by Colin Forbes
`Oh, Christ!'
The wave of the Juras hung above them. Verglas. The zigzags were incredible. Newman was constantly turning the wheel. And now they had entered a narrow gulch. Snow banked high on both sides. Beyond reared dark walls of dense fir forest, the branches of trees sagging under the weight of the snow. She reached to turn up the heater and found it already full on. They went on climbing, twisting inside the gulch. The clock on the dashboard registered 19.20 hours. Eight minutes to rendezvous time. They'd never make it.
They went over the top without warning. Swinging round a particularly suicidal bend, the road suddenly levelled out. They started to descend. Lights appeared in the distance. `Le Pont,' Newman said.
A cluster of houses, steep-roofed, spilling down a hillside. The roofs heavy with snow. Wooden balconies at first-floor level. Hardly more than a hamlet. Newman nudged the car past a hotel ablaze with lights. Hotel de la Truite.
`Look!'
Newman pointed up at the hotel. Under the eaves shards of ice a foot long projected downwards. A palisade of icicles. Inverted. The station was little more than a one-storey hut, an isolated building with no one about. The dashboard clock registered 19.26 hours. Newman parked the car beside the building, out of sight of the exit. First, he had swung it through one hundred and eighty degrees – involving a major rear-wheel skid which made Nancy clench her hands. Ready for a swift departure. He left the engine ticking over.
`I want you to take over the wheel,' he told Nancy. 'I'm going to stand near the exit when the train comes in. This could be a trap. If I come running move like a bird when I dive inside – back the way we came. I'm leaving you now – look, the train is coming…'
The train, three small coaches, an abbreviated caterpillar of lights, stopped behind the station – no more than a wayside halt. Newman heard the distinctive sound of a door slamming. A gaunt-faced man, hatless, carrying two suitcases, appeared under the pallid light over the exit. He had a haunted look, calling out in German.
`Newman! Where is the car… I am being followed…'
Two men appeared behind him in the exit. A car driven at high speed came up the road from the direction of Neuchatel- and Berne. Its headlamps swept like searchlights over the station exit. Newman caught a flash of red – red like the Porsche he had seen on the Thun motorway. There was a scream of brakes applied savagely. The barrel of a rifle projected from the driver's window. At the same moment Nancy drove the Citroen round from the side of the station, pulled up, threw open the doors.
`Inside the car, Seidler!' Newman yelled.
He grabbed one suitcase, hurled it on the rear seat, shoved Seidler after it, shut the door and dived into the front passenger seat. The other car was still moving, slithering in a skid on ice as the rifle barrel moved further out of the window. One of the two men following Seidler was pulling something out from inside his coat.
`Move!' Newman shouted at Nancy. 'Back the way we came…'
The rifle was fired, a detonating report above the sounds of both cars' engines. The man hauling something out from inside his coat pocket was thrown backwards as though kicked by an elephant. The rifle spoke a second time. The other man performed a weird pirouette, clutching his chest, then sagging into the snow.
It was incredible marksmanship. Two bullets fired by a man who had to be driving with one hand, operating the rifle with the other, all while his car was recovering from a skid. Two men died. Newman had no doubt that neither had survived the impact of what had sounded like a high-velocity rifle.
Nancy was driving the Citroen across the beam of the other vehicle's headlights, speeding beyond them as she pressed her foot down regardless of the treachery of the ground beneath their wheels. Then the station was behind them and they were going back over their previous route.
`That man behind him pulled out a gun,' Seidler croaked hoarsely.
`I saw it,' Newman replied tersely.
They were approaching the Hotel de la Truite when a black Mercedes swung out from the drive straight across the path of the Citroen. Nancy jammed on the brakes, the car slithered, then stopped. The Mercedes drove on past towards the station.
`Bastard!' Nancy snapped between clenched teeth. `Maybe he's on his way to meet two bodies,' Newman speculated.
