Terminal

Twenty-Five

Friday, 17 February. Kobler stood behind the desk in his first floor office at the Berne Clinic, his back to the huge smoked glass picture window overlooking the mountains beyond Thun. It was ten o'clock in the morning and he was staring at the large man with the tinted glasses who again remained in the shadows. The soft voice spoke with a hint of venom.

`Bruno, you do realize that last night's experiment was a disaster.' It was a statement, not a question. 'How could the Laird woman possibly have left the grounds? Now we have no way of knowing whether the experiment succeeded or not…'

Kobler never ceased to be astounded by the Professor's colossal self-confidence, by the way he could focus his mind like a burning-glass on a single objective. Wasn't it Einstein who had said, 'Clear your mind of all thoughts except the problem you are working on' – or something like that? And Einstein had been another genius.

Kobler's mind was full of the problem of the police holding the Laird woman's body and the dangerous developments that could lead to. All of this seemed to pass the Professor by. As though reading his thoughts, the soft voice continued.

`I leave to you, Bruno, of course, the measures which may be necessary to deal with those tiresome people who had the impertinence to interfere last night.'

`It will be attended to,' Kobler assured him. 'I may have more positive news – about Manfred Seidler…'

`Well, go on. God knows you've been searching for him for long enough. Another tiresome distraction.'

`I concentrated men in Zurich, Geneva – and Basle,' Kobler explained. 'Knowing Seidler, I felt sure he would hide himself in a large city – one not too far from the border. The most likely, I decided, was Basle. Not Zurich because of the works at nearby Horgen he is too well-known there. Not Geneva because the place crawls with agents of all kinds who spend their lives looking for people. So, the largest number of men I put on the ground in Basle – and it paid off…'

`Do tell me how.'

The flat, bored tone warned Kobler he was talking too much. The events of the previous night had imposed an enormous strain on him. He came to the point.

`We got lucky. One of our people spotted Seidler walking into the rail terminal. He bought a return ticket to Le Pont up in the Jura mountains. It's a nowhere place, a dot on the map. The interesting thing is he didn't use the ticket right away. He just bought his ticket and left the station. We are covering that station with a blanket. When he does use that ticket we'll be right behind him. I'm flying Graf and Munz to Basle Airport from the airstrip at Lerchenfeld…'

`They leave when?'

`They are on their way now.' Kobler checked his watch. 'I expect them to be at Basle Hauptbahnhof within the hour. And Le Pont would be an excellent place to deal with the final solution to the Seidler problem. Everything is under control,' he ended crisply.

`Not everything,' the voice corrected him. 'My intuition tells me the main danger is Robert Newman. You will yourself delete that debit item from the ledger…'

Having gone to bed in the middle of the night, Newman and Nancy slept until the middle of the following morning. Newman, for once, agreed without protest to the suggestion that they use Room Service for a late breakfast.

They ate in exhausted silence after dressing. The weather had not improved: another pall of dense cloud pressed down on the city. Nancy was in the bathroom when the phone rang and Newman answered it.

Who was that?' she asked when she came back into the bedroom.

`It was for you.' Newman grinned. 'Another wrong number…'

`That's supposed to be funny?'

`It's the best I can do just after breakfast. And I'm going out to see someone about what happened last night. Don't ask me who. The less you know the better the way things are turning out…'

`Give her my love…'

Which, Newman reflected, as he walked down the Munstergasse, had been a shrewder thrust than Nancy probably realized. The brief call had been from Blanche Signer. The photographs she had taken of the Berne Clinic from the snow-covered knoll were developed and printed. The surprise, when he arrived at her apartment, was that she was not alone. Carefully not revealing his name, she introduced a studious-looking girl who wore glasses and would be, Newman judged, in her late twenties.

`This is Lisbeth Dubach,' Blanche explained. 'She's an expert on interpreting photographs – normally aerial photos. I've shown her those I took of the Fribourg complex. She's found something very odd…'

The Fribourg complex. Blanche, Newman realized, was showing great discretion. First, no mention of his name. Now she was disguising the fact that the photos were taken at the Berne Clinic. On a corner table where a lamp was switched on stood an instrument Newman recognized in the middle of a collection of glossy prints.

