Day of Judgment

DAY OF JUDGMENT

Contents

Dedication

Epigraph

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Publisher’s Note

About the Author

Also by Jack Higgins

Copyright

About the Publisher

Dedication

For Mike Green, with thanks

Epigraph

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we never had to put up a wall to keep our people in.

President John F Kennedy 26th June 1963

Publisher’s Note

DAY OF JUDGMENT was first published in the UK by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd in 1978 and in 1979 by Pan Books, but has been out of print for some years.

In 2007, it seemed to the author and his publishers that it was a pity to leave such a good story languishing on his shelves. So we are delighted to be able to bring back DAY OF JUDGMENT for the pleasure of the vast majority of us who never had a chance to read the earlier editions.

1

As Meyer turned the corner in the old hearse he reduced speed, his hands slippery with sweat as they gripped the wheel, his stomach tightening as he drove towards the checkpoint, clear in the night under the harsh white light of the arc lamps.

‘I must be mad,’ he said softly. ‘Crazy. The last time, I swear it.’

There were two Vopos at the red and white barrier wearing old-fashioned Wehrmacht raincoats, rifles slung. An officer lounged in the doorway of the hut smoking a cigarette.

Meyer braked to a halt and got out as one of the sentries opened the door. The street ran to the wall itself through an area in which every house had been demolished. Beyond, in a patch of light, was the Western Zone checkpoint.

He fumbled for his papers and the officer came forward. ‘You again, Herr Meyer. And what have we this time? More corpses?’

Meyer passed his documents across. ‘Only one, Herr Leutnant.’ He peered anxiously at the officer through steel-rimmed spectacles. With his shock of untidy grey hair, the fraying collar, the shabby overcoat, he looked more like an unsuccessful musician than anything else.

‘Anna Schultz,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Age nineteen. A trifle young, even for these hard times.’

‘Suicide,’ Meyer explained. ‘Her only relatives are an uncle and aunt in the Western Zone. They’ve claimed her body.’

One of the Vopos had the back of the hearse open and was starting on the brass screws of the ornate coffin lid. Meyer hastily grabbed his arm.

The lieutenant said, ‘So, you don’t want us to look into the coffin? Now why should that be, I wonder?’

Meyer, wiping sweat from his face with a handkerchief, seemed at a loss for words.

At that moment a small truck pulled in behind. The driver leaned out of the window holding his documents. The lieutenant glanced over his shoulder impatiently and said, ‘Get rid of him.’

One of the Vopos ran to the truck and examined the driver’s papers quickly. ‘What’s this?’

‘Diesel engine for repair at the Greifswalder Works.’

The engine was plain to see, roped into position on the truck’s flat back. The Vopo returned the documents. ‘All right – on your way.’

He raised the red and white pole, the truckdriver pulled out from behind the hearse and started towards the gap in the wall.

The lieutenant nodded to his men. ‘Open it.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Meyer pleaded. ‘She was in the Spree for a fortnight.’

‘We shall see, shall we?’

The Vopos got the lid off. The stench was so immediate and all-pervading that one of them vomited at the side of the hearse. The other flashed his torch for the lieutenant to peer inside. He moved back hurriedly.

‘Put the lid on, for God’s sake.’ He turned to Meyer. ‘And you, get that thing out of here.’

The truck passed through the barriers on the other side and pulled in at the checkpoint hut. The driver got out, a tall man in a black leather jacket and flat cap. He produced a crumpled packet of cigarettes, stuck one in his mouth and leaned forward to accept a light from the West German police sergeant who had moved to join him. The match, flaring in the sergeant’s hands, illuminated a strong face with high cheekbones, fair hair, grey eyes.

‘Don’t you English have a saying, Major Vaughan?’ the sergeant said in German. ‘Something about taking the pitcher to the well too often.’

‘How do things look back there?’ Vaughan asked.

The sergeant turned casually. ‘There appears to be a little confusion. Ah yes, the hearse is coming now.’

Vaughan smiled. ‘Tell Julius I’ll see him at the shop.’

