by Fritz Galt
Clearly he wanted Mick for some purpose other than the normal terrorist demands. Possibly it was a retaliation for past actions. Mick had put a good many disreputable world figures either behind bars or flat on their backs never to rise again. Yet, the voice had no note of victory in it. Only some base sense of ongoing mischief.
Perhaps the man wanted Mick for the same reason that the coroner was killed. If the man was working with the bald gunman in the sweat suit and still needed the transcript, that meant the coroner hadn’t divulged its contents the night before.
In which case, she was holding a very valuable document.
She searched her memory of the previous night. She was certain Mick hadn’t read the transcript. She remembered him twisting toward it, looking sexier than ever, and she had disrobed and attacked him with all the arrows in her quiver. Since he hadn’t read it, he would have nothing to divulge.
And that could explain why the gunman in the sweat suit had tracked her down. But how did he find her so quickly?
She looked at Barbara. The young woman and the killers couldn’t possibly be on the same side. After all, Barbara had rescued her from her assailant.
Barbara hadn’t stolen her husband, nor did she seem interested in the transcript.
If the man in the sweat suit and the seductress were after the transcript, they would probably also want Alec.
As soon as possible, she would search Alec’s apartment and interview his colleagues at the laboratory at CERN for clues to his whereabouts.
The surface turned choppy in Lausanne’s busy harbor. As the motorboat slammed into the new turbulence, their outboard motor growling noisily, spraying droplets of water onto the transcript.
She refolded it and tucked it under the collar of her workout suit.
They swung past a great view of Lausanne, its streets alive with the normal bustle of life. Where in all that humanity were Mick and Alec?
Mick shuddered in the cold, damp cell. Below him, people scurried intently up and down the twisting Rue du Petit Chêne, Lausanne’s steep walking concourse.
What a beautiful day for such an ugly event.
His eyes followed the street as it meandered down from the château where he was held, past clock towers, kaleidoscopic splashes of rose gardens and circular cobblestone plazas to the lake.
“It’s a simple question,” a female voice whispered with an Arabic accent. The faint scent of garlic curled under his nose. Her powerful fingers gripped his neck. “Where’s your brother?”
He cringed at the sarcasm in her voice and tried to ignore her painful grip.
Then he remembered the pink geranium petals. The seductive Amazon had been waiting for him beside the hotel on the petal-strewn alleyway. She must have paid the maid to call him to the phone. She had stood in the alley in her sunglasses and miniskirt, one long, shapely leg planted on the hood of her car.
One of Alec’s friends, he had surmised at the time. She would be bringing news about his missing brother. Then he saw that she was brandishing a revolver in a threatening way.
As it turned out from her urgent line of questioning, all she wanted was to find Alec. But why the rough tactics?
Mick’s job had nothing to do with his half-brother’s covert activities in Geneva, and he knew precious little about them. Alec’s gumshoeing around a scientific laboratory was fairly innocuous work, it would seem, compared with the more nuts and bolts spy craft that Everett made him practice in Bern.
The icy grip on Mick’s neck turned into a vice-like crush, and he tried to shrug it off.
In the attractive panorama, sailboats, motorboats and excursion steamers plied the lake’s trackless surface.
“If you don’t tell me where he is,” the woman said in a hushed tone, “I’ll ask your wife.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled the chalky, dead air of the interrogation room.
Finally, his attention drifted straight down to the depths of a ravine. Directly below his open fifteenth century window in the Château St. Marie lay a concrete square where, like ants crawling in and out of a corpse, cars entered a mountain tunnel.
“Ninety meters, straight down,” she said, and her lips began to gnaw on his ear.
He repeated his response, this time between clenched teeth. “Three weeks ago, I saw him in Bern. Two days ago, I talked with him by phone. Yesterday evening, I saw his body lying in the morgue. That’s all the contact we’ve had. And that’s where he is now.”
The woman’s fingernails penetrated his skin, and she directed him to a stiff wooden chair. He dropped back, unable to avoid crushing his arms that were bound behind his back.
“It won’t help to lie,” she said, her voice licking his ear.
“Then someone switched the bodies. I swear I saw Alec’s body. I testified as much to the coroner.”
“Ah, yes. The coroner, poor chap.” The voice drifted away from him.
He filed the comment away for later consideration. “Why do you even want his body? If you want confirmation that Alec is dead, I gave it to you. I gave it to the coroner. What more proof do you need?”
“I don’t need proof. I need his body.”
He blinked with frustration. “What happened to the coroner?”
The woman slapped Lausanne’s morning newspaper on the wooden table. He found himself staring into the blank eyes of the man he had met just twelve hours before.
“As you can see, a lot could have happened since yesterday evening,” he said. It was an accusation as much as an explanation.
“Shortly before his death,” the interrogator continued, “the coroner said he took a transcript of Alec’s last words.”
Yes, there was a transcript. Where was it?
He shifted in his chair and felt a lump in the seat of his pants. It was there.
The voice went on. “I’m told he gave the transcript to you. You have the only copy.”
“I’d tell you if I had it.”