The instrument was a stereoscope used for viewing a pair of photographs taken of the same object at slightly different angles. The overall effect obtained by looking through the lenses of the instrument conjured up a three-dimensional image. Newman recalled reading somewhere that during World War Two a certain Flight Officer Babington-Smith had – by using a similar device – detected from aerial photos the first solid evidence that the Nazis had created successfully their secret weapon, the flying bomb. Now another woman, Lisbeth Dubach, years later, was going to show him she had discovered what? As he approached the table he was aware of a tingling sensation at the base of his neck.

`This building,' Dubach began, 'is very strange. I have only once before seen anything similar. Take a look through the lenses, please…'

The laboratory! The building jumped up at Newman in all its three-dimensional solidity as though he were staring down at it from a very low-flying aircraft. He studied the photos and then stood upright and shook his head.

`I'm sorry, I don't see what you're driving at…'

`Look again, please! Those chimneys – their tips. You see the weird bulges perched on top – almost like huge hats perched on top?'

`Yes, I see them now…' Newman was stooped again gazing through the lenses, trying to guess what he was looking at could mean. Once again he gave it up and shook his head.

`I must be thick,' he decided. 'I do now see what you've spotted but I can't detect anything sinister..

`Once while visiting England,' Dubach explained, 'I made a trip to your nuclear plant at Windscale, the plant where Sir John Cockcroft insisted during its design that they had to install special filters on the chimneys…'

`Oh, Christ!' Newman muttered to himself.

`There was a near-disaster at Windscale later,' Dubach continued. 'Only the filters stopped a vast radiation cloud escaping. The filters you are looking at now at the Fribourg complex are very similar..

`But one thing we can tell you,' Newman objected, 'is that this building has nothing whatever to do with nuclear power.'

`There is something there they are making which needs the protection of similar filters,' Dubach asserted.

Newman, still absorbing the appalling implications of what Lisbeth Dubach had detected in the photos, now found himself subjected to a fresh shock.

As soon as they were alone, Blanche produced a sheaf of papers from an envelope and placed them on the sofa between them. They were, Newman observed, photocopies of typed originals. He had no suspicion that – by making photocopies of the sheets she had typed from the notebook – Blanche was protecting her source, Tweed.

She had gone to the length of typing them single-spaced, whereas her normal typing method was double-spacing, as Newman was well aware. She was careful with her explanation.

`Bob, I can't possibly tell you the identity of the client concerned. I'm breaking my iron-clad rule as it is – never to show information obtained for one client to another…'

`Why?' Newman demanded. 'Why are you doing it now?'

`Bob, don't push me! The only reason I'm showing you this data is because I happen to be very fond of you. I know you are investigating the Berne Clinic. What worries me is you may not realize what – who – you are up against. If you read these photocopies it might put you more on your guard. The power wielded by this man is quite terrifying…'

`So I read these and give them back to you?'

`No, you can take them with you. But for God's sake, you don't know where they came from. They were delivered to you at the Bellevue Palace. See, I've typed an envelope addressed to you at the Bellevue Palace. They were left with the concierge at the hotel…'

`If that's the way you want to play it…'

`I'll make you coffee while you're reading them. I could do with some myself. What Lisbeth Dubach told us has scared the wits out of me. What have we got into?'

Newman didn't reply as he picked up the photocopies and started reading. The report on Professor Armand Grange had, he realized quickly, been prepared by an experienced investigator who wasted no words. There were also signs that he – or she – had been working under pressure.

SUBJECT: Professor Armand Grange. Born 1924 at Laupen, near Berne. Family wealthy – owners of watchmaking works. Subject educated University of Lausanne. Brief period military service with Swiss Army near end World War Two.

Rumoured to be member of specialist team sent secretly into Germany to obtain quantity of the nerve gas, TABUN, ahead of advancing Red Army. Note: Repeat, rumour – not confirmed.

After war trained as doctor at Lausanne Medical School, followed by post-graduate work at Guy's Hospital, London, and Johns Hopkins Memorial Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Brilliant student, always top of his class.

Military service not continued due to eye defect. After qualifying as lung consultant, trained as accountant. He proved to be as brilliant in this field as in the medical.

1954. Due to financial flair became director of Zurcher Kredit Bank at early age of 30. 1955. Founded Chemiekonzern Grange AG with factory at Horgen on shores of Lake Zurich. Chemiekonzern manufactures commercial gases, including oxygen, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and cyclopropane, a gas used in medical practice. Rumoured finance for foundation of Chemiekonzern provided by Zurcher Kredit Bank. Note: Repeat, rumour – not confirmed.

