"Surely, when things settle down -" Bond began to say, but the elderly man cut him off.
"Something funny's going on." He shook his head in marked disapproval. "Nobody knows how this claimant to the von Tarn name has survived. There's even a story that he's been living in places all over the world under the name Tarn, and this Tarn was supposed to have died, only recently, in a road accident in England. Can you believe any rumors these days?"
He went off to bring a plate of ham and eggs, which he set in front of his customer, carrying on his monologue as though uninterrupted. "Yet here he is. Large as life. Yesterday I saw him. He visited the lawyer Saal, over there," pointing to an old half-timbered building across the square, beside the door of which was a brass plate. "The Saals have managed the Tarn estate for six generations. Old Helmut Saal has blocked any purchase of the place since the end of Hitler's war. I'm not saying he's a liar or a cheat, but I think he would do anything to keep his hands on that estate. It's kept the Saal family in style for a very long time. This new von Tarn could be Saal's man, for all we know. Put there to keep the Saals in the style to which they have become accustomed over the years."
Bond told him that he wanted to see a lawyer with regard to purchasing property nearby, but was brushed aside with a "You should go to Fritz Saal, Helmut's brother. He deals with the purchase of property, but there are other things the town's not happy with."
"Such as?"
"Such as this new von Tarn allowing dubious young people to camp in the grounds of the estate. Some of them look to us like the skinheads who do terrible things in the cities – you know what I mean: attacking foreigners, burning buildings, parading in the streets. Let me tell you, I heard stories of people like that from my father. I can even remember some of them myself. Hitler's people, that's who these young ruffians behave like."
"How long has this been going on?"
"The skinheads? Only a couple of days, but some have come into the town to buy food, and they haven't always been too pleasant to the shopkeepers. We've turned them away from here. Anyway, they'll be gone tomorrow or the day after, I understand. They're here for some rally the master of Tarnenwerder's allowed them to have in his grounds. Don't hold with it myself." The old boy went off mumbling to himself about how it wasn't like this in his day.
No, Bond thought, you're of an age when it was, first, the survival of the fittest and utter obedience to the Nazi Party; then an age when the German people were trying to live down the excesses of Hitler's régime, which had brought your country to its knees. The old man, he thought, had also seen the upsurge of West Germany as the thriving industrial center of Europe, and now the toil and turmoil of a country restored and not split in two. The restoration of a single Germany had brought with it problems and a desperate search for a new identity – or, worse, a return to the old way of the Nazis. He could not blame the waiter for being edgy about foreigners, and these German skinheads were, particularly, foreigners here in Wasserburg am Inn, a town that had survived, almost unchanged, centuries of Sturm and Drang.
After breakfast he returned upstairs, surprised that such an old and beautiful building actually provided telephones in the few available rooms. The local directory was not large, and he found the number of Saal, Saal u. Rollen. Within seconds of dialing, he was speaking to Herr Fritz Saal, explaining that he was a British businessman looking for perhaps a large property in the area. An investment, you understand. For a consortium, you will follow. Naturally, Herr Boldman.
Saal was bright and friendly on the telephone, but gloomy about the prospects, though, eventually, he remembered that there were a couple of estates on his books. Perhaps Herr Boldman could call on him at the office, say in half an hour. Herr Boldman was pleased to accept the invitation.
Bond then rang Flicka in London, stressing that he was fine, had arrived and discovered some interesting facts already. He also said that he would call again after his meeting with what he called a property lawyer in the town.
The building from which the Saal brothers and Herr Rollen carried out their business, while obviously very old, had been constantly renovated over several centuries.
Initially, the building had probably been a small town-house for some local worthy. From the half-timbered exterior and the visible leaded windows, he reckoned that it probably had a largish entrance hall, with rooms to left and right, while upstairs it possibly maintained what had originally been three bedrooms.
On reaching the door he found that it was a solid oak panel with metal bindings and hinges, into which had been set a large Yale-type lock – much bigger than the kind of thing you saw on houses in the rest of the world, but still small enough to slip with a thick piece of celluloid or a credit card.
He took a good look at the doorjamb and all the windows, and sought out any telltale wiring or electronic boxes signaling a sophisticated alarm system. There were none, and the telephone wiring came in high, from an overhead pole on the right-hand corner at the front of the building. Bond knew by the size of the telephone input box that it was unlikely to contain any extra surprises.
He pressed the bell, and some seconds later the door was opened. He found himself staring into a pair of large gray eyes topped by amazingly long lashes. Below the eyes was a pert little nose and below that a wide mouth, obviously designed by the Almighty to set a completely new standard of temptation for men. The woman wore her think blonde hair in what at one time would have been called a French plait. Nowadays he had no idea what they called the style, but the hair was so perfect and thick that he had an immediate desire to plunge a hand into it and see if there were gold coins hidden under the smooth glossy surface.
The vision looked to be in her mid-twenties and was dressed modestly, in a manner at variance with her looks – and also the twinkle in her eyes. A second later he saw a black-haired young woman, identically dressed, in a kind of long black nylon coverall that certainly hid whatever street clothes either of the girls wore. This signified that the young women wore these rather ugly uniforms as a protection against damaging or marking their own clothes while laboring in Saal, Saal u. Rollen's vineyard.
By the time he could draw his eyes away from the blonde's charms she had asked if he was Herr Boldman. He somewhat haltingly said yes and he was here to see Herr Fritz Saal.
The smile remained warm, embracing even, as she asked him to follow her upstairs – something she said in a slightly arch fashion that made it into a more personal invitation.
He pulled himself out of his reverie and looked around, realizing that he would have to examine the lower interior of the building more thoroughly on the way out. His casual glance revealed nothing in the shape of electronic code pads for alarm activation. In fact, all the electronics appeared to be two computers and a large laser printer. The dark girl he had glimpsed briefly was now seated behind one of the computers, rattling away at the keyboard as though her life depended on it, which, he thought, bearing in mind the association of the Saals with Max Tarn, it probably did.
As he had thought, there were three doors that led from a small landing at the top of the stairs, plus a short corridor that slid off to the right and ended in another door, which, he concluded, was a bathroom.