Double Jeopardy

CHAPTER 3

Wednesday May 27

Will Mr Keith Martel bound for Geneva please report immediately to the Swissair reception desk…

Martel was inside Heathrow on his way to the final departure lounge when the message came over the Tannoy. He went back down the stairs slowly and paused where he could see Swissair. Only when two more passengers had called at the reception desk did he wander over.

The Swissair girl told him he was wanted urgently on the phone and left him as he picked up the receiver, fuming. It was Tweed. His voice held that quality of detached control which meant he was alarmed. They went through the identification routine and then Martel quietly exploded.

`What the hell do you mean broadcasting my name so everyone in the bloody terminal can hear…'

'I did change the destination to Geneva. Didn't they…' 'They did. Thank you for that small consideration. I now have ten minutes to board my flight…'

'My office was bugged – while we were talking yesterday. About Delta, the lot…'

'Where are you calling from.'

'A phone booth at Baker Street station, of course. You don't imagine I'm such a damned fool as to call from the building, do you? I found the bloody thing purely by chance. The cleaning woman had left a note that my main light bulb had gone. checked it – the bug was inside the shade…'

'So anyone could have overheard our conversation, could have taped it, could know where I'm going and why?'

'I thought you ought to know – before you boarded the plane.'

Tweed sounded genuinely concerned. Unusual for Tweed to display any emotion.

'Thanks,' Martel said shortly. 'I'll keep my eyes open…' 'Probably it's the Zurich end you should watch. A reception committee could be waiting for you…'

'Thanks a million. I must go now…'

The Swissair flight departed on time at t i to hours. In London it had been 50? F. As they lost height over Switzerland Martel, who had a window seat, watched the saddle-back ridge of the Jura mountains which he felt he could reach down and touch. The plane had come in over Basle and headed east for Zurich.

As the machine tilted the most spectacular of views was framed in a window on the other side of the plane, a sunlit panorama of the snowbound Alps. Martel picked out the savage triangle of the Matterhorn, a shape not unlike Delta's badge. Then they landed.

At Kloten Airport, ten kilometres outside Zurich, a wave of heat enveloped him as he disembarked. 5o? F in London; 75? F in Zurich. After Heathrow it seemed unnaturally quiet and orderly. When he had passed through Customs and Passport Control he started looking for trouble.

He was tempted to take the train from the airport's underground station to the Hauptbahnhof, the second location recorded in Warner's notebook. Instead he took a cab to the Baur au Lac.

He was staying at one of the top three hotels in Switzerland and the room tariff would have caused Howard to have apoplexy. But Howard was not paying the expenses. Before Martel left London a large amount of deutschemarks had been telexed to Tweed for the trip from Erich Stoller.

The Germans are paying, so enjoy yourself,' Tweed had commented. 'They're conscious of the fact that the first man I sent to help is no longer with us…'

'And that I may be next?' Martel had replied. 'Still, it's good cover – to stay at the best place in town rather than some grotty little pension…'

Good cover? He recalled the remark cynically as the cab sped along the two-lane highway into the centrum of Zurich. It had been made in Tweed's office which they now knew had been bugged. He could change his hotel – but if the opposition sought him out at the Baur au Lac it might present him with a golden opportunity.

Just so long as I see them first he thought as he lit a fresh cigarette.

It was good to be back in Zurich, to see the blue trams rumbling along their tracks. The route the driver followed took him down through the underpass, sharp right across the bridge over the river Limmat and into the Bahnhofplatz. Martel stared at the massive bulk of the Hauptbahnhof, wondering again why the place had figured in Warner's notebook.

To his left he caught a glimpse of the tree-lined Bahnhofstrasse, his favourite street in his favourite European city. Here were the great banks with their incredible security systems, their underground vaults stacked with gold bullion. Then they were driving down Talstrasse, the street where the Baur au Lac was situated at the far-end facing the lake.

A heavy grey overcast pressed down on the city and, as was so often the case when the temperature was high, the atmosphere was clammy. The cab turned in under an archway and pulled up at the main entrance. The head porter opened his door and Martel counted five Mercedes and one Rolls Royce parked in the concourse. Beyond the entrance the green lawns of the mini-park stretched away towards the lake.

