by Peter Watson
‘James Nickerson, thank you very much. That’s all from us for the moment – except for this late news flash. The Elgin Marbles have still not arrived in Greece but, according to news from Piraeus, a Greek tanker passed HMS Anglesey in the Aegean Sea two nights ago and reports that she was “dressed” for an official arrival. In anticipation of this, the Greek government have announced that they are to give Mr William Lockwood a national honour. Now, here is the weather.’
*
The weather in Geneva at last gave signs that summer was about to break after all. In between the fluffy clouds, the sun shone bright and clear.
‘Now, what’s this?’ Edward rubbed his chin. The stubble was a familiar feel these days. Both he and Victoria watched as a blue Renault drew up outside the Helvétique. A man got out, locked the doors and went into the hotel. ‘Relax,’ said Edward. ‘Nothing to do with us.’
The Rue Saint-Léger was busy without being congested. They had watched as the shops opened up one by one. An electrician’s, a charcuterie, a shop selling dolls and toys. There was a café further along the street but Edward was still saying it was too far away to risk going.
‘Look!’ he suddenly whispered. ‘Here they are.’
They both sat up in their seats as Nancy and Zakros came out of the hotel. Each carried an overnight bag and Zakros had some papers in his hands. The man who had arrived in the blue Renault came out with them and stood on the pavement. ‘It’s a rented car. They had it delivered.’ Edward’s fingers drummed the wheel as they watched Zakros open the driver’s door and then throw the bags on to the back seat. ‘So they’re not going to the airport. No one would bother to hire a car for a twenty-minute journey. There has been a change of plan.’
They watched as Nancy got into the passenger seat. The engine was switched on and the car moved off. The man who had delivered the car disappeared back inside the hotel. Edward let the Renault get about three hundred yards away and then followed. The blue car turned right, down a hill, then left on to the Rue Jacques Delcroze which led under two bridges to a large roundabout. At the roundabout the Renault went straight ahead, before turning left on to the Avenue Pictet de Rochemont. This led to the bridge which crossed the Rhône, where it drained out of the lake.
‘They’re going towards the airport,’ breathed Edward.
‘And lots of other places too.’
Across the bridge, the blue car went straight up the Rue Mont Blanc into the Rue Chantepoulet. It turned right at Notre-Dame. ‘The station!’ breathed Edward. ‘We were right all along. They left the stuff here.’ He stopped the red Audi at the edge of the square, facing the station. Nancy and Zakros got out of the Renault, leaving it with its amber hazard lights flashing. They entered the station under a sign which said ‘Livraison des Baggages’ – left luggage.
The square was busy. Buses, cars, taxis and trams all circled slowly, dropping off or picking up. Five minutes passed. ‘Bit of a while, aren’t they?’ Edward bit his lip.
‘Maybe there’s a queue. Shall I look?’
‘I don’t want to show our faces unless we have to. Give it a while longer.’
Five more minutes passed.
‘Okay,’ said Edward. ‘You go, my face is known. Check out the baggage counter. But try not to be obvious.’
Victoria got out of the car and sauntered across the square. There were puddles from the previous day’s rain but they were vanishing rapidly in the sunshine. Edward watched as Victoria hovered outside the left luggage and then, gingerly, went inside. Edward kept his gaze fixed on the doors.
Less than a minute had elapsed when Victoria reappeared. She waved frantically for Edward to hurry over and there was no attempt to be discreet. He put the car in gear, dodged a bus that was entering the square and drove across to the station. He switched off, put on the handbrake and opened the door. He went to speak but Victoria got in first. ‘They’re not here. I asked at the counter – no one like them has picked up any bags in the last half-hour.’
Edward was already running into the main lobby of the station, which opened off the left luggage department. He stood in front of the ‘Arrivals and Departures’ board. Victoria followed him. ‘Nothing has left in the last ten minutes –’
‘The next train is for Zurich – platform three.’
