Revelation

33 The Raid

In Doug's Davos hotel bedroom, with white peaks framed by the window, Findhorn plugs into the big television screen rather than the cramped little monitor of his laptop. Doug, in an armchair, has Stefi on his knee but doesn't seem to mind. Romella is sitting cross-legged on the double bed while Findhorn, on the edge of the bed, flicks through the items from Albrecht's locked drawer:

• A letter from Mr Tedesco, President of the Society for Information Display. Can you spare one of your senior staff to give a seminar on Advanced Cockpit Displays?

• A long, technical letter from an Andrew Roper, of the UK's MOD, requesting an evaluation of an exciting new development in night-vision goggles (paper enclosed).

• A letter from Colonel Herzberg of US Army Aviation Center, Fort Rucker. Confirming that he will be bringing his team to Davos next month to discuss the new gun system. Secretaries will co-ordinate diaries. Issues to be discussed include survivability, combat effectiveness, human factors engineering, visionics, horizon technology integration, reliability, ASE equipment interfacing. Something has been scrawled over it. Findhorn recognizes the word 'Rosa'.

• A newsletter, described as 'The Key to Unlock the Glory of the Last Days'. Something about the Rewards of Giving. It reads like a scam for the gullible.

• A love letter, or at least a lust letter, from a lady in Boston called Zoe. Romella translates: something about a Nile cruise, an obscure joke about an Italian football team, and the hope they can repeat the experience some time.

• A letter from the Curator, L'Annonciade, St. Tropez, reiterating the gallery's gratitude for the loan of the Klee and confirming that it would be insured for $7,500,000 (seven point five million US dollars) while being exhibited.

• An invitation from H. Silver and Associates, Advanced Systems Division, to attend the fourth HSA Conference on Attack Helicopters in London, England. Attendance fee £1,495 (+17.5 % VAT).

• Somebody from Hull with a visionary new aircraft design which he will reveal in exchange for a fifty per cent share in future profits; the letter is handwritten in biro on lined paper and has a three-up, second-flat-on-the-left address; the spelling is atrocious.

• An address book, small, black and shiny. Findhorn flicks on to the next item.

• A bill for SF 24,310 for installation of an Aga (four-oven, pewter) from Tamman & Sons, Zurich. It is addressed to a Herr W. Neff and has an address near Blatten, Brig, Valais, Switzerland. There is a photocopy of a cheque for that amount, signed by H.W. Neff and drawn on an account in Brig, Switzerland.

'Hey,' says Romella.

'I think so too,' Findhorn replies. 'Who is this Mister Neff, and why should Albrecht be paying for his Aga?'

'Is Neff in the address book?'

Findhorn skims through the electronic copy. There is no Herr Neff.

On the screen, Findhorn displays the last item, a photocopied letter. It has been written in German, with a thick-nibbed fountain pen.

Stefi is running her hands absent-mindedly through Doug's thinning hair. She says,

'I wish I was fluent in twenty languages.'

Stefi seems not to have heard. She is studying the letter closely. 'Go back to the Neff letter.'

Findhorn studies the signature on the cheque, flicks forward again to the love letter from Konrad. Different signatures, but written by the same hand, even with the same thick-nibbed pen. He claps his hands together. 'Well done. Ms Stefanova. Herr Neff and Konrad Albrecht are one and the same.'

Stefi beams. 'Yes, I think we've just struck gold.'

'Albrecht's hideaway. Someplace near Blatten in Switzerland. Could he be there now? With his engineers?'

Romella pulls the telephone onto the bed beside her. 'Put that letter from the US Army back on screen.'

Findhorn obliges. She says, 'That scrawl. It says Rosa.'

'Okay, he has a secretary at Davos called Rosa.' He puts the address book on screen again, flicks through its pages. He has a sense of excitement, like a hunter closing in on a quarry. There is a Rosa Stumpf, with a Davos address. Romella dials through, surprises Findhorn by speaking in fluent German. Findhorn hears a young woman's voice, with the sound of children shouting in the background.

Romella puts the phone down, turns to Findhorn. 'I said I was from Fort Rucker and needed to contact Albrecht urgently. She gave me his ex-directory number.'

She dials Albrecht's home number. Frau Albrecht answers. My husband is walking the dog. You have missed him by five minutes.

He is not away, then?

Who is this? Suspicion in her voice.

This is Colonel Herzberg's secretary. I'm phoning from the States.

