Midnight Plus One

by Gavin Lyall

  ‘You mean the map’s a fake?’ Harvey said.

  ‘No. What good would a fake do them? And, anyway, why should he have one lying around? – he didn’t know we were coming. No – when I sounded worried about walking through the fortifications, he backed me up. He knows all about fortifications, but he didn’t think I would, seeing they weren’t much used in the last war.

  ‘In fact, a fortified zone’s one of the easiest things in the world to walk through; trenches are just a lot of paths sunk seven feet down. They’re planned just so that you can rush up reinforcements or retreat down them or whatever. But he wanted us to think it was difficult – so he could steer us into just one place. That’s why he called that map a “patrol path”. There’s no such thing: a patrol would go up through the communications trenches, if it didn’t start from the front line itself.’

  ‘So what’s the map?’

  ‘A tank path. A fixed line’s also a base for the counterattack, and you’ve got to be able to send up your tanks: they can’t go through the trenches. You’d have to have a path for them: bridges over the trenches and so on. That’s what he tore off the bottom of the map: the title.’

  Harvey nodded slowly. ‘And a copy of the map’s on its way to Liechtenstein by train right now?’

  ‘I hope so. They should have plenty of time to get ready for us.’

  ‘That’s great.’ He eased down comfortably in his seat. ‘So we know they’ll wait till then?’

  ‘They’re professional^’

  He closed his eyes. ‘That’s always nice to know.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  We rolled past the last of the big cuckoo-clock style chalets of Montreux residents who don’t like living in hotels or don’t have bad enough consciences to make it necessary, and came into open farmland. Children at the roadside tried to sell us bunches of wild narcissus by waving them at us, but we steamed on past. On this trip, no flowers by request.

  Beside me, Harvey was dozing, which wasn’t typical for him. Maybe his short night and the long hangover had caught up. Behind, Maganhard settled down to reading the Journal de Genèvewhich he’d picked up in the General’s rooms, and muttering things about share prices to Miss Jarman. I stretched my neck and caught her writing them down. I suppose it mattered.

  About half past three we burbled through the outskirts of Fribourg, the great cliff of the old town hanging over us until we were on our way out on the other side. I did a bit of work on the Michelins with my watch and reckoned we were well on time.

  I felt sleepy, despite the jolting and creaking of the car, but I wasn’t sure I ought to be asleep. I tried to convince myself that the last thing the General would do was set up a gunfight for when we were still inhis car withhis driver. I convinced myself, all right, but by then I wasn’t sleepy any more.

  Just before Bern, Harvey woke up. He did it slowly, like a man climbing out of mud, or out of an hour’s sleep when what he needs is another six. He lit a cigarette, still moving slowly, and coughed several times. Then he asked: ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Bern.’

  ‘How far now?’

  ‘About four and a half hours.’

  ‘Jesus.’ He wiped a hand over his face and then looked at the hand. I tried not to look as well, but I was as interested as he was – and for the same reason. The fingers were quivering.

  I waited, but he didn’t say anything. We sailed majestically through the middle of Bern, sprang past the national Parliament, across the river, and out along the Thunstrasse. We got a lot of interested looks from the citizenry, and a couple of cops gave us half-official salutes. They knew the car, all right.

  We ran out of the city and the road surface turned rough again. The Rolls gave out a faint squeaking and creaking of wood rubbing on wood. It was an oddly reassuring noise, perhaps like being in a cabin of an old tea-clipper under full canvas.

  I turned and peered into the shadow of the back seat. ‘You say you haven’t heard of this man Calieron?’

  Maganhard said: ‘Never.’

  I nodded. ‘He’s turning out quite a boy, isn’t he? He knows enough to employ the General, to hire a gunman like Bernard, maybe enough to frame you on a rape charge – and he gets hold of Heiliger’s shares.’

  ‘To me,’ he said, ‘that is the most remarkable thing. Max believed in personal possession. He carried everything with him.’

  ‘A big black briefcase,’ Miss Jarman said softly. ‘Chained to his wrist. And full of bearer shares, bonds, deeds. It must have been worth millions.’

