of you and me and all of us.’
‘But the Nobel Committee will not support-’
‘I don’t need them. I have a better outlet, a far better transmitting agent.’
‘Who?’
‘Sue Wiley of Consolidated Newspapers. I’m going to lay Farelli’s infamy in her lap tomorrow. You won’t have a part in it, and I won’t. I’ll just give her the tip, and let her run from there, and by tomorrow night-I guarantee you this-the whole world will know, and what I have promised will come true. At the Ceremony, I will sit on the stage by myself, and I alone, will receive the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine!’
Night had fallen on the city, and a damp fog laced the frosty polar darkness. It was five past six in the evening when Andrew Craig reached the shrouded waters of Nybroviken, some blocks behind the Grand Hotel. The portier had given him exact directions to the Royal Dramatic Theatre, reminding him it covered an entire block near Strandvägen, on the iced bay of Nybroviken.
Now, in the fog, Craig was lost, and he waited for help. A Swedish youngster on a bicycle, whistling in the fun of the fog, bundled like a Lapp, approached the corner.
‘Young man-’ Craig called out.
The bicycle slowed.
‘-please, where is the Dramatic Theatre?’
The beet-coloured face was puzzled, and suddenly it beamed. ‘Dramatiska Teatern?’ He jerked his thumb behind him, and held up his forefinger-an improvement on Esperanto-and Craig understood that it was one block away.
He proceeded slowly, heading blindly into the blackness. His mind returned to-had really never left-the person of Emily Stratman. Her kiss, almost twenty-four hours old, was still on his lips. During the Hammarlund dinner, there had been no way to communicate with her, except with his eyes, nor had more been possible in the communal ride to the hotel afterwards.
This morning he had overslept, and had found her at lunch with her uncle and three Scandinavian physicists and their wives in the Winter Garden. He had joined the party, but there had been no opportunity to go further with Emily. Only afterwards, briefly, as they had all risen from the table, had he been able to ask when he might see her again. She did not know. In the afternoon, a social tea. And this evening, a performance of something or other-a pageant-at Drottningholm. Tomorrow then? She had hesitated, and worried, and he had perceived that she was again afraid, afraid she had gone too far on the Hammarlund terrace, afraid to be alone with him and take up from the last encounter. But he had been so pleading and kind that she had acceded, and almost with enthusiasm finally. Tomorrow she was free for dinner, and so that would be it. He had not seen her since, and he wondered if she and her uncle had reached Drottningholm this evening safely in spite of the fog.
He found himself before a stone building piled high and stretching upward through the layers of mist. There were indistinct yellow lights, revealing ornate pillars and a statue, two figures, to the left. This was the Royal Dramatic Theatre he was sure, and he hastened up the steps and inside to keep his meeting with Märta Norberg.
In the lobby, a plump, bandy-legged cleaning woman was pushing a carpet sweeper.
He removed his hat. ‘Pardon me. Miss Märta Norberg is expecting me.’
‘Not inside,’ said the cleaning woman. ‘She finish rehearsal-go upstair with Nils Cronsten.’
‘Can you tell me where upstairs?’
‘She go to-with young ones-Little Theatre of Royal Training Academy. Fourth number floor.’
‘Thank you.’
Craig took off his overcoat, and, carrying it over one arm, began the long climb up the staircase. When he reached the fourth floor, he was winded and overheated.
A big blonde, with the chubby aspect of an innocent milkmaid, and wearing a skintight red leotard that made her flaring hips and buttocks seem abnormally large, was hurrying down the corridor.
Craig intercepted her. Was it fröken or fru? ‘Fröken-’
‘Yes, sir?’ Her accent was clipped West End.
‘-where can I find Miss Norberg or Mr. Cronsten?’
‘The small theatre down there.’ She pointed.
He considered the leotard. ‘May I ask-who are you?’
She dimpled. ‘Viola. Twelfth Night. William Shakespeare. I am overweight, but I am dieting.’
With that, she hurried away, an Amazon in haste, and Craig enjoyed her as he walked to the theatre and went inside.
It was, indeed, a small theatre, ninety-eight red plush seats, footlights ablaze, and a fair-sized stage now displaying three performers in costume, a slender Olivia, veiled, a refined and dignified Malvolio, and a jester, all gaudily attired. Accustoming himself to the auditorium, Craig listened. Olivia was addressing the steward, her voice rising and falling: ‘O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail-’ Craig thought of Gunnar Gottling, and tried to listen again.
‘Are you Andrew Craig?’
Craig pivoted in the direction of the inquiry, and saw a stocky, conventional looking gentleman of indeterminate but older years, a parted brown toupee, complacent respected banker’s face, bow tie, pin-striped neat suit, rise from a seat.
‘I am Nils Cronston, Miss Norberg’s director. She advised me earlier you were to be expected.’
They shook hands in the aisle.
‘I congratulate you, Mr. Craig, on your Nobel Prize. Indeed, I have admired your novels, and it is a pleasure to have you visit us. Please join me. I will send for Miss Norberg.’