He was still standing there when the little priest came up to him. It was quite dark now, and all the street lamps were on, and it was growing very cold. He had probably leaned there, slouched against the tree, for some thirty minutes. He was wrapped in grey gloom, and for the first time since Berlin regretting life in the Luftwaffe. He started when the little man spoke to him, and peered down through the darkness at the strange, dumpy figure with its shapeless, bundle-like coat and floppy, curl-brimmed hat. But he did not answer.
“Never mind,” said the priest, very gently. “It doesn’t matter.”
There was something in the voice which, made Otto feel ashamed. He brought his mind to attention with considerable effort. He said:
“I’m sorry. What was it you wanted?”
The priest, who had begun to move away, turned back. He said, his head tilted to look up at Otto:
“I have to note something down. My memory, you know . . . I was wondering . . . Could you lend me a pen, perhaps? . . . Or a pencil would do. . . .”
“Huh?” Otto’s tone was sharp. He was momentarily startled by the word pencil; then, looking down at his questioner again, grew amused by his own ridiculous imaginings. He laughed inwardly, and felt much better.
“I think I have one,” he said—and began to grope in his pockets, searching for the ordinary stub which he had brought in addition to the pencil in his breast-pocket.
The tree was in a circle of darkness made blacker by its own shadow—and the priest began, while Otto was delving into one pocket after another, to edge towards the street-lamp between the tree and the hotel-entrance. He too was searching in his pockets, and Otto moved automatically with him, until they were both on the very edge of the bright pool of light.
“I’m sorry.” Otto was fumbling furiously. “I know I’ve a bit of pencil somewhere.” He wondered why he was taking so much trouble with the old idolator. Maybe it would be all right to let him use the pencil. No, perhaps safer not—though there could be nothing more ordinary to look at to the uninitiated eye.
While he still delved, now into his hip-pockets, the little man took something from some recess in the shapeless coat. He said:
“You see, I broke my own pencil . . . the last lead . . .”
He held out something to Otto, thrusting the hand which held it into the light: it was a pencil; a cheap, utterly ordinary propelling pencil, indistinguishable from any which might be cheaply bought in any stationery store throughout Europe or even America. But in one vital respect it was identical with that in Otto’s breast-pocket: its original white-metal cap, which had probably once held the usual piece of eraser, had been removed and a clumsy, obviously home-made wooden plug had been substituted. . . .
Otto’s heart jumped violently: he hoped the shock had not been visible to other eyes. He managed to say, casually:
“Too bad! I’ll find mine in a minute,” and study his companion thoroughly for the first time. He realized that he had seen him before: he had sat at the table next the beautiful German. He wondered . . .
But he was cautious. It could do no harm to be cautious. After all, a little man like this might conceivably—as anyone very possibly but improbably might—lose the top of a cheap pencil and replace it with a plug of wood roughly shaped with a pocket-knife! He applied the test. He said:
“By the way, do you happen to know what time it is? I’ve a train to catch. . . .”
The little priest, with a worried look of concentration, started to undo the buttons of the shapeless, enveloping coat. It took him quite a long time. When he had them undone, he reached inside, to another coat presumably, and at last brought his hand out bearing a huge pumpkin of a watch, its case of gunmetal, attached to a heavy silver chain. He moved the monstrosity into the light and peered at it carefully. He said, with gentle surprise:
“Why, it’s seventy-one past, or earlier. . . . I’d no idea! . . .”
And then Otto knew. He waited, and nothing happened—and then produced his own pencil and watched in amazement while the priest made some careful and, Otto was sure, meaningless scratches upon a piece of paper.
He looked up at Otto with a shy, kindly smile. “Thank you,” he said in the gentle voice and returned the pencil. “If you are going this way, perhaps we might walk together? . . .”
And so Otto did not return to Kornemunde. Instead, at the frigid grey hour of five a.m. upon the next morning, he boarded the S.S. Lars Bjolnar. She was a timber freighter of some eight thousand tons—and Nils was duly signed upon her.
He left the blue suit behind him, but each piece of the stout and serviceable and well-used seaman’s clothing he wore was crudely marked with the name N. Jorgensen in indelible ink and a calligraphy which he himself might have thought was his own.
More, he had a well-loaded duffel bag—and in it, besides spare clothing, a sizeable locked strong-box of battered metal. In this box, besides many other necessary things such as his official Identity Card and his seaman’s papers, was a whole background, meticulously compiled, for Nils Jorgensen, comprising such precise and likely data as yellowed old photographs and snapshots of Nils’ father and mother; of Nils himself (it was astonishing how closely the infants and boys resembled Otto Falken); and of their farmhouse in northern Norway. There were also such matters as a beribboned lock of blond hair, a small tattered Bible signed by Jorgensen père et mère—and much more. . . .
As he contemplated these things, Otto was again overcome by awe-stricken admiration for the godlike thoroughness of the great Machine which now, for Germany’s sake, controlled him. And he wondered increasingly, with each passing hour of this monotonous voyage towards Lisbon, what subtle and intricate steps would be taken to secure the unobtrusive entrance of Nils Jorgensen to Britain: he was more certain than ever, now, that this must be his destination.
For no one had told him, yet, that he was going to America!
4 ATLANTIC:
First Phase
They did not, in fact, tell him until he was in Lisbon, and already—by a curious and amazingly fortuitous-seeming set of circumstances—on the way to becoming a crew-member of the fifteen-thousand-ton Vulcania, which flew the red ensign of Britain and was New York bound and had only touched at Lisbon, it seemed, for twenty-four hours of minor repairs.
It had all been very curious, extremely exciting—and further proof of the incredible, minute precision with which the hidden Machine did its work; a precision so delicate that even he himself had not sensed the first link in the chain as being anything but an uninspired and extremely annoying trick of chance. It was not, indeed, until his course was crossed by the third of the planned events that he realized the chain for what it was and became at ease in his troubled mind.
The first thing was the interview, just as they sighted Lisbon, with fat old Captain Svensen of the Lars Bjolnar. Svensen had told him of orders from his owners, received by radio, to the effect that his crew must be cut down. He had even shown the message, to prove that his forthcoming dismissal of Otto was none of his fault. He was very kindly, and appeared genuinely distressed.
Then, just as Otto, ashore and shipless, was desperately worrying as to what he should do next in view of this unexpected intrusion of Fate into the plans of the Reich in so far as they concerned Otto Falken, had come the chance meeting in the tavern with the grizzled Norwegian bos’un of the Lars Bjolnar. And then the hailing of the bos’un by the little English quartermaster; and the round of drinks—and then, as the Englishman, upon hearing that Nils Jorgensen was without a ship, became suddenly interested, the realization that the Machine had been at work the whole time!