Terminal

Sixteen

Newman met – collided with – 'Tommy' Mason when he entered the bar at the Bellevue Palace on his way back from Blanche. It was precisely 10 pm. Mason turned away from the bar holding a tumbler of whisky which he spilt down Newman's jacket. Newman grinned and shrugged.

`I say, I'm frightfully sorry. Waiter, a damp cloth. Quick!' `I wouldn't lose any sleep over it…'

`Jolly careless of me. Look, the least I can do is buy you a drink. Double Scotch – or whatever…'

`You called it…'

Newman took his glass and led the way to the same corner table where he had talked with Blanche. The place was crowded. He sat with his back to the wall, raised his glass and drank as his companion eased his way on to the banquette.

`Captain Tommy Mason,' he introduced himself. 'The "Tommy" is purely honorary. They tacked it on when I was in the Army and the damn name stuck…'

`Bob Newman. No honorary titles…'

`I say, not the Robert Newman? The Kruger case and all that? I thought I recognized you. I'm market research. I've nearly completed my present assignment.' Mason smiled. `Really I'm not hurrying the job – I like this place. Marvellous hotel.'

Newman nodded agreement while he studied Mason. A military type. Early thirties. Trim moustache. Held his slim build erect. Shrewd eyes which didn't go with his general air of a man who would rise to captain and then that would be his ceiling. Mason continued chattering.

`They're all talking about some poor sod who took a dive from that square by the Castle – no, Cathedral – earlier this evening. Ended up like mashed potato on top of a car, I gather..

`Who says he took a dive?'

Mason lowered his voice. 'You mean the old saw – did he fall or was he pushed?'

`Something like that…'

`Well, that's a turn-up for the book. I was trotting round that square earlier today myself. Peered over the wall and nearly had a fit. Like a bloody precipice. In Berne too, of all places…'

`Berne is getting as dangerous as Beirut,' Newman remarked and drank the rest of his whisky. 'Thanks. It tastes better going down the gullet…'

`Berne you said was getting dangerous? Watch your back and all that? Don't walk down dark alleys at night. Place is full of dark alleys.'

`Something like that. A research trip, you said?' Newman probed.

`Yes. Medical. Standards of and practice in their private clinics. They rate high, the Swiss do. Their security is pretty formidable too. Here on a story?'

`Holiday. I think I'd better go. My fiancee will be going up the wall. I've been out all evening…'

`Nice of you to join me in a drink – especially considering the first one I gave you. But don't let me keep you. May see you at breakfast. Avoid the dark alleys…'

As Newman threaded his way among the packed tables Mason sat quite still, watching the Englishman until he had vanished out of the bar. Then he stood up and strolled out, his eyes flickering over the other drinkers.

`Who is this stranger I see?' Nancy enquired when Newman came into the bedroom. She raised a hand as though to shield her eyes. The gesture irritated Newman intensely. He took off his jacket and threw it on the bed along with the folded coat he had carried over his arm.

`You should keep the bedroom door locked,' he told her. `Criticism the moment he does eventually decide to come back.'

`Look, Nancy, this is a busy hotel. If I wanted to get at you I wouldn't use the main entrance – the concierge might see me. I'd come in by the coffee shop entrance and up those stairs from the basement. The lift is then waiting for me. I'm simply thinking of your safety…'

`Have a good evening? Your jacket stinks of alcohol. Did she spill her drink in her excitement?'

`A man in the bar bumped into me. He bought me a drink to say sorry. So, before you comment on it, I also have alcohol on my breath. I've had a swine of an evening…'

Dear me,' she said sarcastically, 'was it very rough?'

`A man who was following me earlier, a man I've used in the past for the same purpose, a nice little man, ended up spread like a goulash over the top of a car. He went over the wall behind the Munster. He was probably pushed. That sheer drop must be a hundred and fifty feet…'

`God, I've just had a very large dinner. You do have a way of putting things…'

`A large dinner. Lucky you. I've got by on a couple of bread rolls…'

`Room Service…!'

They both said it at the same time. Newman couldn't help recalling how Blanche had asked whether he had eaten. He undid his tie and loosened his collar, made no attempt to phone down for a meal. He was beyond it. She didn't press him.

`Who was killed tonight then?' she asked.

`The little man you said you didn't see passing the window of the Pavillon in Geneva when we were having breakfast…'

`Oh, I remember.' She was losing interest. 'Flotsam, you called him. One of life's losers…'

`Sympathetically I said it. You know, you should hail from New York. They divide the world there into winners and losers. He was a refugee who fled from Hungary in fifty-six. He made his living any way he could. He deserved a better epitaph.'

`I had company at dinner,' she told him, changing the subject. 'Another Englishman. Beautiful manners I think he had been in the Army. We got on very well together…'

`Some crusty old colonel of about eighty?' he asked with deliberate indifference.

`No! He's very good-looking. About thirty. Very neat and with a moustache. Talks with a plum in his mouth. I found him very amusing. What time do we meet Dr Novak on Thursday?'

