Sam had said that these people were dangerous, more dangerous than we knew. Big Bruno and his extended family were also very good at their jobs, and they weren’t faring so well. That had to be taken seriously.
I had been dismissed as an unimportant bit player, that was obvious by what happened this morning. They had gone for Godsen and Westwood, not bothering to include me in the festivities. Now, no matter how well the wrap was done on the details of the morning’s action, these people would know what went down. They would know that I was a player now. As even a mild thorn in their side, I would have been killed before I’d left Toronto. It might have worked, as well. I wouldn’t have been expecting it, and I wouldn’t have had my guns on. Although the gun wasn’t the only weapon in the world.
It was an easy jump of logic from there to this: In Toronto, I’d never been considered a player at all, while now I was much more than a mild thorn in their side, I was dangerous, and they knew it. What they didn’t know was just how dangerous I was. There were other tricks I still had up my sleeve, and other contacts that nobody but myself knew about, and if I had my way it would stay like that.
I stepped away from the wall of the church where I’d been watching Godsen and the mixed crowd of tourists and Swiss. Crossing the square, Godsen matched step with me as I headed for the north exit, a small street that never got the sun until it was directly overhead. The buildings were five stories high here, and made of fitted stone from the ground up to the second floor, where the walls turned to clay brick, painted bright colours on one building, and left with a white undercoat on the next, and so on.
Godsen never spoke as we negotiated the crowd on our way up the block. As we came out of the dimness of the small street everything opened up. The spaciousness was in sharp contrast to the area directly surrounding the Niederdorf. The streets were still cobblestone, but the buildings were much more modern, possibly eighteenth century or later. The same type of stone was employed in the walls of most of the buildings around the circular park in the middle of the roundabout. The park was small, maybe ten meters across, but the Swiss didn’t waste space. This was a country so small that it could be effectively hidden in Lake Superior. They never missed an opportunity to utilize an open area. The park in the middle of the roundabout had a path that made an X pattern for foot traffic, with openings in the short black iron fencing that surrounded it.
We passed across the cobblestones and entered one side of the park, using the path provided. Beds of flowers were scattered along the sides of the paths, and each bed held a different mix. The overall effect was very pleasing to the eye.
Vehicular traffic was light at this time of day, but there were still some cars passing through on their way to somewhere. My eye marked every driver, and whether or not there were passengers. On the other side of the park we waited while a few cars went by, then used the crosswalk to get to the sidewalk opposite our starting point in the roundabout. I turned left for a half block, and then right at the corner.
Godsen was still being very quiet. I hadn’t heard a peep out of her since she’d spotted the statue in the square by the church. Her mood was different than any I’d seen so far, but I was willing to go along. It was kind of nice not to be at each other all of the time.
The street was residential with the exception of a bookshop on the far corner of the other side. The houses were small in front, but had four floors, and the lots were deep, maybe fifty or sixty feet. All of the windows were draped and curtained with style and elegance. Obviously not the low rent district. The ironic part was that two blocks up and one to the left, there were four embassies. The Brazilian, the Moroccan, the Uruguayan, and the Spanish. I’d have to be careful about the Spanish Embassy because I used to know a few people who worked out of the basement over there, although they were probably long gone; rotated to another Spanish Embassy basement someplace in the world. Or retired. They had been pretty good lads, actually. One of the few bunches that would share information when it might not have any direct benefit for themselves. To me that just meant that they knew the art of ‘favour banking’.
I turned in at number 27, following a small tiled path around to the back of the house, where there was a small but neatly tended garden. There was a mixture of flowers and vegetables, a Swiss touch. Quite neat. Some of the flowers were in bloom, others not. The garden had been designed to be ever-blooming, with some flowers coming up all year ‘round, except for the heart of the winter season.
