by Fritz Galt
“I was just pumping the French ambassador for information about their expelled diplomat.”
“What did he say?” Everett asked.
“It’s a complete mystery to him.”
“Well, that’s understandable, because the Swiss chose a French diplomat at random to expel. I talked with the inspector, and he told me what’s behind all this. There were two bodies found in Lake Geneva. Both were killed by a French assassin identified as Alexandre LaFleur.”
“Was it ordered by the state?”
“Must have been. One of the dead men was a member of the Polisario Front.”
“Polisario Front?” Ambassador Pistol asked. Apparently he had never heard of the group.
“Terrorists fighting for Western Saharan independence from Morocco. They have bombed the Paris metro on numerous occasions.”
“So the French had him killed?”
Everett nodded.
Ambassador Pistol looked out the open cabin door. “That bastard,” he said under his breath. “He’s lying to me.”
“In defense of the ambassador, it does get complicated,” Everett said. “As it turned out, I supplied a bit of the information myself.”
Everett took a deep breath and sketched out the facts in as favorable a light as possible. In short, the man who died was impersonating Alec Pierce.
“Alec Pierce? Do you mean Mick’s brother?”
Everett nodded. “We’re not sure what happened to Alec. He just disappeared into thin air.”
“Is Mick on the case?”
“He’s missing, too.”
“Wait. Both our men are missing?”
Everett nodded solemnly.
Ambassador grasped hold of a nearby divan. “How’s Natalie taking all this?”
“She’s missing, too.”
“What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Everett didn’t respond. That’s why he was there.
“Mick’s our main case officer,” Ambassador Pistol said. “Natalie’s my only science and technology officer. And we’ve got the president coming to CERN next week. Get them both back here, at once.”
“I can’t, sir. They’re honest to goodness missing, and furthermore, I think we can safely assume that all three are either directly or indirectly involved in the French espionage case.”
“My God. What are you saying? Three of our officers ticked off the Swiss and then went AWOL?”
“It gets worse, sir. Suzy Kraft, my secretary, was murdered last night.”
Pistol’s knees buckled, and he fell heavily into the divan.
“Everett, I’m not ready for this.”
“My apologies, sir.”
“No, it’s not you. I just wasn’t expecting to pull this sort of duty. Is Switzerland always like this?”
“Not really. But don’t take it personally. And please don’t hyperventilate. There’s more.”
“More?”
“I’m afraid between the Swiss expulsion, our missing officers and Suzy’s death, there’s a connection with the president’s visit.”
“Oh dear God. Is someone going to kill the president?”
“I’m afraid someone might try.”
Ambassador Rupert Pistol shot to his feet. “No!” He snapped his jaw shut and jutted his chin out from his swelling chest. Just as the wake of a passing boat happened to rock the moored ship, the ambassador decided to make his stand.
Wobbling with his hands thrust outward for balance, he said, “Our embassy is up to the task. If the president is going to visit Geneva, damn it, the president shall visit Geneva. And that’s final.”
“Rupert, honey.” It was Roberta Pistol calling from up on deck. “Come up here quick.”
The ambassador and Everett raced up the companionway. Roberta stood at the stern pointing out over the sun-drenched river.
The multihued flotilla of the young, the drunk and the semi-naked drifted lazily past.
“Mr. Hoyle. Come quickly,” a husky German voice called from down in the water.
Everett leaned to look over the stern. Below was a corpulent, hairy back of someone in a rubber raft, holding onto their hull.
“Inspektor? Is that you?”
The man looked up. It was Inspektor Tobias Bürgi.
“See that man in the lead? He’s the killer.”
Everett studied the corks of flesh in the middle of the river. A lone motorboat swerved between them, stirring up walls of water.
“How can I help?” he shouted over the noise of the motorboat.
“I need permission to use your ship,” Tobias called.
Everett looked at Ambassador Pistol and saw an awkward diplomatic moment coming.
