by Colin Forbes
`Only about the atombunker. You probably know that the Swiss now have a regulation that any new building erected, including private houses, has to incorporate an atombunker. Well, the one under the laboratory is enormous, I gather. A huge door made of solid steel and six inches thick – the way it was described to me made it sound like the entrance to a bank vault in Zurich. It has to accommodate all the patients and the staff in case of emergency..
So that could explain something else innocently which Newman -had thought sinister – the covered passage to the laboratory also led to the atombunker. Despite all his questions, there was still nothing positively wrong on the surface about the Berne Clinic. It was an afterthought: he asked the question as he was slipping on his coat.
`You thought then that you might have been followed?'
`Not really. Kobler said he had been going to suggest I took the evening off. He urged me to spend the night out if I felt like it…' Novak paused and Newman waited, guessing that the American had made a mental connection. 'Funny thing,' Novak said slowly, tut the last time he did that was the night when Hannah Stuart died…'
Twenty-One
Newman walked into a silent, freezing cold night. Deserted streets. He waited until his eyes became accustomed to the dark. He was about to light a cigarette when he changed his mind. Nothing pinpoints a target more clearly than the flare of a lighter. And he had not forgotten that one of the weapons Beck had reported stolen was a sniper-scope Army rifle – from the Thun district.
Checking for watchers, he strolled to the Sinnebrucke. He was still not convinced that Novak had told him everything. The American could have been sent by Kobler – to lure Newman to Thun. Later, after too much drinking, Novak might have decided to take out insurance by talking to him. Newman was convinced of one fact – he could trust no one.
Water coming in from the lake lapped against the wall below the bridge. Then he heard the sound of an approaching outboard motor chugging slowly. The small craft was flat-bottomed. As it passed under a street lamp he saw it was powered by a Yamaha outboard. One man crouched by the stern.
Newman stepped back into the shadows, unsure whether he had been seen. The man lifted a slim, box-like object to his mouth. A walkie-talkie. They had been watching film from the one area he had overlooked – the river. It would have been easy to observe Newman and Novak sitting at the window table inside the illuminated restaurant. Was he reporting that Newman had just left the restaurant?
Berne is like a colossal ocean liner built of rock and stone, rearing up above the surrounding countryside. Thun's centre lies on the island in a basin. Newman glanced up at the northern bank where the forested hillside climbed steeply, a hillside where the lights of houses glittered like jewels. He left the bridge, crossed the street in the shelter of one of the numerous smaller arcades – smaller than Berne's.
He followed a roundabout route to where he had left his car parked in the Balliz. He was looking for a red Porsche, any sign of Lee Foley, any sign of more watchers. With its network of waterways Thun is like a tiny Venice or Stockholm.
Looking south, at the end of a street he saw the vague outline of a monster mountain, its upper slopes white with snow. He continued walking slowly, listening. He passed one of the old covered bridges on his right and had a view to the north. On the highest point immediately above the town reared the great walls and turrets of the ages-old Schloss, a sinister, half-seen silhouette in the starlit night. The only sound was the slosh and gush of the river flow. He made up his mind.
Newman had not only been checking for watchers: he had taken his lonely stroll while he wrestled with a decision. He could not get out of his mind something Novak had said. Kobler said he had been going to suggest I took the evening off… the last time he did that was the night when Hannah Stuart died.
He walked swiftly back to where the Citroen was parked, got behind the wheel, fired the motor and drove off through the empty streets uphill towards Thun-Nord, towards the Berne Clinic.
The horrific scene jumped towards Newman's headlights as he came over the brow of a hill. He had followed a route which would take him to the main gatehouse of the Berne Clinic – coming in from the north-west. To his right alongside the narrow road was the wire fence guarding the Clinic's extensive grounds which, at this point, included some rough country. He had crossed the snow-line some time earlier and he knew the laboratory was beyond the fence, hidden by a fold in the landscape.
