10
Hedge had gone to the Préfecture in person. There was so much to be discussed. He went in an Embassy car and neither he nor the driver noticed the Renault that did an amazing job of tailing, managing to keep always either two or three cars behind. When Hedge got out at the Préfecture, the Renault drove on past and its driver, a man, used his car radio. An unsuspecting Hedge was taken to the Prefect of Police, who remained polite and amiable and somehow managed to disguise his impatience.
Hedge was anxious for ideas on how the terrorists might go into action — French ideas which might well be different from those of Roberts-White and the Embassy’s security men. “Rocket launchers,” he mused. “The IRA use them in Northern Ireland, you know.”
“I know, yes. Very, very nasty.”
“Well?”
The police chief spread his hands and shrugged magnificently, but said nothing. He considered the suggestion crazy; a Paris summit wasn’t the Bogside or whatever. This, when it came, would be found more subtle. Hedge advanced other ideas in the absence of anything from the Prefect. Bombs, gas, guns, planted explosive, time devices, poison-tipped umbrellas. The Prefect nodded at each, agreeing with them all. Each, he said, was likely.
“Some more than others?” Hedge prompted acidly.
“No, no …”
“Have you nothing else to suggest?”
The Prefect smiled pacifically. “There is little that is new beneath the sun, M’sieur. Guns and powder, they are the basis.”
“Quite. But there’s also nuclear weapons.”
“Not, I think, on Paris.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“These people, we understand, intend to kill only the Russian delegation. Not all of half of France.”
Hedge simmered. What a statement! And how criminally foolish not to take everything into account, even the most fantastic things. You never knew. You had to be ready. It stood to reason. Hedge went on. There was, he said, no end to terrorism’s inventiveness; the Prefect was wrong to say there was nothing new. Little nuclear pellets, say: they could be put anywhere. Under tables, in the lavatory cisterns, in bathroom cupboards, disguised as other things, safe things. Poison could be administered by means other than umbrellas. Any member of the many staffs could have been suborned. Hedge waved aside the protestations about rigid screening procedures. Evil persons still slipped through the tightest of nets. Why, they’d even had them in Britain!
The Prefect of Police had had enough. He stood up and thrust out a hand which Hedge was obliged to grasp. He said, “It was so kind of you to come, M’sieur —”
“I’ve not —”
“I shall tell you what I believe.”
“Yes?”
“What is to happen, what method is to be employed … this we shall know if and when it happens. Until then, M’sieur, we have no way of knowing. Our efforts must be to prevent anything at all happening, and if we can do this, then all these cogitations will not have been needed.”
He smiled, pressed a bell on his desk, a minion came in and Hedge was escorted out, by this time speechless beyond a muttered goodbye. All this trouble, all this humiliation, and for what? For the Russians, people who were beneath contempt! Hedge didn’t give a pin for the safety of the Russians per se. Russians were just a confounded nuisance, frankly better dead. But of course there was the British delegation — and the PM. He must as it were set his sights on her. As he had reflected once before, it wasn’t always only the target that got hit. If only the French police would pull their wretched fingers out. Meanwhile they provided Hedge with transport back to the British Embassy. Once again the Renault wasn’t noticed. Nor, when Hedge reached the Faubourg St Honoré, was the woman in the least noticeable. Glasgow-drab, she mingled with the shadows and kept her eyes open. The Renault went past, its driver once again using his two-way radio. While Hedge remained in the Embassy, the Renault was relieved by a Simca, which took up its station in a side street within range of a small transistorised transceiver concealed between the woman’s breasts, uncomfortably but safely. It was not long before Hedge came out again. This time he was on foot; he didn’t want cars that might be known for Embassy ones approaching the Hotel Aviatic. He preferred to use the Metro, anonymously. He did, with the woman behind him. He descended at Concorde, whence he could go straight through to Montpamasse-Bienvenue, about the same distance from the Hotel Aviatic as was Saint-Placide.