Nancy glared at him and started the car moving again. Outside the hotel a pair of skis had been rammed vertically into the ground. During their brief stop Newman had heard singing with a drunken cadence coming from inside the hotel. Death at the station, revelry at the inn. Apres-ski in full swing.
Seidler leaned forward, grasping the backs of their seats.
He stared through the windscreen as though getting his bearings. He spoke suddenly, this time in English for Nancy's benefit.
`Not the left turn to Rolle! Bear right. Take the lakeside road…'
`Do as he says,' Newman said quietly. 'Why, Seidler? I'd have thought this was a good place to leave fast…'
`There is a house on the left-hand side of this road at the foot of the mountain. We talk there… Mein Gott, what was that?'
`It's that helicopter again,' Nancy said, glancing out of her side window. 'If it is the same one. I first heard it when we turned off at Rolle…'
`So did I,' agreed Newman. 'It followed us up the mountain. There are a lot of military choppers floating around…'
`Military?' Seidler sounded alarmed. 'You were followed?'
`Shut up!' Newman told him. 'Just warn us before we reach this house…'
`Keep to the road round the lake before I tell you to stop. Keep the very fast speed…'
`I need directions as to the route, not how to drive,' Nancy replied coldly.
At about three thousand feet the Vallee de Joux nestles inside folds of the Jura Mountains. To their right the lake was a bed of solid ice covered with a counterpane of snow. To the left the mountain slopes were scarred with the graffiti of daytime skiers propelling themselves across the snow. Here and there loomed the silhouettes of two-storey houses constructed of shiny new wood. As a winter ski resort Le Pont was prospering.
`This is it,' Seidler called out, 'just before we arrive in the L'Abbaye village…' He leaned forward again. `Place the car in the garage…'
`Don't,' Newman interjected. 'Drive it under that copse of firs. Back it in if you can – facing the way we're going now.'
`You know something? I might just manage that, Robert…'
Newman's mind was galloping. He had just seen his opportunity. L'Abbaye. Beyond the far end of the lake was Le Brassus. Only a few kilometres beyond Le Brassus was a tiny Douane, a Customs post, thinly manned. And beyond that the road passed into France. The road continued over French soil for another twenty kilometres or so to La Cure. He could even remember the Hotel Franco-Suisse where he had once stayed the night – the strange hotel where you went through the front door still in France and out of the back door into Switzerland! At La Cure they could turn north, continuing into France. That was how he was going to get Nancy out of Switzerland – to safety – tonight.
`Why not the garage?' Seidler complained.
`With the car left outside we can escape quickly – or have you not noticed that chopper is still with us?'
`You have brought the two thousand Swiss francs?' demanded Seidler.
`No. You just put that in because people don't value something they can get for nothing.' Newman turned to face Seidler. 'If you don't want to talk we'll drop you here and drive away. Make up your mind…'
`We go into the house…'
Seidler looked to be near the end of his tether. Haunted eyes, deep in their sockets, stared back at Newman as Nancy skilfully backed the Citroen off the road a short distance up the slope under the firs. She switched off the engine and Newman got out of the car, standing for a moment to stretch his aching limbs.
The two-storey house stood a few yards back from the road on the lower slope. It was old, decrepit and a verandah ran the full length of the ground floor. A short flight of wooden ste
ps led up to the front door and there were balconies in front of the shuttered windows on the first floor. The downstairs windows were also shuttered. Nancy thought it was a grim, eerie-looking place.
The beat of the chopper's motor was louder now the Citroen was silent. Newman craned his neck but it was somewhere behind the copse and going away from them. He slapped his gloved hands round his forearms.
`God, it's freezing,' commented Nancy.
At that height it was Arctic. No wind. Just a sub-zero temperature which was already penetrating Newman's shoes and gloves. Another row of stiletto-like icicles was suspended from the house's gutter. Newman made no effort to help with the two suitcases Seidler carried up the steps.
`Whose place is this?' he asked as Seidler took a key out of his pocket.
