The man covered his skin. The woman wriggled. They shouted at him.
He saw the priest. The priest had brought him a meat pie, had asked him to bring wood to the church house in the village. He heard the priest’s soft words: Was it when you were a child and living in this house that the guilt was born? You don’t have to answer me — but the only palliative for guilt is confession. All I can say, Tadeuz, is that if ever the chance is given you — it is unlikely — to right a wrong then take it, seize it. Each word of what the priest had said was clear in his mind.
Soldiers had hunted through the forest, and had offered the reward of a two-kilo bag of sugar for help in the capture of fleeing Jews, and again men hunted and were down at the Bug banks. He had betrayed a boy and a girl. It was to right a wrong that he went forward.
They cringed away from him.
When he was closer, they stood. He saw now that they took defensive postures, that their arms were out and their fists clenched. He showed them his own hands, empty.
He said, ‘There are hunters in the forest. I can take you to them. It will right a wrong. You can hurt them and make vengeance.’
The girl hissed at the boy, ‘What is he? Some goddam pervert?’ He did not understand her language.
He said, ‘I will show you them, and lift the curse.’
He reached out his hand, and the girl was shrilclass="underline" ‘What you reckon? Going to watch us and jerk off?’
He took the boy’s arm. He said, ‘The curse is my burden, help me … The hunters are here, I will lead you to them and you will destroy them. I beg you, come with me.’
He had hold of the boy’s sleeve. ‘A deranged lunatic, what else? Sorry and all that. I was up for it. Just get rid of him and let’s get the hell out.’ He tugged at the coat.
The boy spoke in German. ‘Where are they?’
‘Beside the river.’
‘Can you show me where they are?’
‘I will. It is to be free of the curse.’ The boy allowed him to pull at the coat and didn’t try to break away from him.
‘You’re not bloody going with him …’
‘He knows where they are. I am.’
The great weight, the burden of Tadeuz Komiski, seemed shed. He led them. He knew what he would do when the curse was cast off, and felt happy. He took them through the forest, away from where the old fences had been, the huts and the watchtowers, the burning pits and the chambers joined by the rubber piping to the truck’s engine, away from where the geese had been chased so they would scream louder. He glided among the trees, as he had when he was a child.
He had spoken to Mikhail. With Mikhail, he had found Josef Goldmann.
Together they talked. Where was the nearest international airport? Was there any indication of a cordon or roadblocks? Which passports were available to them? Which of the cars should they take? Would they tell Reuven Weissberg that they were fleeing into the night?
When Goldmann had wavered, Mikhail had gripped his shoulders. ‘We do not have a meeting, we do not set up a committee, we do not debate and discuss. We go. You’ve seen him when the fury’s alive. That anger burns. Would you tell him? I won’t. Viktor is clear. Viktor reports on men tracking along the river. Who, in darkness, comes covertly along the banks of the Bug? A farmer? A forester? A tourist? Surveillance officers from an intelligence agency? I think so. I think also that we have very little time.’
Viktor could not have faulted Mikhail.
He pushed Josef Goldmann, a violent shove. The man half fell but Mikhail caught him, then threw him on. Mikhail would not have told Reuven Weissberg that he was abandoned, nor would Viktor. He imagined, a brief thought, a tonguetied and terrified Josef Goldmann stammering out a message of treachery and the voice would have died before it had been blurted. They went.
They held Josef Goldmann between them, as if he was their prisoner. They hustled him away from the river. They took him because he was the banker. He had made the investments, he knew in which banks’ strong boxes the deeds of ownership were held, he had the account numbers in his head. Josef Goldmann had control of the millions of dollars, sterling and euros, hidden under layers of nominee names and code numbers, that would offer a comfortable future to Viktor and Mikhail. Without him they would be paupers. Paupers would have no protection, and paupers could not buy a roof.
They dragged Goldmann behind them, his feet scraping the forest floor. Viktor had no sense of wrongdoing, or of betrayaclass="underline" he did not recognize such feelings. He had a sense, though, of anger. It had been Reuven Weissberg who had demanded the outsider walk alongside him, who had treated the outsider as a favoured toy, an indulged pet: he would have liked to hurt the toy, heard the pet squeal. He could not take out that frustrated anger on Josef Goldmann because the flabby, pasty-faced Jew knew the codes, the numbers and the banks.
Bugsy said, ‘It’s gone down the tube, Mr Lawson. Normally I’d not speak out, but I’m going to. It’s down the tube, Mr Lawson, because of you. There’s going to be shit in the fan, but I’m not prepared to take the rap for it, and I don’t reckon any of us is, or should. They were your decisions, Mr Lawson, and you’ll have to stand by them. They were the wrong decisions.’
Adrian and Dennis were at the edge of the group, had said their piece alternating the delivery of news that was awful, then inched back. In his career, Christopher Lawson had not experienced what was, almost, a moment of mutiny.
Shrinks said, ‘If you’d treated your agent with a modicum of sensitivity, Mr Lawson, this fiasco wouldn’t have been bred. You contaminated the man’s loyalties. In effect, to drive him deeper into their arms, you lost him. The result is plain as a pikestaff. We have only a vague idea of where this hideous weapon may be brought to. Your leadership, or lack of it, has engulfed us in abject failure. When we get back, when there’s the inquest, don’t expect me to respond to your usual bully-boy tactic. I’ll put the knife in and twist it.’
He could see their faces. They despised him. It was as if they had torn off badges and insignia, had thrown them into the mud and sought flight — sought, above all, to preserve reputations. What to do? It exercised him. Didn’t know. What option was available to him? To move along the bank of the Bug, only the moonlight to guide them, and hope for a visual sighting.
Dennis’s torchbeam caught them.
Well, it didn’t take an intelligence officer of Christopher Lawson’s experience to read the runes. Her coat was open, and in the V-neck of her pullover it was clear that the blouse buttons were fastened out of kilter. Davies’s fly was unzipped. He had little fight left in him.
The girl did the talking for them both. ‘Everyone here, except Deadeye. Does that mean you’ve no eyeball?’
He didn’t bluster. Didn’t refer with cutting sarcasm to the state of her dress or Davies’s. He nodded.
‘We’ve had an eyeball on the riverbank,’ she said, calm and no triumphalism. ‘It’s why we’ve been so damn long. It goes on for ever, the explanation … Enough for now, a deranged idiot, babbling, Luke says, about hunters and vengeance, took us down to the river edge. Sod his code-call, Johnny’s there and Target Two, Reuven Weissberg. We saw them and beetled back.’
He thought, but couldn’t have been certain in that frail light, that she grinned. He thanked her.
‘Well, is that what you’ve been waiting for? Our idiot buggered off but we can lead you.’
Did he allow relief to flicker on his face? He did not.
‘Right. Let’s be on the move,’ Lawson said.
‘They’ve gone, Johnny.’ Reuven Weissberg hunched down beside him.