Day of Judgment. Jack Higgins
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finally managed to throw her off and turned in time to see Röder pass under a lamp at the end of the street, still running, and turn the corner.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘I mean, that really does help a lot, doesn’t it?’
Her voice was the merest whisper. ‘You’d have killed him, wouldn’t you?’
‘Probably.’
‘I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.’
‘I know. Very humanitarian of you and a great help to your father, I’m sure.’ She flinched at that, her eyes wide, and he slipped the Smith & Wesson into his inside pocket. ‘I’ll take you to see Father Conlin now. Another one big on the noble gesture. You and he should do rather well together.’
He took her arm and together they started across the bridge.
Father Sean Conlin had, with Pastor Niemoller, survived the hell of both Sachsenhausen and Dachau. Afterwards, five years in Poland had made him realize that nothing had really changed. That he was still fighting the enemy under a different name.
But a tendency to do things in his own way and a total disregard for any kind of authority had made him a thorn in the side of the Vatican for years, on one famous occasion censured by the Pope himself, which perhaps accounted for the fact that a man who was a legend in his own lifetime should still be a humble priest at the age of sixty-three.
He sat in the confessional box, a frail, white-haired man in steel-rimmed spectacles, dressed in alb, a violet stole about his neck, tired and cold for there had been more than usual that morning.
What he very much hoped was his last client, a local streetwalker, departed. He waited for a while, then started to get up.
There was a movement on the other side of the screen and a familiar voice said, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking. Maybe people decide to give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.’
‘Simon, is that you?’ the old man replied.
‘Together with a true penitent. A young woman whose confession runs something like this. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am Gregory Campbell’s daughter.’
Conlin said quietly, ‘I think you’d better bring her into the sacristy and we’ll have a cup of tea and see what she’s got to say for herself.’
* * *
The sacristy was almost as cold as the church itself. Conlin sat at the small deal table with a cup of tea, smoking a cigarette while the girl told him about herself. She was, it seemed, a doctor by profession; had only taken her finals at Dresden the previous year.
‘And your father? Where is he now?’
‘Near Stendal, in the country. A village called Neustadt. A very small village.’
‘I know it,’ he told her. ‘There’s a Franciscan monastery there.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, but then I don’t know the place well at all. There is an old castle by the river.’
‘That will be Schloss Neustadt. It was presented to the Franciscans by some baron or other at the beginning of the century. They’re Lutherans, by the way, not Catholic.’
‘I see.’
He said to Vaughan, ‘And what do you have to say?’
‘I’d give this one a miss.’
‘Why?’
‘The SSD man at the bridge. What was he doing there?’
‘It could be that they are on to you and Julius. Bound to happen after a while.’
‘Excuse me, but is Major Vaughan’s opinion relevant?’ Margaret Campbell asked.
The old man smiled. ‘You could have a point there.’
Vaughan got up. ‘I think I’ll take a little walk, just to see how things stand.’
‘You think there could be others?’ she asked.
‘It’s been known.’
He went out. She said to Conlin, ‘He scares me, that one.’
Conlin nodded. ‘A very efficient and deadly weapon, our Simon. You see, Miss Campbell, in the kind of game he plays he has a very real advantage over his opponents.’
‘What is that?’
‘That it is a matter of supreme indifference to him whether he lives or dies.’
‘But why?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t understand.’
So he told her.
* * *
When Vaughan went back into the sacristy they were talking quietly, heads together. The old priest glanced up and smiled. ‘I’d like you to see Miss Campbell safely back into East Berlin later today. You’ll do that for me, won’t you, boy?’
Vaughan hesitated. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but that’s as far as I go.’
‘No need for more.’ Conlin turned to Margaret Campbell. ‘Once back on their side, return to Neustadt and wait for me. I’ll be there the day after tomorrow.’
‘Yourself?’
‘But of course.’ He smiled almost mischievously. ‘Why should others have all the fun?’ He stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Never fear, my love. The League of the Resurrection has something of a reputation in this line of work. We won’t let you down.’
She turned and went out. The old man sighed and shook his head. Vaughan said, ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘A child of twelve who, with only her father’s hand to hold on to, was suddenly spirited away by night from everything warm and secure and recognizable, to a strange and rather frightening country with an alien people whose language she didn’t even understand. I think now that in some ways she is still that lost and frightened little girl.’
‘Very touching,’ Vaughan said. ‘But I still think you’re wrong.’
‘O, ye of little faith.’
‘Exactly.’
Margaret Campbell was at the church gate when Vaughan caught up with her.
The street was deserted, grim and forbidding in the grey morning light. As they started along the pavement she said, ‘Why do you live like this, a man like you? Is it because of what happened out there in Borneo?’
‘Conlin and you have been improving the shining hour,’ he said calmly.
‘Do you mind?’
‘I seldom mind anything.’
‘Yes, that was the impression I got.’
He paused in a doorway to light a cigarette and she leaned against the wall and watched him.
Vaughan said, ‘The old man was very taken.’
He very carefully tucked a wet strand of hair under her headscarf. She closed her eyes and took a hesitant step forward. His arm slipped around her waist and she rested her head against his shoulder.
‘I’m so tired. I wish everything would stand up and walk away and leave me alone to sleep for a year and a day.’
‘I know the feeling,’ he said. ‘But when you open those eyes of yours, you’ll find nothing’s changed. It never does.’
She looked up at him blankly. ‘Not even for you, Vaughan? But I thought from what Father Conlin said you were the kind of man for whom the impossible only takes a little longer?’
‘Even the Devil has his off-days, didn’t he tell you that as well?’
He kissed her gently on the mouth. She was suddenly filled