`A friend's. He dwells here only in the summertime…'
`Sensible chap…'
To Newman's surprise, the key turned in the lock first time. They entered a huge room which seemed to occupy most of the ground floor. At the far end on the left-hand side a wooden staircase led up to a minstrel's gallery overlooking the room below.
The floor, made of wooden planks, was varnished and decorated with worn rugs scattered at intervals. The furniture was heavy and traditional; old chairs, tables, sideboards and bookcases. Nancy noticed a film of dust lay over everything.
Along the right-hand wall was the only modern innovation – a kitchen galley with formica worktops. She ran a finger along them and it came away black with dust. Opening a cupboard she found it well-stocked with canned food and jars of coffee.
`I will demonstrate at once what this is all about,' Seidler informed Newman in German. 'Please wait here…'
He disappeared through a doorway in the rear wall, dumping one suitcase on the floor and carrying the other. Newman turned to Nancy and shrugged. She asked him what Seidler had said and he told her. Even inside the house with the front door closed it was icy – and they could still hear the chopper in the distance as though it were circling. Nancy opened her mouth and screamed at the top of her voice. Newman swung round and stared at the back of the room.
A hideous apparition had appeared in the doorway through which Seidler had disappeared. Newman understood the scream as he gazed at the man with no head standing there, the man with the blank goggle-eyes of an octopus. Seidler was wearing a gas mask, a mask with strange letters stencilled above the frightening goggle-eyes. CCCP. USSR.
Twenty-Eight
`I brought half-a-dozen consignments of these gas masks over the border… smuggled them across the Austrian frontier from the Soviet depot inside Czechoslovakia.. I speak Czech fluently which helped…'
The words tumbled out of Seidler – like a man who has carried too much locked away in his mind for too long. After the macabre demonstration he had removed the mask and Nancy was now making coffee. She had broken the seal on one of the jars of instant coffee, found a saucepan inside a cupboard and had boiled a pan of water on the electric cooker. Pouring the water into each of three chunky mugs containing some of the coffee, she stirred and then handed them round.
`We need some internal central heating in this ice-box,' she observed. 'And I do wish that bloody chopper would go away…'
Newman heard a car approaching along the icy lakeside road from the direction of Le Pont. The shuttered windows made it impossible to see outside. He ran to the front door and heaved it open – just in time to see the tail-lights of the car vanishing towards Le Brassus. A red car. It was moving like a bat out of hell despite the icy surface. He closed the door again.
`Who employed you for this job, Seidler?'
`You'll write a big story – get it in the international press, expose them… otherwise I'm finished…' 'I'm giving you the scoop of a lifetime…'
Seidler was badly rattled, self-control gone, almost on the verge of hysteria as he rambled on in German. He wore an expensive camel-hair coat, a silk scarf, hand-made shoes. Newman drank some of the scalding coffee before he replied.
`Answer my question – I'll decide how to handle it later. Keep to the point. I think we have very little time left,' he warned in English for Nancy's benefit.
`That car which shot past worries you?' she asked.
'Everything worries me. That car, yes. Plus the Audi, the Saab and the Volvo which kept passing us on our way up here. And that military chopper up there. Add the carnage back at the station and we all have a great deal to worry about. So, Seidler, who employed you? One question at a time…'
`The Berne Clinic. Professor Grange – although mostly I dealt with that brute, Kobler. Grange used me because of my connections inside Czechoslovakia…'
'And how did you obtain these consignments? You can't just walk in and out of a Soviet military depot.'
For the first time a bleak smile appeared on Seidler's cadaverous face. He sat down gingerly on the arm of a large chair as though it might blow up under him. He gulped down some of his coffee, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
'You've heard of the honey-traps the Russian secret police use? They get a girl to compromise someone, take photos…'
I know all about honey-traps. I told you to keep to the point! Any moment now this house may become one of the most dangerous places in Switzerland…'
'This honey-trap worked in reverse. By pure chance. The brilliant Czech they use to operate the computer for stock control at the depot met an Austrian girl on holiday while he was in Prague. He's crazy over her. She's waiting for him in Munich – waiting for him to get out. For that you need money, a lot of it. I provided that money. He provided the gas masks and fiddled the computer…'
'Why does Grange want this supply of Soviet gas masks?'