From the airport to hotel he had not been followed. He was quite certain. The fact somehow did not reassure him as he followed the porter inside. The hotel was almost full. On the phone he had accepted a twin-bedded room overlooking the park. When the porter left he checked bedroom and bathroom for hidden microphones and found nothing. He was still not happy.

He went down the staircase after checking his room – avoiding the lift because lifts could be traps. The atmosphere was luxurious, peaceful and disturbingly normal. He strolled over the concourse to where tea and drinks were being served under a canopy near the French Restaurant. He ordered coffee, lit a cigarette and waited, watching the world's elite arrive and depart. He was looking for a shadow.

His appointment with Claire Hofer at her apartment was eight in the evening, an odd hour which he had wondered about. Normally he would have scanned the area in advance but the bugging of Tweed's office changed his tactics. He was good at waiting and he counted on the impatience of the opposition.

By 7.30 he was swimming in coffee and people were starting their evening meal in the nearby restaurant. He suddenly scribbled his signature and room number on the bill, stood up and walked out under the archway. Crossing Talstrasse, he turned left up Bahnhofstrasse away from the lake. He had spotted no one but could not rid himself of a feeling of unease.

Stopping by a machine in the deserted street, he inserted four twenty-centime coins obtained from the Baur au Lac cashier, took his ticket and waited for one of Zurich's 'sacred cows'. These gleaming trams had total right-of-way over all other traffic – hence the Zurichers' irreverent description.

The-ticket gave him a slight twinge. Inside his breast pocket was an envelope which contained the contents of Warner's wallet – including the tram ticket with the destination RENNWEG/AUGUST inscribed. This stop was not far away and the ticket could have been used by Warner when he called on Claire Hofer. A tram glided up the street, streamlined and freshly-painted. Martel climbed aboard and sat down near the exit doors.

From the hotel it would have taken him five minutes to walk to Centralhof 45, Claire Hofer's address. Taking a tram and travelling only one stop he hoped to flush out anyone following him. He played it deviously at the next stop. Standing up, he pressed the black button which would automatically open the double doors when the tram stopped.

The doors opened, he checked his ticket and stared about in a perplexed manner as though uncertain of his destination. People left the tram, came on board. Still he waited. The doors began closing. Martel moved…

He knew how the tram worked. He stepped down on to the outside foot-board just when it began to elevate in conjunction with the closing of the automatic doors. As a safety device, when there is weight on the foot-board, the doors remain open – or open again if they are closing. Reaching the sidewalk he paused to light a cigarette, to see if anyone rushed out after him. The doors shut, the tram moved off.

Centralhof is a square enclosed by buildings. One side overlooks Bahnhofstrasse. There are four entrances under archways at the centre of each side of the square – one leading off Bahnhofstrasse – to the interior garden beyond.

Martel crossed the street, walked down Poststrasse, turned right and continued along the third side of the block. Walking under the archway he saw the trees and the fountain he remembered. Nothing had changed. He sat down on a seat.

He had never visited this apartment in Centralhof before – but on an earlier visit he had used exactly the same tactic to entice a shadow to show himself. On that occasion it had worked.

The only sounds in the semi-dark were the chirruping of invisible sparrows in the foliage of the trees, the gentle splash of fountain water. It was impossible to imagine a more peaceful scene. He looked up at the windows masked by net curtains and the silence was almost a sound.

No one had followed him into this oasis of peace. He began to think he had evaded detection. He got up and headed for the archway Tweed had shown him on a street plan which contained the entrance to the apartment.

There was only one name-plate, a bell-push by its side. C. Hofer. He pressed the bell and a woman's voice responded through the metal grille of the speak-phone almost immediately. In. German – not Swiss-German, which he would not have understood.

'Who is that?'

'Martel.'

He kept his voice low, his mouth close to the grille. The other voice sounded disembodied, filtered through the louvres.

'I have released the catch. I am on the first floor…'

He went into a bare hall and the spring-loaded hinge closed the door behind him. An old-fashioned lift with open grille- work enclosing a cage faced him. He ignored it and ran lightly up the staircase to arrive a few seconds before she would expect him.

