The Power

44

'That is what we have saved you from…'

Tweed almost thundered the words as he stood in the snow, still gripping Amberg's arm. They had walked out of the front door and beyond the porch to survey a scene of carnage.

Blood disfigured the white of the snow, the bodies of Mencken's assault group lay in grotesque attitudes. Paula stood on his other side, the Browning still in her hand, ready for use. Gaunt had brought up the rear.

As they stood in the bitter cold Butler, who had medical training, completed checking each body to see if anyone was still alive. He stood up from the last corpse and shook his head. A station wagon full of Mencken's troops had followed the Citroen into the yard. The occupants, all armed, had been despatched by Newman with his Uzi as they had emerged.

Butler, Cardon and Nield, with Newman's help, were now carrying the bodies and laying them inside the station wagon. Amberg was shivering with fear. Tweed gripped his arm more tightly.

'All this havoc has been caused by the accursed film and the tape. I've lost track of how many have died – many of them innocent of any crime. My patience is exhausted, Amberg. You will produce the real film and tape or I will contact Beck, Chief of the Federal Police at the Taubenhalde in Berne. You will be charged as an accessory to mass murder, so make up your mind now. I repeat,' he continued in the same grim tone, 'I've run out of patience with you.'

'As a banker I felt I should keep my word to Joel Dyson who deposited…'

'Forget Dyson. Your own life is in great danger. Can you at long last grasp that? Look at those corpses – those men came to kill you. For the last time, where have you hidden the film, the tape?'

'At my bank in Ouchy on the shores of Lake Geneva,' Amberg gulped, using his free hand to wipe beads of sweat off his high forehead. 'It belonged to Julius but it was registered in a different name. It was the only place no one could connect with us.'

'So they are still in Switzerland,' Tweed commented more quietly.

'Yes. After this terrible experience perhaps we should return at once to my country. To Ouchy, I mean,' he added quickly.

'You will travel with us.' Tweed made no attempt to reassure the Swiss. 'I must warn you we shall face other attacks on our way back to Colmar. Whether we arrive there alive is in the lap of the gods.'

He looked at Paula. 'Where are Jennie and Eve? They are safe, I assume?'

'Safe as houses – safer than this castle was,' Paula replied. 'When you first came out here I nipped back to the swimming pool. They were both sitting down at the table, drinking hot coffee from a percolator.'

To steady their nerves?'

'In the case of Jennie, yes. Eve is made of sterner stuff. She had an automatic rifle across her lap – she'd brought it from somewhere. She made the remark that if any thugs arrived at the pool she'd take some of them with her. Tough as old hickory,' Paula ended in an admiring tone.

'She is a very strong-minded woman,' Amberg agreed in a regretful tone. 'I expect she will want to come with us. A little business matter which can only be settled in Ouchy.'

'Why?' Tweed demanded. 'Have you transferred all the assets to the shores of Lake Geneva?'

He was suspicious. Ouchy faced the shore of France and there was a regular boat service from there to Evian.

'Merely a matter of banking policy,' Amberg replied. 'Is there a safe way down to Colmar?'

'No,' Tweed informed him. 'It will be a journey of pure terror…'

Norton had recovered swiftly from the shock of the fiasco of the assault on the chateau. Sitting in his Renault, he used his mobile phone to contact Mencken. It took him several minutes to establish a link free of atmospherics.

'I'm on route D417,' Mencken said, talking quickly before he could be questioned. 'I'm sure they will come this way heading back to Colmar. After what they faced on their journey up by the other route. All the roads west are blocked by snow.'

'You'd goddamn better be right,' Norton rasped. 'What happened at the chateau? You only sent in two cars and you had five.'

'I kept Yellow, Orange and Brown in reserve. They'll be needed to finish the job on route D417…'

'You could have overwhelmed them if you'd kept to your original instructions.'

'I don't think so,' Mencken rapped back in a burst of fury. 'It was that friggin' glider which took us by surprise…'

'Crap!' Norton shouted down the phone. 'It should have been shot down…'

'That's what I like,' Mencken snapped. 'Armchair strategists who stay a safe distance from the action. I'm closing this conversation. The new ambushes have to be checked…'

'Mencken! You talk to me like that just once more…'

Norton swore foully when he realized no one was listening at the other end. He sucked in a deep breath of cold air to calm down. There was an important job waiting for him – at six in the evening he was due to meet Growly Voice at the Lac Noir rendezvous. It could be that inside a few hours he'd have both the film and the tape. He'd then drive to Strasbourg, catch an Air Inter flight to Paris where he would board Concorde for Washington.

'Here is Marler, the man who saved the day,' announced Newman.'I sent Nield out to find him.'

Tweed was waiting impatiently inside a huge living-room which led to Amberg's bedroom. Newman had earlier briefed Tweed on the arrival of the glider. Paula ran forward and hugged the new arrival.

'Thank you,' Tweed said simply. 'You saved our bacon -and our skins.'

'Really, it was dead easy,' Marler drawled. He lit a king-size. 'Pure luck I floated in when I did. What's next on the agenda? I see they've tidied up the courtyard.'

The station wagon with the bodies is parked inside the garage building at the back as you suggested,' Newman confirmed. 'What about the French authorities?'

'We'll wait until we get to Basle,' Tweed decided. 'I'll call my old friend Chief Inspector Rene Lasalle in Paris.

Otherwise we could be delayed in France for ages with red tape, statements, all that hogwash-'

He broke off as he heard Eve's voice calling out to Amberg in the bedroom. She was helping him to pack.

'Two clean shirts here, Walter. They'll see you through until we reach Ouchy.'

'Shouldn't I have more?' Amberg's voice asked querulously.

'Two are enough,' Eve responded firmly. 'We have to get a move on. Now, these documents…'

Tut them in the zip-up folder.' Amberg's tone was decisive. 'Don't alter the sequence. They're important.'