He heard a swish of nylons, and the woman stepped in front of him. Her skin was naturally bronze, her black hair was pulled back tight and she wore a gray tank top punctuated by pert nipples.
She squatted down opposite him, her thighs flexing against a miniskirt in two bundles of taut muscle. The flat planes of her cheeks and prominent nose hinted at North African origins. Her large, dark eyes drank him in as if sipping from a goblet of nectar. “What did the transcript say?”
He swallowed hard. “I didn’t read it.”
She rose quickly and whacked a fist against the wooden table. A crack zigzagged across the top. She began to stalk around the room. “Your brother died, and you didn’t bother to read his last words?”
“It was all a blur, for God’s sake. One day I’m talking to him on the phone. The next, I’m holding his personal effects in a plastic bag.”
“What did you do after you left the morgue?”
“My wife and I had dinner, and then we returned to the hotel.”
“You ate dinner?” the woman said, incredulous.
He shrugged.
“What did you do when you returned?”
The questions had taken a personal turn, and a dangerous one at that.
“What did you do then?” she demanded to know, her voice prying at him like the claws of a hammer.
“My wife and I made love,” he shouted back. “I didn’t have time to read the damn transcript.”
The woman snorted. She drew up dramatically to look out the open window. She flexed a thick, bare arm out to one side and ran her other hand gently over the dusky, sculpted knots of muscle. “You made love,” she whispered.
He felt his shoulders tensing.
“I want the transcript,” she said in a low tone, “and I want to know why you lied to the coroner.”
“For what it’s worth, I have the transcript with me.”
She spun around, and he indicated his back hip pocket.
She circled to his side where she could see the bulge in his pocket. Her thin
eyebrows lifted with surprise. Her lean abdomen pressed warmly against him. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
At that moment, he heard a shriek like the whine of a table saw. The red fuselage of a private helicopter passed by, shooting a pungent gust of exhaust through the open window.
As the chopper prepared to touch down on the château’s terrace, the cell door opened. In stepped a short man with a gold pendant swinging against his hairy chest. “You can stop now, Zafina. Trevor sent his chopper.”
“He’ll be pleased,” she said. “We’ve made progress.”
The man sniffed the air as if trying to divine the interrogator’s techniques. “He expects more than progress. He wants answers.”
“On your feet,” Zafina ordered, and jerked Mick out of his chair.
“Thanks,” he said, and shook the kinks out of his shoulders.
As Mick stumbled down the staircase, a question was gnawing at him. Why didn’t his captors bother to conceal their identities?
No sooner had he begun to consider the question, than the answer hit him as clear as day.
They would kill him when they were done.
Chapter 10
Barbara yanked up on the door handle and turned the key to unlock her apartment. “Extra security,” she said, with a smart, professional smile. “Come in.”
Natalie stepped into the apartment.
Barbara continued talking, not unlike a real estate agent striking a chatty mood. “My mother lives in Majorca during the island’s off-season. It’s terribly hot there this time of year, of course, but there are no tourists.”
Natalie stared at the gangly Italian furniture and gaunt figures in the artwork. It seemed strange that an older woman’s tastes ran so modern.
“I stay here often. I decorate it to my taste,” Barbara said, seeming to sense her curiosity.
Natalie could buy that, for the moment. The apartment would be the perfect place to stay for a short while.
The young aerobics teacher unlatched several high windows and pulled them open. “See? We face the south.”
Through the open window, Natalie saw tree-lined streets and the plume of Geneva’s famous Jet d’Eau spraying over the harbor.
“It’s very peaceful,” she said.
“Our telephone number is written here,” Barbara continued in her offhand manner. “Keep it with you, but you must memorize the answering machine code to replay messages. It’s 1971, the year of my birth. You’ll find extra clothes in my wardrobe.”
She walked into the bedroom, where she paused before the mirrored armoire door to check her hair. Instead of combing it out of her eyes, as Natalie expected, she merely curled it behind her ears. Then she swept the door aside to reveal an entire summer wardrobe. With a bounce in her step, Barbara ran her fingers over all the fabrics in the rack.
“This will only be necessary until I can buy some clothes,” Natalie said.
“This place is yours for as long as you need. I’m happy to share it.”
Natalie surveyed the bedroom: rattan furniture, a plush sheepskin rug and an assortment of sensuous finery. She shivered as it suddenly occurred to her. Was she was staying in the pad of a high-class escort?
She took Barbara by the elbow and drew her down to the Ottoman at the foot of the bed.
“There’s one question I need to ask you,” she said.
Barbara whisked some errant strands of hair away.
“Why are you doing this?”
Barbara focused on her. “Of course you must know this.”
She hesitated, and Natalie wondered if she was pausing to compose a lie.
“I was hired.”
That took Natalie by surprise. “Hired for what?”
Barbara forced herself to speak, as if confessing. Perhaps she felt ashamed to talk in such crass terms after she had developed something of a rapport with Natalie. “I was asked to look after you in case you found your brother-in-law.”
“I knew it. Everyone’s looking for Alec.”
“I know nothing else. That’s all I know.”
Barbara eased off the seat and floated toward the corner of the room. There she leaned against the wall and held her forehead with her index fingers.
