The Dark Frontier by A. Decker (best books to read non fiction .txt) 📕

right. In the uncomfortable silence that ensued, Mirabelle brandy was the only remedy to paper over the cracks they opened up in his conscience. He stood up and walked over to the table, where the half-empty bottle stood. He refilled both glasses. Turning to hand a glass to Achim, he knocked the rucksack that was leaning against the table leg. It gave a thud as it hit the floor.

Frank held out the glass for Achim.

“What else have you got in there?” he asked, nodding at the rucksack. “Apart from Mirabelle brandy?”

“I was sixteen when my uncle Max first introduced me to the stuff,” Achim said, ignoring his friend’s question. There was a mild sigh in his voice, which Frank was unable to identify. “It was the first real summer after the Great War. I’d been sent off to stay with my uncle in Alsace. An amazing character. One of life’s survivors – you had to be, living in Alsace in those days. He had a gammy leg. I was never told why. There were many things about Uncle Max we didn’t talk about. But that leg probably saved his life. He would certainly never have volunteered for service, and he would have refused to be conscripted. Not that he was a pacifist. He was just unable to take sides. He had a lot in common with you, Frank.”

Achim smiled as he savoured the brandy.

“Actually,” Achim continued, “he had very little in common with you. But in that one respect, the way you refuse to take sides, you remind me very much of Uncle Max. In every other detail, he was not like anyone else I’ve ever known.

“He lived on the edge of a small town in a region near here called the Sundgau, where he eked out a sparse living as a sculptor. You’d be surprised what a fertile breeding ground it is here for sculptors. Did you know that the creator of New York’s Statue of Liberty was from this region and that one of his other monuments stands just around the corner from this hotel? Of course, poor old Uncle Max didn’t make it to such dizzy heights. But perhaps I loved him all the more for his failures as a sculptor. It just added to his charisma. Certainly, the monolithic shapes that stood sentry in his atelier nurtured an insatiable fascination. Of course, nobody at war is interested in art anyway. By all accounts he suffered unimaginable hardship, until circumstances moulded him into such a master of survival that, by the end of the war, he had become one of his town’s wealthiest citizens.

“It had apparently been an open secret that he was involved in smuggling during the war, but most people turned an indulgent blind eye to it. After all, they enjoyed the benefits of what he was able to bring across the border with him from Switzerland. And those who felt unable to ignore his illegal activities were simply too dull to catch him at it. Perhaps if they had realised at the time what a fortune he was amassing, the silent majority would have been less indulgent, because when the war ended and it eventually emerged just how affluent he had become, there was a lot of resentment and envy. Even as an insensitive sixteen-year-old I could feel it in the village when I visited him. Of course, this only heightened my fascination for him. And when he let me into the tales of his smuggling exploits, and even took me with him one weekend on a nostalgic tour of all the crossing points along the frontier, the spell was complete.”

“Is this why you picked out that place to meet the other day?” Frank asked.

“Absolutely. The frontier there is a rabbit warren of easy access routes. Almost invisible. And served by a little railway that carries you straight to the anonymous heart of this city. It seemed perfect.”

“Why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, Achim? Why this need for anonymity?”

He looked across at Frank with an intensity that hinted almost at a trace of animosity.

“I can’t afford the mistake of being too honest. Otherwise I’d run the risk of being kicked back across the border. And the family with me.” He poured another drink. “I came down a few months ago, you know. Before I got your letter. But the Basel police refused me entry. I don’t know why. Was never given any explanation. Someone suggested that they’d probably used up their annual quota for Jews and couldn’t risk letting any more in for fear of stoking antisemitism. Strange people the Swiss. They like to stay aloof, but they sometimes seem a little too keen on enabling our own gangsters in government.”

Achim sipped from his Mirabelle brandy as he contemplated this story. Then added:

“So, I just felt this back door would be safer. And our crossing point is in a different canton, too, so if there had been any checks there, they wouldn’t have had any record of the Basel police rejecting me. I learned a lot from Uncle Max. Or maybe it’s just in the blood.”

At that moment, the phone by the bedside rang. Achim looked nervously at his watch. Then picked up the receiver. The conversation was short and almost monosyllabic. When he put down the receiver as nervously as he had picked it up, Frank’s curiosity was suitably primed. But it was not about to be satisfied.

“I’m sorry, Frank, but we’ll have to bring this delightful binge down memory lane to a close.” He lifted the bottle and held it up against the light of the window. It was already half empty. “Under the circumstances, it’s probably just as well,” he added, a gleaming smile in his eyes.

He put the bottle back on the table and picked up the rucksack that still leaned against the table leg.

“So, what precious cargo do you have in there?” Frank asked again, gesturing towards the rucksack. “You never did tell me.”

Achim gave no reply. He plainly did