But all the training had been conducted wearing it, he reminded himself, in balancing argument. And it guaranteed absolutely the accuracy necessary after the first or second shot, because by then the panic would have erupted.
Sighing, Zenin zipped and buckled himself into the vest yet again, rehearsing and adjusting and rehearsing and adjusting, not satisfied until he had achieved the Balashikha minimum of four minutes on three consecutive occasions.
Physically aching, Zenin slumped on to an easier chair, away from the rifle and the tripod but staring fixedly at them, the harness crumpled alongside. One minute ten seconds to loose off the shots, four minutes to disentangle himself, a minute to the door, putting on his jacket as he moved, six minutes to quit the building allowing for the two minutes it had usually taken on his test departures for the elevator to get to the top floor and descend again. Twelve minutes ten seconds. During that time he was sure there would be nothing but panic at the Palais des Nations, no one knowing what was happening or from where, milling about in confused pandemonium. And there was the woman as the decoy, the person whom all the security forces were supposed to believe responsible, not immediately troubling to search further. Zenin smiled at his calculation. He decided he could allow as much as a further three minutes to get clear of the apartment and he already knew how long it would take for him to walk briskly but unhurriedly to the railway terminal. Easily enough time for the Carouge train: later that day, after getting rid of Sulafeh, it would mean his driving the Peugeot there, for it to be waiting when he arrived.
The orders were that he should abandon the car, against the risk of Swiss intelligence carrying out some car-hire sweep after the killings and ensnaring him in the net, but now that he had evolved his method of escape Zenin doubted the necessity. He’d leave the final decision until later but the Russian saw no reason why he should not return the vehicle on the due date and leave the country quite ordinarily. But not by air, initially. He’d wait a day or two — not in Bern but somewhere else, Zurich perhaps because it was conveniently north — and then cross the border into Germany by train. He had no need for an airport until Amsterdam, for the connection back to Moscow, so Zenin thought he might continue by rail right into Holland. But not in one journey. He’d break it in Germany: Munich, maybe. He’d never been to Germany and considered he would deserve a short vacation, after it was all over. And it would not strictly be an indulgence. His training was to work in the West, so the more exposure he got in the different countries the better he would be able to carry out the assignments.
Aware of the appointment with Sulafeh, Zenin shifted at last, going back to the guncase still containing the Browning with which she was to be supplied. Her obvious excitement by violence concerned him: she could not be relied upon to have it today, he determined. It would have to be a last minute hand-over. There was the need anyway for them to meet briefly on the actual day in the event of there being schedule changes so it could be done then.
Zenin closed the bag and arranged the harness more tidily over the rifle, like a dust cover. He carefully pulled the already concealing curtains and looked briefly around the apartment, ensuring he had forgotten nothing, before removing the wedges from beneath the door. He stared uncertainly at them for a moment, realizing that by not using them he could reduce by at least thirty seconds — maybe a whole minute — the time it would take him to leave the apartment, after the shooting. Something else to be decided on the day, he thought, putting them neatly side by side on the table.
Zenin was customarily early at the cafe on the Rue de Coutance he had given Sulafeh as a meeting place, wanting his usual satisfaction that it was safe, not approaching it until he saw her arrive without any pursuit — and unflustered like she had been the previous day — and settle herself at a window table.
She smiled up eagerly when she saw him approach, reaching out for his hand to pull him down into the chair opposite.
‘It worked!’ she announced at once.
‘Tell me.’
‘All hell was breaking loose when I got back to the hotel last night,’ said the woman. ‘Some passer-by had found Dajani in the alley. His accreditation, too, so it didn’t take long for the police to notify the delegation. They even interviewed me!’
‘The police!’ said Zenin.
‘There was no problem,’ she said, reassuringly. ‘They just asked me what the arrangement was and I said we were going to dine as colleagues but that he did not turn up. Zeidan sat in on the interview and confirmed that I had called, asking about Dajani …’ She smiled. ‘I agreed last night that having me call him was clever, didn’t I?’
Her coquettishness irritated him. ‘Was it only the police!’ he demanded.
Sulafeh retreated, as she always did. She said: ‘Of course, darling! It was just routine!’
‘How routine!’ he persisted.
‘Just like I said it was. Zeidan confirmed that I had called: said — like he told me — that he thought it had been a misunderstanding and didn’t bother to do anything. That he hadn’t worried about it until they, the police, arrived.’
‘How much questioning was there about what you were doing?’
‘None,’ insisted Sulafeh. ‘I said that after telephoning I went to another cafe, had a meal, walked around Geneva and then went back to the hotel. Where I found the police waiting for me.’
‘Did they ask which cafe?’ said Zenin, realizing another possible oversight.
‘No.’
‘Or for any proof of your eating there?’
‘They don’t suspect me!’ insisted Sulafeh, in weak defiance. ‘They’re putting it down to a street mugging: embarrassing in the circumstances, maybe, but just a mugging.’
Why hadn’t he thought of the need to identify a cafe other than the bistro! Because he’d become sexually involved and failed to be as objective to the degree of removed sterility to which he had been trained. No more, Zenin determined. And never again.
