Terminal

Twenty-Seven

Basle. About the same time when Newman and Nancy ended their second visit to the Berne Clinic, Bruno Kobler was sitting in his bedroom at the Hotel Terminus which faces the Hauptbahnhof at Basle. Kobler had flown to Basle and this hotel had been chosen because of its strategic position.

Manfred Seidler had been seen purchasing a ticket to Le Pont, the tiny town close to the edge of Lac de Joux in the Jura Mountains. Since then they had lost track of Seidler, which was unfortunate, but Kobler possessed almost the calm patience of Lee Foley when it came to waiting. He spoke to the short, stocky Emil Graf who stood by the window, waiting for a signal from Hugo Munz who was in charge of the team inside the Hauptbahnhof.

`Seidler has to show,' Kobler observed. 'I'm sure he has a rendezvous with someone at Le Pont. And we have more men waiting at the Hotel de is Truite…'

`I don't know Le Pont,' Graf replied. 'From the map it looks a godforsaken place…'

`It is – just the remote spot where Seidler will feel safe to meet whoever he's going to sell the sample he stole from us. And the Hotel de la Truite is near the station…'

`He must have arrived! Munz has just signalled.

Kobler was already opening the bedroom door, slipping into his astrakhan coat. He gestured towards the holdall bag on the bed to remind Graf not to forget it. Kobler had no intention of carrying the holdall, considering what it contained. Hired lackeys were paid to take such risks. Kobler would only lay his hands on the weapon when the time came to use it. He might not even have to use it at all – not when he had hired backup.

`He's boarded the two o'clock train,' Munz informed them as they hurried inside the huge station. 'Here are your tickets – and you'd better move…'

`It's Lausanne first,' Kobler guessed as he settled himself in his first-class seat alongside Munz. Graf had boarded the coach where Seidler was seated.

Kobler studied the rail timetable he had brought with him. He nodded his head as the train glided out of the station, turning the pages as he checked connections, then he glanced at Munz who sat in a rigid posture.

`Relax. We have to wait until we get him on his own. It may be hours yet. We're doing a simple job – like cleaning up some garbage…'

He looked out of the window as the train picked up speed, moving through the suburbs. He was not sorry to leave – the city of Basle was hostile territory, the home base of Dr Max Nagel, the main opponent of the Gold Club. Kobler need not have worried. At that moment Nagel was aboard another train – bound for Berne.

Five coaches ahead Manfred Seidler was a bundle of nerves. He broke open a fresh pack, lit his forty-first cigarette of the day as he thought of the scene back in the flat before he had left.

Erika had rushed back from the office to make him a meal during her lunchtime break. It was during the meal that he had told her he was leaving. She had looked appalled.

`Do you have to? I could take a long lunch hour. Nagel has gone to Berne…'

`What for?' Not that he was really interested.

`It's queer. I had to make him a reservation at the Bellevue Palace. He's attending some Medical Congress reception. He's not even a doctor. And I've never seen him look grimmer – he's up to something…'

`Probably to tie up some deal which will net him another million or two. Erika, I may not be back till tomorrow – so don't start worrying…'

`You know I will – until I see you safe and sound again. Where are you going? What is it all about? I'm entitled to know something, surely?'

`Where doesn't matter,' he had told her. 'I'm going to meet that British foreign correspondent, Robert Newman. He can give me protection – by blowing Terminal wide open. No, don't ask me any more. And thanks for the meal…'

Seated in the train he wished he had said more. He looked up at the rack where he had stored his two suitcases. One contained some of the newspapers Erika had brought him, the other the sample. It would be difficult for anyone to snatch two suitcases off him when he was walking along a platform. And they wouldn't know which case contained the sample. You had to think of little things like that.

Seidler stirred restlessly and took a deep drag on the cigarette. They had turned up the heating and he would dearly have liked to take off his jacket. But that was impossible. He was too aware of the 9-mm. Luger inside the spring-loaded holster under his left armpit.

Berne. Beck sat behind his desk in his office and looked at Gisela who had just taken the call. She put down the receiver and turned to speak to her chief.

