The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that the helicopter was Drabble’s blind spot. He was counting on it to pick his people up at a given spot at a given time, but if the Wessex went unserviceable and had to back off at the last minute, then all the hostages in the world wouldn’t help him to overcome that hurdle. Such a last-minute hitch might not throw Drabble but he wondered if the rest of the team were as resolute; a set back at that precise moment might well crack their morale and then Drabble would have his hands full holding them together, and if he was so distracted, then the risk to David’s life would be diminished accordingly. Harper made a mental note to cease referring to him as David. The use of his Christian name made for emotional involvement and he had to remain detached and aloof if he was going to see the situation in its true perspective.
He knew that in the end he would have to refer the problem to the Minister of State but when he did, Harper wanted to be able to so advise him that the final decision would go his way. At the moment, it certainly wouldn’t because the scales were tipped one way. The only certain factor was that a boy stood to lose his life and the reverse side of the coin was anyone’s guess. The Minister would insist on an accurate assessment of the danger to national security and Harper could only hazard a wild guess, and in those circumstances the Minister would naturally go for what amounted to a sell out.
He buzzed Miss Nightingale and asked her to connect him with Edward Julyan. Sometimes a person who was not close to the problem could see things with a clearer eye, and what better person to consult than an old acquaintance holding a similar position to his own?
The phone rang, and answering it, he heard Miss Nightingale say, ‘You’re through,’ and then Julyan said, ‘Good afternoon, Cedric, to what do I owe the pleasure?’
Harper said, ‘Let’s go to secure speech.’ He pressed the button on the scrambler, waited for a second or two and then said, ‘It’s the same old problem, I’m afraid.’
‘Tarrant?’
‘In a way. I can nail Drabble and the defector but the boy may well be killed in the process.’
‘Do you know who the defector is?’ Julyan said calmly.
‘No—if I did, there would be no problem. I’d grab him before he had the chance to join up with Drabble. My quandary is should I risk a boy’s life on the assumption that a bigger issue is at stake?’
Harper waited for an answer, and the break in the conversation seemed to go on and on. ‘Are you still with me?’ he said quietly.
‘Yes, I’m thinking,’ said Julyan. There was another pause, shorter this time, before he said, ‘In your place, I would dump the problem in the Minister’s lap; it should be his decision. I’m sorry not to be more helpful but that is the only advice I can give you.’
‘Two heads are better than one,’ Harper said vaguely, ‘and at least you have confirmed my own view of the situation. Thank you for listening so patiently.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ said Julyan.
Harper replaced the phone and sat back in his chair. Idly, he picked up the scrap of paper on which Tarrant had listed those on the General Purpose Intelligence Committee whom he knew in varying degrees. In view of what had happened since Sunday, it was ironic to see that amongst those graded as virtual strangers were Poppleton, Julyan, the Director of Naval Intelligence and himself. His eyes went to the clock on the wall and he drew some satisfaction from the knowledge that there was no pressing need as yet to approach the Minister and he decided to wait and see what happened. It was hardly an inspiring policy but it had its points.
*
McKee’s little army was beginning to muster slowly but surely. Now that Silk and Calvert had joined him at Hillglade Farm, only the man known to McKee by the code word ‘Drabble’ remained at large and he, of course, was the key figure, for without him the whole enterprise would become a barren and sterile affair. They were approaching the crucial stage when their security would reach its lowest point and they would become vulnerable. In less than three hours McKee and Julyan would meet face to face for the first time ever, and all the weeks of careful planning and preparation would come to fruition only if Julyan had the nerve to go through with it. In his own mind, McKee was satisfied that until now, he personally had left nothing to chance. The risks had been calculated before each stage of the plan had been implemented, and only in the matter of procuring the arms and the explosives had they been treading on dangerous ground.
The plastic explosive had been obtained from French Army sources during the previous February and, following a short visit to Paris during the Easter holiday, had been smuggled back to England by Calvert lashed to the chassis members of his car. Part of the consignment had been earmarked for the total destruction of Goring and Findon while the remaining seven pounds had been stored at Hillglade Farm. The acquisition and storing of the small arms had posed a number of security problems, since unlike explosives, they were not only harder to come by but were also easier to trace through the registration number stamped on the breech of each weapon. Rather than approach an Arms broker direct, Jarman, acting on instructions, had placed an order with the contractor and later, Silk had collected the merchandise from a safe drop and had stored them at his place until they were required.
They had taken care to ensure that at no stage had the defector been placed in jeopardy and McKee could only hope that the same consideration had been shown to them, because they were as good as dead if the man had been stupid enough to attract the attention of the British Security Services. It was the one phase of the operation over which McKee had no control, and knowing this, he drank a little more of Burroughs’ whisky and tried to relax while he waited for the phone to ring.
It rang some twenty minutes later just as he was beginning to think that something had gone terribly wrong.
Ruth Burroughs said, ‘It went off very well. He spent about two hours looking round the Hall and then Paul spoke to him on the telephone at Thorpe Langton a few minutes ago.’
‘How did he sound over the phone?’
‘Paul said he seemed agitated.’