‘What else?’ he asked.
Sulafeh sniggered, coquettish again. ‘Guess what Zeidan said, afterwards?’
‘What?’ responded Zenin, forcing the patience.
‘He said there was no possibility of bringing anyone else in to replace Dajani,’ recounted Sulafeh. ‘That he was sorry if there had been any misunderstanding between us and that he had the greatest admiration for me as a linguist. And that he was sure I could take over the sole responsibility, demanding though it might be!’
Zenin forced his cynical laugh. ‘So it worked,’ he said.
‘I am back where I should be, for the picture session,’ she announced, almost proudly. ‘It’s all right now.’
Zenin relaxed, just slightly. ‘Good,’ he said, distantly. ‘Very good.’ Now everything could work as it was designed to work: it would be all right, like she said.
‘The police told me something, during the interview,’ announced Sulafeh.
‘What!’ said Zenin again, feeling his tension rise.
‘About Dajani,’ she said. ‘Do you know what you did to him? You broke his pelvis.’
‘Did I?’ said the Russian, in apparent innocence.
‘He really won’t need those condoms again for a long time, will he!’
Zenin realized the direction of her conversation and did not want to follow it. He said: ‘Does the translator change involve anyone at the conference?’
She shook her head. ‘It was made public today at the Palais des Nations, on an adjustment of representation order: there was no reaction whatsoever, apart from a few ridiculous expressions of sympathy for the randy bastard.’
It seemed he had got away with it, thought Zenin. He said: ‘We’ll need to meet tomorrow, for you to tell me of any last minute changes.’
‘When do I get the gun?’ she demanded, eagerly.
‘Then.’
‘Why not today?’
‘Too dangerous,’ he refused. ‘There could be a spot check, even though you’ve made friends with the security people.
Someone could go through your room. Better to leave it until the very last moment.’
‘I have to be at the Palais des Nations by eight-thirty.’
‘It will have to be before.’
‘Shall I come to the apartment?’
‘No!’ said Zenin, too anxiously. He’d taken his last chance with the woman: from this moment on it was distancing time. Less forcefully, not wanting to upset her, he said: ‘I told you yesterday we’ve got to protect the mission: nothing else matters now until that is all over.’
‘We’ve still got to make arrangements for afterwards,’ she said.
‘One step at a time,’ Zenin insisted, thinking. The railway terminal was an obvious meeting place but they had used that almost too much; and it was the route he had chosen for his escape, so it would be definitely wrong to be seen there with her. A hotel then. He said: ‘Do you have a list of the delegation hotels?’
‘Yes,’ she said, bending to the large briefcase and handing it to him.
Zenin ran through the list, from the Beau-Rivage and the Des Bergues and the President and the Bristol and then smiled up: ‘On the Quai Terretini there’s the Du Rhone: it’s on the way you will take, from your hotel to the conference. I will be in the foyer at seven.’
‘What do I do?’
‘If there are any changes to the schedule just hand me the sheets.’
‘The gun!’
‘And I’ll give you the gun,’ promised Zenin, patiently.
‘And afterwards?’
‘You’ve got a city map?’
‘I bought one the first day.’
‘Memorize where the Rue de Vermont connects with the Rue de Montbrilliant,’ instructed Zenin. ‘There will be immediate panic, when the shooting starts. Get away from the garden and out of the international area at once and go to that connecting point.’
‘I understand,’ said Sulafeh, intently.
‘I will already be waiting there. The car is a blue Mercedes, numbered 18-32-4. You got that?’ said Zenin. The Peugeot was brown, the number was 19-45-8 and it would anyway be at Carouge, awaiting his arrival off the train.
‘Blue Mercedes, licence number 18-32-4,’ Sulafeh recited, trustingly.
‘Where would you like to go?’ asked the Russian.
‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘Anywhere, as long as it’s with you.’
Playing the part, Zenin reached across the table, covering her hand with his. ‘You’re going to be,’ he promised.
‘Please let’s go to the apartment now,’ she said. ‘I want you!’
‘I thought you wanted the gun, just as much?’ said Zenin, the excuse already formulated.
‘I don’t understand,’ said the woman.
‘The weapons aren’t here in Geneva,’ lied the Russian. ‘I’ve got to get them. There isn’t time for the apartment today.’
Zenin walked from the cafe to collect the car from the railway terminal, relieved to be away from the claustrophobia of Sulafeh’s attention. He took the south route out of the city, the lake grey and stretched away to his left, picking up the Carouge signpost almost at once. This time tomorrow, he thought, it would all be over. He was beginning to feel excited: excited but not nervous.
David Levy made the demand as soon as he entered the office of Brigadier Blom in the Geneva safe house. Roger Giles was already there and said he thought it was a good idea, as well.
‘I’ve arranged the tour for the security services of the participating countries,’ said Blom, stiffly. ‘That’s all.’
‘What harm would it do for Charlie Muffin to come along?’ asked Levy.
‘He has no cause or reason to be there.’