He climbed into the cab and drove away. After a while he kicked one heel against the front of the bench seat. ‘Okay in there?’ There was a muffled knock in reply and he grinned. ‘That’s all right then.’

The area of the city into which he drove was one of mean streets of old-fashioned warehouses and office blocks, alternating with acres of rubble, relic of the wartime bombing campaign. Some fifteen minutes after leaving the checkpoint, he turned into Rehdenstrasse, a dark street of decaying warehouses beside the River Spree.

Half way along, a sign lit by a single bulb read Julius Meyer and Company, Undertakers . Vaughan got out, unlocked the large gates, opened them and switched on a light. Then he got into the truck and drove inside.

The place had once been used by a tea merchant. The walls were of whitewashed brick and rickety wooden steps led up to a glass-walled office. Empty coffins were stacked on end in one corner.

He paused to light a cigarette and the hearse drove in. Vaughan moved past it quickly and closed the doors. Meyer switched off the engine and got out. He was extremely agitated and ceaselessly mopped sweat from his face with the grimy handkerchief.

‘Never again, Simon, I swear it. Not if Schmidt doubles the price. I thought the bastard was on to me tonight.’

Vaughan said cheerfully, ‘You worry too much.’ He leaned into the cab of the truck, fumbled for a hidden catch so that the front of the bench seat fell forward. ‘All right, you can get out now,’ he said in German.

‘This is a life, this life we lead?’ Meyer said. ‘Why do we have to live this way? What are we doing this for?’

‘Two thousand marks a head,’ Vaughan said. ‘Paid in advance by Heini Schmidt, who’s got so many of the poor bastards lined up over there that we can do it every night if we want to.’

‘There’s got to be an easier way,’ Meyer told him. ‘I know one thing. I need a drink.’ He started up the steps to the office.

The first passenger, a young man in a leather overcoat, crawled out of the hidden compartment and stood blinking in the light, clutching a bundle. He was followed by a middle-aged man in a shabby brown suit whose suitcase was held together by rope.

Last of all came a girl in her mid-twenties with a pale face and dark sunken eyes. She wore a man’s trench-coat and a scarf tied peasant-fashion round the head. Vaughan had never seen any of them before. As usual, the truck had been loaded in advance for him.

He said, ‘You’re in West Berlin now and free to go anywhere you please. At the end of the street outside you’ll find a bridge across the Spree. Follow your nose from there and you’ll come to an underground station. Good night and good luck.’

He went upstairs to the office. Meyer was sitting at the desk, a bottle of Scotch in one hand, a glass in the other which he emptied in one quick swallow.

He refilled it and Vaughan took it from him. ‘Why do you always look as if you expect the Gestapo to descend at any moment?’

‘Because in my youth there were too many occasions when that was a distinct possibility.’

There was a tapping at the door. As they both turned the girl entered the office hesitantly. ‘Major Vaughan, could I have a word with you?’

Her English was almost too perfect, no trace of any accent. Vaughan said, ‘How did you know my name?’

‘Herr Schmidt told me when I first met him to arrange the crossing.’

‘And where was that?’

‘In the restaurant of the old Hotel Adlon. Herr Schmidt’s name was given to me by a friend as a reliable man to arrange these matters.’

‘You see?’ Meyer said. ‘Every minute it gets worse. Now this idiot hands your name out to strangers.’

‘I need help,’ the girl said. ‘Special help. He thought you might be able to advise me.’

‘Your English is really very good,’ Vaughan told her.

‘It should be. I was born in Cheltenham. My name is Margaret Campbell. My father is Gregory Campbell, the physicist. You’ve heard of him?’

Vaughan nodded. ‘Between them, he and Klaus Fuchs handed the Russians just about every atomic secret we had back in nineteen-fifty. Fuchs ended up in the dock at the Old Bailey.’

‘While my father and his twelve-year-old daughter found sanctuary in East Germany.’

‘I thought you were supposed to live happily ever after,’ Vaughan said. ‘Socialist paradise and all that. Last I heard, your father was Professor of Nuclear Physics at Dresden University.’