There was a wooden slat fence all around the perimeter of the property, which wasn’t very Swiss, but did afford some amount of privacy. Not much, but some. The houses all around had windows looking in on the garden. There was a continuation of the tiled path that led directly to the garage. The lane that ran behind the houses gave those on this street and the next one over entrance and egress. I turned to Godsen.
“Stay on the corner of the house here, and hoof it into the garage if anybody shows up in a group.”
“You mean that if it’s more than one person I’m to run to you for help?” She gave me a look that had none of the characteristics of the smile I’d seen earlier. Scary.
“No. I mean if more than one person shows up here now, we’d better make a run for it. I don’t want to be found here, it’s as simple as that. If it’s only one, then the chances are that he, or she, isn’t here to take us for a ride. Okay?” Her expression softened.
“Okay. Sorry if I’m a bit touchy.” This was a whole new side of her personality, and it suited her well. I smiled and shook my head.
“No need to apologize. You have had a hell of a day, and not a lunch in sight yet. I’ll only be a minute or two, alright?”
“Fine. Do it.” She folded her hands across her chest and I could see that her right hand had slipped under her suit jacket. I had no doubt that her gun was now in her grasp, yet she looked like a woman waiting for her husband or her date to show up. Smooth.
I walked the few steps to the garage and turned the handle carefully, opening the door only an inch or two. There were sensors active in the garage, because the lights came on instantly. I scanned the opening from top to bottom, and I couldn’t see any trip wires. That in itself didn’t mean much. There were a lot of more sophisticated ways to discourage entry, but in a normal house on this street in Zurich, there was no need to employ them. I thought about the garden. I knew that it wasn’t Mark who took care of it, and there would have to be some tools and gardening paraphernalia associated with the upkeep. The garage was the obvious storage place for all of that stuff.
Pushing the door all the way open revealed what I had thought I would see. In the far corner was a small wheelbarrow with various garden implements sitting inside it. So the gardener used the garage safely, which meant that I should be able to as well. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. The van was right there where Mark said it would be. A brand new ’96 Plymouth Voyager LX in forest green, with a matching forest green interior. I knew for a fact that they didn’t come in that combination, so it had been custom ordered. The outside of the van didn’t have the usual striping and ‘All Wheel Drive’ written down the side, which was a nice touch.
I still have fond memories of my Chevrolet Camaro, ’79 vintage. Also custom ordered. It had a midnight blue metallic paint job that changed colour depending on the lighting and the angle of view. It was a Z28 version, with a four-speed manual transmission. The final gear ratio was 3.07, which gave it a high top end. It had a blueprinted 350 C.I. engine, Quad Carb, or four-barrel carburetor, high back leather seats in the front that went to the top of your head, giving great support, and not a mark on it that could tell it apart from a normal six cylinder, three speed automatic Camaro. The kind that moved slower than a Volkswagen, and was purchased by the boatload for singles who liked the lines of the car, and families that only had one small kid, or a dog and no kid. It was a car that was officially rated for 2.5 people. Mine had standard hubcaps with whitewall tires, that just happened to be performanc
e oriented. The top end had been somewhere above one hundred and forty-five miles per hour. Off the line, I could take ‘Vettes, Trans Ams, Porches, you name it. They ate my dust. I really enjoyed that car. If you went into a ninety-degree turn at sixty miles an hour, all you had to do was downshift and step on the gas. You would come out of the turn with both back wheels smoking, and accelerating from your entry speed.
It was what you called a ‘Sleeper’, in other words, it was more than what it seemed. Much more. Maybe that was the case with this van. The tint on the windows was a shade darker than factory specification, and it sat on Michelin tires. They looked bigger than the fourteen and fifteen inch options you normally get. The low front end with fog lamps indicated an LX designation, which carried most of the available options, with the exception of a moon roof, which it didn’t have. That was good news, because I knock my head on them. They just take up too much interior headroom.
I walked to the back of the van and kneeled down, feeling under the left back wheel, patting my hand back and forth until I found what I was looking for. A magnetic key box. Opening it revealed keys to the van, and the house. We were in business.