That was Leupin. Newman and Dr Kennedy are just leaving the Berne Clinic. He spotted them through his binoculars and radioed in the information…'

`Thank you. Gisela, I want you to make reservations at the Bellevue Palace for three of our men. I want them there during that Medical Congress reception tomorrow. Professor Grange will be there. I may put in an appearance myself.'

`Things are coming to a head, aren't they?'

`Your instincts are usually good, Gisela. The one piece still missing is Manfred Seidler. The fox has gone to cover, but he has to surface. When he does I want to be there – before the military get him. Send out a fresh alert. Seidler must be found at all costs…'

Newman infuriated Nancy when they had left Novak and were approaching the parked Citroen. She just wanted to get away from the place – she was so depressed by Jesse's attitude.

`Let me check the car,' Newman warned. 'Wait here… `Why in God's name!'

`To make sure no one has tampered with it.'

He looked for fresh footprints, for any sign that someone had been clever, using their own footprints still sculpted in the hard snow. He checked the bonnet where he had pressed a small amount of snow on arrival, snow which had frozen immediately at the point where the bonnet lifted. The snow was undisturbed. He unlocked the car and waved to Nancy to get into the passenger seat.

`I'm driving this time,' he informed her as he got behind the wheel and she flopped beside him.

`You don't like my driving?' she flared.

`Remember last time – the snowplough?'

`Maybe you're right. Why all the fuss about someone tampering with it?'

`In case they'd placed a bomb,' he told her brutally as he continued his policy of unnerving her.

`Jesus! You want a nervous wreck on your hands?'

They said nothing more to each other during the drive back to Berne which was uneventful. At the Bellevue Palace they had a late lunch in the coffee shop which was quiet so it was safe to talk freely. Nancy brought, up the subject over their coffee.

`The next thing is Seidler?'

`That's right. Don't forget to pack the two overnight cases. I have an idea we're going to need them.

`Which was the first thing I was going to do. At least this time I'm permitted to accompany you..

`Nancy, do shut up…'

They spent the whole of the rest of the afternoon inside the bedroom in case Seidler phoned early. Newman had purchased a road map the previous day and he studied this while Nancy kicked off her shoes, lay on the bed and tried to sleep. She was certain she'd stay awake and the ringing of the phone jerked her back into consciousness with a start. Newman grabbed for the instrument, the map spread out on the other bed.

`Newman speaking…'

`This is Manfred Seidler. I am only going to say this one time…'

`You'll repeat it if I don't get it. Go on…'

`Le Pont, in the Juras, near Lac de Joux. You know it?' `Yes…'

`We rendezvous at exactly nineteen twenty-eight hours. At the station. I will be on the train which arrives at nineteen twenty-eight…'

Tor Christ's sake, I'll never make it. Don't you realize it's five o'clock now?'

`If you are interested in the information I can provide – no details over the phone – bring two thousand Swiss francs in cash. Park your car a very short distance from the station – but out of sight. I shall be carrying two suitcases.'

`I need more time. There's snow in the Juras. The roads will be hell…'

`Nineteen twenty-eight hours. And I won't wait. Are you coming or not?'

`I'm coming…'

There was a click at the other end of the line. Seidler had broken the connection. Newman replaced the receiver and checked his watch again. He examined the map quickly while Nancy leaned over his shoulder.

`Can we make it?' she asked.

`If we go this way we just might. He's cutting it bloody fine…'

His finger traced a route from Berne along motorway N12 down to Lake Geneva. The finger turned on to motorway N9 – roughly running parallel westward to the lake until it joined the third motorway, N1. At a place called Rolle, between Lausanne and Geneva, on the shore of the lake, Newman traced a route along a road winding up over the Juras and stopped at Le Pont.

`That's a long way round,' Nancy objected. 'It's two sides of a triangle…'

`It's also the only way we'll get there in time – by using the motorways. And I've driven up the section from Rolle, so I know the road. It will be diabolical when we get above the snow line. Come on, girl. I'll take the cases. Thank God I had the tank refilled on the way back from Thun…'

They were waiting for the lift when Nancy told Newman to go ahead to the car and she'd follow. 'I've forgotten my purse,' she explained as the lift arrived and Newman, swearing, stepped inside.