`We don't. I go alone. He won't open up in the same way if you're present. And Thun is getting a dangerous place to visit. Or have you forgotten what nearly happened to us on the motorway?'

`No, I haven't!' she burst out. 'Which is why I think you might have made more of an effort to get back earlier – to have dinner with me. I needed company. Well,' she ended savagely; 'I got company…'

The phone started ringing. Newman glanced at Nancy who shrugged her shoulders. He suddenly realized she was wearing a dress he hadn't seen before. Another black mark, he supposed. No comment. The bell went on ringing and ringing. He picked up the receiver.

`A M. Manfred Seidler to speak to you,' the operator informed him.

`Newman, we must meet tomorrow night. I will phone details for the rendezvous late tomorrow afternoon…'

Truculent. Hectoring. Was there also a hint of desperation in Seidler's tone? Newman cradled the phone on his shoulder while he lit a cigarette.

`Newman? Are you still there?'

`Yes. I'm still here,' Newman replied quietly. 'Tomorrow is out of the question…'

`Then we do not meet at all! You hear me? Other people will pay a fortune for the information I have..

`Sell it to the other people then…'

`Newman, people are dying! I told you that before. Don't you even care?'

`Now you listen to me, Seidler. I can probably meet you three days from now. That's my best offer. And I need to know in advance the rendezvous…'

`You have a car?'

`I could get hold of one.' Never give out even the smallest item of information to someone who is a completely unknown quantity. 'And if you don't come to the point I'm going to put down the phone.

`Don't do that. Please! For God's sake! Newman, I will call you again tomorrow at five o'clock. No, not tomorrow. Five o'clock on the day we meet. You must have a car. And, believe me, it is. too dangerous over an open line to give you details of the rendezvous. Dangerous to you – as well as to me..

`Five o'clock the day we meet. Good night…'

Newman replaced the phone before his caller could say one word more. He lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed, smiling at Nancy who sat watching him intently.

`You were pretty tough with him,' she said.

`In a two-way pull situation like that one participant comes out on top – dominates the other. When we do meet I'll get a lot more out of him if he's at the end of his tether. I think he's pretty near that point now. For some reason I'm his last hope. I want to keep it that way.'

`And the day after tomorrow you see Dr Novak in Thun?'

`Yes. I'm banking a lot on that meeting. I suspect we may have a similar case with Novak to the Seidler situation. Both men living on their nerves, scared witless about something. I just wonder if it's the same thing…'

`Bob, there's something I didn't tell you. But first you've got to eat. An omelette? Very digestible. Followed by fruit?'

He nodded and sat smoking while she called Room Service. The atmosphere between them had changed, had turned some kind of corner. They'd needed that phone interruption to quench their irritation with each other. Seidler had done them a favour. He waited patiently until she'd given the food order, asking also for a bottle of dry white wine and plenty of coffee. She then sat on the bed beside him.

`Bob, what do we do next? I don't know.'

For Nancy Kennedy it was a remarkable comment. She sounded bewildered, as though it was all happening too fast and she couldn't take it in. He put it down to her American background. Europe functioned differently, was infinitely complex.

`First, as I said, I see Novak. Find out what is really happening inside the Berne Clinic. That's why we are here. I'll have to find some way of putting the pressure on him, break him down. That's Item One. Next, the following day, we meet Seidler, find out what he knows. I have a feeling it's all beginning to come together. Fast. What was it you'd omitted to tell me?'

`When I was talking to Jesse at the Clinic while you occupied Novak's attention he told me they were conducting some kind of experiments…'

`Experiments? You're certain he used that word?'

`Quite certain. He didn't elaborate. I think he was worried Novak would hear us talking…' There was a knock on the outer door. 'I think this is your food. Eat, drink and then bed…'

Half an hour later they had undressed, turned out the lights and Newman knew from Nancy's shallow breathing that she was fast asleep. Exhausted by the day's events. He lay awake for a long time, trying to see a pattern to what he had learned.

The weird business of the rapid incidents which Beck couldn't understand. The theft of an Army mortar. The theft of one Army rifle plus twenty-four rounds of ammo. The snowplough incident he had good reason to understand, Newman thought grimly.

Then the murder – it had been murder, he was convinced – of Julius Nagy. The disappearance of Lee Foley. And Blanche had told him Foley had been in the vicinity of the Berne Clinic at the time of his visit with Nancy. So everything – excluding the Nagy killing – was happening in the Thun district.

The Gold Club business which seemed to bother Beck so much. And Seidler's reference in his Geneva phone call to bringing in a consignment across an eastern border. A consignment of what? Across which border? Newman felt certain that if only he could arrange these different factors in the right sequence a pattern would emerge.

He fell asleep with a disturbing thought. The photo showing Bruno Kobler, administrator of the Berne Clinic – again Thun – in conversation in front of the Taubenhalde with – Arthur Beck.