“Just who are we chasing?” Ambassador Pistol called down to Tobias.
“It’s the man who killed Frau Kraft.”
The back of Ambassador Pistol’s neck turned scarlet. “Then we’ll stop him.”
The ambassador scrambled up to the flying bridge and gunned the engines to life. Peering ahead for an opening in the sea of bodies, he spun the wheel.
Nothing happened. Lines creaked against the wooden pilings.
“Jesus,” Everett cursed under his breath. Their ship was still moored to the pier. “Hold on.”
He jumped down two meters to the dock and landed flat on his street shoes.
That hurt.
Pistol continued to force the throttle, rocking the pleasure cruiser forward and back against its tethers.
Everett raced along the pier to the front of the ship. During a momentary slack in the lines, he slipped the rope free and heaved it onto the prow.
Then he headed back to the line at the stern. The ship was nearly tearing the piling from the dock.
Meanwhile Tobias stood up in his dingy and shouted, “Don’t leave without me.”
Roberta and the French couple watched in shock. At last, Roberta tossed an oil-soaked line overboard, and the inspector caught it.
The ship was churning up whitewater, and lurching against its last mooring.
At an opportune moment, Everett unfastened the inch-thick rope from the piling.
He wouldn’t let the ship leave without him.
He wrapped the rope around one arm and took a headlong leap off the pier.
He slammed into the glacier-cold water and sank like a rock.
Then he felt a strong tug on his arm. The rope was popping him back to the surface. Soon he could take a breath, despite the spray of water that he created as he skimmed over it.
He squeezed his eyelids until his eyes were dry enough to see.
Tobias was skittering across the surface in his dinghy, buffeted from side to side.
Roberta Pistol called out for the men to hold on.
Preparing to jump overboard in case they needed rescue, she excitedly peeled her blouse over her head. Then she shimmied out of her pleated skirt. Her long dark mane swung over her face, and her ample breasts dangled loose, suspended only by a taut bikini. Holding her hair behind her head with one hand, she held a lone life-vest earnestly toward the two men who were too far behind the streaking craft to reach it.
Everett jerked away from the sight and tried to see Suzy’s killer. The guy wasn’t too far ahead. It was a bearded man steering a fiberglass motorboat, and he seemed to sense that he was being followed.
Indeed, the America I was closing fast.
The man took off downstream at full power.
By the tug of the rope, Everett felt the America I increase acceleration.
The wide Montbijou Bridge loomed ahead. As they passed into its cool shadow, the America I drew abreast of the killer’s boat.
The man had run out of room to maneuver as Rupert Pistol adroitly headed him off, with rocky shallows and a dam ahead.
After the bridge, the open-air pools at Marzili lay on the left bank. An arm of the Aare flowed back into an estuary where families splashed in the still water.
Swept by the river’s current and at full throttle, the motorboat r
ocketed past the grassy embankment.
The killer looked to both sides. His options were narrowing by the second. Wedged between the America I and the green grounds of the Schwimmbad, he could either abandon his boat or crash into the rocks by the dam.
He stood on the stern, rocked there for an instant to gain his balance and plunged into the river.
His boat veered under the America I’s prow and headed straight for the dam.
With no time to spare, Rupert Pistol wheeled about in an abrupt turn, and the America I drifted to a halt.
But it was too late for Everett.
He released the rope and slammed broadside into the ship. He cushioned the blow with his arms and legs, but boy was he going to hurt the next day.
Tobias’s dinghy crashed in from behind and smashed him once again against the stern. With a whoosh of air, the dinghy began to deflate.
The inspector coughed and spouted water into the air. “I can’t swim,” he cried, and clung to his rope.
Roberta and the French ambassador’s young wife sprang into action. They arced like porpoises off the stern and sailed over the men’s heads.
Meanwhile, without a skipper, the killer’s launch sped under the final bridge and disappeared over the dam.