Lausanne Gare. Seidler lugged the two suitcases out of the phone booth back on to the platform. He felt a sense of relief: Newman was coming. He hurriedly made his way to the restaurant where there would be plenty of people while he waited for his next train.

He was deliberately taking a roundabout route – to make sure he was not being followed. Now he had to wait for the Cisalpin, the Paris express which travelled non-stop to the frontier station at Vallorbe. From there he would back-track on the small local leaving Vallorbe at 19.09 and reaching Le Pont at 19.28.

Berne. `Leupin calling, Chief. Newman has just left the hotel carrying two cases. He's putting them in the back of his car, the Citroen. Hold on, his fiancee has dashed out to join him…'

`It's all right, Leupin,' Beck reassured his subordinate. 'I have allocated another six men to the job – as a contingency measure. Six men with three more cars. They can leapfrog to make sure he doesn't know what we're doing. You and Marbot tail him for the first lap. Good luck…'

Beck put down the phone and sighed as he looked across at Gisela. She brought over the fresh cup of coffee she had poured for him. It looked as though it was going to be quite a night: Beck was in his shirt-sleeves, the sure sign of a long siege.

`Newman and his girl just left the Bellevue with two cases,' he told her. 'They're getting into that hired car…'

`They're trying to leave the country?'

`That would be out of character for Newman at this stage of the game. You have laid on that other facility I requested?' The machine is already standing by…'

It was very dark that night. It was very cold. Newman almost made the Citroen fly, moving well over the limit when he felt he could risk it on the motorways. At that, they were overtaken several times, twin headlights turned full on, flashing past them at God knew what speed.

`That couldn't be the police, could it?' Nancy wondered aloud when the second car sped past.

`Hardly. The first was a Saab, that was a Volvo…'

`I keep thinking about Jesse. I don't see what we can do about him.'

`Nothing. I can see where you get your stubborn streak from.'

`We can't just do nothing…'

`Leave him to me…'

`And what does that mean?' she asked.

`I'll think of something…'

He slowed down on the way to Geneva. A few minutes later the route sign appeared indicating a turn-off. Rolle VD – Rolle, Canton of the Vaud. Newman swung away from the lake, away from the N1 on to the side road north which immediately began to climb. In the distance the Juras loomed like a giant white tidal wave arrested in mid-motion. Then they were above the snow line.

In their headlights the narrow road ahead was like a mirror, a mirror of ice. The road turned and twisted, climbing steeper and steeper. The danger signs began to appear, signs with a sinister zigzag. Risque de Verglas. Skid. Ice. Now the road really began the ascent. Newman's arms ached with the strain of holding the wheel, keeping the car on the road. Nancy glanced at him. His lips were compressed, eyes narrowed. She lit a cigarette, glanced in the wing mirror. The lights of the black Audi were still there. A long way back on an unusually straight section. First the Saab, then the Volvo, now the Audi. She looked ahead and stiffened.

`Oh, Christ!'

The wave of the Juras hung above them. Verglas. The zigzags were incredible. Newman was constantly turning the wheel. And now they had entered a narrow gulch. Snow banked high on both sides. Beyond reared dark walls of dense fir forest, the branches of trees sagging under the weight of the snow. She reached to turn up the heater and found it already full on. They went on climbing, twisting inside the gulch. The clock on the dashboard registered 19.20 hours. Eight minutes to rendezvous time. They'd never make it.

They went over the top without warning. Swinging round a particularly suicidal bend, the road suddenly levelled out. They started to descend. Lights appeared in the distance. `Le Pont,' Newman said.

A cluster of houses, steep-roofed, spilling down a hillside. The roofs heavy with snow. Wooden balconies at first-floor level. Hardly more than a hamlet. Newman nudged the car past a hotel ablaze with lights. Hotel de la Truite.

`Look!'