'To defend Switzerland, of course – and to make another fortune. Seventy per cent of the Swiss population have atom- bunkers they can go to in case of nuclear war. Imagine how many gas masks it would take to equip the same number of people to protect them against Soviet chemical warfare.'
But why have them delivered to the Berne Clinic? The place isn't a factory. I still don't get it…'
'He tests the gas masks there…'
'He does what!'
'Bob,' Nancy interrupted, 'do we have to talk to him here? There's something about this place I don't like…'
The wind had started to rise in the Juras. The timbers of the ancient house began to creak and groan. The place seemed to tremble like a ship in a choppy sea. Newman guessed it was the low temperature – the wood was contracting. During their brief drive from Le Pont he had noticed in the glare of the headlights places on the verge of the road where the snow had melted. The sun must have shone down on the Vallee de Joux; hence the criss-cross of ski-tracks on the slopes. It was the extreme change in temperature which was affecting the old building – plus the onset of the wind.
`We have to talk here,' he said rapidly in English, hoping Seidler would miss his meaning. 'I told you, I think we have very little time. God knows what's waiting for us outside when we do leave…'
`Thank you. You are so reassuring…'
Newman's callousness was deliberate. He was preparing Nancy psychologically for the dash to the French frontier. He continued questioning Seidler.
`How does Grange test the gas masks?'
`He started using animals. I once saw an obscene sight – a chimpanzee escaped. It was wearing a gas mask, clawing at it to try and get it off its head…'
`And then?'
`He decided he had to progress to testing the masks on human beings. He uses the patients – they're terminal, anyway. I arrived late in the Lear jet from Vienna a few weeks ago with the previous consignment. A cock-up at Schwechat Airport outside Vienna. The driver of the van waiting for me at Belp was ill – food-poisoning, he said. I had to take over the wheel and drive to the Clinic well after dark. I saw a woman – one of the patients she must have been – running in the grounds wearing a gas mask and a bathrobe. She was trying to tear off the mask while she ran. They were firing cani
sters from something at her – the canisters burst in front of her…'
`So where do they get the gas from?' Newman demanded.
`How the hell do I know? I certainly never brought any gas out of Czechoslovakia. Luckily they didn't see the van – so I turned it round and arrived at the Clinic later. The Swiss Army is guarding that place…'
`How do you know that?'
`I've caught glimpses of men in Swiss uniform – inside that gatehouse and patrolling the grounds at a distance. We're in real trouble, Newman, the worst kind…'
`What goes on inside that laboratory – and inside the atombunker?'
`No idea. I've never been there…'
`I'm still not convinced. Give me your full name…' `Gustav Manfred Seidler…'
`And you brought these gas masks on the orders of Dr Bruno Kobler of the Berne Clinic?'
`I told you that. Yes. He takes his orders from Grange…' `Seidler, why did you do this?'
Tor money, a lot of money. One other thing, I have a girl-friend in…'
`That's enough!' Newman rapped out.
He walked over to a large arm-chair which stood with its tall back to Seidler who suddenly frowned and crossed the room to stare at the miniature tape-recorder Newman had placed there and turned on during Seidler's brief absence when they first arrived. The German grabbed for it but Newman grasped his arm and shoved him away. Seidler's expression was livid.
`You bastard!' Seidler exploded.
`Part of any self-respecting newspaper man's equipment,' Newman lied as he pressed a button and ran the tape to the end. 'Some take notes, but I thought that might inhibit you…'
`So that was what you bought today in that shop in the Marktgasse,' Nancy commented as she peered over the back of the armchair.