In the distance, the killer thrashed across the swift current toward shore. Apparently, he was no more of a swimmer than Tobias.
Everett decided to pursue the man. He kicked off his shoes and unbuckled his belt. With smooth, efficient strokes, he drifted out of his saturated trousers and aimed for Suzy’s killer.
“Wait for me,” Tobias shouted, and began to dog-paddle to shore.
With smooth strokes, the two women gave chase as well.
Soon Everett’s feet struck something. The river was a mere half-meter deep.
He scrambled to his feet and began to slog through the shallows.
Far ahead of him were Roberta and the Frenchwoman, giving chase on foot. Their patches of yellow and orange fabric were more suited for sun-bathing than sprinting.
The spray from their feet stung Everett’s face, and pride. How had they gotten so far ahead of him? And why couldn’t he catch up?
Tobias, with his considerable weight, was pumping his arms hard, just behind the women.
Ahead of them all, the killer pounded up a set of concrete steps in his black leather boots. Back on firm land, he vaulted over bodies that lay in the grass, splashed through wading pools and dodged trees like an Olympic athlete.
At last, Everett made the beach. He struggled out of his waterlogged business jacket and had to flap his arms to whip it off. Then he jerked his necktie loose and tossed it aside.
The women seemed determined not to let the man get away. Roberta in particular, her flanks taut, her toes pointed and her muscular posterior barely rippling, slipped smoothly through the human obstacle course.
Gaining rapidly on her, Everett sprayed onlookers with a shower of buttons as he ripped his shirt from his chest.
He was panting as he emerged from the park, only to find the others waiting for a break in traffic. Shoulder-to-shoulder, the four sprinted to the center median of busy Marzili-Strasse.
There Everett came to a stop.
Dripping wet, the killer turned on a pointed black boot and hopped into a departing city bus.
Out of breath and delirious, Everett didn’t know what to do.
But Tobias did. He summoned his police demeanor and hailed a passing squad car.
He shouted at the policeman in German, then ducked into the tiny car and they skittered off down the street.
“Well…thank you…ladies,” Everett said between gasps for breath. Dizzy, he leaned over and rested his forehead against Roberta Pistol’s fragrant, gleaming abdomen.
It was strange how quiet the street had become. Just the distant throb of jazz played live at the Dampfzentrale.
Nobody seemed aware of the excitement that had just happened.
It was just a normal rush hour in a major European city. He was leaning against a nubile young woman while dressed in his Calvin Kleins and black socks. Beside him stood a Frenchwoman, tanned, soaked, and virtually naked.
He lingered for a second to enjoy the warm abdomen, the panting chest, the throbbing heart, and the tickle of a slight tuft of peach fuzz against his cheek.
“Daddy!”
He looked up.
Wrapped in a colorful Brazilian beach towel and holding his mother’s hand, Everett, Jr. waved at him from across the traffic.
Estrella did not look so pleased.
Chapter 24
Natalie stared out the window of the Royal Air Maroc jetliner at the blue Mediterranean thirty thousand feet below.
She’d rather be enjoying the beaches than flying business class with an unstable young man who might lead her to the Proteus Jihad.
She wasn’t heading to the Middle East or the Levant at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. But the plane was taking her to an equally mysterious place. They were approaching the western fringe of Islamic rule, land separated from Mecca by deserts and the Atlas Mountains, inhabited by the Berbers and backed against the formidable, foaming Atlantic.
She was en route to Morocco.
Khalid leaned against her and pointed out the window at a sharks-tooth promontory to the west.
“The Pillars of Hercules,” he explained. “That’s where Hercules forced the continents of Africa and Europe apart.”
In one all-encompassing view, she could see both gateposts of the Mediterranean Sea, where it flowed into the dark blue Atlantic.
She remembered Khalid arriving in a sweat at the airport, his cologne working overtime.
At the departures terminal, he had pulled out his wallet and laid down cash for both tickets. Despite his swift decision to leave, somehow he had managed to acquire and pack a suitcase, which he checked at the ticket counter.