As Hedge went down the steps, the woman spoke briefly into her corsage. Thereafter she travelled in the same carriage as Hedge. From Montparnasse she tailed him to his hotel, then once again used her communication system. Her call was picked up in the Simca, which at once left its side street off the Faubourg St Honoré and drove fast for the Rue de Vaugirard. Two men got out, one of them tall and hefty with a face like granite, the other weasely but dangerous-looking.
They went into the Hotel Aviatic and the hefty one asked for Mr Hedge. Yes, he was in.
“What room?”
“I am sorry, I cannot — I will telephone for him to come down —”
“No. Room number, please. British police officers, from Scotland Yard.” Briefly, well palmed, a nondescript card was flashed. The room number was given and the men went up in the lift. As the big man knocked on Hedge’s door he heard, faintly, the simultaneous ring of a telephone — a warning, from Reception. Inside, Hedge dithered then chose wrong. Leaving the telephone to ring unanswered meanwhile, he went to the door. The moment he opened it, the men moved. Handcuffs were snapped around Hedge’s wrists and he felt the hard ring of metal that pressed into his side.
“What — what —”
“Shut up,” the man said. The smaller man deftly wound a heavy gag around Hedge’s mouth and chin and he was propelled along to the lift and then down to the entrance lobby. The girl in Reception, joined now by a young man, stared at gagged Hedge, at his captors.
“Obscene language,” the big man said. “Not for young ladies.”
Without delay or interference Hedge was marched out into the street, feet twinkling in an effort to keep up with himself, and bundled into the Simca.
*
Shard had responded to the old Russian’s suggestion that in the West’s interest he might find it possible to tell what he knew: he could not, he said, do that. His job was, had to be, in the Russian interest also. Neither Britain, nor France, nor any other EEC country, could countenance the assassination of persons who were party to the conference.
“Then you place at risk your own people.”
“Perhaps. I’m still not talking. Not that I have much to talk about.”
The old man regarded him silently. His fingers shook a little on the Kalashnikov. It wasn’t a reassuring sight. In the air was a hint of Shard being inadvertently colandered. He was considering this when Mikhail came back into the room. He spoke in Russian to the old man, staring at Shard as he did so. Shard caught the name of the Soviet Foreign Minister, A.Y. Hokadian. Neither Mikhail nor Nicholas gave him a translation, but Mikhail said to him in English, “Now the time is close and we shall move.”
No more than that; Mikhail left the room again. From somewhere outside Shard heard little fat Annie singing. It sounded like a happy song though Russian. Love, perhaps. Shard wondered if the girl was still thinking of Tex or had shifted her whole allegiance to Mikhail. Presumably, since she was happy, the latter. Little fat Annie was an intellectual desert, happy merely to be with a man and never mind what that man intended to do to world peace. That obtuseness just could be worth bearing in mind. Dumb girls could be manipulated. Perhaps. Perhaps not; sometimes they had a strong streak of obstinacy. Their very dumbness wrapped them in a cocoon. The singing came nearer and the girl came into the room, smiling, doing a little happy dance like a baby elephant. Old Nicholas regarded her indulgently, like a father. Or in his case a grandfather. The whole scene struck Shard as immensely weird; the Kalashnikov didn’t fit. The happy, inconsequential fat girl and the old man, with the fires
of youth damped down into geriatricism, softened almost into a kind of benevolence, didn’t seem part of the assassination plot at all. Yet, oddly, Shard still had the idea that Nicholas was in charge rather than Mikhail.
Little fat Annie grinned at Shard. “Hullo,” she said.
“Hullo, Annie. You sound happy.”
“I am,” she said. He saw she had made a daisy chain and had put it round her neck. A country girl at heart, and never mind the grimness of her home town of Kharkov in the coalfields of the Ukraine? Certainly the hippie field in the Ardèche had appeared to suit her.