‘Good. If he stays worried he will do as he’s told.’
‘Do we come back now?’
McKee checked the time. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you do that.’ He planned to keep Tarrant running for a while longer yet before he allowed Calvert and Silk to make contact with him. He thought it unlikely that Harper had fixed a bleeper to the car because there was no evidence that Tarrant was being followed, but he intended to make quite sure. He finished his whisky and then went up to the bedroom to change.
McKee opened the chest of drawers and picked out the striped tie. It was, he thought, typical of Max that he had elected to tweak the English over their inbred sense of snobbery and beyond doubt, it was the most improbable recognition signal he’d ever used. It was ludicrous to think that success or failure now rested on two men who would be wearing similar ties when they met. McKee would never have believed it if his instructor at Kazanakov had told him that a day would come when he would wait for a man to approach him in a crowded bar and ask if he too was a member of the British Ski Association.
He could see fat Max now, his face gashed in a broad smile as he briefed him on the recognition procedure, and the snow had been falling heavily as the light faded from the slopes, and below them in the valley the lights of the village of Thalkirchdorf were burning, and then Max had taken off, his skis kissing the snow as he hurtled downhill towards the warmth and comfort of the Gasthof Trauber, and his mocking laughter had hung in the stillness of the pine woods. McKee had no love for the Germans but for fat Max he nursed a lasting hatred. Even if they did originate from the KGB, taking orders from a Bavarian upstart made him want to vomit.
16
TOURS, CHATEUROUX, MONTLUÇON AND ROANNE WERE BEHIND THEM NOW. They had covered more than three hundred and sixty miles but they still had another three hundred and eighty to go before they reached San Remo, and although they had averaged seventy-two
miles in the hour, Jarman knew that they would have to do better than that once they got on to the motorway at Lyon. They would get a good clear run down to Aix-en-Provence, but as soon as they started to move across through Cannes and Nice, their average would drop off sharply.
There was nothing wrong with the way she drove, but according to his calculations, they would be lucky if they crossed the frontier much before midnight, and he wished to avoid that. He had tried spelling her at the wheel but he had been forced to recognise that he could not match the mileage target which she had established. It seemed to Jarman that a bond existed between the woman and the car and that she was able to push the Mercedes to its limit and yet remain in complete control. If it hadn’t been for the children they would have made even better time, but Melissa Julyan had insisted on stopping for lunch, and subsequently, both children had kept on asking to go to the lavatory because they had drunk so much Coke with their food that it was damn nearly running out of their ears.
The weather had also been against them, and for over an hour they had driven through a violent thunderstorm with the rain pouring down from a leaden sky, and that had been particularly nerve-racking because the wipers had failed to keep the windscreen clear, and since it was a right-hand drive, she relied on him to say when it was safe to overtake. Latterly, with the weather improved, the needle had been flirting with the hundred mark, and yet, such was her road sense and ability to anticipate hazards that Jarman had not felt at all nervous.
She sat upright, her hands at ten and two o’clock on the wheel, and the strength in her small-boned wrists was self-evident as they went through the tight bends on Route National 7 between Roanne and Tarare. Her mouth was set in a straight line as if she was determined to ignore the shriek of tyres sliding across the surface of the road, while mind, eyes and limbs worked together in perfect co-ordination. Her right foot touched the brake as the car came into each corner and then stabbed back to the accelerator at just the right moment. The smell of hot engine oil was strong inside the car and the late afternoon sun beating in through the glass turned the interior into an oven which not even the draught coming from the lowered side windows could lessen. Half drugged by the heat and the fumes, both children now slept fitfully on the back seat.
Jarman loosened his tie and unbuttoning the shirt at the neck, used a handkerchief to wipe off some of the sweat which had gathered in the folds of his throat. He envied the woman’s apparent coolness and he wondered how she achieved it; it could not be entirely due to the fact that she was not wearing a bra beneath the silk blouse, and fascinated by the sight of the erect nipples on her breasts, he stared at her in open-mouthed admiration. Women usually provoked a low key response but this one attracted him strongly. There was a quality about her which suggested that she was beyond the reach of most men, and seeing her in profile, he could well understand how Julyan had become so completely infatuated that ordinary standards of morality no longer applied and no act of betrayal was too monstrous if it succeeded in pleasing her.
The worst part of that section of the road between Roanne and Lyon was behind them now and they were closing fast on L’Arbresle, and he wondered how long she would be able to keep it up before she showed signs of fatigue. The constant drumming of the tyres and the heat of the engine had a hypnotic effect on Jarman and he fought unsuccessfully to keep his eyes open. His head lolled forward on to his chest and presently, only the restraint of the seat belt held him upright, and when at length she spoke to him, her voice took on a muzziness which failed to penetrate.
Sharp nails cruelly pinched the flesh on the back of his wrist and the shock pulsated the adrenalin through his veins and aroused him. He half turned in his seat to strike out and then checked the instinctive movement when he saw the narrowed, contemptuous eyes staring at him through the polaroid sun glasses.
‘You’re a clod,’ she hissed vehemently, ‘a stupid, lazy, good- for-nothing clod. I went past a truck back there completely blind because you had fallen asleep. I know you are not much good as a driver but at least you can try to stay awake.’