In the airplane, he looked restored and energetic, an eager raconteur of his nation’s history.
“To the north lies the British colony of Gibraltar, an important peninsula that protects the Mediterranean. Do you know how Gibraltar got its name?”
She shook her head.
“The land is English, but the name is not. The first Berber chieftain to take all of Spain was named Tarik. He crossed the straits with his troops and landed at the base of that mountain. In our language, we call a mountain ‘jebel,’ so we named that mountain Jebel Tarik. Through the sands of time, it came to be known as Gibraltar.” He laughed.
They were passing over an arm of Africa, a peninsula that reached out toward Gibraltar.
“To the south lies the Spanish enclave of Ceuta,” he said. “The caves of Hercules. The garden of Atlas’ daughters, where Ulysses felt captivated by Calypso.”
Perhaps Morocco was older than Europe itself. Not many European sites ended up in Greek mythology and epic poems.
“Even the air in which we’re flying is pregnant with history,” he said.
He sat back and spoke softly. “Our King’s plane was returning one day from France. Three Moroccan Air Force jets sprayed the airplane with cannon shells. Only after our King got on the radio and told the pilots in a disguised voice that ‘The tyrant is dead’ did the fighter pilots call off the attack.”
She turned to him with a gasp.
He seemed encouraged by her attention, and continued.
“That’s not the first time an attempt was made on his life. The King is a descendant of the Prophet. He has baraka.”
“What’s that?”
“He enjoys a charmed life. He has divine protection.”
A tinge of sarcasm, with undertones of contempt, had crept into his voice.
“What were the other attempts?”
“Oh, if you must know.” He drew up in his seat and resumed in a quiet voice. “On the occasion of his forty-second birthday, he invited hundreds of guests to his castle on the beach near Rabat. One thousand four hundred non-commissioned officer cadets stormed the palace an
d shot over a hundred guests dead. The King took refuge in a bathroom somewhere deep in the enormous palace. They never found him, and he survived. That is baraka.”
“Is there any recent history of violence?” To tell the truth, she didn’t know the first thing about Moroccan history, ancient or contemporary. Nor had she particularly cared, until now.
What interested her beyond the history lesson, was the morose tone that crept into his voice the longer he talked.
“In a later coup d’état attempt, several bombs were placed in American Government offices in Rabat and Casablanca. They didn’t explode because the idiot bomb maker needed glasses. He had crossed his wires.”
Okay, so the bomb maker was a disaster, but she didn’t share Khalid’s sentiments about the bomb maker’s target.
Her admiration for the King was growing.
Dried off after his adventure at the Aare River, Everett was sitting in his office when the phone rang. Determined to get the hang of the caller ID system, he glanced at his phone’s LCD screen before picking up the phone.
“Hi, Suzy,” he said.
He realized his mistake at once.
“I mean Claudia.”
Suzy Kraft had already been seamlessly replaced by a roving secretary named Claudia Strapping.
“Call from a man named Tubby on Line One,” Claudia said.
Well, not so seamlessly.
“Thank you. I’ll take it,” he said, and pressed Line One. “Hi, Tobias.”
“Good afternoon, Everett. You don’t sound so chipper, especially after your swim this morning.”
“I’m not. My secretary is dead, I have people missing, and my wife didn’t appreciate the public spectacle I made of myself.”
“Ja. I’m not surprised. But I called to say that I’m grateful for your help. Our men have placed the suspect we were pursuing under surveillance. I’ll let you know what happens.”
Good. They would have Suzy’s killer soon.
Tobias sure worked fast. Everett had last seen Tobias hovering over Suzy Kraft’s corpse at her apartment, and the next thing he knew, Tobias was in the rubber dinghy chasing after a bearded man in a motorboat. “How did you find the suspect in the first place?”
“Fingerprints,” Tobias said. “We had him on file.”