1964. Subject bought controlling interest in Berne Clinic. This establishment reported engaged in practice of cellular rejuvenation since subject took over. General comment: subject speaks fluent German, French, English and Spanish. Has made frequent visits to USA and South America. Believed to be millionaire. I was told by reliable contact no decision affecting Swiss military policy taken without reference to subject. One of the most influential voices in Swiss industrial-military complex. This comprises preliminary report based on sources in Zurich and Berne.

Newman read through the report twice and his expression was grim as he inserted the sheets inside the addressed envelope. Recent incidents flashed into his mind, triggered off by the report.

The doodle he had been given by Anna Kleist, a doodle of a gas-mask. Arthur Beck's comment about Hannah Stuart. 'The body was cremated…' The photograph Julius Nagy had taken of Beck outside the Taubenhalde – talking to Dr Bruno Kobler, chief administrator of the Berne Clinic.

Col Lachenal's reference to tous azimuts – all-round defence of Switzerland. And, most recent of all, Lisbeth Dubach's interpretation of the photos Blanche had taken of the laboratory at the Berne Clinic`… something there they are making which needs the protection of similar filters.'

Another aspect of the report intrigued Newman: it bore all the hallmarks of a military appreciation with its terse, precise phraseology. That took his mind back to his meeting in the bar at the Bellevue Palace with Captain Tommy Mason. What was it the Englishman had said during their conversation when Newman had queried his research trip?

`Yes. Medical. Standards of and practice in their private clinics…'

Newman had little doubt he had just read a report drawn up by Mason – Mason who had 'accidentally' bumped into him in that bar, who was now dead. He asked Blanche the question, feeling pretty sure he already knew the answer.

`At the end of the report the word "preliminary" is used. That suggests more to come. Did you get the impression from your other client this would be the case?'

`No, I didn't.' Blanche paused. 'Nothing was said about any further data coming from the same source.' She perched on the arm of the sofa next to him. 'Bob, that report is frightening. Where is all this leading to? There is a mention of the Zurcher Kredit Bank – my stepfather is president of that bank…'

`There really isn't a close relationship between you two?'

`If you don't do exactly what my stepfather wants you to – and I didn't – he just forgets all about you. He's very much the military man. Obey orders – or else…'

`Blanche…' He took her hand. `… this whole business is beginning to look far more dangerous than I ever suspected. Is there any way your father could know that we are friends?'

`Our lives have gone separate ways. He doesn't know who my friends are – and doesn't want to know. And he is my stepfather. My mother divorced my real father who is now dead. You see now why we're so far apart…'

`I'd like you to keep it that way.' Newman kissed her and walked across the room to collect his coat. 'I'm off now – and thanks for this report…'

`Take care, Bob. Please. Where are you going now?' `To blow someone up with verbal gelignite…'

Lachenal agreed to see Newman as soon as he arrived. It is only a ten-minute walk from the upper Junkerngasse to the Bundeshaus Ost. On that morning it had been a freezingly cold walk through the warren-like arcades and on the way Newman had taken the precaution of slipping into the Bellevue Palace to leave the report on Grange in a safety deposit box at the hotel.

Coming out of the safety-deposit room, he bumped into a small, plump-faced man who had turned away from the reception counter, a man who blinked at him through his glasses before he spoke.

`I'm sorry,' Tweed said. didn't see you coming… `No harm done,' Newman assured him.

`I haven't been here long,' Tweed rambled on as though pleased to encounter a fellow-countryman. 'Has the weather been as beastly as this recently?'

`For days – and I think we're due for snow. Best thing is to stay indoors if you can. The wind out there cuts you in two…'

`I think I'll take your advice. This is a marvellous hotel to take refuge in…'

Tweed wandered off across the inner reception hall and Newman paused by the door, taking his time putting on his gloves. Sitting in a corner with her back to him was Nancy and the plump Englishman was heading straight towards her table followed by a waiter carrying a tray of coffee – coffee for two.

Newman waited just long enough to see the Englishman sit down opposite her while the waiter served them with coffee. They were talking together when Newman walked out and turned left to the Bundeshaus Ost.