He will be here in two hours' time with a colleague. Then they are going off someplace to discuss a business matter. Thirty-five years and Konrad has never before missed Christmas at home. Do you wish to call back in say three hours?

No. It will wait, thank you.

Ach! And at Christmas too. But he will be back tomorrow.

Merry Christmas. Goodbye.

And you may never see your husband again.

Romella says, 'He's summoning his engineers. We're out of time.'

Findhorn types into the Internet, throws up a map of Switzerland. Davos is on the far eastern edge of Switzerland. Brig is about halfway between Geneva and Davos. Blatten is a tiny village high in the Bernese Alps. A track lies beyond it, a thin line winding into the mountains. Instinctively, Findhorn knows that Albrecht's hideaway is somewhere up there. 'I need to contact Matsumo's killers.'

Romella says, 'You'll need your translator.'

The killers are waiting for them at Geneva Airport. Ms Drindle is wearing a heavy fur coat and a sort of Cossack hat. Dark trousers protrude below the coat. The sunglasses, Findhorn presumes, come from her camera-shy nature. The Korean's face is similarly adorned but he has a black trenchcoat and hat which makes him look like a small, fat jazz player.

There are no handshakes or words of welcome. Findhorn and Romella follow them into the cold air. 'You drive,' Ms Drindle instructs Findhorn. 'Keep strictly to the speed limit.' The car is a black, four-wheel drive Suzuki with French number plates. Findhorn takes the wheel. Romella sits beside him. He has to think carefully about changing gear in a car with a left-hand drive. He takes them carefully through Geneva and over the Mont Blanc bridge, which for some reason is decked out with the flags of the Swiss cantons. The big water jet is off but the paddle steamer restaurant is doing Christmas lunches. He follows the signs for Thonon and is soon taking them along flat white countryside with Lac Leman to their left. He is acutely aware that until now the people in the rear of the car have been trying to find and kill him.

Conversation is zero.

They are through the tongue of France which borders the south of the lake, and back into Switzerland, before Drindle speaks in her mannish voice. 'Tell me how you would go about it, Findhorn.'

The road looks as if it has just been cleared of snow but already a thin fresh layer is beginning to form. Findhorn is driving with excessive care.

'I'm too sick to think about it.'

'Do so anyway.'

Findhorn mumbles, 'Knock on his door and blow his head off.'

In the mirror, he sees Drindle give a quick nod. 'Actually that can work. At least with proper planning and in the right circumstances, such as a quiet suburban area. It has the crowning merit of simplicity.'

'There has to be an alternative to this.'

'Name it.'

Findhorn exhales deeply and shakes his head; he's been over it a thousand times.

Drindle continues, almost leaning over Findhorn's shoulder. 'There are three essentials in an operation like this. Planning, surprise and invisibility. You must leave not the slightest trace of your presence, apart from the corpse itself.'

'Don't try to make this sound like a legitimate military operation, Drindle. You're just a murderer.'

Her voice is icy. 'You are in no position to make facile moral judgements.'

Findhorn has no answer.

How much the Korean understands is unclear, but in the mirror Findhorn sees the man giving him a long, hostile stare. Findhorn turns and looks into the small, bloodshot eyes. He says, 'Screw you.'

The snow is getting heavy. Romella, to deflect tension, says: 'I just hope we get through.'

Findhorn hopes they don't.

'We're about a hundred kilometres from the Simplon Pass,' she adds, unfolding a map.

An old-fashioned Beetle trundles past, its spiky tyres glittering like chariot wheels.

'Consider this car, Findhorn. Foreign plates, four-wheel drive, snow chains, nothing unusual. But we will be off the main highway, climbing a very steep road with no ski slopes or other tourist attractions at the end of it, a road which leads only to the chalets of the rich scattered over the mountainside. We will be noticed.'

'It's Christmas. People have visitors.'

'Good. But what do we do with the car? Park it outside Albrecht's house? What would you do if you were Albrecht, with a trillion dollar secret and a host of enemies, if you saw a strange car waiting unexpectedly outside your empty home?'

'Run a mile.'

'Precisely. Therefore the car will not be there. We will find an empty woodshed, or even park it in his own garage. In this weather there will be no traces in the snow of man or vehicle.'

Findhorn says, 'I think I'm going to be sick.'