In his headlights he saw a gate in the wire fence wide open. Two police cars, the blue lights on their roofs flashing and revolving, were parked in the road by the gateway. A woman inside the grounds was running up the rocky slope towards the gateway, a woman wearing some kind of robe. Behind her in the gloom a vague shape bounded after her. One of the bloody Dobermans. The woman ran on, a stumbling run. In front of one of the police car's lights stood two people. Beck and, Oh, Christ! Nancy…'
The Doberman was going to get her, the running woman. She was just too far from the open gateway. Jesus! It was a nightmare. Newman pulled up near the gateway as Beck raised both hands and stood very still. He was gripping a gun. Behind him a third car appeared. Not a police car. It braked savagely and someone jumped out. That was the moment when Beck fired. The dog leapt vertically into the night, seemed to stay there in suspension, then flopped to the ground. So much was happening it was difficult to take it all in.
Newman left his car. The man who had just arrived was Captain Rene Lachenal. In full uniform. The running woman staggered through the gateway and collapsed on the road. Her robe fell open and Newman saw she was wearing pyjamas underneath a thick dressing gown and sensible shoes caked with snow.
Nancy was already bending over the inert form. Beck was using his walkie-talkie. Newman counted six uniformed policemen, all wearing leather overcoats and automatics holstered on their right hips. Beck slipped his weapon into his pocket and put on gloves. He closed the gate and stooped over it, fiddling with something. Newman couldn't see what he was doing.
`You are trespassing inside a military zone,' Lachenal called out angrily. 'We will look after this woman…'
`Military zone?' Beck straightened up and walked away from the gate which Newman saw was now padlocked. 'What the hell are you talking about? And I have summoned an ambulance for this woman. It will be here very shortly…'
`We are conducting military manoeuvres,' Lachenal insisted. 'There was a barrier at the entrance to this road…'
His tall, gaunt-faced figure towered over Beck who was staring in the direction of Berne where an approaching siren could be heard, growing louder every second.
`Yes, we saw the barrier,' Beck told him. 'We drove through it. And, it appears, a good job we did. In any case, there was no formal notification beforehand of any manoeuvres. And, we have saved this woman. You saw that dog…'
Newman had a series of vivid impressions he recalled later like pictures taken by flash-bulbs. An armoured personnel carrier pulling up behind Lachenal's car. Troops jumping out clad in battle gear – helmets, camouflage jackets and trousers and carrying automatic weapons – who spread out in a circle. Lachenal lifting a pair of field glasses looped round his neck and briefly scanning the grounds beyond the wire fence, lowering them with a grave expression. Nancy, who was close to Newman, standing up slowly and whispering to Beck so the only other person who heard her was Newman.
`We haven't saved her, I'm afraid. She's dead. I don't like the look of her. I can't be sure, of course, but all the signs are she died of asphyxiation. More serious still, I detect distinct signs of some form of poisoning. If you asked me to guess – it could be no more than that – I diagnose cyanosis…'
`Say no more,' Beck suggested. 'I have all I need.'
The ambulance had arrived. The determined driver eased his vehicle past the personnel carrier and Lachenal's car, drove on until his bonnet almost touched Newman's Citroen, backed into the gateway area, turned so the ambulance faced back towards Berne, and stopped it alon
gside the woman's body in the road. The rear doors opened, two men in white emerged carrying a stretcher, and this was the moment when Lachenal intervened.
`What are you doing?' he demanded. 'I can have her taken for immediate attention to a military hospital…'
`She's dead, Lachenal,' Beck told him in a cold voice.
It was extraordinary. The lofty figure of the Intelligence captain, a member of the General Staff, was dominated by the much smaller figure of Beck by sheer force of personality. The policeman took out his automatic again and held it so the muzzle pointed at the ground.
`We can still take her,' Lachenal said after an interval. 'This may be a matter for counter-espionage..
`Forget it, Lachenal. I'm taking over jurisdiction. And I am treating this as a case of suspected homicide. It is a matter entirely for the Federal Police. Incidentally, if you do not immediately order your men to lower their weapons I'll bring a charge against you for obstructing the course of justice the moment I arrive back in Berne…'
`They are not threatening anyone…'
`I am waiting.'
