Packer had closed his eyes. ‘One of the Ruler’s men also saw you up at the Gotschnagrat,’ he said feebly.
‘He’ll never recognize me — not the way I was dressed.’
‘What did you do with the radio?’
‘Don’t worry, nobody’ll find it until the snow melts.’
‘Did you leave any fingerprints?’ he asked desperately, playing for time now.
‘Don’t be silly. You don’t think I’d go up the mountain without gloves, do you?’ She signalled for the bill. Packer made a belated attempt to intervene, but she had already got her purse out. It seemed a depressingly final gesture.
‘When are you coming back to London?’
‘I don’t know.’ She slid off her stool and stood facing him, their eyes level. ‘I’m sorry, Owen, but it’s all over. I can’t explain properly — and anyway, you’ve got to go. It’s too dangerous for us to stay together. And that business with the necklace last night, well —’ her voice filled with sudden righteousness — ‘that’s just something I can’t forget. I’m sorry. But there it is. Now, can you give me a lift — just down to the town? I can’t walk,’ she added, ‘because you’ve got all my cases in the car, remember?’
She stood beside him, waiting. Packer could think of nothing to say: nothing sensible nor dramatic, not even outraged pleading came to his lips. He sat staring at the pool of melted snow that had spread out under his boots on the floor.
‘Come on,’ she said.
He followed her dumbly, through the crowds, into the street outside which lay in the shadow of the mountain, filled with a macabre carnival air, its music a cacophony of sirens and motor horns. He unlocked the car and they got in. ‘Well, where to?’
‘The Chesa. I’ve got to meet DJ there in half an hour.’ She paused as he started the engine. ‘Don’t try to come in. It won’t do any good.’
He did an angry three-point turn, oblivious of the crowds. ‘You’re going to have one hell of a time getting to St Moritz,’ he said at last; ‘if you get there at all.’
‘That’s all right. Jo Knox-Partington’s got a private helicopter laid on.’
‘You think you’ll get air clearance with all this going on? They’ve got half the Swiss air force up there at the moment.’ He was driving on his brakes, his hand on the horn, weaving and jolting through the crowds.
‘Oh well, if we don’t,’ Sarah said lightly, ‘we’ll just have to go by car. It won’t matter getting there late — it’s an all-night party.’ They had reached the main street where there was an almost unbroken convoy of traffic moving in the direction of the Wolfgang-Davos road. ‘I’m sorry about Sammy,’ she added. ‘But he wasn’t really much of a friend of yours, was he? Still, it was a horrible thing to happen.’
Packer said nothing. He shot forward into a gap between two cars, and pulled up outside the Chesa Grishuna Hotel; got out, unlocked the boot, and after pushing Ryderbeit’s gigantic bag to one side, lifted out Sarah’s cases and laid them in the snow. When he looked up, she was standing in front of him, her little mittened hand held out.
‘Goodbye, Owen.’
He breathed in, and nodded. ‘You’ll be getting in touch with Charles Pol, of course?’
‘I expect so.’
Then he lost his temper; grabbed her arm and jerked her round. ‘Did Pol pay you ten per cent down, and the rest when the Ruler was dead? Just to get up there on the mountain and say half a dozen words into a radio? While Sammy and I take all the risks and do the job — and Sammy gets killed doing it — and you choose this moment to run out on us, just to enjoy some bloody uppercrust jamboree where you can pick up a millionaire or two!’
She managed to wriggle free and stepped back, white-faced, the lipstick smeared like blood at the corner of her mouth. ‘Well, that’s it! That’s the end! Absolutely the end. Now go away — go away and don’t ever try to see me again.’
She turned and began to give instructions to a porter who had appeared from the hotel. Packer slammed the Fiat boot shut and stood for a moment watching Sarah’s trim little figure walking into the porch of the Chesa, her head high and her Gucci bag swinging at her side. Then he got back into the car.
He drove almost without seeing, without swerving, relying on his horn and his headlamps. The crowds scattered, leaping out of his way and howling abuse after him. He parked outside the Vereina and stumbled back towards the bar.
