The Power

33

Marler, typically, had told Tweed before leaving Basle that he'd hire his own car, make his own way to Colmar.

'I may not reach the Hotel Bristol until late in the evening,' he had warned.

Tweed, knowing Marler liked to operate on his own, had agreed immediately.

'See you at the Bristol then,' Marler ended jauntily.

Hiring an Audi, he had driven to Mulhouse. There, instead of continuing north along the autoroute to Colmar, he had turned west, heading for the Ballon d'Alsace in the southern region of the Vosges. He had reached the French glider airfield and had a long chat in his fluent French with the controller.

Marler, after training in Britain, was an expert in flying gliders. He had examined a machine, climbing into the confined cockpit. The controller had leaned against the side as Marler haggled over the price. He would want the glider for several days.

'Incidentally, you've seen my licence, but accidents happen. How much if I smash it up?'

'Sir, that would cost you a lot of money.'

'How much?'

The controller had told him and Marler had nodded. He knew Tweed had the funds to fork out if necessary. The deposit paid, Marler drove off, returning by the route he'd come until he joined the autoroute north near Mulhouse.

Keeping just inside the speed limit, he raced along the autoroute, bypassing Colmar, continuing north to the great river port of Strasbourg on the Rhine. Arriving there, he was driving much more sedately. Marler knew Europe as well as Newman, and he thought the ancient city unique.

The old city is perched on an island and spanned by many bridges. Marler parked his Audi outside and walked the rest of the way, crossing one of the bridges, glancing up to admire the medieval architecture. This was history, the Free City where once Protestant refugees had fled from French Catholic oppression. Which probably explained why it housed so many craftsmen in different fields. It was one of these craftsmen Marler was visiting. A gunsmith – who provided on the quiet the greatest range of weapons of any secret armaments supplier on the Continent.

Near the immense mass of the looming cathedral, Marler turned down a narrow stone-flagged alley. Suddenly he entered a world of silence, all sounds of traffic and human bustle gone.

He mounted a flight of worn stone steps to a landing on the first floor. Facing him was a massive studded wooden door with a Judas window. The only modern item in sight was a metal-grilled speakphone with a button alongside it. No indication as to who lived there.

'Who is it?' a quiet voice asked in French.

'Marler. You know me, Grandjouan. We've done business before.'

The Judas window opened, eyes peered out at him through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched on a hooked nose. Marler waited while chains were removed, bolts pulled back, locks unfastened. The place was a fortress. The door swung open.

'Marler, indeed. So long since we last met. Come and join me for a glass of wine.'

Grandjouan was a hunchback with tiny feet. Marler was careful not to stare at his deformity. When his host had closed the door, chained and relocked it, they shook hands.

'I hadn't time to press the button, you old rascal,' Marler remarked. 'So how did you know someone had arrived?'

'One of my state secrets.' Grandjouan chuckled throatily. 'Now the wine…'

'Not for me, thank you so much. I have a long way to drive when we 've completed our business.'

'Such a pity. I have the most excellent Riesling.'

'Well, just a small glass.'

Grandjouan had a clean-shaven weathered face. Impossible even to guess his age. He had a nice smile and his eyes twinkled behind the spectacles as he handed Marler the glass.

'Sante!'

'Sante!' Marler repeated. This is very good.'

'I told you so. Now, as always you are a man in a hurry. So down to business.'

'I want an Armalite rifle, dismantled, with plenty of ammo. Twelve hand-grenades. A tear-gas pistol with a supply of shells. A Luger, again with ammo. All without any history.'

'Of course.' Grandjouan sipped again at his wine. 'I believe you are going to start a small war?'

'It could be something like that.'

Marler had carried from the car a cricket bag which contained a bat and several balls. He had put it on a table when he accepted the glass. Grandjouan looked at it, shook his head, covered with thinning grey hair.

'You proposed to carry these items away in that? Yes? I can do better. The container will come free, my friend.' He opened a cupboard, produced a cello case. 'Much better. It will take the load, which your cricket bag will not. Also we like some camouflage, in case you are stopped by the police.'

Grandjouan wore an old leather jacket with a woollen blue shirt underneath, open at the neck. His trousers were old but clean' corduroy. Marler looked round his lair as his host ferreted about.

The walls were lined with huge old wooden chests and cupboards. When Grandjouan opened one cupboard it was stacked to the gunwales. Heaven help any policeman who came to search this place. Illumination came from a large oval window in the slanting roof. Heating was provided by several oil heaters. The only reasonably modern item of furniture was the massive old fridge from which Grandjouan had taken the bottle of Riesling. The place reminded Marler of a hermit's cave.