Lachenal gave a quick order to the officer in charge of the detachment. The troops boarded the personnel carrier which was then, with some difficulty, reversed before it was driven off towards Berne. Beck watched these proceedings with an icy expression, the gun still by his side. Lachenal turned and stared down at him.
`Homicide? I don't understand…'
`Neither shall I – until after the autopsy has been performed. One more thing, I have a fully-qualified doctor here who has examined the body. She states the dead woman shows clear signs of having died from cyanosis or some other form of poisoning. Just in case you have second thoughts. You have your own walkie-talkie, I imagine, to keep in touch with these manoeuvres which sprung up so suddenly? Good. Let us synchronize wavebands. I wish to keep in direct touch with you until we reach Berne safely. Perhaps you would be so good as to follow in your car?'
`I find the implications behind that request outrageous…'
`But you will comply,' Beck told him grimly. 'Homicide was the word I used. That takes precedence over everything with the sole exception of a state of war. Agreed?'
`I will accompany you in my car to the outskirts of Berne. Perhaps you would like to drive off first, then the ambulance, and I bring up the rear?'
Beck nodded, still in full psychological command of the situation. The bearers had carried the woman's body inside the ambulance and closed the doors. At Newman's request Beck had agreed one of his own men should drive the Citroen back to the Bellevue so Newman could travel in Beck's car with Nancy.
Before leaving, Beck gave the remaining policemen orders to pile into the other car and patrol the entire perimeter of the Berne Clinic. Passing the ambulance, he clapped a gloved hand on to the edge of the driver's window to indicate he should follow him. As they left, he exchanged not one more word with Lachenal, maintaining his total control of the situation to the last.
He opened the rear door of his car, ushered Nancy inside and introduced her to his subordinate, Leupin, who joined her on the other side. He made the remark as he climbed behind the wheel and Newman settled himself alongside.
`I'm not too happy yet about Lachenal. He seems to have so many troops at the snap of a finger. You do realize that he must have called up that armoured personnel carrier when he'd arrived but before he got out of his car?'
Beck had started driving when Newman pointed to the walkie-talkie lying in Beck's lap. The communication switch was turned to off.
`You can keep tabs on him with that, can't you?' Newman observed.
`But who is he calling at this moment – on a different waveband? I simply don't know. Certainly, Lachenal looked very worried and uncertain about the whole business. He's a very complex character, our Rene Lachenal – but basically a man of integrity. His one concern is Switzerland's security..
`And how far would he go to protect that? The military do live in a world all their own.'
`A great deal may depend on how he reacts during the next few minutes- before we reach the motorway to Berne… My God! I think he's gone over the top. Look at that…'
Ahead of them as they went downhill, blocking the road like a wall, was a gigantic tank with a gun barrel like a telegraph pole. Newman went cold. It was a German Leopard 11.
The tracked monster was stationary. Except for one moving part. The immense gun barrel, with a massive bulge of a nozzle at its tip, was elevated at a high angle. Slowly it began to drop. In the rear of the car Nancy, stiffened with fear, bit her knuckles, unable to take her eyes off the muzzle which was being lowered. Soon it would be aimed at them point-blank.
Beck had stopped the car. Newman had an awful premonition. He knew the capacity of the Leopard. One shell could blow them into fragments. The car would disappear. The ambulance on their tail would disintegrate. They would have to scrape the remnants of the two vehicles – and their occupants – off the road. The elevation continued to fall.
`They must have gone mad,' Beck said hoarsely.
He reached for the walkie-talkie to contact Lachenal, then dropped the instrument back in his lap. Newman shook his head in agreement. There simply wasn't time to reach Lachenal. Always supposing the officer was tuned in to the agreed waveband.
`No time for Lachenal,' Newman warned.
Know…'
The gun barrel seemed to move in slow motion, remorselessly. Originally it had pointed at the sky. Now it had lost half that elevation. Now it only had a few more degrees to lose before they would be staring straight at that diabolical nozzle.