‘Watch the taxis, in case they try to trick us.’ Edward ran along the underpass and up the steps to platform three. He scanned the people waiting. Neither Nancy nor Zakros was among them. He ran back to the front of the station where Victoria was waiting. She shook her head. ‘No sign of them.’
‘Ssshhhugar!’ hissed Edward. ‘They were clever. We thought they were relaxed last night. It was an act! They left the hotel as a lure, to see if someone broke into their room. They probably left the room arranged in such a way that we were bound to disturb something. That told them they were being followed, watched. And it gave them all night to work out a plan to deceive us. They obviously didn’t have time to pick up any of the Blunt stuff – but used the left luggage counter as a delaying device. But if they didn’t take a train, or taxi, what did they do?’
‘Look!’ said Victoria, and pointed.
Edward followed her gaze. At the far end of the station building was a red sign. In white letters it said ‘Alpine’, and then, underneath, ‘Car hire’.
He was already running. He skidded to a halt outside the door of the Alpine office and then walked slowly across to the desk. ‘Has my brother-in-law picked up his car yet?’ he said casually to the woman behind the desk. He gave Zakros’s name. She smiled and said, ‘Oh, you’ve just missed him. They left – oh, five or six minutes ago.’
Edward groaned – but then his manner changed abruptly. He dipped into his inside pocket and took out his wallet. He fished out a hundred-franc note. ‘What sort of car was it and what was the registration number?’ The girl stared at him. This was not brother-in-law behaviour. Edward took another note from his wallet. ‘Quickly!’
A man sitting at a desk overheard this exchange and came towards them. ‘What is it, Monica?’
‘This person wants information about a client.’
The man looked at Edward, then at the notes. He smiled and took the money from the counter. ‘I’ll deal with this.’ He bent to delve in the records. After a moment, he took out a sheet and handed it across to Edward.
Edward scanned the paper. Zakros had rented a Mercedes, white. Edward scribbled down the registration number.
‘They didn’t say where they were going, did they?’
Monica looked across and shrugged. ‘No. Few people do – though they did ask where they might buy maps of France.’
Victoria and Edward hurried back to their car. ‘But where in France?’ she asked of the air in general.
‘First things first,’ said Edward. ‘I’ve just realized – last night, when they reached their hotel, they didn’t know they were being followed, so they must have had the Blunt stuff with them. They probably left it in the hotel strong-room while they went out, just to be on the safe side.’ He started the car and they drove off. ‘They confirmed when they got back that they were being followed – which is why they worked out the plan to drop us.’ He turned left into the Rue Chantepoulet, past the church and back down towards the lake. ‘But they abandoned the bags they took in the blue Renault – they needed to do that to convince anyone following that they were just stopping off at the left luggage.’ The Audi reached the crossroads before the bridge. ‘Therefore they have to go back to the hotel first, to collect the Blunt stuff, before going on anywhere else.’
Edward pulled rapidly away, across the bridge, retracing their route of a few minutes earlier. He was as nippy as he could be but the traffic was heavy and they were trapped several times. When they did reach the Helvétique, it was immediately clear that there was no white Mercedes in the vicinity. Edward stopped the Audi and marched into the hotel lobby. He buttonholed the receptionist they had talked with the night before. ‘Has Dr Quincy le
ft yet?’
‘I believe so – let me ask.’ The man turned and spoke with his colleague.
‘Yes,’ said the colleague. ‘They were shopping, they said, and didn’t want to leave their luggage in the car. But they collected it oh, about fifteen minutes ago. And they paid their bill earlier this morning, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Edward forcing a smile on to his face. He stepped outside with Victoria and got back into the Audi. He was not given to swearing but there was a word Nancy had been fond of. ‘Sonsabitches!’ he hissed.
Victoria opened out the map and spread it over her knees. ‘France! Jesus, there must be five or six ways out of Geneva into France. The place is surrounded by France.’
Edward looked at her, then snatched at the map. He studied it for a few moments.
‘What is it?’
‘You don’t know what you just said.’