“I was hired by an English gentleman named Sir Trevor O’Smythe. I’ve worked for him before. He pays me good money. The work isn’t difficult. And I get all this.” She indicated the apartment and clothes.
Natalie groaned.
“I don’t mean to hurt you,” Barbara said softly. “And I’ve told you too much.”
“So you read this page?” she asked, holding up the transcript.
“I did, but it gave no clue to finding your brother-in-law. Don’t ask me why that dangerous and disgusting bald man was looking for it. It’s a worthless piece of paper.”
“So, you are an employee of this Sir Trevor O’Smythe?”
Barbara nodded. “He’s a good man. He’s a knight, you know.”
“How did he get the title?”
“He’s kind of a modern-day Robin Hood. You know, screw the rich people and help the common man. It got him into lots of trouble with Parliament, I heard. But it also gained him some respect from the Crown.”
Natalie let her glance wander around the room. “As well as a little wealth, some nice apartments, some young women on retainer.”
Barbara couldn’t return her frank look. “Excuse me,” she said. With her chin wrinkled, she gathered her purse from a table and stomped toward the door.
Natalie jumped up, crossed the room to her side and grasped the young woman by her heavy cotton jersey.
Barbara swung around with tears in her eyes. “I’m not a kept woman.”
Natalie gently pried Barbara’s hands away from her face. “I’m sorry I said that. But if you really want to help me, I have to ask you these questions.”
In the several minutes it took for Barbara to control her sobbing, Natalie walked into the bathroom, switched on the bank of lights, noticed a box of condoms tucked neatly in the back of a cosmetics drawer, and brought out a handful of tissues.
Through wet eyes, Barbara gazed fondly at the outfits in her armoire. “You can help me, too,” she said.
“How’s that?” Natalie asked, surprised.
Barbara grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. Again, she found it difficult to speak and seemed to appeal to Natalie for strength.
At last, she said, “You can help me find my dear Alec.”
Mick might have overheard his captors’ names, but he had never heard of them.
He sat in the rear seat of the helicopter with an impressive bank of pilot’s instruments in full view. The engine reverberated, vibrating faster as the rotors gained speed.
He felt a tug against gravity, and they were off.
They pivoted, tilted and, out the Plexiglas bubble, the gray face of the château diminished in size.
The view was a blur of building tops beneath him. The flight path followed train tracks that vanished underground for blocks at a time. Then they launched over a splash of flowers on the city’s esplanade.
Soon they were over the lake. By his calculations, they were heading in a southeasterly direction, away from Geneva.
A small businessman sat hunched impassively in the co-pilot’s seat. All Mick could see of his face was a pair of glacier-colored, reflective sunglasses and a thick carpet of black hair.
Zafina occupied the rear seat beside him.
Within fifteen minutes, they approached the shoreline, with the majestic Château de Chillon clearly visible out Mick’s window.
Soon they drifted up a broad valley. Farmland flanked a rushing river, the Rhône. France claimed the mountains to the south. Switzerland possessed the land below them and to the north.
Bridges crisscrossed the Rhône as it roared through the antiseptic little town of Visp.
The helicopter veered to the right and mounted higher into the Alps. Directly over the pilot’s shoulder, Mick made out the Little Matterhorn.
Moments later, as they swept around a pine-forested mountain, the hooked finger of the real Matterhorn appeared in all its glory. Italy lay beyond that.
From Mick’s vantage point, Switzerland seemed like a tiny country composed of white mountaintops all visible from one point. But, distances were deceptive from the air, including the height of the mountains.
He made a mental note that the helicopter didn’t veer along the train tracks up the valley toward Zermatt and the Matterhorn. Instead, it took a left fork up an equally steep valley. They followed a lone, twisting road that leaped back and forth over a frolicking stream. He lifted his gaze. Enormous, snow-filled mountains awaited them at the end.
“Saas Fee,” he whispered to himself. He and Natalie had once enjoyed a winter ski vacation there. He remembered the layout fairly well, but since it was summertime, it took a moment to reorient to the landmarks.
First they would fly over Saas Grund, a small village below the ledge that opened out into a bowl where Saas Fee lay. As recently as the 1950s, visitors could only reach the remote bowl by foot or mule. Now a road ground its way up to the fringes of the village where it terminated immediately at a parking garage. Cars could go no further, as the pollution from internal combustion engines could kill the delicate alpine plant life.
Before the helicopter mounted the ledge, he spotted a third “Saas” village further up the valley. Saas Almagell was the last sign of civilization, sleeping among a forest of pine trees before an enormous dam and its reservoir. Thereafter a long tunnel led the venturesome traveler to the wilds of Northern Italy.
The pilot applied thrust and altered the pitch of his rotor blades, and the helicopter soared higher.
Mick began to feel dizzy and took a deep breath. They were definitely at high altitude.
He remembered a heliport near the outskirts of Saas Fee. But the pilot didn’t head there.
They continued to ascend past a spruce forest, with the town far below. Timber yielded to granite. The slope of the mountain grew more precipitous. Where would the pilot set down?