Nancy glanced at Leupin, a tall, thin-faced man. His face was moist with sweat. He seemed hypnotized by the inevitable descent of the huge tube. Still gazing ahead, he reached out his left hand and grasped her arm, an attempt to bring her a little comfort.
`Hold on tight!' Beck shouted suddenly.
He released the brake and rammed down his foot on the accelerator. The Audi shot forward down the icy road, skidded, recovered its equilibrium under Beck's iron control as they went on speeding towards the tank which was growing enormously in size as it rushed towards them through the windscreen. The gun tip was almost facing them. Newman had a horrible preview of the huge shell hitting. A fraction of a second and the explosion would be ripping through metal, tearing apart flesh, incinerating it in one horrendous inferno under the hammer-blow force of the detonation.
Beck, facial muscles tensed, drove on – passed underneath the gun barrel extending far beyond the tank's chassis. He jammed on the brakes. Although braced, everyone inside the car jerked forward. Beck had stopped within inches of the massive caterpillar tracks. It was no longer possible to fire the cannon. He snatched up the walkie-talkie.
`Lachenal! Are you there? Good. What the fucking hell are you trying to do. There's a bloody great tank which aimed its gun at us. I'm in direct radio communication with Berne. They've heard it all. Get this piece of scrap metal out of my way. Tell it to back off, clear the road… Do you read me…?'
`I've been trying to call you…' The strain in Lachenal's voice came clearly over the walkie-talkie. 'You kept talking. It's all a mistake. Kobler is waiting in a car to speak to you. The tank was to stop you driving past him. He caught me at the main exit from the Clinic.
`Tell Kobler to go jump off a cliff,' Beck rapped back as he reversed the car a few inches, using one hand to drive. 'I'm telling you just once more. Tell that tank commander to back off. There will be an enquiry…'
`I've already given the order,' Lachenal reported when he came back on the walkie-talkie. 'You must understand there are manoeuvres…'
`Dr Bruno Kobler's manoeuvres?'
That silenced Lachenal. They sat without speaking as the Leopard began its reverse movement, its tracks grinding ponderously as the commander backed it and turned it up a fork road just behind him. Beck glanced in the rear view mirror and briefly saluted the driver of the ambulance to show him the crisis was over. As soon as t
he road was open he shot forward, turning left away from the Leopard and downhill on the road which led to the motorway.
Twenty-Two
`I think, Bob, I should explain Dr Kennedy's presence,' Beck said as he drove along the motorway. 'One of my men – Leupin, in fact, who is sitting behind me – was watching the Bellevue Palace when he saw her leaving. He asked her to wait and called me. It is only two minutes by car from my office – using the siren,' he added with a ghost of a smile.
`I told you on no account to go anywhere, Nancy… Newman began.
`Please!' Beck interjected. 'Let me finish. Her help back there at the gateway was invaluable. She told me she had received an urgent phone call from the Berne Clinic. Her grandfather had taken a turn for the worse. I persuaded her to come back with me to the hotel and I called Dr Kobler. He said they had made no such call, that Jesse Kennedy was fast asleep. We still don't know who tried to lure her out. I was on the way to the Clinic myself and she agreed to come with me in the police car. I thought it best to keep an eye on her…'
`What took you to the Clinic tonight of all nights?' `I have someone inside,' Beck replied cryptically. `Who?'
`You, as a foreign correspondent, are in the habit of revealing your sources?' Beck enquired in a mocking tone. `We drove past the main gateway to that second gate…'
`Which was open,' Newman commented.
`I opened it myself. In the boot is a pair of strong wireclippers I used on the padlock chain. Quite illegal, of course, but we could see that poor woman fleeing for the gate. Afterwards, I locked it again with an identical padlock I had taken the precaution of bringing with me.'
`You seem amazingly well-organized,' Newman remarked.
`I know the file on Hannah Stuart backwards. I told you of a certain witness I can't use. Afterwards, I paid a visit to that gate from the laboratory and noticed the type of padlock used. I was banking on a second opportunity – although I did not foresee the consequences would be so tragic.'