Height: five feet six inches. Weight: nine. stone two pounds. Age: twenty-five. Colour of hair: black. Colour of eyes: deep blue.

This was the description of Hofer Tweed had supplied to Martel in London. It was typical of Ferdy Arnold's consideration and efficiency that he should supply the girl's vital statistics in this terminology: he knew Tweed's detestation of the Common Market and the metric system.

Martel was not armed with any weapon when he reached the first floor. He expected Hofer to supply a hand-gun. A closed door faced him on the deserted landing and he noticed that – blended in with the grain of the highly-varnished woodwork – was a spy-hole. At least she took some precautions when strangers arrived.

'Welcome to Zurich, Mr Martel. Please come in quickly…'

The door had been opened swiftly and the girl examined him as she ushered him inside, closed the door and double-locked it. Martel had stubbed out his cigarette as he waited inside the archway below. He held the black holder between his fingers and studied her without any show of enthusiasm.

She was wearing dark-tinted glasses with the outsize exoticshaped lenses so many girls affected these days. Her hair was very black, her height was about five foot six and he calculated she would turn the scales at around nine stone. She was also very attractive and wore a flowered blouse and a pastel-coloured skirt which revealed shapely legs.

'Satisfied?' she demanded in a waspish tone.

'You can't be too careful,' he told her and walked out of the tiny hall into a living-room whose windows overlooked the garden inside Centralhof. His manner was off-hand and he inserted a cigarette and lit it without asking her permission.

'Yes, you may smoke,' she told him.

'Good. It helps my concentration…'

He looked round the room which was filled with heavy leather arm-chairs and sofas and the usual weighty sideboard. The German Swiss went in for solid furniture which was probably a reflection of their sturdy character. He thought he knew what Hofer was thinking. Hell, do I have to work with this bastard?

'I'm just making some coffee,' she said in a more friendly voice.

'That would be nice…'

He went towards the window and changed direction as she vanished through a swing-door into a kitchen. From a quick glimpse it looked expensively equipped. Quietly he turned the handle of a closed door and eased it open, peering inside.

The bedroom. Large double bed. Large dressing-table with a few cosmetic articles neatly arranged. A pair of large double doors which presumably led to a large built-in wardrobe or dressing room. Everything spotless. He left the door half-open.

She had the percolator bubbling away when he walked uninvited into the kitchen. On a wing counter there were plates of half-eaten food, an unwashed glass, unwashed cutlery and a pair of scissors with a piece of sticking-plaster attached to one of the blades. She swung round, her mouth tight.

'Make yourself at home, Martel…'

'I always do…' He smiled briefly, the cigarette-holder still clenched between his teeth. 'Did Warner sleep here often?'

It threw her. She almost caught the percolator with her hand and knocked the whole thing over. He waited, watching her, smoking his cigarette. She unplugged the percolator, which had stopped bubbling, went to a wall-cupboard and opened it.

'Spring-cleaning – that's when I change things around to stop life getting boring…'

She took coffee-cups from another cupboard next to the one she had first opened and Martel was relieved to see they also were large. He drank coffee by the gallon. He said no cream and she poured two cups of black coffee, put them on saucers and looked at him.

'You're in my way…'

'Allow me…'

He picked up both cups and carried them into the living- room where he placed them on mats on a low table. She followed him, talking as she came through the swing-door.

'You're agile – I can't get through that swing-door with two cups. I have to take them one at a…'

He looked up as she stopped in mid-sentence. She was staring through her dark glasses at the half-opened bedroom door. It was impossible to see the expression in her eyes but her mouth compressed into a bleak gash.

'You've been in the bedroom…

'I like to be sure I really am alone with someone…' 'You've got a bloody nerve…'

She started towards the bedroom but he reached forward, caught her arm and sat her down on the sofa beside him. Still gripping her arm with one hand he reached up towards the outsized tinted glasses. She clawed her other hand and struck at his face with talon-like nails. He had to move fast to grab her wrist to protect himself: she had moved like a whip-lash.