‘I don’t?’
Edward handed back the map and started the car. He accelerated up the Rue Saint-Léger and turned right, hurrying back down the hill to the Boulevard Jacques Delcroze. ‘I’m sure I’m right but I’ll explain as we go.’ He turned right at the Rue F. Hodler. ‘Nancy and Zakros couldn’t know they had been rumbled until yesterday evening, when they got back to their room. They couldn’t have known we would get on to them when we did, so they would have had to work out a completely new plan during the night. Even now they may be in the dark about all the details. They must have contacted someone in Greece by now – someone in Kofas’s organization, Stamatis Leondaris’s wife, even if there are no other members of the Brigade. So they found out about the Cessna. As a result of that, perhaps, they set a trap for us. Now they will have put two and two together. They successfully lured us away – and gave us the slip. But they had to come back here, I mean to the hotel. We have confirmed that.’ He slowed at the Boulevard des Tranchées, then accelerated into the Route de Malagnou. ‘Now, the fact that they behaved the way that they did at the railway station proves that they thought they were being followed –’
‘Well, of course –’
‘If you’re being followed, you don’t leave clues as to where you are going.’
‘But they didn’t. Not really. As I said, there are six or seven ways into France from here.’
‘They’re not going to France.’
‘What? How do you know?’
‘I don’t know. I’m guessing. But it’s a good guess. That’s why they asked the woman at the Alpine car rental about maps for France. They wanted to wrong-foot us but in a not too obvious way. There was always the chance that whoever was following them would eventually find their way to Alpine, as we did. So they spread a little gentle confusion.’
‘Then where –?’
‘There are two possibilities. Either they could stay in Switzerland. They could go to ground, here in Geneva, sit still for a few days. But they need to get to a good newspaper and Geneva doesn’t have one. So that means Zurich. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung.’ He pulled out, to pass an enormous Dutch coach. ‘But think about that for a moment. This story isn’t exactly flattering to the Swiss. It reflects badly on Swiss banking laws and on Swiss banks. All that Nazi loot secreted away. Knowing the Swiss, there’s a good chance that the newspaper Nancy and Zakros went to would turn them in, rather than publish anything damaging to their precious banks.’
‘So?’
‘So . . . that leaves the second alternative.’ Edward pointed ahead, at the road sign they were approaching.
‘Chamonix?’ said Victoria. ‘That’s France, too.’
‘Mont Blanc,’ said Edward. ‘The tunnel. It leads to Italy. Italy has plenty of good papers – in Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples. For that matter they can sail to Greece or fly to America from there.’
‘But how can we be so certain?’
‘We can’t. We’ve just got to risk it.’
‘Why not alert the French or Italian police – get them to close the border?’
‘How are we going to convince them over the phone? And without telling them everything? And how long would it take? Chamonix is eighty kilometres away, fifty miles. Motorway for most of it. Thirty-five, forty minutes at the most. We couldn’t even get a helicopter in time – and once they are in Italy they can take any number of roads, abandon their Mercedes and hire something else.’
Victoria lapsed into silence as Edward manoeuvred the car through the Geneva suburbs. In a few moments they reached the border with France. They sailed through. Victoria remarked gloomily, ‘They probably got the same treatment, too.’
Edward pushed the Audi to 190 kilometres per hour, close to a 120 miles an hour, and held it there. Neither spoke. The Mercedes ahead of them was easily capable of the same speed and more. If Nancy and Zakros were worried about being followed – and they must have been apprehensive, at the least – they would certainly have pushed the Merc as fast as it would go. Which meant Edward and Victoria had no chance of catching them. They passed Vetraz and Arenthon. By now the day had cleared gloriously and the sun shone from almost directly in front of them. They passed Bonneville, where the road crossed the river Arve, according to the sign. The valley sides began to close in about them. Towards Cluses the road began to rise, lifted on huge stilts. A temporary roadworks sign loomed.
‘Jesus!’ groaned Victoria. ‘Just what we need.’