  ‘So?’ I looked at her. ‘Then why wasn’t he carrying it when he crashed?’

  She smiled in the gloom. ‘Nobody seems to know, Mr Cane.’

  Maganhard said suddenly: ‘You saidmaybe this Calieron arranged the – the charge against me. Is it not obvious it must be him?’

  ‘Not quite. If he fixed that charge, then he gave himself a system for keeping you away from Caspar meetings: getting you pinched by the cops. He could have put the cops on to you several times in the last two days – but every time he tried to kill you instead. I don’t see why. He doesn’t need you dead to be able to outvote your partner Fiez. He only needs to stop you coming to the meeting.’

  Maganhard said: ‘He dare hardly leave me alive if he proposes to try and destroy my company.’ And he sounded rather smug about it.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t buy that. What could you do to him, once he’s forced the decision to sell Caspar out? He isn’t stealing anything, he’s just turning the company into cash. He gets his share – but you get yours. Where’s your complaint?’ Before he could start telling me, I added: ‘I mean legal complaint.’

  Miss Jarman said: ‘Are you trying to tell us that this Calieron person is not really trying to kill us?’

  Harvey chuckled quietly.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But if he was going to the trouble to hire people like Bernard to kill you, I don’t see why he needed the French rape charge as well.’ Then I got another bright idea. ‘Maybe it’s all a stunt by Fiez, trying to get control of Caspar. Maybe there’s no Calieron, maybe Heiliger’s certificatedidgo up in the crash. You’ve never met Calieron.’

  ‘No, but Monsieur Merlin has. As soon as I heard from Herr Fiez, Merlin flew out to see them.’

  ‘He saw Calieron?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t he kick Calieron’s teeth in and grab the certificate?’

  ‘That is not the waylawyers work, Mr Cane. And you forget – this Calieron may legally own the certificate. He may be Max’s legal heir.’

  ‘Yes. I forgot there must besomething legal about all this.’

  ‘And in any event,’ he went on smoothly, ‘Herr Fiez could not hold a meeting by himself. Under the rules, there must always be two shareholders present.’

  I nodded. ‘All right. Now we know Fiez is a Good Guy. So why isn’t Calieron killing him instead of you? He can outvote either of you as long as the other isn’t there – but you’re skidding all over Europe and Fiez is sitting in Liechtenstein. I’d’ve thought it was a lot easier to knock off Fiez instead.’

  Maganhard chewed this over. Then he said: ‘Also under Caspar’s rules, Herr Fiez, as resident director, has a special responsibility. He must be at a company meeting. If he is not, and he is still alive, his vote is taken for granted on the majority side. This, you understand, is to stop him deliberately preventing a meeting by not appearing when only one other shareholder can be present.

  ‘But, of course, I am not bound to appear. So if this Calieron killed Herr Fiez, I could stop the meeting by not arriving.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘I get it. So as long as he’s trying to kill you, he’s got to keep Fiez alive.’

  But I still didn’t see why simply getting Maganhard in jail wouldn’t have done just as well.

  We rumbled through the covered wooden bridge into Langnau and across the cobbled streets. Beyond that, we were in the picture-postcard country of the Entlebuch valley: dark sweeps of
pine forest on the hills, bright apple blossom by the roads, and old church spires that looked like witches’ caps.

  But to me, most of Switzerland is a picture postcard. Calm, arranged, carefully trimmed… the weather isn’t bad, the Rolls is going well, but not much excitement -nobody’s shot at us in hours… It’s something to do with me, not with Switzerland. Maybe just that this place looked like a postcard when a lot of Europe was like something from a horror film.

  I’m too old to grow out of it, Lat perhaps it’ll die with me.

  Harvey shifted in his seat, rubbed his face again and sneaked another look at his fingers. He just spread them open in front of him – not as obvious as stretching them full out at arms’ length the way doctors make you do it, but clear enough if you knew what he was up to. The fingers were shaking like a hula dancer’s hips.

  He turned his head slowly and looked at me. His face was blank – as blank as his face could ever be. It was still a face that would know hell when it saw it, but it didn’t show what it knew now.

  Except that I could guess. I said: ‘You need a drink.’

