Day of Judgment. Jack Higgins

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СКАЧАТЬ devious man, Brother Konrad. I can see that now.’

      ‘So I’ve been told,’ he said, smiling, and poured her coffee.

      In West Berlin, Bruno Teusen stood at the open window leading to the terrace of his apartment in one of the new blocks overlooking the Tiergarten and sipped black coffee. He was at that time fifty, a tall, handsome man with a pleasant, rather diffident manner, that concealed an iron will and a razor-sharp mind.

      A lieutenant-colonel of ski troops on the Russian Front at twenty-five, a serious leg wound had earned him a transfer to Abwehr headquarters at Tirpitz Ufer in Berlin, where he had worked for the great Canaris himself.

      His wife and infant son had been killed in an air raid in nineteen-forty-four and he had never remarried. In nineteen-fifty when the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, popularly known as the BfV, was formed, he was one of the first recruits.

      The function of the BfV was primarily to deal with any attempted undermining of the constitutional order, which, in practice, came down to a constant and daily battle of wits with the thousands of Communist agents operating in West Germany. Teusen was Director of the Berlin office, a difficult task in a city whose inhabitants still tended to equate any kind of secret service with the Gestapo or SD.

      It had been a hard day and he was considering the merits of dining on his own and having an early night or phoning a young lady of his acquaintance when his bell rang. He cursed softly, went to the door, and peered through the security bullseye.

      Simon Vaughan was standing there, Brother Konrad behind him, wearing corduroy trousers, a reefer jacket and tweed cap.

      Teusen opened the door.

      ‘Hello, Bruno.’

      ‘Simon.’ Teusen looked Konrad over briefly. ‘Business?’

      ‘I’m afraid so.’

      ‘You’d better come in, then.’

      He closed the door and turned to face them. Konrad took off his cap. Vaughan said, ‘This is Colonel Bruno Teusen. Bruno, Brother Konrad of the Franciscan Order of Jesus and Mary at Neustadt on the other side. I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say.’

      He walked across to the drinks cabinet, poured himself a Scotch and went out on the terrace. It was really very pretty, the lights of the city down there, but for some reason all he could think of was Margaret Campbell, trapped at Neustadt with her injured leg and probably frightened to death.

      ‘Poor stupid little bitch,’ he said softly. ‘You shouldn’t have joined, should you?’

      It was perhaps fifteen minutes later that

      Teusen and Konrad came out on the terrace.

      ‘Not so good,’ the Colonel said.

      ‘Can you do anything?’

      ‘For Conlin?’ Teusen shrugged, ‘I don’t hold out much hope. I’ll get in touch with the Federal Intelligence Service in Munich, but I don’t see what they can do, other than inform interested parties.’

      ‘And who might they be?’

      ‘The Vatican, for one. He is a priest, after all. Where was he born – Ireland?’

      ‘Yes, but he’s an American citizen.’

      ‘They might be interested then, but I wouldn’t count on it. And we haven’t any proof that Conlin’s over there. If anyone approaches the East German Government officially, they’ll simply deny any knowledge of him. In any case, from the sound of it, getting him out of Schloss Neustadt would take a company of paratroopers dropping in at dawn, and Skorzenys are thin on the ground these days.’

      Brother Konrad said, ‘And the girl?’

      ‘We might be able to do something for her.’ Teusen turned to Vaughan. ‘Would you be willing to help there?’

      For a moment Vaughan saw again her pale face, the dark weary eyes in the early morning light on the bridge over the Spree. He smiled. ‘Julius won’t like it.’

      ‘I know. Something for nothing again.’ Teusen glanced at Konrad. ‘When do you have to be back?’

      ‘My permit allows me a seven-day stay in East Berlin.’

      ‘And where are you staying now?’

      Konrad turned uncertainly to Vaughan, who said, ‘At our place in Rehdenstrasse. You might have to sleep in a coffin, but it’s home.’

      Teusen said, ‘I’ll be in touch. Possibly tomorrow – certainly by the day after. We should have the responses of all the interested parties by then.’

      He closed the door behind them and poured himself a cognac. Then he went to the telephone, dialled a Munich number and asked to speak to General Reinhardt Gehlen, Director of BND, the Federal Intelligence Service. Strange that he no longer felt tired.

      4

      In Rome, on the following morning, in an upper room of the Vatican, His Holiness Pope John XXIII, close to death due to the effects of the stomach tumour from which he had been suffering for a year, held audience propped up by pillows in his bed.

      A young monsignor sat by his side, reading from one letter after another in a low voice. His Holiness listened with closed eyes, opening them occasionally to sign a document when requested and again when his physician entered to administer a pain-killing injection.

      The phone at the side of the bed buzzed and the monsignor answered it. He said, ‘Father Pacelli is here.’

      The Pope nodded. ‘Admit him.’

      ‘This is not good,’ the doctor said. ‘Your Holiness knows …’

      ‘That he has very little time, and a great deal to do.’

      The doctor turned away, closing his bag, and the monsignor opened the door to admit a tall, gaunt old man with white hair and deepset eyes, a strangely mediaeval figure in the plainest of black habits.

      ‘You look more like a bird of prey than usual this morning,’ the Pope said.

      Father Pacelli smiled lightly, for this was an old game between them. He was almost seventy years of age, a Jesuit, second only in that illustrious order to the Father General himself, Director of Historical Research at the Collegio di San Roberto Bellarmino on the Via del Seminario, from where he had been responsible for more than twenty-five years for the organization of the closest thing the Vatican had to a Secret Service department.

      The Pope looked up from the document he was reading. ‘You Jesuits, Pacelli. The plain black habit, the lack of pomp. A kind of humility in reverse, don’t you think?’

      ‘I remind myself of the fact in my prayers each day, Holiness.’

      ‘Soldiers of Christ.’ The Pope waved the document at him. ‘Like Father Conlin. He reminds me strongly of a certain colonel of infantry I knew when I served as a military chaplain during the First World War. Whenever he went over the top to lead an attack he СКАЧАТЬ