'Martel, I've had you in a big way,' she hissed through perfectly formed teeth. 'If we are going to work together we have a few things to get straightened out…'

'You never answered my question about you and Warner…'

He had released her and picked up his cup of coffee, sipping at it while he watched her. She got herself under control very quickly, picking up her own cup before she replied.

'That's one of the things. First, it's none of your damned business. Second, the answer is no – he didn't even make a pass at me in all the time I knew him. It was strictly a business relationshiplike ours is going to be…

'Oh, that you can count on, Claire. When did you last see Warner before he was murdered? And I may call you Claire?'

'I suppose so. I last saw Charlie three days before he went off on a trip to Lindau. He was frustrated – said he felt he wasn't getting anywhere…'

'With Delta?'

She paused. Martel sat thinking and guessed if she could have read his thoughts they would have surprised her. He was recalling Tweed's comment that the dossiers never lied.

'If the facts conflict with your expectations, always believe the facts,' was a maxim Tweed had hammered into Martel. Hofer had worked out her reply.

'You're referring to their neo-Nazi background?'

'I'm referring to Delta's underground organisation he was tracking.'

Martel's attitude now was one of complete relaxation but inside his nerves were tingling as he forced himself to lean back and cross his legs. Hofer drank more coffee and then stood up. When she had followed him in the kitchen she had brought with her a shoulder bag which she left on a chair behind the sofa close to the window. She went round the back of the sofa, talking while she moved.

'He did leave a notebook with me. There's a lot in it but I'd have remembered any reference to Delta…'

Martel was like a coiled spring. There was a faint thumping sound which came from beyond the half-open bedroom door. Hofer continued talking as she undid the clasp of her bag.

'The workmen next door are a nuisance – they're making alterations to the apartment before redecorating. The people cleared out to Tangier until it's all finished…'

Martel had chosen the sofa to sit on because it faced a large mirror over the fireplace. There were vases of flowers on the ledge but between them he could watch Hofer behind him. He had made a bloody awful mistake when he was so careful to check that he was not followed to Centralhof. He had got it the wrong way round. The danger had been in front of him, not behind. The enemy was waiting for his arrival at the apartment…

'I'm sorry if I was uptight when you arrived,' Hofer continued, 'but the news of Charlie's death shook me…'

He heard the click, watched her coming up behind him through a gap in the flowers in front of the mirror. He swung round suddenly, grasped Hofer's right hand by the wrist. The hand held an object like a felt-tip pen.

The click had occurred when she pressed something and a blade shot out from inside the handle, a blade unlike any he had ever seen, a blade like a skewer with a needle-thin tip. She had been pushing the needle-point towards the centre of the back of his neck.

He twisted the wrist brutally and she yelped as she dropped the weapon and he hauled her bodily over the back of the sofa and sprawled her along its length. Her skirt was dragged up to her thighs exposing a superb pair of legs. She arched her supple body in a sexual movement, using her free hand to try and pull him down on top of her.

'Bloody cow…'

He hit her a hard blow on the side of the jaw and she went limp. Standing up, he undid his leather belt and tightened the adjustable fasteners on either hip. When he bent down to turn her over on her face she suddenly came awake and jabbed two stiffened fingers towards his eyes. He became rougher, gave her a tremendous slap.

'Start struggling and I'll break your Goddamn neck

For the first time he saw her mouth go slack with fear and she remained passive as he turned her over, pulled the upper part of her body towards him, then used the belt to strap her ankles to her wrists.

It was the most uncomfortable position anyone can be forced into: if she struggled she would suffer excruciating pain. He tightened the belt to the limit of his strength. Soon the circulation would start to go. He left her on the sofa after using his handkerchief as a gag.

'It's not too clean,' he assured her.

Then he walked into the bedroom where the faint thumping was repeating itself. He opened both doors of the built-in wardrobe cupboard and looked down. The dark-haired girl on the floor had been trussed up like a chicken and her mouth was sealed with a band of sticking plaster.

`Hello, Claire Hofer,' he said. 'Thanks for the warning. Now let's make you comfortable. You have got guts…'