The door that opened onto the lane had no windows in it whatsoever, but was rigged with an automatic door opener and a small convex mirror at the top corner of each side of the door. The Voyager had an overhead console that supplied a holding place for the remote door opener. I was pretty sure that I’d find it there. Opening the driver’s door, I popped the overhead holder open, and there it was. Hopefully the battery was still live. I slipped the key in the ignition and turned on the electrics. The tank showed full, and the computer readout from the overhead microprocessor display showed five hundred kilometers until empty. Lovely.
One thing this van had that I would have to get used to was side doors on both the right and the left. The interior was spotless, which is pretty normal for a new car, as was the exterior. No dust, nothing. The gardener must have been giving the exterior a dust-off now and then. The odometer read two hundred and twelve klicks, and it still had that new car smell that everyone loved. Aces.
I left the garage and closed the door behind me, motioning to Godsen, who was still watching the side path. She turned and joined me as we entered the sunroom at the back of the house. The screen door was open, but the main door that opened onto the kitchen was locked.
I took a quick look at the keys and selected the right one, letting us in quietly. The entire place had the look and smell of a newly gutted and renovated house. I turned to my right for three paces and entered the code on the alarm system. For a few seconds the light stayed red, and I was about to do a runner, when it changed to green, and I started to relax a bit. Not enough to get taken by surprise, but enough to exhale and start breathing regularly again.
The kitchen was large, with an island in the middle that included a small double stainless steel sink along with the cutting top. I ran my fingers across the fresh wood. Not a slice of knife nor a whack of cleaver had marred the surface yet. It was spotless. The fridge and stove were stainless steel, with a microwave built into the top section of the stove, with the conventional oven below. The fridge and all of the cupboards were filled with irradiated long life food supplies. It wouldn’t be haute cuisine, but there was plenty to keep us going for a week or more. That would be all the time we needed. I hoped.
All of the windows had wooden slat blinds on the inside, closed now, naturally. The sensors were installed here as well, and most likely all through the house. Handy, but expensive. It was time to explore. I started out slowly, and Godsen stuck pretty close at first.
As we walked from room to room, the lights would turn on and off as we entered or exited. Inside the house, there was a small amount of dust beginning to accumulate on the various surfaces. The deal for the garden and the van apparently didn’t extend into the house, which was odd. That Mark would arrange for one but not the other suggested that there may be things he didn’t want anyone to see. Which maybe wasn’t so odd after thinking about it for a minute. He was a spook, after all.
We wandered slowly and methodically from room to room, working our way upstairs as we went. Everything was new, the walls and floors tastefully decorated with expensive wallpaper and beautiful broadloom style wall-to-wall carpeting, all in pastels. The furniture was straight out of Roche-Bobois, and each room had its own theme. In addition to the kitchen, there were three bedrooms in all, a spacious dining room, and a sunken living room with a fireplace. One of the bedrooms was set up as an office, with a new PC and HP Laser printer on the desktop. Maybe to write his memoirs. That would thrill the gang he worked with. Maybe his memoirs were already written. Food for thought.
I carried on with Godsen one step behind or sometimes one step ahead. I was carrying my new H&K in my left hand hanging it low by my side. Godsen had pulled out her piece as soon as I had, but she was carrying it in the two-handed ‘barrel to the ceiling’ position. She was learning, and that was a good thing.
Her gun was a Glock. One of the new ones that were easy to conceal. It would have been dwarfed by my hand, but it suited her well. That gun came in a few configurations, the most powerful of which was the .40 calibre. From the size of the barrel opening, she had opted for that version.
When we hit the top floor, we were in for a surprise. The master bedroom and a five piece en-suite with a full size hot tub was the order of the day. You could have a very nice party for four in there. It wasn’t the luxury that surprised us however.