  He looked at his spread fingers again, with no more emotion than if he was deciding he needed a manicure. Then he said slowly and simply: ‘Yes. I’m afraid I need just that.’

  I’d been expecting this – but still hoping I wouldn’t get it. After getting plastered last night at Pinel, he was back on the old routine: either he took a drink, or his hands shook themselves off his wrists. He’d only managed to delay it so long by the wine he’d drunk at the General’s; now even that was wearing off.

  The shakes would pass, all right – in about twenty-four hours. I might need him handling a gun inside five.

  I sorted the maps in my briefcase and consulted one. ‘We should be in Wolhusen in ten minutes. You can get a couple of quick ones there.’

  He nodded, but went on staring at his hand. Then he said: ‘Or maybe a bottle.’

  I didn’t like the idea. I wanted him to take on just enough to cure his shakes, but not so much that he slowed his reactions. It was a pretty thin line… I was crazy: it wasn’t a line at all, only a matter of time. Once he started drinking, he wouldn’t stop until he’d dissolved. That’s what alcoholism’s about.

  But an alcoholic who’s worrying about where the next one’s coming from won’t have time to worry about anything else. A bottle would reassure him, and all I could do was hope any trouble came before his co-ordination had washed away.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll stop and pick one up.’

  Miss Jarman said: ‘Must you, Harvey?’

  Harvey twisted and held a hand out to her. She looked at the dancing fingers, then reached and held them for a moment. Then she opened the mahogany glove-box set into the wall beside her, and took out the biggest silver flask I’ve ever seen.

  ‘I found it earlier,’ she said simply.

  He took it and unscrewed the big cap and poured himself a shot. Whatever it was, there must have been well over half a bottle of it. He sniffed and sipped.

  ‘Four-star, too,’ he said.

  ‘Cognac?’

  He nodded, lifted the cap, and toasted me. ‘It could be a good day yet.’

  I wasn’t sure about that.

  We passed Wolhusen and ran into Luzern. We lost time there by mixing in with the rush-hour traffic, but I’d have been far more worried to reach the frontier in daylight and dawdle around waiting for darkness.

  After that we were into a series of long switchbacks: winding along the level by a lake, then hauling up over a small range of mountains, and down to the next lake. Nobody said much. Harvey took occasional sips at the cognac: ‘twice he filled the cap up again. But he wasn’t rushing it.

  I looked at my watch. An hour and a half to dark. Five hours to midnight Maganhard asked: ‘Have you worked out where we shall cross, Mr Cane?’

  I grabbed to make sure the partition window was wound up tight – and found Harvey’s hand on it already. He smiled easily. By now, he was just about at his brightest and best. Three cognacs had killed the shakes without clouding his reactions.

  But from now, the only way he couldgo was downhill.

  I pulled out the photostat map aria spread it across my knees. The fortifications run crossways over a small ridge -the Fläscherberg. The tank path stays on the road side, runs almost parallel with it, a few hundred yards away. So if we cross over the ridge, alongside the river, we can walk through there and nobody’ll hear us.’

  ‘In all, how long will it take?’

  ‘If we can get started soon after eight-thirty – well, we may have to get through a bit of barbed wire at the front itself—Let’s say we’ll be at a phone on the other side by ten o’clock at the latest. We get your pal Fiez to come and collect us, and we’ll be in Vaduz by half past.’

  ‘We are not going to Vaduz.’

  I turned and peered into the gloom. ‘Maybe I should have asked this before: I’d been worrying just about the frontier. Right – whereare we going in Liechtenstein?’

  ‘Company meetings are held at Herr Flez’s house in Steg.’

  ‘Steg?’ At first the name didn’t mean anything to me. Then I remembered it: a little village way up on the only road that ran up into the mountains. The road itself faded out a couple of kilometres farther on, at a ski hotel right under the peaks that were the Austrian border.

  ‘Christ,’ I said slowly. ‘It’s a pretty lonely place up there.’ All I could remember of it was a few woodcutters’ huts and a handful of chalets. ‘Fiez must be an honest man.’