‘With luck, it might be exactly what we need,’ replied Edward. ‘Keep your fingers crossed. How far ahead do you think they are? If they are ahead.’
‘Ten, fifteen minutes. Maybe a bit more.’
The temporary road signs showed that the traffic in their direction was crossing to the other side of the divide and that for six kilometres the traffic was two-way. Small plastic poles were inserted in the carriageway every twenty yards or so and overtaking was forbidden. Edward drove fast right behind a lorry labouring up the incline. He was forced to slow to around 40 kilometres an hour, barely 25 mph. Two trucks rumbled past in the opposite direction, then a coach. Immediately afterwards, Edward pulled out. The Audi moved into the other lane, between two of the poles, and Edward changed down. He accelerated past the truck that had been ahead of him, then past another. The driver sounded his horn and flashed his lights. Ahead, a car coming towards them was flashing its lights. Edward pulled back in between two poles and accelerated away from the forward truck.
The next traffic was about half a mile ahead and again he raced up to it, changed down, and pulled out as soon as there was a chance to do so. He passed two coaches, their occupants goggle-eyed as the Audi raced past them. Edward pulled in again when he had to, this time snicking one of the poles which sounded tougher than it was. Looking in the rear-view mirror he could see he had left it bent and bouncing around the road. The forward coach of the two blared its horn. But Edward was accelerating away again. ‘If Nancy and her lover got behind a slow truck we could be making up minutes,’ he breathed grimly. Twice more he slipped the Audi into the oncoming lane. Twice more the other traffic – in both directions – flashed their lights and blared their horns. Once more he hit a pole and sent it careering across the roadway and underneath an oncoming lorry. Had the driver of the lorry braked there might have been the most almighty collision but he had the sense simply to run over the pole and crush it.
Then the roadworks were over and they were crossing the divide, back on to a clear carriageway. Edward edged the Audi dose to 200 kilometres per hour but he could feel it growing less stable; the wheel had a slight tremble. He didn’t let up. They passed Magland and Sallanches. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Quarter to twelve.’
‘How long since Geneva?’
‘Twenty-one minutes, since you ask.’
‘We might have saved . . . four, five minutes on that incline? That still leaves them three or four minutes ahead, a long way on a motorway.’
‘If they came this way in the first place.’
Edward didn’t respond, except to press his foot harder on the accelerator pedal, e
ven though it was already flat against the footwell. They passed Le Fayet and then Servoz. Then a sign which said, ‘Mont Blanc tunnel, 12 km’.
‘Seven miles.’
The valley sides were now very dose to the road and the air felt cooler all of a sudden. Both scanned the road ahead. A sign told them they were coming to the toll area, where they had to pay for the autoroute. ‘Lie back, dose your eyes,’ said Edward.
What –?’
‘Do it!’ At the same time he switched his headlights full on. Ahead of him was a row of seven or eight toll booths and leading back from each of these were lines of cars and caravans, nine or ten vehicles long. Edward pulled over to one side and drove past the lines. He pulled up very dose to the right-hand booth and, at the same time, rolled down his window. To the irate driver of the car next to him he gesticulated to Victoria and shouted: ‘Hôpital! Crise de coeur! Hôpital!’
The driver looked, then beckoned Edward forward.
Waving his thanks, he eased the car in front and stopped by the cashier. As he handed some money to the woman, he said quietly to Victoria. ‘There’s a white Mercedes just gone through. I don’t know whether it’s them or, if it is, whether they’ve seen us.’
The woman gave them their change and Edward sped off. He accelerated, but now the autoroute came down to two lanes and they were blocked behind a caravan. The driver of that took several seconds to pass another, very similar caravan. By the time Edward was free, the traffic was slowing for the border control as they left France.
‘Got it!’ said Victoria. ‘White Mercedes, five cars ahead.’
One by one the cars were waved through the border control without being stopped. As the Audi approached the uniformed passport control officer, however, he waved Edward to a stop.