`Lachenal,' Newman began savagely in the Intelligence chief's office as he sat facing the Swiss across his desk, 'what was all that bloody nonsense out at the Berne Clinic? I'm referring to that Leopard tank – for a moment it looked as though it was going to blow us to kingdom come. My fiancee nearly had a fit. I didn't enjoy the experience too much myself. And what is a German Leopard 11 tank doing in Switzerland? If I don't get some answers I'm going to file a story…'

`Permission to reply?' Lachenal's tone was cold, hostile. Even seated he seemed a very tall man, his back erect, his expression mournful. He's not a very happy man, Newman was thinking as he remained silent and the Swiss continued.

`First, I must apologize for the most unfortunate incident due entirely to a brief lack of communication. It was a simple but unforgivable misunderstanding. The people responsible have been severely reprimanded..

`What's a Leopard 11, the new German tank, maybe the most advanced tank in the world, doing in Switzerland..

`Please! Do let me continue. That is not classified. As you know, we manufacture certain military equipment but we buy a lot abroad – including tanks. We are in the process of re-equipping our armoured divisions. We have just decided to buy the Leopard 11 after thorough testing at Lerchenfeld. It is no secret…'

`Tabun. Is that a secret? The special team sent into Germany near the end of the war to bring back Tabun gas. Is that a secret?' Newman enquired more calmly.

`No comment!'

Lachenal stood up abruptly and went over to the window where he stood gazing at the view. Even dressed in mufti, as he was that morning, Lachenal reminded Newman of de Gaulle more than ever. The same distant aloofness at a moment of crisis.

`You know the fohn wind has been blowing,' Lachenal remarked after a pause. 'That probably contributed to the incident outside the Berne Clinic. It plays on the nerves, it affects men's judgement. It is no longer blowing. Soon we shall have snow. Always after the fohn…'

`I didn't come here for a weather forecast,' Newman interjected sarcastically.

`I can tell you this,' Lachenal went on, thrusting his hands into his pockets and turning to face Newman, 'it is true that the Germans had a large quantity of Tabun, the nerve gas, near the end of the war. Twelve thousand tons of the stuff, for God's sake. They thought the Soviets were going to resort to chemical warfare. The Red Army captured most of it. They've now drawn level with the West in a more sinister area – in the development of organo-phosphorous compounds. They have perfected their toxicity…'

`I do know that, Rene,' Newman said quietly.

`But do you also know the Soviets have perfected far more deadly toxic gases – especially those highly lethal irritants which they have adapted for use by their chemical battalions? I am referring, Bob, specifically, to hydrogen cyanide…'

Hydrogen cyanide…'

The two words rang through Newman's head like the clang of a giant hammer hitting a mighty anvil. Lachenal continued talking in a level voice devoid of emotion.

`This substance is regarded in the West as being too volatile. Not so by the Soviets. They, have equipped their special chemical warfare sections with frog rockets and stud missiles. Artillery shells filled with this diabolical agent are also part of their armoury. Did you say something, Bob?'

`No. Maybe I grunted. Please go on…'

`The Soviets have further equipped aircraft with sophisticated spray tanks containing this advanced form of hydrogen cyanide gas. We have calculated that a single shell fired through the vehicle of a missile, an artillery shell or from a spray tank – aimed by a low-flying aircraft – would destroy all life over an area of one square kilometre. Just a single shell,' Lachenal repeated.

Newman heard him but he also heard Nancy's diagnosis of how Mrs Holly Laird had died. And the complexion of the face showed distinct traces of cyanosis. What was it Anna Kleist had replied? My examination so far confirms precisely Dr Kennedy's impression…'

Lachenal walked back from the window and again sat behind his desk, clasping his hands as he stared at his visitor who sat motionless. Newman shook his head slightly, brought himself back into the present. He had the distinct conviction that the Swiss was labouring under enormous tension, that he was concealing that tension with a tremendous effort of will.

`And so,' Lachenal concluded, 'all that started with Tabun. Which was what you came here to talk about – not the Leopard.'

`If you say so, Rene.' Newman heaved himself to his feet and reached for his coat. 'I'd better be going now…'

`One more thing, Bob.' Lachenal had stood up and he spoke with great earnestness. 'We all have to be the final judge of our own conduct in this world. No hiding behind the order of a so-called superior…'

`I would say you're right there,' Newman replied slowly.

It was this conversation which decided Newman as he left the Bundeshaus Ost – decided him that at the very first opportunity he would get Nancy out of Switzerland-even if it meant he had to crash the border.