She approached Nicholas, singing again. She took the daisy chain from her neck. “For you,” she said. “Bend your head.” The old man did so; Annie lifted the daisy chain. The Kalashnikov swung a little sideways. Shard sweated, felt the pounding of his heart. He had been straining at the ropes on his wrists; there was a little play … if only there had been just a little more. The moment passed when footsteps were heard approaching and Mikhail came into the room. He spoke in Russian and went out again. The old man ordered Shard to his feet and moved behind him with the Kalashnikov prodding into his back. In the integral garage the Dormobile was waiting. Shard was put back into the toilet compartment and the vehicle, with Nicholas and the girl in the passenger seats and Mikhail at the wheel, was backed out.
*
“I don’t know what you imagine you’re doing,” Hedge panted in the back of the Simca. He was free of the gag and doing his best to maintain his dignity. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” the big man said.
“Then you’ll —”
“Shut up.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Granted. Now shut up, Hedge.”
Hedge gave a gasp. They did know! What, for God’s sake, had happened to security? And what was to happen to the PM and the Foreign Secretary — for that matter, to himself, which was a much more immediate thought. He looked sideways; the small man was alongside him and there was a revolver thrust into his ribs and something about the look in the small man’s eye told him that the revolver would be used if necessary and never mind the fact of the busy Paris streets. The thing was silenced, he could tell that from the size and feel of the part that was pressing into him. There would be a phut and that would be all. Probably they wouldn’t kill him, he wouldn’t have been kidnapped if he hadn’t had value to them, but he would be wounded and might bleed to death if there were any traffic hold-ups. Or he might be shot in the knee-cap, like the IRA did in Belfast. Hedge trembled and felt sweat run stickily. What a damnable situation. He couldn’t imagine what might be wanted of him. The whole idea of kidnapping him was so inept. There would be consternation in the Embassy, indeed in Whitehall — these people might have known there would be a real toothcomb drawn through Paris, on orders from the very top. Not only Paris; all France. Then Hedge’s heart sank: there were so many blasted idiots around these days, the wrong sort had achieved responsibility and were unequal to it. That man Roberts-White had referred to balls-ups and though Hedge still didn’t like the term he had to confess its relevance. Dunderheads abounded and wrong decisions would be made to the detriment, most likely, of his own safety. Roberts-White himself was no great shakes. And some fool in the Foreign Office itself had been responsible for sending the obviously false information that Stanislav Asipov, who seemed to have started all this, had been considered a mere plant for future use by the Soviet intelligence services …
“Sheer twaddle!” Hedge said aloud.
“What is?” the big man asked from the front.
“Oh, nothing.”
“Shut up, then.”
Hedge relapsed into silence. The voice had held a definite threat. The Simca seemed to fly through the traffic, missing other cars by centimetres, just managing to pull up in time at pedestrian crossings. In no time at all Hedge was utterly lost; they had entered parts of Paris that Hedge had never been in and would never have wanted to be in. Something that looked rather like London’s East End. Warehouses, factories, rows of horrible little dwellings, and soon a stench of Seine. Not a salubrious part. If Paris had been closer to the river’s mouth this would probably have been dockland. As it was, it was nondescript; the only vessels were small ones, barges mostly, and here and there a vessel fitted with passenger seats on the upper deck, river pleasure craft undergoing refit.
As the Simca stopped at one of the nasty little houses, close to some derelict premises that ran down to the river, Hedge felt extremely uneasy. Bodies could be disposed of in rivers, no trouble at all — weighted sacks came into his mind, or the holds of barges. A concrete slab with a man embedded in it would sink quickly, never to rise again. Or he could form a part of the foundations of a by-pass.
Hedge was ordered out and, between the two men, was shepherded into the house, which smelt of cooking oil, garlic and the emanations of the river.
The river!
Hedge remembered something: the programme for the VIPs had included two excursions on the Seine, one of them an afternoon trip laid on for the Russian delegation at their special request, the other a real show-off to all the VIPs, Paris by night, a dinner party aboard a bateau mouche …
There could be a connexion, perhaps.
If so then he, Hedge, might be at the heart of it. To win or lose it all: that was quite a thought, and a worrying one.