There was a man on the stool where Sarah had been sitting. Packer stood at the bar without looking at him. The voices all round him were thumping at his head, so that he had to lean forward and put his hands over his ears to prevent himself from screaming.
A hand closed round his wrist and pulled his arm down. ‘Hello, soldier. You look all in.’
CHAPTER 22
‘She’d got her claws well into you, hadn’t she? You poor bastard.’
‘I loved her,’ Packer said, in a cold dead voice.
‘You’re well out of it, soldier. Over the wall, I call it.’
‘I still love her.’
Ryderbeit cackled. ‘Don’t be bloody soft! What do you plan on doing? Running down to the Chesa and duffing up that Arcy-James bastard, then carrying the maiden off on your white steed to faraway parts?’ He slapped Packer on the shoulder. ‘What you need is a bloody good drink.’
‘Maybe I do.’ For the first time Packer realized how thirsty he was. Ryderbeit was back on a triple Scotch and had lit up one of his coronas. His ordeal, which he had briefly described to Packer, had left him uncannily calm.
‘What upsets me is the way she used us,’ Packer said bleakly.
‘Shit! She didn’t use us — we used her. And Charlie Pol used all of us. But enough of your Miss Sarah bloody Laval-Smith. She’s history. We’ve got to think of ourselves now. My route’s blocked — no trains while they bring up the rescue teams. It’ll have to be the car. What’s your reckoning on how long they’ll take to put up road blocks?’
‘Well, there was a chopper on the spot right away — but my guess is they’ll be looking for a party of the Ruler’s compatriots, or for some of his Arab neighbours. They can’t detain every tourist in Klosters and Davos.’ He called to the barman for Ryderbeit’s bill, and bought a couple of bottles of Apfelsaft for the journey.
‘Come on, let’s go.’
The road down to Landquart was an almost continuous queue of traffic both ways. At intervals police cars stood with flashing blue beacons, but no one was as yet inspecting any vehicles going down except for the odd casual glance.
Ryderbeit chuckled. ‘If any of those Arabian fat cats are holidaying up here, I guess they’re likely to spend a nice few hours with the boys in grey!’
‘We haven’t considered the Ruler’s own boys,’ said Packer.
‘They’ll probably be running around chasing their tails. With the big bossman dead, they’ll be like a swarm of bees when the queen’s been knocked off.’
Packer nodded dubiously, as a policeman waved them on. ‘I suppose you’re right. The chain of command goes back to Mamounia, and I doubt there’s anyone big enough here to take any immediate decisions. They’ll be too busy worrying about him being dead.’
‘Holy Moses, he’s dead all right!’ Ryderbeit said, and settled back in his seat to light another cigar.
It took them nearly four hours to cover the forty kilometres to Landquart; but here the traffic suddenly dispersed as they joined the stretch of autoroute past Sargans, on the main road to Zürich.
‘Are we clean?’ said Ryderbeit at last.
Packer glanced again in the mirror. ‘For the moment.’
Ryderbeit sat stroking his hairless chin. ‘When it comes to a diversion, soldier, an avalanche takes a lot of beating.’ He paused, then gave a shout. ‘Holy Moses, we’ve been forgetting something!’ And he switched on the radio above his knees, pressing several buttons until he found a channel in French.
The voice was speaking with the hurried, improvised tone of an announcer whose scheduled progra
mmes have been cancelled, to make way for up-to-the-minute news flashes. Full details of the avalanche were still uncertain, although it was officially confirmed that at least thirty people were dead and many more missing.
After a number of contradictory interviews with eye witnesses, the announcer broke in with an official bulletin:
‘The authorities are also investigating the report of two shots, which witnesses heard fired a few seconds before the avalanche commenced. It has not been established where these shots came from, or who was responsible, but rumours that they were fired by soldiers of the Swiss army on local manoeuvres have been rigorously denied by the military authorities. The police, meanwhile, are conducting intensive investigations. We will be bringing you further instant coverage of the Davos-Klosters catastrophe as soon as we receive news.’
The voice gave way to rather unseemly light music. Ryderbeit said, ‘That’s bloody weird. You know what? Somebody’s put the muzzle on. Now I can understand the Ruler being able to swing the lead out here, but how the hell do those underlings up in the chalet get the cops to clam up on his murder?’