Grandjouan returned holding a black beret in one hand, a folder of leather tucked under his other arm. He handed Marler the beret.

'You are English. Obvious – very – from the clothes you're wearing.'

Which was true. On the Continent Marler was always taken for what they imagined the typical Englishman to be, a member of the idle upper classes. His drawling way of speaking reinforced the impression. It had thrown more than one adversary off guard.

Under the British warm, which he had placed on an armchair, he wore a houndstooth sports jacket, heavy grey slacks, a blue cravat below his strong jaw. He looked at the beret.

'Why this?'

'You are posing as a musician with that cello case. The beret on an Englishman dressed as you are suggests the artistic temperament.'

'God forbid!'

'Wear it. And here in this folder are some sheets of music. Spread one or two on the car seat beside you. They will strengthen the impression that you are a musician.'

Marler glanced at the sheets. He paused at one sheet -

'La Jeune Fille aux Cheveux de Lin', 'The Girl with the Flaxen Hair'. Unconsciously he began to hum the tune to himself. Grandjouan performed a little dance of delight.

'Excellent, my friend! You have thought yourself into the part.. .'

Grandjouan himself packed the twelve grenades, the tear-gas shells in the cello case after wrapping each item in thick tissue-paper. He performed the same routine with the tear-gas pistol, the Luger and ammo. Then he took a box he had extracted from beneath one of the floorboards which was hinged invisibly. Inside was the Armalite, dismantled.

'I'll assemble that if I may,' Marler suggested.

Grandjouan watched with approval the speed at which Marler put the separate parts together. He attached the magnifying night scope, squinted through it at the skylight, pressed the trigger of the unloaded gun.

'It feels good…'

With equal rapidity he dismantled it and Grandjouan picked up the pieces, again wrapping them in the tissue-paper. He fitted them inside the cello case, added ammo. Then he took a large piece of black velvet, spread it over the case's contents. From another deep drawer in an ancient chest he took out a long slim object inside a silk sleeve. He pointed to the end projecting before laying it on top of the velvet.

'More camouflage. The bow for your imaginary cello -with the end showing.'

He closed the case, snapped down the latch. Grandjouan had been right – everything had fitted in snugly, filling the case. Marler picked it up, tested the weight as the hunchback beamed, spoke again. Marler was wearing the beret.

'Perfect,' enthused Grandjouan. 'I used the tissue-paper so there was no danger of any rattle.'

Talking of danger, why did you say I might be stopped by the police? Oh, let's first settle up.'

Marler made no attempt to haggle over the price. Producing a wad of French thousand-franc notes he counted out the correct amount on a table. He was reaching for the cello case and his cricket bag when Grandjouan explained.

'Yes, you could well be stopped by the police. I have an ear to the grapevine. Paris has received a message that a team of terrorists is crossing into Alsace.'

'Where from?' Marler asked sharply.

'From Switzerland.'

'I see. I'll be careful.'

He shook hands, thanked the hunchback for his service. As Grandjouan closed the door behind him he paused to pull up the collar of his coat. Standing on the platform at the top of the stone steps he glanced down. Inset into the stone was a square piece of rubber. Of course! A pressure pad. That was how the wily old hunchback had known someone had arrived before he had pressed the bell.

Marler was very alert as he walked back inside the alley, pausing at the exit to glance out. No sign of a patrol car. It was, of course, Beck who had warned Paris -warned them about the Americans.

A little unfortunate from Tweed's point of view – that the Haut-Rhin, where Colmar was located, would be swarming with flics on the lookout. On the other hand the news confirmed that the Americans had followed them close on their heels. Maybe it was only just beginning.

In mid-afternoon at the Chateau Noir the banker, Amberg, stared at his uninvited guest, listening, saying nothing. Gaunt had arrived in his hired white BMW without phoning first to make sure it would be convenient for him to call. Now his voice boomed in the Great Hall.

'I was a close friend of your late lamented brother, Julius. I am a close friend of your sister-in-law, Eve. I feel I have a responsibility to track down whoever murdered Julius so brutally. After all, my dear chap, the tragedy did take place in my house in Cornwall, Tresillian Manor.'

'I see,' Amberg replied and was silent again.

Gaunt sat in one of the very large black leather button-backed armchairs scattered about the vast space. The chair would have dwarfed most men, but not Gaunt. His stature with his leonine head seemed to dominate the room.

Swallowed up in another armchair close to a crackling log fire, Jennie Blade warmed her hands. If you were any distance from it the place was freezing. The Great Hall merited its name. About sixty feet square, it had granite walls and miserable illumination from wall sconces. She doubted whether the bulbs inside them were more than forty watts.

