Here Kipsel broke down and began to stab Magdalena’s picture with his fork and Blanchaille had to lead his friend from the café before the proprietor became too angry.
‘I wasn’t the traitor. Magdalena was with the Regime all the time. She set me up, and you. And even Kaiser. Christ! But Kaiser must feel sick.’
‘So do I,’ said Blanchaille, ‘Magdalena was Apple One. It’s so obvious it hurts.’
‘Well,’ said Kipsel, ‘maybe at last we know something.’
‘Maybe,’ said Blanchaille.
But it wasn’t much and it came too late.
CHAPTER 19
They wandered about in the general area of Clarens until they struck the little road set back from the lake and lined with large nineteenth-century villas, one of which they knew immediately from a hundred slides and photographs Father Lynch had shown them over the years. Then, too, there was the familiar flag flying from a first-floor balcony. It was growing dark, the sun was setting behind the further mountains lighting the clouds from below so they seemed not so much clouds as daubs of black and gold on the deepening blue of the sky. Even though there were lights in the upper storey of the house, the shutters on the lower floors were closed. The last of the tourists had departed. They would not gain entry until the following morning.
As it happened there were a number of garden chairs and a small, circular steel table at the bottom of a short flight of stairs which led from the front of the house into the garden. Here, though cold, they slept until some time after midnight when they were roughly awoken.
They knew him even though he wasn’t wearing one of his Hawaiian shirts with the golden beaches, the coconut palms and the brilliant sunsets, even though he carried a revolver which he waved at them ordering them into the house.
Once inside, Blanchaille marvelled at his outfit. A raw silk suit extremely crumpled as if it had been slept in, no tie, shirt collar twisted, his laces undone as if he’d just shoved his feet into his shoes before coming outside and wafting off him good and strong were waves of liquor. He’d been drinking, drinking most of the night, Blanchaille guessed. He was aware of a hallway, the smell of polish, photographs on the walls, Kruger everywhere, and to his right a staircase which carried the large warning: No Admittance to the Public. At the top of the stairs stood a woman in a blue dressing-gown.
‘What have you got there, Gus?’ she asked grumpily.
They recognised her immediately, of course, that slightly imperious, dark, faintly hawk-like profile — those handsome rather beaky good looks, the eagle priestess, Secretary of the Department of Communications, Trudy Yssel.
‘Oh Ernie Nokkles where are you now?’ Kipsel whispered.
‘Spies are what I’ve got here,’ said the big wild man.
‘Tourists,’ Blanchaille countered.
‘Normal times for that. Normal opening times. It’s rare that pilgrims, whatever their fervour, camp in the grounds. Isn’t that so, Trudy — isn’t that so?’ he appealed to the haughty figure in blue above them.
‘I’d say, from the look of them, you’ve picked up a couple of bums, that’s what I’d say. Who are you boys?’
They told her.
‘Not the Kipsel?’
Kipsel sighed and admitted it.
‘And I know you,’ said Kuiker to Blanchaille. ‘You used to be Father Theo of the Camps.’
‘And you used to be Gus Kuiker, Minister of Parallel Equilibriums and Ethnic Autonomy.’
Above their heads Trudy Yssel laughed harshly. ‘You really picked a couple of wise-guys this time. As if we don’t have problems! When will you learn to leave well alone?’ She spun on her heel.