The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

conspiracy against men like Wilhelm Gustloff, who died in the service of his people. A heroic champion of the Third Reich cut down by the vicious craven rat of a decadent community. The word ‘Jewish’ did not cross his lips. It did not need to. Everyone knew what he meant. And nodded wisely in agreement.

“Please, Frank. Let’s go. I can’t stand this any longer.”

Patricia’s appeal betrayed a pitch of anxiety he had never heard in her voice before. And he could not listen to it any more than she could stand the hate-filled ravings of his fellow countrymen.

It was just as they turned to go that Frank saw an all too familiar figure standing in the crowd. The features were partly hidden under a large felt hat. But the supercilious expression of his thin lips was unmistakable. And for an instant, just sufficient for the animosity to register, their eyes met. Hoping that Patricia had not seen him, Frank guided her into the nearest side street.

“I’m sorry,” he said, surprising himself by his composure. “The assassination of Gustloff is not an event that figures in my calendar. If I’d known it was just a year ago, so close to where we’re standing now, I wouldn’t have brought you here this week.”

As he looked back, he saw Breitner detach himself from the crowd of onlookers, move around behind them with his characteristic swagger, cigar in mouth, and follow them into the side street. At the next junction, Frank manoeuvred Patricia to the right and, finding a tea-room round the corner, persuaded her that some refreshment would do them both good.

As a refuge, it proved a curious place. It sorely needed a coat of paint. And the aroma of cheap cigars hung in the air. But this was thankfully overpowered by the sweeter fragrance of pastries and chocolates displayed at the counter. They sat down and ordered two cups of coffee.

“Please forgive me,” Frank said. “I hadn’t realised how deeply colonised this part of Switzerland has become by my fellow countrymen. And it certainly never occurred to me that we’d face Nazi marches and demonstrations in Davos. Such a far cry from the sanatorium atmosphere of The Magic Mountain.”

“Don’t be too sure about that. Their death cult is just the kind of self-destructive urge explored by Thomas Mann. Especially in the tedious Tristan theme he obsesses about in so many of his novels.”

Patricia’s melancholy words brought to mind the story she had told him of her school days, when she played Isolde to the Tristan she had been so madly in love with. They hinted at the never-ending sense of bereavement that appeared to pursue her. And he desperately searched for the right words of comfort. A hopeless venture.

As the elderly, sour-faced waitress placed the coffee on the table, Patricia’s gasp startled Frank even more than the voice that snaked its way around the waitress and almost caused her to spill the coffee.

“Good morning, Patricia. Mr Eigenmann. What a pleasant surprise. May I?”

Without waiting for an answer, Breitner planted himself between them at the side of the table. Despite his arrogance and self-assured swagger, he struck Frank as more vulnerable than he remembered the man from their first encounter. Perhaps it was the way he kept his hat on in the tea-room, as if he had something to hide. Or perhaps it was the pastiness of winter that he needed to shake off. Or maybe it was simply an impression engendered in Frank by the feel of the gun that still sat faithfully in his pocket.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, directing his attention at Patricia. Then, turning his cold lupine eyes towards Frank, he added: “I’ve been looking for both of you.”

“I’m sure you didn’t come all this way in search of us,” Frank replied.

“Just one of life’s happy coincidences that you should also be here paying tribute to our fallen hero,” he said with a sarcastic smile. And savoured the idea with a supercilious smirk on his lips as the elderly waitress, who looked as though she had not set foot outside her tea-room for the last twenty years, remained standing silently between Breitner and Patricia. Waiting. Patricia spent the whole time looking down at the table like a schoolgirl who had been caught in a compromising situation and did not seem to notice her. But Breitner was plainly irritated by the woman.

“All right, bring me some Black Forest gateau,” he grunted, when he realised at last that she would be satisfied with nothing less than an order.

“We only have carrot cake,” she replied, wrapping her words in a slow, deliberate enunciation of every syllable that did nothing to conceal her impatience.

“Good. Bring me some carrot cake, then,” Breitner said with a nauseous look on his lips. “And make it sharp.”

The old lady endeared herself to Frank by defiantly refusing to show any respect for his arrogant posturing, and she shuffled back to the counter more slowly than ever.

“I can’t stand the cretinous way they address you in this country. They don’t talk to each other like that. Why do they talk to me like it?”

He chose to ignore the smile on Frank’s face and turned a cold dismissive stare on him to underline his complete indifference to any opinion Frank might have of him.

“One way or another, Eigenmann, you cause me a lot of trouble. And you’ve still not found Lola for me,” he added, piercing Frank with his cold steely stare.

“If you’re not collaborating with the communists, you’re interfering in my private affairs.” He looked at Patricia. Her eyes remained firmly on the cup in front of her. But Breitner was determined to demonstrate his dominance. He reached out a hand and lifted up her face to examine the trace of bruising that still showed around her left eye.

“Then look what happens,” he said, letting her head drop and looking back at Frank. “And if you’re not pestering Mademoiselle Roche, you’re molesting my people.”

“You mean Wolfgang and