The walls sheered up to a height of thirty feet or so. Scattered here and there, as though rationed, small rugs lay on the stone-flagged floor. The entrance hall was grim enough, but this so-called living-room was pure purgatory, Jennie said to herself. There was hardly any furniture except for the chairs and two large, bulbous – and repellent – sideboards standing against a wall. Gaunt was ploughing on, as though unaware of the lukewarm reception.

'The question I have to find an answer to is why he was murdered, Amberg. I had a chat with him when he arrived. He told me he had fled Switzerland because he was scared stiff. Apparently a Joel Dyson had deposited with him at the Zurich headquarters a film and a tape. Is that so?'

'That is correct,' Amberg replied and again lapsed into silence.

Gaunt leaned forward. Jennie had the impression that he was studying the banker carefully. His voice became a rumble, his manner like that of an interrogator.

'You saw what was on the film, you heard the tape?'

'No. Dyson handed them to Julius.'

'And did he watch the film, listen to the tape?'

'I don't know.'

'Where are they now?'

'They have gone missing.'

'What!' Gaunt exploded. 'Look, Julius told me he had first stored them in a vault at the Zurcher Kredit in Zurich. He then had them transferred to a less obvious place of safety. The bank vault in Basle.'

'I know. He told me.'

'So how the hell can they be missing?' Gaunt demanded. 'I always thought Swiss banks were like fortresses, that they kept the most meticulous records of every single transaction. Now you tell me they are missing.'

'Mr Gaunt, if you can't speak more quietly I may have to ask you to leave.'

'Plenty of room for my voice in this mausoleum. You haven't answered the question.'

Amberg, perhaps to compensate for his lack of height, sat in a low-backed hard chair perched on a dais behind an old desk Jennie thought could have come from a second-hand stall in the Portobello Road. To break the tension, to get a little more warmth, she reached into a basket, took out two logs, placed them on the fire. Amberg frowned at her.

'Those logs are very expensive.'

'Oh, pardon me.'

Stuff you, she thought. Everything here is rationed. The logs, the rugs, the words Amberg allowed to escape his lips. She stood up, straightened the jodhpurs she'd worn against the cold, thrust her hands inside her pockets to ward off the chill, wandered past the dais.

At the far end of the hall, down a wide flight of stone steps, was an indoor terrace. A huge picture window gave a panoramic view across the lower slopes of the sunlit Vosges. The glare of the sun off the snow was intense. The air was so clear Jennie could see in the distance another range of mountains. The Black Forest. In Germany beyond the Rhine.

She happened to glance down and sucked in her breath. Beyond the picture window the ground fell away into a sheer precipice. At the bottom was a sinister black lake, shrouded from the sun by the Vosges. Behind her the conversation continued. Assuming 'conversation' now meant one man talking to another.

'I have no idea why they went missing,' Amberg replied. 'It was Julius who supervised the transfer.'

'I thought you were Chairman of the bank,' Gaunt threw at the Swiss.

'That is correct. Day to day business was handled by Julius.'

'Are you saying you have no idea what happened to two items given into the bank's safekeeping?'

That is correct.'

'Put that remark on a record so you can play it,' Gaunt snapped.

As he stood up, his expression grim, Jennie decided to intervene. Amberg had also stood up, small, portly, dressed in a black business suit. He turned to her in surprise, as though he'd forgotten her presence. Jennie realized the intensity of his concentration on his duel with Gaunt.

'How on earth do you manage to run this enormous place?' she enquired. 'Surely you need servants?'

'True. They don't live in. Too much of an invasion of privacy, which I value highly. The peasants from the local villages provide all the manpower needed.' His blue eyes twinkled. 'Of course, I have to pay them more in summer, but that's understandable. They can make a living tending the vineyards. I own a vineyard myself. Next time you come and see me you can sample some of my wine. I think you will like it. But your friend appears anxious to leave.'

Jennie had been staring straight into his shrewd blue eyes for every second he spoke. The transformation in his personality astounded her. Then she thought of the probable explanation. He was a man who preferred the company of women – and Gaunt had, gone at him like a bull at a gate. She glanced at the Squire. He stood like a man carved out of stone. Furious that he'd got nowhere with the banker.

Amberg escorted them into the entrance hall. As she was stepping out of the chateau Amberg held out his hand, shook hers warmly.

'Don't forget my invitation to taste the wine…'

His expression changed suddenly as he looked at Gaunt. It reminded her of the expression the Swiss had adopted during the 'conversation'. Like a slab of ice.

'Goodbye, Mr Gaunt.'

'And it hasn't been a pleasure,' Gaunt roared at the top of his voice.