‘Or not to be, by the same token,’ pointed out the American. ‘I’d actually like him along.’
‘So would I,’ said Levy. ‘We’re all convinced it’s a false alarm. Let’s show him the protection is more than adequate, whatever happens.’
Charlie responded at once to Blom’s telephone call, nodding as the man extended the invitation.
‘Thought you’d never ask,’ said Charlie.
Chapter Thirty-three
They swept up to the Palais des Nations in Blom’s official car and were gestured straight through the criss-cross barriers and on into the conference complex. The vehicle stopped at the front entrance, where another man in uniform who was never introduced saluted the brigadier smartly and nodded to Levy, Giles and Charlie, all of whom nodded back.
‘Central control first,’ announced Blom.
The uniformed man led into the main building and along a wide, sweeping corridor where other uniformed security guards were obvious and very visible: one group were actually looking through a bag being carried by a woman in one of the side offices as they went by. There was an average of two men in each group carrying handheld metal detectors.
The control room was on the second floor, its entrance guarded. The man came smartly to attention, opening the door as they approached for them to enter unhindered. It was a large, circular room, its walls lined in serried rows with television monitors in front of which sat operators manipulating banks of camera adjustments and sound switches. The camera placings inside the huge conference chamber ensured no part of it was unobserved. The corridor along which they had earlier walked was also well covered, as well as the entry area where the delegation leaders would be received. Externally the cameras were clustered over the entrance area, so that every section of the approach was displayed, and further cameras were installed around the building to give practically a complete view of the grounds outside. The special area where the commemorative photographs were to be taken had a separate camera grouping, supplying three different monitors with visibility almost as good as that in the conference room. Blom handed each of them the final, definitive conference schedule.
Charlie accepted it but did not look at it. Instead he said: ‘If any of these operators see something suspicious what is the system for them to raise any alarm?’
Blom’s unidentified aide indicated telephones in front of each operator and said: ‘They are direct lines to security control.’
‘Does security control have a matching monitor system?’ demanded Charlie.
‘No.’
‘So a verbal description has to be given of whatever appears suspicious: and where it’s happening has also got to be verbally described?’ persisted Charlie.
‘Each man — the operator here and the security supervisor in their section — work from identical, grid-divided maps,’ came in Blom. ‘The location is instantaneous: the system has been extensively practised and works very satisfactorily.’
‘How long, from the moment of picking up a telephone in this room, until someone from security gets to the designated spot on the map?’ asked Levy.
Blom looked to the assistant, who hesitated. Then he said: ‘Five minutes.’
A guess if ever he’d witnessed one, thought Charlie. He said: ‘You think you’d have five minutes in a real security emergency situation?’
‘No doubt you’ve got a superior suggestion,’ said Blom, sarcastically.
‘What about a sound alarm, a klaxon?’ said Charlie. Was it all a waste of time? he wondered. Or might it just stir some reaction? Whatever, he supposed he had to try, if only for his own satisfaction.
‘A klaxon has no other practical benefit beyond making a noise and alarming people without letting them know where the danger is,’ rejected Blom.
‘Making a noise has a very practical benefit,’ disputed Charlie. ‘It makes your villain run.’ He nodded to the other two security chiefs next to him. ‘And they don’t need initially to know where the danger is, just that there is danger and that they’d better throw a cordon around the people they’re supposed to be protecting.’
‘This is a system that has been perfected over a number of years and never found to be wanting,’ insisted Blom.
‘How many potential security disasters has it averted?’ asked Giles.
‘There h
ave been a number of alarms,’ said Blom.
‘False alarms or real alarms?’ asked Levy.
‘Fortunately there has never been a real danger,’ conceded Blom.
The American appeared to be coming over like Levy, thought Charlie. How much real pressure were either prepared to exert, though? He said: ‘So it’s never been properly tested in real circumstances? Just practise and false alarms?’
‘I’ve not the slightest doubt it will work as it is designed to do in any real situation,’ said Blom. He paused, looking directly at Charlie. ‘Which we’ve yet to confront,’ he added.
Any discussion with Blom was like making rude faces at himself in the mirror, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Is this it? Just this television surveillance and the physical security checks?’
‘All the bomb checks have been carried out. Every member of every support staff had been vetted,’ assured Blom.
‘That wasn’t what I was immediately thinking about,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you intend having aerial surveillance, from helicopters, while the conference is on?’
There was the briefest of pauses. Blom said: ‘There is a helicopter provision within the complex.’
‘Will there be helicopters in the air?’ asked Giles, coming out even more strongly with demands upon the Swiss.
‘If it is considered necessary,’ conceded Blom.
‘While we’re talking about it, what about air space?’ said Levy.
Blom experienced yet again that stomach-sinking sensation of things moving too quickly away for him to be able to grasp. ‘Air space?’ he asked, weakly.
‘Is the entire overflight area being closed to commercial aircraft?’ asked the Israeli.
‘It will be,’ promised Blom, with increasing discomfort.
Charlie indicated the group of screens showing the approach and entrance areas and said: ‘Five manholes, I’ve just counted them. Are they sealed?’
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