41 
Dark Night

The night was late.

A chill breeze blew off the Wohlensee toward central Bern. The two men who were speaking in low tones in the shadows beneath a tall deserted brick church felt the cold. But the heart of the one was colder than the air and he hardly noticed. And the other would be home in his bed before long.

“Look, Scarlino,” said the latter, “what you ask will not be easy. Those records are closely guarded. I could lose my job.”

“What is that to me? You will be well paid. The time has come when the people who put you in your job expect compensation.”

“What do you know of that?”

“I know. That is all that is important.”

“Does this have to do with the war? Which side are you spying for this time?”

A low laugh sounded in the darkness.

“You know me better than that.”

“Yes, I do. You would kill a German just as soon as an Englishman or a Serb.”

“Or a Swiss bureaucrat, if it came to that. Let me just say that there are certain people high up on both sides who are very interested in a contact who stumbled across my path recently. There are rumors of an independent network with connections in Austria, and an Englishwoman who infiltrated them and is now making a run for it. It is even said a high-level assassination is planned. You would not want your name somehow linked to all that, would you?”

The Swiss man squirmed. He should have known better than to get involved with these people.

“What would your dear wife and children say?” continued the man whom he had called Scarlino. “The stakes are high. To fail me now could, shall we say, be a fatal miscalculation on your part.”

“Don’t worry,” he said finally. “I will get the information. Just keep my name out of it.”