Saskia let her imagination unfurl. Those millions had their heads bowed in boredom and desolation. Their heads remained down, even when the Man of Steel called them to their deaths. Great swathes of people vanished as though never born. Emptied. Ablated.
Each a lacuna, she thought.
Within her, the image of the star conflated with that of the red chrysanthemums that had accompanied her resurrection in the mortuary. The star grew and shrank like a slow heart, fat with blood. Her eyelids seemed to soften. She slept.
The four gendarmes came from the direction of Kleine Scheidegg. They were cloaked and hatted and all business. One of them carried a lantern, but the reddish indirect light had strengthened. It was dawn.
They did not speak as they approached the automobile. When they were close enough to touch it, they nodded to one another and formed a surrounding box. Their pistols were drawn.
The gendarme with the lantern reached for the door. He opened it and shone his light inside.
The Bébé was empty.
From her crouch behind a pine tree uphill of the lay-by, Saskia watched them. The men made no small talk.
Five minutes passed before a police automobile approached from Kleine Scheidegg. It stopped some metres from the Bébé. An elegant gentleman stepped out. He had a lit, drooping pipe. He motioned for a second man to follow him from the vehicle.
This man was taller than the first. His hands were cuffed behind his back. Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov flexed his shoulders.
The lantern-carrying gendarme turned to his pipe-smoking colleague and shook his head. The pipe-smoker seemed to be dissatisfied. He turned to Pasha and gestured towards the Bébé. His meaning was clear. He wanted Pasha to explain its presence.
Pasha looked at the Bébé as though he had never seen it before.
Saskia smiled.
The pipe-smoker remonstrated with him. He argued that Pasha must recognise the automobile. Pasha pretended not to understand. He shrugged and looked at man as though he were an idiot. Saskia nodded. At some point in their conversation, Pasha fussed at his cuffs. He made as though he found it difficult to breathe.
Only Saskia saw, or cared to see, the pamphlet that dropped from the rear of his jacket.
Eventually, the pipe-smoker became tired of the situation and ordered Pasha back into the police automobile. He climbed in after him. The gendarmes watched as the vehicle trundled out of sight. They did not break their square.
Saskia wondered what the police had on Pasha. For such elaborate treatment of him and the Bébé, she guessed that they had connected him to the stolen money by way of the telegram.
The gendarme with the lantern suddenly crouched to look beneath the vehicle. Seeing nothing, he turned wearily to his colleagues and motioned for them to search the area.
Saskia did not move. The terrain was rocky, uneven and thick with trees. She was not surprised to see them make little effort to find her. When they had covered the ground around the Bébé in a cursory fashion, they returned to the vehicle and drove it away, following the first automobile towards Kleine Scheidegg.
Saskia shook the facts again and again, seeing how they fell and mixed. Pasha’s arrival at the hotel in Kleine Scheidegg had been anticipated. While his enquiries might have raised suspicions on their own, Saskia was sure the authorities had been waiting for him; Kleine Scheidegg was an important crossroads in the Bernese Oberland, but it could not have four gendarmes and an officer of the Sûreté standing by to arrest a suspicious foreigner. This overwhelming force suggested that the Bolshevik machinery was turning.
She broke from cover and retrieved the pamphlet that Pasha had dropped. It was an investor’s summary of progress on the Jungfraujoch Railway. It showed the line running south out of Kleine Scheidegg before an eastern swing into the foot of the Eiger. That tunnel would have been Saskia’s best route to Soso. But with Pasha discovered and the Bolsheviks alerted, Saskia could not risk using it.
There were several places within the network where side-tunnels had been cut through the north face. One of them, Station Rostock, had been a temporary staging post, closed after the turn of the century. All that remained of the station was a wooden door opening onto the face. Saskia was more interested in a second station, the so-called Eigerwand, which had a long, open terrace at a height of around three thousand metres.
She looked at the Eiger. The terrace of the Eigerwand Station would be one third of the way up the face, well before it became vertical.
A healthy and fully augmented Saskia might have free-climbed the route. The Saskia who had been reduced by death, however, was a weaker one by far. She would be more affected by ice-climbing, the falling rocks, and disorientation. Her climb would begin at Apliglen. She would need equipment and a local guide.
Ego, how long will it take me to walk to Alpiglen?
‘Half an hour.’
Very well. Enhance my hearing, please. When there is any evidence of vehicles, or walkers, tell me to take cover. In the meantime, prime and entrain the rock-climbing representations in my pre-frontal motor cortex.
‘You no longer have a functioning motor cortex.’
Saskia looked at her hands. They were gloved, but she could imagine the black fingers within.
Read me something as I walk. Emily Dickinson, perhaps.
With Ego’s companionable whisper among her thoughts, she walked the road. On the outskirts of Alpiglen, she hid in the drainage channel as a group of servant girls hurried past carrying bread from Kleine Scheidegg. Saskia felt foolish in the ditch. She continued along the road and openly greeted a young farmer, who touched his cap in return. He was accompanied by a loping mountain dog. The dog gave her a wide berth.
Saskia went straight past the chalets of the settlement to the higher ground at the south, where it started to ramp up to the Eiger. The lush greens greyed out and the groves thinned. Where the path became steep, bright with the first spill of sunshine, Saskia stopped on the edge of a meadow creaming with daffodils.
That will do, she thought. Thank you.
There was a bicycle leaning against a tree. It had bulging panniers. Nearby, a familiar man was looking up at the Eiger. He had not seen her. He held something to his mouth. A moment later, Saskia’s sensitised ears heard the crunch of an apple.
Ego, return my hearing to human-band.
‘Very good.’
Saskia slipped off her rucksack and withdrew the gun that Gaus had found on Mr Jenner. She approached the man. He wore a tweed jacket but the bowler hat was the same. From five metres away, Saskia cleared her throat. The man turned.
‘Good morning, Gausewitz, whom everyone calls Gaus.’
At that moment, an east wind fell upon the meadow, drawing out her cape like a great, black wing. Gaus seemed intimidated, even scared, at her sudden appearance. She watched him master himself.
‘Ms Tucholsky,’ he said. Though his smile was forced, Saskia felt that he was pleased to see her. ‘My luck is in.’
‘Gaus, you have always been eager to help me, and I thank you for it.’ Saskia kept her eyes steady. Her gun was angled towards his feet. ‘But I ordered you to return.’
Gaus swallowed his mouthful of apple, then slung the core into the daffodils. With a juvenile pout, he said, ‘You think it’s easy for Agents Intemporal? All this waiting? I was selected because I need money, I suppose. That’s my fault for chumming along with the Alpine Club. But I want the adventure, too.’