Assassination Brigade

Eight

My suite had a sweeping view of the sparkling sea and the towering cliffs that soared for miles along the curving coastline. As I unpacked my bags, showered, and changed, I could hear Helga moving about in her suite next door. From the sounds of her movements, I could tell that her actions roughly duplicated mine.

It was several hours before play would resume at the casino. We would, of course, dine at the hotels penthouse restaurant with the sliding ceiling that opened to the sky. But there was plenty of time to spend before dinner. I knew Helga didn’t care about sightseeing, and I thought it would be a shame if we didn’t enjoy this time together in a more pleasurable pursuit. Hoping that Helga felt the same way, I solved the minor but potentially troublesome difficulty presented by the locked door between us by ordering champagne, caviar, and three dozen red roses to be delivered to her at six. At approximately one minute after die hour, she rapped on the door and called to me softly.

“You are very thoughtful,” she said, holding out a glass of champagne as I entered her suite.

She was wearing a delicate pink negligee that outlined her body in a lovely silhouette when she moved to the windows overlooking the sea. I paused for a moment to enjoy the sight of her body through the gossamer fabric of the garment and then joined her at the window. The setting sun had disappeared somewhere below the horizon, but it had left a deep, rich, golden reflection behind in the clear sky. The waters of the Mediterranean, in turn, reflected the sky, intensifying the light so that the room seemed to be alive with dazzling gold.

“It’s a very lovely view, isn’t it?” Helga asked, turning toward me.

“Yes, very lovely,” I replied, my eyes deliberately running down the length of her body and up again until I met her gaze. She ran her tongue around her lips and asked, “Do you like me, Tony?”

“Yes, very much.”

“As much as you like my sisters?” she persisted. The question surprised me after the night we had spent together in New York, but instead of answering her directly, I held out my arms and said, “Would you like me to show you how much?”

She came toward me in a sensuous, flowing motion, her eyes half closed and her lips parted. I kissed her, and her whole body immediately responded, vibrating gently up and down against me. Her legs opened and encircled mine, and I could feel her quivering Renter seeking my own aroused, responding body. She moaned softly and swayed backwards, setting down her champagne glass. I placed my own glass on a nearby table. When I turned back, I saw her slipping off her negligee.

The golden light turned her nude body into an exquisitely molded, living bronze statue. I barely had time to remove my own clothing before she had pulled me down onto the chaise lounge with her.

“Quickly!” she whispered, pleading, as she thrust her hips up. We were joined.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” she murmured breathlessly. Her hands clutched at my shoulders and arms, and her nails dug into my flesh as she urged me on. Moments later, I felt her body opening and closing around me, her head twisting from side to side in passion, until we reached the peak of a wildly convulsive climax.

As we lay side by side on the chaise, she turned her head and looked at me. She was smiling softly, “You know now, don’t you?”

I nodded.

I knew what I should have guessed ever since we had left New York — but, of course, until a few minutes ago there had been no way to tell. The woman lying beside me was not Helga, for I was familiar with her distinctive way of making love. Nor was it Maria, whom I also knew intimately.

“You’re Elsa.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “You’re not sorry, are you?”

“How can you ask a question like that? After what we just shared?”

She laughed delightedly. “Helga will be furious when she finds out what I’ve done. I was spending the night in her apartment when you phoned her in the morning. She was still asleep and didn’t hear a thing. When you suggested a trip to Monte Carlo, I just decided to pack up and go and let you think I was Helga. It sounded like such fun. Besides, you’ve already spent enough time with my two sisters. It’s my turn.”

As I listened to her words, I reflected that it was just the kind of trick that the Von Alder women were capable of playing. But even though her explanation did sound plausible enough, I had to remind myself that the Von Alders were suspects in the case I was trying to solve and that there might be something sinister in Elsa’s substitution for Helga.

But I could do nothing at that moment. I smacked lightly on her shapely little buttocks and told her to get dressed.

When we arrived at the casino after dinner, we found it was jammed. The huge crowd was standing in a tightly packed circle around one roulette wheel in hushed anticipation. There were three men inside the circle: the croupier, a second man, who wore a tuxedo and dark glasses— obviously one of the directors — and the Belgian, Tregor, the man who was breaking the bank.

Elsa and I managed to squeeze through the crowd to a spot only a few feet away from the three men. Just as we arrived, the spinning roulette wheel clicked to a stop, and the watching crowd pressed forward and gasped. The croupier shoved a mountainous stack of chips across the table to Tregor, who imperturbably put them beside another huge stack in front of him.

“My God!” a woman near me whispered excitedly. “He just won half a million dollars! What’s he going to do now?”

Tregor seemed oblivious to the people pressed around him. He was a giant, imposing man with a big belly who sipped from a glass of mineral water he kept filled from a bottle standing at his elbow. Dark glasses hid his eyes, but his face, I noticed, was set in an absolutely blank mask.

Every eye in the room was trained on him, waiting to see what he’d do next. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on the fist he had made with his right hand as if he was meditating and remained in that posture for several seconds. At that moment I was probably the only one in the crowd who glanced toward the director standing opposite. He was in almost die identical pose as Tregor! It was almost as if they were silently communicating with one another!

A second later both men raised their heads simultaneously, and Tregor with a steady hand confidently placed his whole stack of chips on the red square in front of him.

Elsa clutched my arm. “He’s going to bet all his winnings!” she whispered unbelievingly. “A million dollars!”

Tregor settled back into his chair as the croupier raised a hand and set the wheel spinning again. It spun dizzily for a second or two. As it began to slow, die onlookers started chanting in unison, “Red, red, red”—Tregor’s bet. Finally the wheel stopped. The Belgian had won again. The croupier pushed another stack of chips toward Tregor’s original stack. Two million dollars! Then the director stepped forward and announced in a quiet voice, “The wheel is closed for the evening.”