The entire house, and all entryways were displayed on security monitors mounted into the back wall where the window should have been. I know that because I found the remote right next to the king-size bed on the night table. There were a full dozen of them, and they were all Sony. Mark had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to set this up, and he was nervous about something. Like being tracked down and eliminated maybe. Otherwise why such an elaborate security system? Or had he been doing business in the wrong sector? Maybe it was just the way things worked nowadays. It had been a while since I’d been in the game.
The benefits were good, I remembered that well enough, and the pay was alright. Nothing to write home about I suppose, but there were always some fringe perks that would come your way once in a while. My team’s way of handling those was to rotate the perks through our favourite charities, then put one in the kitty, then do the rotation again before putting one more in the kitty. Then once every six months I would take everyone on ‘training leave’. How long the leave lasted, and how far we went, depended solely on the size of the kitty. Usually it was enough to give everyone a great long weekend at some nearby resort. It served to keep the men relaxed and bonded.
I checked every monitor, and all of the rooms we’d been in, as well as the garage and the walkway, backyard, and front and back doors were displayed. I stood looking at the screens for a few minutes, trying to figure out what was bugging me. Then I realized what it was. No basement view.
Godsen was still trying to tear herself away from the en-suite with hot tub when I called her.
“Ronnie?” She poked her head out of the doorway to the bathroom.
“Yes?”
“Come and check this out, will you?” She had lowered her gun to a hand-down carry, like I had, and even in her small hand it was hard to detect. I remember thinking, ‘Nice backup gun, you could put it almost anywhere.’ She walked up beside me and unbidden stared at the monitors. They were an eye-catching detail, for sure.
“What’s up?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me.”
“I don’t get it. Spell it out.”
“Well, this looks like a pretty good security system, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.”
“What else do you see?” She looked at me, but I was watching the monitors, I only caught it out of the corner of my eye. She was almost smiling.
“There’s no feed from the basement. Do they cycle through a series of cameras? Or maybe the ba
sement camera is down.”
“No, there’s only one feed per monitor, as far as I can tell, and I’m the engineer, remember?”
“Then the basement is off limits. That means that you can’t get in that way.”
“Or you can. If you know how, but you don’t have to worry about anyone else getting wise to it because it’s rigged. Or it’s so good you feel you don’t need to bother.”
“No that doesn’t make any sense. Not after going to all this expense. Why stop before the last one you have to install? No, I don’t buy it.”
“That’s what I thought. Let’s take a look first hand, shall we?”
“Lead on, McDuff.” She held out her arm towards the doorway. The one that had the Glock in it. It must be fairly light as well as compact.
“Okay, let’s do it.” I used the remote to turn off all the monitors with one key touch, put it back on the night table and headed downstairs. Godsen was a few paces behind me.
On the ground floor, we started looking for the door to the basement. I didn’t remember seeing it when we’d first come through, and it didn’t pop up out of nowhere just because we were looking for it now. We spent about ten minutes combing the place with no luck. I decided to call a halt.
“Okay, that’s enough. We’ll find it when we’re back here with Westwood and Therese. For now, let’s just get the van and roll.” Godsen nodded her agreement, and we left the way we’d come in, locking up after ourselves. Two minutes later we were sitting comfortably in the Voyager all belted in.
I reached overhead and pushed the middle panel on the console, setting the garage door in motion. Then I turned the key in the ignition, starting the engine. The largest engine available for this van was a 3.3 litre V-6. I knew because I had the previous model year version of the van myself. This didn’t sound like the V-6 I had in mine back home. Not at all. Mostly because it was very hard to determine without looking at the gauges whether or not the engine was even running. The Chrysler V-6 was a bit noisy, there was no way around that. It was a good engine, especially when paired with the 4-speed Overdrive transmission. Which was a mandatory option when you chose the high end model. Interesting. Mark had had some custom work done on this baby, and it hadn’t even been driven past the engine break-in period.
The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel Page 44