Newman pointed up at the hotel. Under the eaves shards of ice a foot long projected downwards. A palisade of icicles. Inverted. The station was little more than a one-storey hut, an isolated building with no one about. The dashboard clock registered 19.26 hours. Newman parked the car beside the building, out of sight of the exit. First, he had swung it through one hundred and eighty degrees – involving a major rear-wheel skid which made Nancy clench her hands. Ready for a swift departure. He left the engine ticking over.

`I want you to take over the wheel,' he told Nancy. 'I'm going to stand near the exit when the train comes in. This could be a trap. If I come running move like a bird when I dive inside – back the way we came. I'm leaving you now – look, the train is coming…'

The train, three small coaches, an abbreviated caterpillar of lights, stopped behind the station – no more than a wayside halt. Newman heard the distinctive sound of a door slamming. A gaunt-faced man, hatless, carrying two suitcases, appeared under the pallid light over the exit. He had a haunted look, calling out in German.

`Newman! Where is the car… I am being followed…'

Two men appeared behind him in the exit. A car driven at high speed came up the road from the direction of Neuchatel- and Berne. Its headlamps swept like searchlights over the station exit. Newman caught a flash of red – red like the Porsche he had seen on the Thun motorway. There was a scream of brakes applied savagely. The barrel of a rifle projected from the driver's window. At the same moment Nancy drove the Citroen round from the side of the station, pulled up, threw open the doors.

`Inside the car, Seidler!' Newman yelled.

He grabbed one suitcase, hurled it on the rear seat, shoved Seidler after it, shut the door and dived into the front passenger seat. The other car was still moving, slithering in a skid on ice as the rifle barrel moved further out of the window. One of the two men following Seidler was pulling something out from inside his coat.

`Move!' Newman shouted at Nancy. 'Back the way we came…'

The rifle was fired, a detonating report above the sounds of both cars' engines. The man hauling something out from inside his coat pocket was thrown backwards as though kicked by an elephant. The rifle spoke a second time. The other man performed a weird pirouette, clutching his chest, then sagging into the snow.

It was incredible marksmanship. Two bullets fired by a man who had to be driving with one hand, operating the rifle with the other, all while his car was recovering from a skid. Two men died. Newman had no doubt that neither had survived the impact of what had sounded like a high-velocity rifle.

Nancy was driving the Citroen across the beam of the other vehicle's headlights, speeding beyond them as she pressed her foot down regardless of the treachery of the ground beneath their wheels. Then the station was behind them and they were going back over their previous route.

`That man behind him pulled out a gun,' Seidler croaked hoarsely.

`I saw it,' Newman replied tersely.

They were approaching the Hotel de la Truite when a black Mercedes swung out from the drive straight across the path of the Citroen. Nancy jammed on the brakes, the car slithered, then stopped. The Mercedes drove on past towards the station.

`Bastard!' Nancy snapped between clenched teeth. `Maybe he's on his way to meet two bodies,' Newman speculated.

Nancy glared at him and started the car moving again. Outside the hotel a pair of skis had been rammed vertically into the ground. During their brief stop Newman had heard singing with a drunken cadence coming from inside the hotel. Death at the station, revelry at the inn. Apres-ski in full swing.

Seidler leaned forward, grasping the backs of their seats.

He stared through the windscreen as though getting his bearings. He spoke suddenly, this time in English for Nancy's benefit.

`Not the left turn to Rolle! Bear right. Take the lakeside road…'

`Do as he says,' Newman said quietly. 'Why, Seidler? I'd have thought this was a good place to leave fast…'

`There is a house on the left-hand side of this road at the foot of the mountain. We talk there… Mein Gott, what was that?'

`It's that helicopter again,' Nancy said, glancing out of her side window. 'If it is the same one. I first heard it when we turned off at Rolle…'

`So did I,' agreed Newman. 'It followed us up the mountain. There are a lot of military choppers floating around…'

`Military?' Seidler sounded alarmed. 'You were followed?'

`Shut up!' Newman told him. 'Just warn us before we reach this house…'

`Keep to the road round the lake before I tell you to stop. Keep the very fast speed…'

`I need directions as to the route, not how to drive,' Nancy replied coldly.