‘He has cancer of the lung,’ she said simply. ‘A terminal case. A year at the most, Major Vaughan. He wants out.’

‘I see. And where would he be now?’

‘They gave us a place in the country. A cottage at a village called Neustadt. It’s near Stendal. About fifty miles from the border.’

‘Why not try British Intelligence? They might think it worth their while to get him back.’

‘I have,’ she said. ‘Through another contact at the University. They’re not interested – not any longer. In my father’s field, you’re very quickly yesterday’s news and he’s been a sick man for a long time now.’

‘And Schmidt? Couldn’t he help?’

‘He said the risk involved was too great.’

‘He’s right. A little border-hopping here in Berlin is one thing, but your father – that’s Indian territory out there.’

Whatever it was that had kept her going went out of her then. Her shoulders slumped, there was only despair in the dark eyes. She seemed very young and vulnerable in a way that was curiously touching.

‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ She turned wearily, then paused. ‘Perhaps you can tell me how to get in touch with Father Sean Conlin.’

‘Conlin?’ Vaughan said.

‘The League of the Resurrection. The Christian Underground movement. I understood they specialized in helping people who can’t help themselves.’

He sat staring at her. There was silence for a long moment. Meyer said, ‘So what’s the harm in it?’ Vaughan still didn’t speak and it was Meyer who turned to her. ‘Like Simon said earlier, cross the bridge at the end of the street and straight on, maybe a quarter of a mile, to the underground station. Just before it, there’s a Catholic church – the Immaculate Heart. He’ll be hearing confessions round about now.’

‘At four o’clock in the morning?’

‘Night workers, whores, people like that. It makes them feel better before going to bed,’ Vaughan said. ‘He’s that kind of man, you see, Miss Campbell. What some people would term a holy fool.’

She stood there, hands in pockets, a slight frown on her face, then turned and went out without a word.

Meyer said, ‘A nice girl like that. What she must have gone through. A miracle she got this far.’

‘Exactly,’ Vaughan said. ‘And I gave up believing in those long ago.’

‘My God,’ Meyer said. ‘Have you always got to look for something under every stone you see? Don’t you trust anybody?’

‘Not even me,’ Vaughan said amiably.

The judas gate banged. Meyer said, ‘So you’re just going to stand there and let a young girl walk all that way on her own and in a district like this?’

Vaughan sighed, picked up his cap and went out. Meyer listened to the echo of his footsteps below. The door banged again.

‘Holy fool.’ He chuckled to himself and poured another glass of Scotch.

Vaughan could see Margaret Campbell pass through the light of a street lamp thirty or forty yards in front of him. As she crossed the road to the bridge and started across, a man in slouch hat and dark overcoat moved out of the shadows on the far side and barred her way.

The girl paused uncertainly and he spoke to her and put a hand on her arm. Vaughan took a .38 Smith & Wesson from his inside pocket, cocked it and held it against his right thigh.

‘No way to treat a lady,’ he called in German as he mounted the half-dozen steps leading to the bridge.

The man was already turning very fast, his hand coming up holding a Walther. Vaughan shot him in the right forearm, driving him back against the rail, the Walther jumping into the dark waters below.

He made no sound, simply gripped his arm tightly, blood oozing between his fingers, lips compressed, a young man with a hard, tough face and high Slavic cheekbones. Vaughan turned him around, rammed him against the handrail and searched him quickly.

‘What did he say to you?’ he asked Margaret Campbell.

Her voice shook a little as she replied. ‘He wanted to see my papers. He said he was a policeman.’

Vaughan had the man’s wallet open now and produced a green identity card. ‘Which, in a manner of speaking he is. SSD. East German State Security Service. Name of Röder, if you’re interested.’

She seemed genuinely bewildered. ‘But he couldn’t have followed me. Nobody could. I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I. Maybe our little friend here can help us.’

‘Go to hell,’ Röder said.

Vaughan hit him across the face with the barrel of the Smith & Wesson, splitting flesh, and Margaret Campbell cried out and grabbed him by the arm.