Ahead of them they see an oasis of light underneath a blanket of heavy grey sky. At the boundary of the town there is a blue notice with a list of passes which are off en, ouvert, aperto and open. Findhorn notes that the Simplon Pass is one of them and that it's the quickest escape route from Switzerland once the deed is done. Romella tells him to turn left.

He turns left and finds himself on a road running parallel to a railway station. There is a row of bright red carriages with Zermatt marked on their sides. There is a bridge, and Findhorn turns onto it and they drive over the white, tumbling River Rhone, and then he is immediately onto a steeply climbing hill. He drops gear.

And he drops gear again: the road begins to climb seriously. He uses low gears and extreme care.

Picture-postcard chalets, all snow-laden roofs and glittering Christmas trees, are scattered over high white slopes. It seems incredible that there are houses up there. He sees no signs of a road up to them. Grim, icy giants watch his progress through gaps in the clouds. Brig becomes a glow far below them.

They crawl into a small village. There is a handful of cars and a cable car station. Far above them, a little blue cable car is disappearing into the clouds. Findhorn stops their vehicle and they step out, their breath misting in the freezing air. Drindle walks over to a cluster of post boxes. They scan the names. Herr W. Neff lives in a house called Heya.

They split up. Findhorn finds himself wandering along narrow streets, barely a car width. Snow is piled high on either side. There are neat wooden chalets with verandahs and red shutters, and dates and names painted in white Gothic script on their walls. Part of the village is given over to big wooden huts standing on thick wooden stilts. Some are filled with wood, others with hay. He passes a church whose small, crowded cemetery is outlined under a metre of pristine, fluffy snow. There is an air of orderliness about everything. There is, however, no Heya.

A one-track, potholed road leads out of the village: the thin, black line on Findhorn's map. He looks at it, trying to follow its route up the mountain. Here and there he glimpses stretches of the road. Romella is flouncing through the car park snow. She is wearing blue jeans and leather boots; Findhorn thinks there is something vaguely eccentric about the combination of Peruvian hat and Doug's duffle coat. He points upwards. 'I don't think it can be done.'

She looks up. 'You could be right.'

'What the hell are we doing here?'

'I'm beginning to wonder.'

The killers appear and they settle into the car. Findhorn takes off, leaving the square and taking the car onto the track. He is gripped by fear within the first two hundred yards. It is almost impossible not to skid, and within half a mile the metal barriers have petered out. He glances briefly away from the road, finds himself looking down on the roofs of chalets far, far below, and experiences a surge of terror. In the car, there is dead silence.

After about a mile the road worsens. The snow becomes deeper, and he has to negotiate a series of tight hairpin bends with nothing between the car and thousands of feet of air. His jaw aches with tension, his hands are sore with gripping the steering wheel and a dull ache has developed in his gut. Above them, a massive white cloud is billowing down the mountainside like an approaching avalanche.

At last, in a state of quiet terror, Findhorn sees an Alpine villa on the edge of his vision: he doesn't dare take his eye off the track. A final bend and the road levels, terminating at a square of open, flat ground. They step out. Findhorn is weak at the knees. To him, the altitude is incredible. They are looking out over white Alpine peaks and the air is pure and cold. He catches a whiff of wood smoke. Boulders as big as houses are scattered around. A forest of snow-laden conifers lies above them and there is a rough track into the trees. Far across the valley, clouds are pouring down between peaks like a vast waterfall.

The chalet is marked Heya. It is about fifty yards back from the square and is reached by a steep path. There is no garage, but there is a Saab in the square, and tracks in the snow where another vehicle has taken off recently. The winter supply of wood is piled high at the side of the chalet, which has a wooden verandah with little flower boxes. The roof is under a metre of snow and projects out over the house. The upstairs shutters are closed. A small Christmas tree is set to the side of a big downstairs window, its lights brilliant in the gloom.

'This guy likes seclusion,' Findhorn says. He is shaking all over.

'Which suits our purpose nicely.' Drindle is opening the rear door of the Suzuki.

'There might be a housekeeper,' Romella suggested.

'If there is, so much the worse for her.' Drindle is pulling what looks like a squat shotgun out of a holdall. The Korean is balancing a pistol in each hand, as if he is weighing potatoes. He ends up stuffing one in each trenchcoat pocket.

'There shouldn't be, not with secret discussions about to take place,' Findhorn hopes. In spite of the cold air he feels little beads of sweat on his brow.