‘Could be they’re worried about the publicity. Remember, these Swiss’ll go to any lengths to protect their tourist trade. Just look how they covered up on that cholera epidemic in Zermatt a few years ago.’
‘Sounds just a trifle too pat for me, soldier.’
They drove for some time in silence, reaching the end of the strip of autoroute, where they rejoined the main road along the edge of Lake Walensee.
There was no other traffic in sight, and Packer was cruising at ninety kmph when he rounded a bend on the dark lakeside and saw in his headlamps, directly in front of him, the back of an unlit panel-truck. He twitched the wheel to the left and slammed on the brakes, throwing Ryderbeit out of his seat and crushing his cigar in a shower of flaming ash against the windscreen.
The Fiat’s wing clipped the rear corner of the truck, and Ryderbeit yelled, ‘Bastard! Don’t stop — it’s his own bloody fault!’
But Packer had to stop. He felt the whole car nimble and the power-steering began to swerve wildly under his hands. The car was slewing across the road in a bumpy skid, away from the lakeside, and stopped with a violent jolt against the left-hand bank. Ryderbeit yelled, ‘Lights — out!’ — and as Packer groped for the switch, Ryderbeit slid down on his knees and grabbed Packer round the waist. ‘Down!’
Packer squeezed himself beneath the wheel, kneeling under the dashboard. ‘Easy,’ Ryderbeit whispered. ‘We’ll get out my door — then lie flat as a corpse.’
As he spoke, there was a crack and a splintering of glass. The rear window smashed and something thumped into the back of Packer’s seat. Ryderbeit had his door wedged half-open against the bank and slithered out. Packer followed, his hands touching frozen mud. Too late he remembered his gloves in the back of the car.
The darkness was almost total, as he slid down into an icy ditch. Ryderbeit had moved off silently into the night, and the only sound now was the distant hum from the autoroute. Then, almost simultaneously, there were two cracks from ahead, followed by the clink of the Fiat’s shatterproof windshield. Packer had seen no muzzle-fire, but guessed that the shots had come from their side of the road, opposite the dark blur of the panel-truck which he could just make out, about fifty feet away.
Ryderbeit’s whisper reached him out of the darkness ahead. ‘You stay put. The car’ll give you cover for the moment.’ As he spoke a pair of headlamps swept round the bend, throwing the panel-truck into hard relief, and dazzling them both as they pressed themselves flat into the icy mud of the ditch.
It was a TIR lorry with a trailer, and going slow enough to just manage to swerve out from behind the unlit panel-truck. Its airhorn bellowed with fury, but it roared on, its eight double tyres covering Packer with a freezing spray. Its headlamps had given Packer a glimpse of Ryderbeit, now halfway between the Fiat and a point level with the panel-truck, moving, belly flat in the mud, with the rhythm of a snake. At the same time, Packer had made out the silhouette of a shelving buttress ahead, probably a duct leading down into the ditch.
For a moment a deep black quiet closed round them; then the darkness was sliced by two more glares of light — stationary this time — and, without looking up over the edge of the ditch, Packer knew that they came from the panel-truck. Both beams were centred on the Fiat.
There was a short pause. Packer pulled himself along on his elbows, until he was a safe distance from the double beam, then took another quick look over the edge. A big squat man was moving forward along the lakeside, shoulders hunched, holding something against his stomach. He made no sound.
He passed level with where Packer was lying and came within a few yards of the Fiat; paused, then ducked across the road. Packer lowered his head and heard a couple of loud popping noises and a tinkle of glass as the truck’s headlamps went out. Packer had forgotten all about Ryderbeit’s little ‘lady’s gun’.
He was already out of the ditch, still with a clear impression in his mind of where the man had been standing. He lifted one foot and took a step forward, resting his heavy ski boot down as gently as though he were walking on glass. He still could not see the man, but he could sense him. He could feel that tense bulk of bone and flesh standing a few feet away, gripping his gun with both hands and wondering what to do. In a second he would decide: deprived of the light, he’d either take cover behind the Fiat, or more likely make a dash back to the truck.
