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.

‘Come on, Trudy,’ the Minister implored. ‘Give a man a break. I caught ’em.’

But she was gone.

Another woman bustled along the corridor. Frizzy grey hair and a cross red face. She carried a broom and a pan. She looked at Kipsel and Blanchaille with horror. ‘Now whom have you invited? I told the Minister that he can’t have any more people here. This house isn’t designed for guests, it’s a museum. I’m sorry but they must go away, they can find a hotel, or a guest-house. The Minister must understand, we can’t have no more people here.’ She began sweeping the floor vigorously.

‘I’m sorry, Mevrou Fritz, but you see, these aren’t guests,’ said Kuiker, ‘These are prisoners.’

‘Prisoners, guests, it’s all the same to me. Where will the Minister put them? I keep trying to explain to the Minister. This house is not made for staying in. It’s made for looking at. Every day at ten I open the doors and let the people in to look. They look, sign the visitors’ book and leave.’

‘I’ll lock them in the cellar,’ said Kuiker.

Kuiker took his prisoners down into the cellar, which turned out to be a warm and well-lit place built along the best Swiss lines to accommodate a family at the time of a nuclear blast and was equipped with all conveniences, central heating, wash-lines, food and toilets. Kuiker producing a length of rope, ordered Blanchaille to tie Kipsel to the hot-water pipes and then did the same for Blanchaille, despite the complaints of Mevrou Fritz who pointed out, not unreasonably, that she would be extremely put off when she did her ironing by the sight of these two men trussed up like chickens, staring at her. Kuiker’s response was to turn on her and bellow. His face turned purple, the veins stood out in his neck. Mevrou Fritz flung aside her broom and fled with a shriek.

Kuiker whispered rustily in Blanchaille’s ear. ‘Soon the house will be open to tourists. You will hear them passing overhead. Examining the relics, paying their respects to the memory of Uncle Paul. Make any attempt to get attention and you’ll be dealt with. That’s a promise.’ And to prove it he struck Blanchaille across the face with his pistol.

They sat trussed like chickens all day. At one stage Mevrou Fritz came in and used the ironing table, complaining increasingly about their presence and of the trouble which the arrival of Gus Kuiker and Trudy Yssel had caused her. ‘This is Government property. I’m here as a housekeeper, I see to it that the tourists don’t break things or take things. I sell them postcards. I polish the floors. I dust the Kruger deathbed and I straighten the pictures. It is dull and lonely work, far from home and the last thing I expect is to have to share my extremely cramped quarters with a jumped-up little hussy who’s too big for her boots and a Government minister on the run who spends most of the day drinking. And now I have prisoners in the cellar.’

Blanchaille and Kipsel were not fed. They were released from their chairs only to go to the lavatory and then only under Gus Kuiker’s gun.

Later that night Trudy Yssel lay in bed. Down the corridor from the small spare bedroom they could hear the continual low grumblings of Mevrou Fritz now relegated to this little corner of the house, as if, she said, she were a bloody servant, or a skivvy.

Minister Gus Kuiker poured whisky into a tooth glass. Trudy Yssel looked at him. It was hard to believe that this unshaven drunk was the Minister confidently tipped to succeed President Bubé. But then she considered her own position. Despite the attempt to maintain appearances, the carefully groomed nails, the chiffon négligé, the impeccable hair, it was hard to believe that she was the Secretary of the Department of Communications.

‘What do you recommend, Trudy?’

Trudy looked at him pityingly. ‘Why ask me? You brought them in here. Now you deal with them. Why couldn’t you have left them in the garden? Then they would have come in at the official time, with all the other tourists, looked around and left. None the wiser.’

‘Maybe they’re spies,’ said Kuiker. ‘Maybe the Regime sent them to find us.’

‘Well, that doesn’t matter now — does it? You’ve found them. They know who we are. Worse still, they know where we are. What’s to be done?’