At about three thousand feet the Vallee de Joux nestles inside folds of the Jura Mountains. To their right the lake was a bed of solid ice covered with a counterpane of snow. To the left the mountain slopes were scarred with the graffiti of daytime skiers propelling themselves across the snow. Here and there loomed the silhouettes of two-storey houses constructed of shiny new wood. As a winter ski resort Le Pont was prospering.

`This is it,' Seidler called out, 'just before we arrive in the L'Abbaye village…' He leaned forward again. `Place the car in the garage…'

`Don't,' Newman interjected. 'Drive it under that copse of firs. Back it in if you can – facing the way we're going now.'

`You know something? I might just manage that, Robert…'

Newman's mind was galloping. He had just seen his opportunity. L'Abbaye. Beyond the far end of the lake was Le Brassus. Only a few kilometres beyond Le Brassus was a tiny Douane, a Customs post, thinly manned. And beyond that the road passed into France. The road continued over French soil for another twenty kilometres or so to La Cure. He could even remember the Hotel Franco-Suisse where he had once stayed the night – the strange hotel where you went through the front door still in France and out of the back door into Switzerland! At La Cure they could turn north, continuing into France. That was how he was going to get Nancy out of Switzerland – to safety – tonight.

`Why not the garage?' Seidler complained.

`With the car left outside we can escape quickly – or have you not noticed that chopper is still with us?'

`You have brought the two thousand Swiss francs?' demanded Seidler.

`No. You just put that in because people don't value something they can get for nothing.' Newman turned to face Seidler. 'If you don't want to talk we'll drop you here and drive away. Make up your mind…'

`We go into the house…'

Seidler looked to be near the end of his tether. Haunted eyes, deep in their sockets, stared back at Newman as Nancy skilfully backed the Citroen off the road a short distance up the slope under the firs. She switched off the engine and Newman got out of the car, standing for a moment to stretch his aching limbs.

The two-storey house stood a few yards back from the road on the lower slope. It was old, decrepit and a verandah ran the full length of the ground floor. A short flight of wooden steps led up to the front door and there were balconies in front of the shuttered windows on the first floor. The downstairs windows were also shuttered. Nancy thought it was a grim, eerie-looking place.

The beat of the chopper's motor was louder now the Citroen was silent. Newman craned his neck but it was somewhere behind the copse and going away from them. He slapped his gloved hands round his forearms.

`God, it's freezing,' commented Nancy.

At that height it was Arctic. No wind. Just a sub-zero temperature which was already penetrating Newman's shoes and gloves. Another row of stiletto-like icicles was suspended from the house's gutter. Newman made no effort to help with the two suitcases Seidler carried up the steps.

`Whose place is this?' he asked as Seidler took a key out of his pocket.

`A friend's. He dwells here only in the summertime…'

`Sensible chap…'

To Newman's surprise, the key turned in the lock first time. They entered a huge room which seemed to occupy most of the ground floor. At the far end on the left-hand side a wooden staircase led up to a minstrel's gallery overlooking the room below.

The floor, made of wooden planks, was varnished and decorated with worn rugs scattered at intervals. The furniture was heavy and traditional; old chairs, tables, sideboards and bookcases. Nancy noticed a film of dust lay over everything.

Along the right-hand wall was the only modern innovation – a kitchen galley with formica worktops. She ran a finger along them and it came away black with dust. Opening a cupboard she found it well-stocked with canned food and jars of coffee.

`I will demonstrate at once what this is all about,' Seidler informed Newman in German. 'Please wait here…'

He disappeared through a doorway in the rear wall, dumping one suitcase on the floor and carrying the other. Newman turned to Nancy and shrugged. She asked him what Seidler had said and he told her. Even inside the house with the front door closed it was icy – and they could still hear the chopper in the distance as though it were circling. Nancy opened her mouth and screamed at the top of her voice. Newman swung round and stared at the back of the room.

A hideous apparition had appeared in the doorway through which Seidler had disappeared. Newman understood the scream as he gazed at the man with no head standing there, the man with the blank goggle-eyes of an octopus. Seidler was wearing a gas mask, a mask with strange letters stencilled above the frightening goggle-eyes. CCCP. USSR.