In that second, Packer moved. He lunged forward with his arms flung out, fingers rigid, and heard a shuffle in the dark as his elbow collided with something solid and padded. He turned, measuring the distance by instinct, then kicked out his right boot with all his force, feeling the man’s shins collapse under him.
There was a howl and the leather-clad body crashed against him. The next moment Packer was holding the man up, and could smell the garlic on his gasping breath, together with a thick honey-scented hair oil. His left hand reached down for the gun; but the man had remembered it too, and brought it up with a painful smack against Packer’s wrist.
Packer chopped his right hand down on the man’s forearm and jabbed his knee up into his groin. Both blows connected, though the man’s heavy coat protected him from the worst injury. Packer kicked him again, quickly, on both shins, then, applying all the strength in his frozen hands, he wrenched down the man’s wrist. But the man did not let go. He was immensely strong. The gun was pointing harmlessly at the road, when there was the sound of another car behind them. A moment later the shape of his opponent began to form out of the darkness.
Packer calculated that he had perhaps three clear seconds in which to disengage himself from this indecent embrace in the middle of the road, as well as to neutralize the gun. The headlamps were growing brighter and the noise of the approaching car drowned the man’s short heavy breathing. Packer tightened his left hand round the gun wrist, kicked again, savagely at the kneecap, and squeezed off the man’s scream by locking his right hand round the side of his neck and pressing his thumb down.
The car was 100 yards away and the man was beginning to squirm, giving out a high-pitched rasping sound, like a rusty ratchet. In the glow from behind, Packer could see the saliva bubbling at the edges of his clenched lips.
He squeezed harder, feeling the stiff rubbery artery flattening under the pressure; then something heavy hit the side of his boot and clattered on to the road. Still without letting go of the man’s wrist or neck, Packer kicked the gun into the ditch. As he did so, the man collapsed.
Packer was hauling his dead weight to the side of the road when the car reached them. It had slowed down and the driver had opened his window. ‘II y a un accident?’ he called.
‘Rien de sérieux,’ Packer replied. He smiled and imitated the motion of drinking.
The man in the car smiled back, rolled up his window, and drove on.
Packer bundled the gunman’s inert body face-down into the ditch, groped about in the mud, a
nd finally retrieved the man’s weapon — a heavy long-barrelled .38. The safety catch was off and he marvelled that it had not fired during their struggle.
Now he was ready. He turned and began to run, with long crouching steps, again in pitch darkness, down the bed of the ditch towards the invisible buttress ahead. The question now was how many were there? The only way to find out was to draw their fire, and pinpoint the muzzle flashes.
There was no sign of Ryderbeit. When Packer calculated he was halfway to the duct, he threw himself flat and called quietly, ‘Sammy!’
From the darkness ahead came a faint slithering. ‘Soldier?’ Ryderbeit appeared, serpent-like, beside him. ‘You get him?’
‘Yes. And his gun.’
Ryderbeit reached out and ran his fingers over the weapon. ‘Nice. Nice, soldier! Where is he?’
‘In the ditch by the car, sleeping. What about your boy?’
‘Nowhere. Vanished. Bloody ghost man.’
They ducked down as another car swept round the bend and passed, this time without slowing down.
‘There must be more than one,’ Packer said, his lips almost touching Ryderbeit’s ear. ‘They’d never pull a stunt like this single-handed.’
‘Yeah, but where is the bastard? The only cover he’s got is here and the truck — and I’ve checked both.’
‘Maybe we’ve scared him off. Anyway, no point in hanging around. Let’s have a look at the Fiat.’
‘We won’t be using that Fiat again,’ Ryderbeit said, and Packer felt something sharp prod into his chest. He took hold of what felt like a length of heavy chain, but instead of links, it was made up of barbed spikes welded into double crosses. At the end of it was a length of cord.
‘I found it under the truck,’ said Ryderbeit. ‘An old trick. You must have seen it dozens of times. Throw it across the road just as the car’s coming — all four tyres Kaput — then haul it back in before anything else comes past. Still, at least we’re breathing. Let’s get our luggage out before the sightseers start getting here.’ He had already pushed past Packer and was moving back down the ditch.
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