Drindle growls something to the Korean, who hands her a pair of black leather gloves before putting on a pair himself. Romella's face goes chalk white and Findhorn feels his own going the same way.

They trudge up through the snow, Drindle leading and the Korean taking up the rear. Drindle looks through a window, tries a door. Then the Korean is shouting from the side of the house. He is holding a heavy axe. There are wooden steps down into a cellar. In the cellar, there is a pyramid of wood, and trestles, and the smell of sawdust, and a door. They stand back as he smashes at the door repeatedly, the noise painfully loud in the confined space. Then he has an arm through and is fiddling with an inside key, and they are into a short corridor and through another door.

They are met by warmth.

The kitchen has a high stone roof, vaulted in the Italian style. An alcove contains a four-oven, pewter coloured Aga stove. A shiny copper pot is suspended from the ceiling by a big-hooped black chain. Copper pans are hooked onto nails at various points around the whitewashed walls. The furniture is pine, antique and solid. It is highly polished. Chairs are scattered around as well as little tables on which are vases with yellow, red and pink flowers. Little decorative cups in odd places contrast with the solidity of the furniture. There is a smell of stew, presumably simmering in one of the four ovens.

Through to the living room, which is doubling as a dining room. Here there is a smell of beeswax and scent, and an air of obsessive neatness. Near the centre of the room is a heavy table with white tablecloth. The table has been set for dinner: there are six places. Crystal wine glasses sparkle in the Christmas-tree lights. The air is warm from a wood-burning stove set in an inglenook. There is an old-fashioned pendulum clock over the fireplace; its steady tick-tock gives a sense of harmony to the room, of solidity and domestic contentment.

It also makes Drindle's voice that much more jarring. 'Every Swiss household has a rifle. Find it.'

Findhorn, Romella and the Korean climb the wooden stairs. There are three bedrooms off. Findhorn follows Romella into a bedroom. 'This is madness. What are we doing here?'

'Do you think I'm delirious about it?'

'Have you thought about the gloves?'

Her face is grim. 'Yes.'

'You know what it means?'

'I'm not stupid, Fred. They're not bothered if we're caught.'

Findhorn whispers, 'But if we were caught we could talk. They'd be at risk.'

'I know. Therefore they intend to kill us.'

'What are you people whispering about up there? Have you found it?'

The Korean shouts triumphantly and appears on the landing with a long-barrelled rifle which looks as if it is polished as regularly as the copper pans.

'What can we do?' she whispers.

'Come down here where I can see you.'

Ms Drindle's fur coat, hat and wig have been tossed on a chair and he has his feet up on the dining table. His hair is close-cropped and grey. He is examining, almost caressing, the gun. It has a wooden stock with a fist-sized hole in it, and a short, stubby dark barrel. The Korean tosses him the rifle and disappears.

Findhorn looks at Drindle. 'I suspected it.'

Drindle smiles. 'To confuse witnesses. And there are so many security cameras these days.'

'Maybe you just get a kick out of dressing in women's clothes.'

Drindle unclips the rifle's magazine, empties the bullets into a vase, replaces it and tosses the rifle to Romella. 'Put it back.'

The Korean shouts something. They go through to a large study. The man is still in trenchcoat and hat, but his sunglasses are off and he is grinning hugely. There is a safe, about three feet tall, in the corner of the room. Drindle drops to his knees, plays with the handle of the safe. He turns to them, a strange expression on his face. 'It's in here, isn't it? The trillion dollar secret. And all we need is the key.' He runs his gloved fingers round the base. 'It's on a concrete plinth, and we would need a small crane to move it. But no matter, the key will arrive shortly.' He stands up and grins ghoulishly. Then he snaps something to the Korean, who scowls and heads out. There is a brief gust of cold air as he leaves.

Drindle waves his gun at Romella and Findhorn, directing them towards the living room. He waves it again and they sit on chairs away from the window. He throws a couple of heavy logs onto the fire and opens the stove's air vent. Then he sits across from them, while a red glow flickers through the room as the sky darkens outside.

The Korean is back in fifteen minutes, during which time not a word of conversation has been uttered in the room. He looks like a snowman. He tosses his black trenchcoat and hat on the floor next to the Christmas tree and holds his hands to the fire, shivering and cursing. To Findhorn, the man in the firelight looks demonic.

Then the Korean, warmed up, sits back on a low leather armchair with a pistol on his lap, grinning for no obvious reason.

And they wait.