There could be, and there was no excuse for his laxity, and although he knew that she was in the right, Jarman still seethed with anger. This domineering, over-confident, arrogant woman was no better than the whores around the Boulevard Madeleine, and it was on the tip of his tongue to say so when he saw the caravan looming up in front of them. He shouted a warning, and as she swerved out into the centre of the road, he saw too late that they were on a collision course with a Citroen Safari which had just overtaken a slow-moving Simca.
They were less than fifty yards apart and there was nothing anyone could do. Melissa stamped on the brakes and her whole body was arched back against the seat like a drawn bow. The wheels locked and the agonised, screaming tyres left pieces of burning rubber upon the surface of the road. For a split second Jarman had a clear view of the other driver and saw the panic in his bulging eyes and was convinced that he could hear him screaming.
They met head-on at a combined impact speed of one hundred and seventy miles an hour and the radiator disintegrated and the engine block, torn from its mounting, was pushed back through the forward bulkhead at an oblique angle. Travelling upwards, it severed Jarman’s right leg and driving through his rib cage it churned his trunk into a bloody and obscene pulp. Simultaneously, the windscreen exploded like a bomb and a piece of metal from the facia panel sliced through his scalp and entered the brain.
The frame and chassis members buckled and were compressed into a solid mass of useless metal; the offside stub axle was wrenched off and the wheel, bursting through the mud-wing, soared up into the air, and then falling back, it bounced on the tarmac and then trundled drunkenly into the field bordering the road.
Melissa Julyan was frozen to the steering column which, becoming a blunted lance, entered her stomach and with relentless energy bored right through her slim body until finally the shaft reappeared between her shoulder blades. The doors sprang open as if plucked by giant hands and a small figure was tossed out into the roadway where it lay inert.
Locked in a fatal embrace, both cars now slewed across the road so that the oncoming Simca caught the rear end of the Citroën a glancing blow to lift it up and over on to its roof which in turn crumpled like a piece of tin foil. The driver of the Opel Rekord braked hard but the weight of the caravan behind pushed the car forward and in slow motion, it gradually approached and then finally hit the Mercedes. The impact smashed the headlamps of the Rekord and forced open the boot on the Mercedes and fuel from the ruptured petrol tank began to form a dangerous, fast- spreading pool on the tarmac. The cacophony of tortured metal and inhuman screams were a long time in dying.
The driver of the Opel was the first to reach the shattered heap of wreckage and the sight of the mangled bodies inside the Mercedes so unnerved him that he reeled away vomiting. It was quite apparent that the adult occupants were beyond help but a child, trapped between the bucket seats up front and the bench seat at the back, was still alive. The first car to approach the scene of the accident was a Volvo travelling towards Roanne out of Lyon, and finding the road ahead blocked, it turned back and alerted the police in the next village. It then took just over ten minutes for a Citroen ambulance car from the First Aid Post in Tarare to arrive, and it was joined shortly afterwards by two police cars and another ambulance, but until the fire tender and recovery vehicle appeared, the combined efforts of the police and the ambulance men failed to extricate the five-year-old girl trapped inside the Mercedes. Even then, it was necessary to lay a carpet of foam over the road to counteract the potential fire risk of the ruptured petrol tank before the rescue work could begin.
Crowbars were used to prise the seats apart, but despite the greatest care on their part and the tranquillising effect of the morphine injection, the child screamed as she was lifted clear and placed inside the ambulance. After that, it was simply a butcher’s job. An acetylene torch was used to cut through the steering column which
impaled Melissa Julyan in her seat and once this was accomplished, it was comparatively easy to remove her lifeless body. Any victim of a road accident looks ghastly even if the resultant injuries are only superficial and violent death was no stranger to these firemen and recovery mechanics from Lyon, but they required an absolute detachment of mind when they started to free the broken hulk of what had once been a man. They ripped off both doors, cut out the supporting pillar, and having burned a hole through the roof, they were able to lift the engine block away from Jarman’s lap with a crane. Devoid of all emotion, they then moved on to the Citroen Safari and started on the grisly task of removing the decapitated body wedged inside the overturned car.
Bundled inside four black plastic bags, the bodies were eventually taken to the morgue where, as a formality, they were pronounced dead on arrival. Tentative identification was made on the basis of passports, driving licences and other documents recovered from the scene of the accident and at seven-thirty that evening, the British Consulate was notified of the deaths of a Mrs Melissa Julyan and her son, Mark Clifford, aged four, and they were also informed that her daughter, Elizabeth Anne, aged five, was on the D.I. list.
The police were able to supply the presumed address of the next of kin from the information contained in the International Green Card issued by the General Accident and Assurance Exchange Corporation in respect of a 1968 Mercedes 220 SE with the registration number TLA 0934 C, and the Consulate was requested to notify those concerned and arrange for positive identification. Similar action was taken in respect of the American citizen Walter J. Outram whose body had been recovered from the same car, but in his case the authorities were anxious to know why he was wearing a money belt which contained a number of uncut diamonds valued at approximately six and a half million francs.
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