  ‘We have not had dealings with gunmen before this,’ Maganhard said. ‘And I do not think it would be wise for Herr Fiez to come and fetch us. You forget: he will have this Galleron with him by then. If Calieron knows we have escaped his ambush, he may…’ He tried to think of things this Galleron might do.

  I could think of them for myself. I started to ask if Merlin would be there by then, but didn’t: even if he was, the same snag applied. We’d still tip off Calieron and lose the element of surprise.

  Maganhard said calmly: ‘So you must find us a car on the other side of the frontier.’

  That was all – just find a car. And a driver to get a good look at our faces – even if he agreed to go up the steep, stony road to Steg that was probably snowed-in at the top. And we wouldn’t even find that nearer than Vaduz, ten kilometres beyond the frontier.

  Maganhard knew Liechtenstein – and the problem. ‘You may have to steal one,” he added just as calmly.

  ‘That always sounds the easy way,’ I said gloomily. ‘Look – there won’t be many cars in those little villages just across the frontier. And they won’t be parked in the street. And even if they are, they won’t have the keys in them. And I can’t start opening one up and rewiring it in the middle of the village.’

  Then you will have to think of something else,’ Maganhard said. ‘I hired you to get me to Steg by-‘

  ‘I know. I’m thinking.’ But I didn’t like what I was thinking. And the more I thought, the less I liked it. But I couldn’t think of anything else.

  I said slowly: ‘We’re already in a car.’

  Harvey jerked his head round, then slanted his eyebrows at me. Miss Jarman said: ‘What d’y ou mean?’

  ‘The tank path. If it’ll take a tank, it’ll take a Rolls-Royce. We kick out Morgan – and drive across. Then we’ve got a car on the other side.’

  The girl’s voice was almost breathless with disbelief. ‘But – but you said they’d be waiting there, expecting us! ‘ They aren’t expecting a Rolls. And they aren’t expecting us to expect them. We’ve got that much margin.’

  ‘We could still get shot to hell,’ Harvey said thoughtfully. Then think of something better.’ After a long time, he smiled crookedly. ‘Hell, you’re just crazy to use that machine-gun of yours again. All right.’

  Then, carefully and steadily, he poured himself another brandy.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  There was a police
Volkswagen parked up on the cliff-top road alongside the Wallensee, but they waved us on past and went on stopping selected other cars. They obviously weren’t taking the roads before Liechtenstein very seriously – the real blocks would come at the frontier – but it still told me something.

  They didn’t know we’d been in Montreux: if they’d known that, they’d have been bound to stop any car theyknew came from Montreux, even the General’s. And that meant my friend the Montreux inspector hadn’t talked -and if he hadn’t talked now, he probably wouldn’t later. He had good reason: if he talked, he had to admit both to. arresting Maganhard before there was an official requestand to getting conned into letting him go again.

  Those are two big pieces of pride for a cop to swallow whole. I hoped he’d go on chewing a long time: he was the only official who could give a good description of me. I must remember not to drop in and buy him a drink one day.

  The last of the sun glittered on the snow of the mountains across the lake, and darkness closed in around us as we came down into the See Tal valley. After that, it got darker fast. Morgan put on the headlights and huge yellow beams spread all over the road and well off it.

  Harvey poured himself his fifth cognac and asked: ‘Where do we take over?’

  ‘May as well wait until he stops to let us out, near the frontier. You noticed he’s got a gun?’

  Harvey nodded, sipped, and asked: ‘And where d’you think they’ll be waiting?’

  I opened the photostat map again, lit a cigarette, and started studying.

  The fortifications were some of the most careful, well-planned ever built. Three lines of firing trenches – first line, second line, reserve line – neatly laid out with plenty of corners, and connected up by zigzag communication trenches. And pillboxes, blockhouses, dugouts scattered around lavishly. Everything to fight the Perfect War.

  And why not? Generals never get things right until it’s well out of date, and this lot had been built a good fifteen years after air power and armour had made it useless. Nowadays, you wouldn’t attack this sort of thing head-on: you’d isolate it with fighter-bombers, flatten it with carpet-bombing… No. Nowadays you’d just press a button. My own ideas were a war out of date by now.