There was the shortest pause, and then the voice concluded. ‘Max, we have made you a reasonable offer. Do not destroy it, or endanger those near and dear to you, by going to the Swedish security police. They will not find me. Nor will they find Walther or Emily. Act as I have suggested, one way or the other, but act on your own. Any other course will prove foolhardy. Mit herzlichen Grüssen, Max.’
There was a click, the endless rubbing, and not another word in Craig’s ear.
His hand darted to the machine, pulling the tiny lever to ‘Stop’. He hesitated a moment, the torrent of information scrambled and dancing in his head. Had he heard it rightly? Had he missed anything important? He wanted to hear Emily’s voice again, to test and judge the degree of her agitation and feeling. That, and to hear her. He gripped the rewind knob in his fingers and quickly reversed the tape. He edged the lever to ‘Play’, cupped his hand over the earplug, and listened for eternal mute minutes. There was nothing, no voice, no sound of any kind, except the mocking rasp of the tape as it wound in its circle. Finally, he realized the recorded tape had been automatically erased after it had played, through use of some unusual device. All he had heard would never be heard again. The future of the three Stratmans was in his hands-in his head, really-their predicament and the condition surrounding their future. Craig stopped the playback and removed the plug from his ear.
He stood in the entry hall and tried to think. In his entire life, he had never heard anything more stupefying, unless it had been the first news of Harriet’s death. And now, in a sense, he had tuned in on the death of a second human being, were he Max or Walther Stratman. He was overcome by an apathy induced by the impossible: to save Emily’s father and yet save Max Stratman. But quickly the apathy passed, and necessity and responsibility mothered clarity.
To whom could he go? Where could he turn? What was right? What was wrong?
There was an easy but dreadful solution, of course. He need only awaken Max Stratman, soberly repeat every detail that had been on the incredible tape, and if Stratman believed him (and Craig thought that he would), Stratman himself could carry the burden of the decision into Concert Hall in two hours. It was tempting, dangerously tempting, this notion, to awaken Stratman and let him decide between his brother’s freedom and his nation’s need.
And then, at once, the notion of what he had been tempted to do sickened Craig, and gave him the old revulsion towards himself, which he now understood more clearly. If he performed in the old, smooth way-running from a shout of distress in the night, ducking away from an uneven gang beating in the street, hiding from reality and his debt to existence by the soft coma of drink and drug and self-pity and inaction and retreat-he would leave this northern place as he had come, a riven and dismembered man, lost to himself and his time, the eternal victim of all unseen fears. The test was finally the test of his bedrock character. Victory or failure was not the criterion of the test. Responsible action was the criterion. No, of one thing he was certain at last-he would not awaken poor old Stratman.
Yet, merely to prove something to himself, he could not be careless enough to accept a dare that would trifle with another’s life. And it was more than that now, because now he knew that Emily’s future was his own, and so this had come down to self-survival at last. To whom could he turn? The Swedish security police, of course. But even if they believed his wild story-and they might, because of his Nobel stature-what could they do? Eckart would evaporate, Walther would be whisked away, and Emily would long be a corpse in some narrow alley or a hostage in her hated Germany, before the police, without clues, could pick up her trail. The slow noisy wheels of officialdom, he decided, were to be ignored.
But then, what else? There was only himself, with his knowledge, and no other. He, himself, on the trail? It was ridiculous. He had created too many books not to know of what fiction was made. In books, most often, you knew the end result, the solution, and you tried, as credibly as possible, to manipulate your characters towards it. But this was awful life, where the end result, the solution, was unknown, and therefore the hero character, taking up the gauntlet, had to go forth aimlessly in a maze, towards a destination that had no existence and towards a climax that could not be predicted. If he were writing-and an old nostalgia for that happy hideout enclosed him-how simple it would be. His writer’s mind revolved and wrote: a strange polar city blanketed in snow, a beautiful girl in hidden custody, a bizarre ransom note, two ideologies at war over the payment, and the attractive young man in the trench coat, treading his way through lonely foreign streets where dangers lurked, but always drawing nearer, as clue gave him clue, as-hell, and to hell with it!
He broke off the contrived fantasy and tried to think harder. There was no knowledge of international intrigue-euphemism for plain filthy blackmail-in the true experience of his life. Except for his reading of documented books, and hearing of occasional Communist fanatics, like the one Lilly’s Hungarian, Nicholas Daranyi, had told him about-what was the name? Enbom, yes, Enbom, the Swede with Communist sympathies who had sold secrets to the Russians-except for such true…
Suddenly Craig stiffened. His mind leaped to one sound possibility. Daranyi, Nicholas Daranyi.
Craig tried to recollect what had brought him to Daranyi. A self-confessed free-lance spy, yes, but that was as much foolishness as fiction. It was something else altogether that excited him now. It was something that Daranyi had once said of himself, and something, their last time, that Lilly had said of Daranyi. He racked his brain, and cursed himself for not having been a better listener. Daranyi had worked, was working-which?-for a Nobel committee judge-to investigate all the present laureates. He had hardly paid attention to it at the time, but now, in review, it had a foul smell. Had he himself been spied upon? And Stratman? Had someone been interested in Stratman for any reason-perhaps for the reasons that had been erased on the tape? Far fetched, and yet-Daranyi was a possibility. Even if he knew nothing of this matter, he, more than anyone, would likely know what to do about it. Suddenly, for the first time, Craig took Daranyi seriously.
He heard the clock, and he realized, painfully, that time was running out. He had less than an hour and three-quarters to act on his own. But now, for the first time, he had need to define his mission: to act on his own, yes, laudable-but to act how? And to what end? What was he after? He must reach Emily and Walther, of course. That was the goal. He must ascertain that Emily was alive and safe. He must look upon Walther with his own eyes and know that this sudden visitor was, indeed, Emily’s father. If he was not her father, the cruel hoax needed to be exposed. If the tape was true, and Walther true-and Craig had little doubt about this-then Craig must reason and plead with Walther to withdraw from this drama and end the impossible dilemma.