‘Stop it!’

She was surprisingly strong and during the brief struggle, Röder ran to the end of the bridge and stumbled down the steps into the darkness. Vaughan finally managed to throw her off and turned in time to see Röder pass under a lamp at the end of the street, still running, and turn the corner.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘I mean, that really does help a lot, doesn’t it?’

Her voice was the merest whisper. ‘You’d have killed him, wouldn’t you?’

‘Probably.’

‘I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.’

‘I know. Very humanitarian of you and a great help to your father, I’m sure.’ She flinched at that, her eyes wide, and he slipped the Smith & Wesson into his inside pocket. ‘I’ll take you to see Father Conlin now. Another one big on the noble gesture. You and he should do rather well together.’

He took her arm and together they started across the bridge.

Father Sean Conlin had, with Pastor Niemoller, survived the hell of both Sachsenhausen and Dachau. Afterwards, five years in Poland had made him realize that nothing had really changed. That he was still fighting the enemy under a different name.

But a tendency to do things in his own way and a total disregard for any kind of authority had made him a thorn in the side of the Vatican for years, on one famous occasion censured by the Pope himself, which perhaps accounted for the fact that a man who was a legend in his own lifetime should still be a humble priest at the age of sixty-three.

He sat in the confessional box, a frail, white-haired man in steel-rimmed spectacles, dressed in alb, a violet stole about his neck, tired and cold for there had been more than usual that morning.

What he very much hoped was his last client, a local streetwalker, departed. He waited for a while, then started to get up.

There was a movement on the other side of the screen and a familiar voice said, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking. Maybe people decide to give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.’

‘Simon, is that you?’ the old man replied.

‘Together with a true penitent. A young woman whose confession runs something like this. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am Gregory Campbell’s daughter.’

Conlin said quietly, ‘I think you’d better bring her into the sacristy and we’ll have a cup of tea and see what she’s got to say for herself.’

* * *

The sacristy was almost as cold as the church itself. Conlin sat at the small deal table with a cup of tea, smoking a cigarette while the girl told him about herself. She was, it seemed, a doctor by profession; had only taken her finals at Dresden the previous year.

‘And your father? Where is he now?’

‘Near Stendal, in the country. A village called Neustadt. A very small village.’

‘I know it,’ he told her. ‘There’s a Franciscan monastery there.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that, but then I don’t know the place well at all. There is an old castle by the river.’

‘That will be Schloss Neustadt. It was presented to the Franciscans by some baron or other at the beginning of the century. They’re Lutherans, by the way, not Catholic.’

‘I see.’

He said to Vaughan, ‘And what do you have to say?’

‘I’d give this one a miss.’

‘Why?’

‘The SSD man at the bridge. What was he doing there?’

‘It could be that they are on to you and Julius. Bound to happen after a while.’

‘Excuse me, but is Major Vaughan’s opinion relevant?’ Margaret Campbell asked.

The old man smiled. ‘You could have a point there.’

Vaughan got up. ‘I think I’ll take a little walk, just to see how things stand.’

‘You think there could be others?’ she asked.

‘It’s been known.’

He went out. She said to Conlin, ‘He scares me, that one.’

Conlin nodded. ‘A very efficient and deadly weapon, our Simon. You see, Miss Campbell, in the kind of game he plays he has a very real advantage over his opponents.’

‘What is that?’

‘That it is a matter of supreme indifference to him whether he lives or dies.’

‘But why?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t understand.’

So he told her.

* * *

When Vaughan went back into the sacristy they were talking quietly, heads together. The old priest glanced up and smiled. ‘I’d like you to see Miss Campbell safely back into East Berlin later today. You’ll do that for me, won’t you, boy?’

Vaughan hesitated. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but that’s as far as I go.’

‘No need for more.’ Conlin turned to Margaret Campbell. ‘Once back on their side, return to Neustadt and wait for me. I’ll be there the day after tomorrow.’

‘Yourself?’

‘But of course.’ He smiled almost mischievously. ‘Why should others have all the fun?’ He stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Never fear, my love. The League of the Resurrection has something of a reputation in this line of work. We won’t let you down.’