*
The report went in to the house between the Rue du Faubourg St Antoine and the Boulevard Voltaire, being conveyed by a leather-clad motor-cyclist: House Four, safe arrival. The woman from Glasgow received it, then used the telephone. Tex hadn’t arrived at his destination yet, but would be informed as soon as he did so. The motor-cyclist left, with orders to hold the captive incommunicado and alive. House Four would be informed when Hedge was required to be produced. It wouldn’t be long now.
When the motor-cyclist got back to House Four, Hedge had been securely locked into a basement. It was very damp from its proximity to the river, and it smelt foul. The very air was foetid. It was totally dark. Hedge sank into a trembling heap of misery on a cold, damp stone floor. At first there had been some euphoria about being at the heart of things — stupid, really, when as a prisoner there was nothing useful he could do, but it had been there along with thoughts of a visit to Buckingham Palace afterwards — but by now it had gone. For one thing, Hedge so far had no idea which of the two factions had kidnapped him. The Avengers of St Petersburg, the nonpersons — or the man Tex from the hippie commune? If it was the non-persons, then he really could be at the heart. If it was Tex and the wretched Communist Alliance Transatlantic, then equally he could be near the heart, since the man Tex was anxious to get his hands on non-person Mikhail Asipov. Or was said to be. Thus, where Mikhail was, or where Mikhail was perhaps expected to be, then so also could be Tex. That stood to reason. Conversely, where Tex was, then Mikhail might be expected. At any rate, somewhere in the vicinity.
Suppose the non-persons, the undead, intended to prove, in this vicinity, their fact of living — prove it here, on the Seine, when the VIPs embarked? Suppose Tex and CAT knew that?
Hedge gave a pathetic moan. What was the use of conjecture? He was powerless to act upon it; if he managed to piece together a hypothesis, it would be no more, really, than being wise after the event. He couldn’t communicate it. If he could communicate, damn it all, he’d communicate his whereabouts and be rescued by a determined squad from the GIGN! That thought led him back to Shard. Where was Shard, who if he was free would naturally have pulled out every possible stop to get his chief back to safety?
*
“Gone,” Roberts-White said briefly to Eve Brett. “Hooked away from his hotel by a subterfuge. Not very bright of him.”
“What do we do, sir?”
“Refer it to HE,” the First Secretary said. He left the room after contacting his immediate chief, a counsellor. One did not approach the Ambassador direct, nor use the telephone to him except in dire emergency. Counsellor and First S
ecretary went together for an audience of HE.
The Ambassador was concerned. “Shard, and now Hedge. Damn! It seems this thing’s for real, not that I ever doubted that. Do we react, or don’t we, that’s the first question.” He drummed his fingers on his desk. Neither the Counsellor nor Roberts-White offered an opinion; such had not precisely been asked for. The Ambassador answered his own query. “I shall of course inform Whitehall and the Elysée Palace … but as for Hedge himself, we play him down. I’ve a feeling whoever’s got him has an inflated idea of his importance in the scheme of things. At this stage we don’t want to appear rattled by his loss.” He looked up with an impish look in his eye. “Does Hedge rattle?”
He was looking at Roberts-White, who took the point and said, “No, sir.”
“Not much actual use?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. I hope that doesn’t sound disloyal.”
“Never mind disloyalty, Roberts-White, always be honest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And his knowledge of the plans is certainly no more than mine and that’s little enough currently.”
“Sir?” The Counsellor raised an eyebrow.
“Changes,” the Ambassador said briefly. “The French are worried and I’m far from surprised. They’re proposing changes in the programme — I don’t know the details yet. It’s all in the melting pot.”
“Is there any suggestion of a cancellation?” the Counsellor asked.
“No. But that’s exactly what I’m going to put to Whitehall, now this has happened.” The Ambassador made a gesture of dismissal. “I’ll let you know the result.”
*
His Excellency’s submission cut no ice at all. The Elysée Palace considered that matters had already gone too far, that a cancellation would almost certainly be misconstrued in Moscow, even if deliberately, and the NATO military brass would be furious at cold feet. But, as a result of Embassy pressure, the French President made contact by telephone with Downing Street, speaking personally to the Prime Minister.
The Executioners Page 12