The crowd moved back as Tregor collected his chips with the help of several casino employees and headed toward the cashier. I noticed that at least twelve secret agents from various foreign governments, all of whom I recognized, were trailing him. Tregor wouldn’t, he couldn’t, go anywhere without those agents right behind him. The world’s governments had made it difficult for him to slip out of town easily.

I considered all modes of transportation in and out of Monte Carlo. There were only three roads that led out of the town, and they could be easily watched. The town officials kept all boats in the harbor under constant surveillance, and they had the fastest boat in the Mediterranean. No one could leave by air because there is no level stretch of ground in Monte Carlo long enough to make an airfield. These factors would prevent Tregor from eluding the agents who were trailing him to find out where he was taking the money he had won. It wasn’t necessary for me to follow.

I was interested in the director and the croupier, who were now dismantling the roulette wheel — a common practice at the close of play when the house has suffered such enormous losses. The wheel would be carried to the casino basement where all the casino’s wheels, which are made of rosewood, are manufactured. Each wheel, I knew, was balanced to an exactitude of one thousandth of an inch and moved on jewels as precisely as a watch.

But a wheel could be fixed. That’s why I wanted a closer look at this particular one and why I followed the director and the croupier when they went through a nearby door. As I watched them disappear through the doorway, I instructed Elsa to go back to the hotel and to wait for me there.

It was dark on the stairs that led to the basement, but there was a light below. I’d gotten halfway down the stairs when the door above me slammed shut. At the same moment a blinding light snapped on. Then I heard a shrill scream. Turning quickly, I saw that Elsa, contrary to my instructions, had followed me. A man, probably the one who had slammed the door, had her in a tight grip and was pointing a gun at me.

I turned back toward the basement to see the casino director and the croupier climbing the stairs toward me. Both carried guns, and the croupier also carried a length of pipe in one hand. When the two men had reached the step below me, the director whipped off his dark glasses. His eyes were glazed as if he were hypnotized or drugged. “Take care of him,” he ordered. The croupier raised the iron pipe, and everything went black.

Consciousness returned slowly, and even when I was able to see and hear again, it was as if I were viewing my surroundings from a distance and through a hazy filter. My body and limbs felt heavy and sluggish. Although rough hands were shoving me, I hardly felt a thing. Gradually I recognized die symptoms of my lethargic condition. I had been heavily drugged while I had been unconscious. It must have been one of the powerful depressants that work on the central nervous system.

I was fighting hard to overcome the effect of the drugs, but even though I was in excellent physical shape, I was only partially succeeding. I could see all that was going on around me but could not move. The croupier and the director had placed me behind the steering wheel in the front seat of a car. I saw Elsa, drugged and unconscious, sprawled in the seat beside me, and there were men leaning inside both opened doors. The motor of the Mercedes was racing, but the car wasn’t moving.

Then I noticed that one of the men was adjusting something around the floorboards under my feet. Soon he slid out of the car, and I heard him say, “Okay, she’s ready to take off.”

The car doors were slammed shut. The engine was still racing. My drugged brain couldn’t determine die meaning of what was happening. Dimly, as if I were in the midst of a fog, I saw a hand reach in through the open window next to me and put the Mercedes in gear. The car shot forward.

Then I realized that Elsa and I had been placed in the Mercedes with the accelerator pressed to the floorboards. We were now streaking along the dark, deserted roads of Monaco at over a hundred miles an hour. At that accelerated speed, the Mercedes would crash before we had gone too far, and we’d both be killed. When our bodies were found, it would look like we had died in an accident after an overdose of drugs. There would be no indication of murder.

Desperately I tried to gain control of my body.

So far, we had been lucky and the car had stayed at the center of the road. But up ahead there would be hills and curves, and unless I could begin steering the car, we’d go off the side of the road soon. I tried to raise my hands, but they felt like heavy weights. I tried again. Both hands rose ponderously, — faltered, dropped, and rose again slowly. I could see the dark landscape sweeping past in a blinding blur from the car window. Sweat was pouring from my body from the effort of lifting my hands a few inches to the steering wheel. Then I saw a sharp curve ahead. I could see my fingers closed around the steering wheel, but I couldn’t feel the wheel under them. Somehow I managed to turn it a few degrees to the right just as the car went into the S-curve. It was enough to keep us on the road. The car whipped around the curve at break-neck speed and catapulted over the top of a steep incline.

The road continued to climb. From the car window I saw that we were on the precipice of a cliff that fell almost straight down from the edge of the pavement to the sea. The car crested on the top of the precipice and then careened along the steep angle toward the road like a metal projectile shot from a cannon. The tires shrieked against the pavement. Still dulled by the drugs, I tried to concentrate on our one chance of survival: somehow I had to keep the car upright and on the road until it finally ran out of gas.

There seemed no end to the nightmare that followed. Mile after mile the Mercedes roared past darkened villas and cottages, up and down the winding, twisting roads of the Cote d’Azur. Monaco was far behind us. We sped along the corniches, the highways linking Monaco to Nice and then through Nice itself, silent and shuttered for the night.

The highway beyond Nice ran level with the sea — wet and slick and dangerous. The rear of the Mercedes slipped from one side to the other. If we skidded, we would land in the sea. But the Mercedes streaked on through Antibes. Finally, somewhere between Antibes and Cannes, it began to lose speed, and in another mile or so it was barely rolling. With a tremendous effort I twisted the steering wheel, and the car lunged to the side of the road and stopped. The engine went dead. Elsa, still on the seat next to me, hadn’t stirred once.