She turned and went out. The old man sighed and shook his head. Vaughan said, ‘What are you thinking about?’

‘A child of twelve who, with only her father’s hand to hold on to, was suddenly spirited away by night from everything warm and secure and recognizable, to a strange and rather frightening country with an alien people whose language she didn’t even understand. I think now that in some ways she is still that lost and frightened little girl.’

‘Very touching,’ Vaughan said. ‘But I still think you’re wrong.’

‘O, ye of little faith.’

‘Exactly.’

Margaret Campbell was at the church gate when Vaughan caught up with her.

The street was deserted, grim and forbidding in the grey morning light. As they started along the pavement she said, ‘Why do you live like this, a man like you? Is it because of what happened out there in Borneo?’

‘Conlin and you have been improving the shining hour,’ he said calmly.

‘Do you mind?’

‘I seldom mind anything.’

‘Yes, that was the impression I got.’

He paused in a doorway to light a cigarette and she leaned against the wall and watched him.

Vaughan said, ‘The old man was very taken.’

He very carefully tucked a wet strand of hair under her headscarf. She closed her eyes and took a hesitant step forward. His arm slipped around her waist and she rested her head against his shoulder.

‘I’m so tired. I wish everything would stand up and walk away and leave me alone to sleep for a year and a day.’

‘I know the feeling,’ he said. ‘But when you open those eyes of yours, you’ll find nothing’s changed. It never does.’

She looked up at him blankly. ‘Not even for you, Vaughan? But I thought from what Father Conlin said you were the kind of man for whom the impossible only takes a little longer?’

‘Even the Devil has his off-days, didn’t he tell you that as well?’

He kissed her gently on the mouth. She was suddenly filled with a kind of panic and pulled away from him, turned and continued along the pavement. He fell in beside her, whistling cheerfully.

There was an all-night café by the bridge. As they neared it, it started to rain. He reached for her hand and they ran, arriving in the entrance slightly breathless and very wet.

The café was a small, sad place, half a dozen wooden tables and chairs, no more. A man in a dark blue overcoat was fast asleep in a corner. He was the only customer. The barman sat at the zinc-topped counter reading a newspaper.

She waited at a table by a window overlooking the river. Behind her, she could hear Vaughan ordering coffee and cognac.

As he sat down she said, ‘You speak excellent German.’

‘My grandmother came from Hamburg. She grew up by the Elbe, I was raised on the Thames. She lived with us when I was a boy. Raised me after my mother died. Made me speak German with her all the time. Said it made her feel at home.’

‘And where was this?’

‘Isle of Dogs near the West India Docks. My old man was captain of a sailing barge on the Thames for years. I used to go with him when I was a kid. Down to Gravesend and back. Even went as far as Yarmouth once.’

He lit a cigarette, the eyes dark, as if looking back across an unbridgeable gulf. She said, ‘Where is he now?’

‘Dead,’ he said. ‘A long time ago.’

‘And your grandmother?’

‘Flying bomb, November ’forty-four. There’s irony for you.’

The barman appeared with a tray, placed a cup of coffee and a glass of cognac in front of each of them and withdrew. Vaughan took his cognac in one easy swallow.

‘A little early in the day, I should have thought,’ she commented.

‘Or too late, depending on your point of view.’

He reached for her glass, she put a hand on his. ‘Please?’

There was something close to surprise in his eyes and then he laughed softly. ‘Definitely too late, Maggie. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you? In fact, very definitely far too far gone. You know that poem of Eliot’s where he says that the end of our exploring is to arrive where we started and recognize the place for the first time?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was wrong. The end of our exploring is to recognize the whole exercise for what it’s been all along. One hell of a waste of time.’

He reached for the glass again and she knocked it over and sat staring at him, her face very white.

‘And what’s that supposed to prove?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just take it as sound medical advice.’

He sighed. ‘All right. If you’re ready, we’ll move on. I’m sure you can’t wait to get back on your side of the fence anyway.’