Paula had winked at Tweed when she heard Eve again running the show as she had done a few minutes earlier. Tweed, who had glanced at his watch a moment before, frowned and stared at Paula without seeing her.

Marler had amused himself by asking Jennie to show him the indoor swimming pool. He returned with her, stubbed out his cigarette in a crystal glass ashtray. Jennie was gazing at him with more than normal interest as she played with the string of pearls round her neck. Marler reached out to touch them.

'Those are quite beautiful…'

'Don't touch!' She coloured as Marler withdrew his hand, raised an eyebrow. 'Sorry I snapped at you. It's just that I'm superstitious about anyone else handling them.'

Paula noticed that Tweed, despite his impatience to be on their way, wasn't missing even the most trivial incident. He frowned again briefly, glancing at the pearls and then at her expression. Eve strode out of the bedroom at that moment, carrying a large Louis Vuitton case. Behind her ambled the banker, looking unhappy.

'I'm not sure I've packed enough.'

'You haven't packed anything. I have,' Eve reminded him. She slapped her hand against the case she'd perched on a table. 'Enough in there to get you to Cape Town. We are only going to Ouchy. And I can see Tweed is in a hurry. In case you've forgotten it, Walter, from now on Tweed is your protector. He may even get us to Colmar and points south alive.'

'Don't joke about things like that,' Amberg protested. 'It's bad luck.'

'Someone else is superstitious,' Jennie remarked. 'I'm not the only crackpot round here. Am I riding in the same chariot I was transported up here aboard? Hope so, Bob and Tweed got me here in one piece. Oh dear. You are shaking your head, Tweed.'

'One thing I forgot to tell you, Tweed,' Marler broke in. 'The glider is a complete write-off. I warned you. Cost you a bomb.'

'Don't worry about that. Jennie has raised the question of transport. I've discussed that with Newman and we've made some changes in the sequence of the convoy. Object, to confuse the opposition.'

'I insist I'm driving back down those mountains in the BMW,' Gaunt barked out. 'Feel comfortable behind the wheel of that car. Eve, are you joining me? If not…' He turned to Jennie. 'You'll be most welcome as a passenger. And I'm a good chap as escort – with my trusty Colt.'

Gaunt appeared to be adopting a jovial manner to lighten the atmosphere. Watching him, Paula couldn't decide whether he was just a show-off, full of his own importance, or a formidable personality.

'I'd like to ride back with Tweed,' Eve said, gazing at him. 'If that's all right with you.'

'Newman will head the convoy, driving the station wagon this time,' Tweed explained. 'He has the advantage of being armed with the Uzi, a deadly weapon. Marler will travel next to him. He has the advantage of carrying his Armalite and the tear-gas pistol. The station wagon becomes the spearhead of the convoy.'

'What about the Espace?' Paula asked.

'That will follow behind the station wagon and I will be driving it with you alongside me. Cardon, armed with grenades, will travel in the row behind us. That leaves Butler and Nield, who will ride the motorcycles. But this time the convoy will maintain its sequence come hell or high water – with Butler as outrider in front of the station wagon all the time and Nield bringing up the rear. Eve sits next to Cardon in the Espace.'

'Hold on!' Gaunt boomed out, raising a hand. 'I'm with this party in case you've forgotten.'

'Which I hadn't,' Tweed shot back. 'You're car number three, following my Espace, with Nield behind you. And Philip,' he said, addressing Cardon, 'I know that inside your hold-all you have a collection of walkie-talkies. Give one to Marler, one to Paula, who has sharp eyes, one to Butler, one to Nield, and one to Jennie, who proved on the way up she also has sharp eyes.'

Cardon unfastened his hold-all and had distributed the walkie-talkies in less than a minute, including a clear instruction to Jennie as to how to operate it. Holding the instrument, Jennie looked at Eve with a mocking expression. She spoke to her in a whisper.

'You're lucky, darling. Nothing to do except make up to Tweed. They call it spare luggage.'

'Not too spare, dear.' Eve reached behind a couch, came up holding an automatic rifle in both hands, the muzzle pointed at the ceiling, Tweed noted with approval. 'And I'm a crack shot,' Eve went on, also in a whisper.

'Modesty really has become an old-fashioned virtue,' Jennie flashed back. 'I'll look after Greg for you.'

Tweed's acute hearing had picked up the catty exchange. He put his hands round the shoulders of both women.

'I am relying on both of you to back up the team when it comes to a crisis. Both of you have my full confidence.'

'What about me?' asked Amberg, who had remained silent and still while he listened to the arrangement of the convoy. 'I do have a Mercedes in the garage…'

'Leave it there,' Tweed told him. He'd purposely not mentioned the banker earlier, exerting a little more psychological pressure. 'You will be sitting in the Espace, in the second row of seats between Eve and Cardon.'

'Will you be carrying that rifle?' Amberg demanded, staring at the weapon Eve was holding.

'Bet your life I will,' she told him cheerfully. 'So when we're attacked, keep your head down. Now, what are we waiting for, everybody?'

'I'm waiting for you all to get a move on,' Tweed said brusquely.

'Amberg,' Newman snapped, 'you'd better hurry out to the garage and lock it up. Has anyone else a key to this place?'

'Yes. The woman who acts as housekeeper in my absence and lets in the other servants.'

'Wouldn't want them poking around in that garage, considering what it contains besides your car.'

'No, of course not…'

The convoy was drawn up in the deep snow in the courtyard and everyone was aboard their allotted vehicles when an ashen-faced Amberg, huddled in a fur coat, returned. Only Newman stood outside the Espace. He gestured for the Swiss to get aboard.

'I saw that car – and what was inside,' Amberg remarked. 'The garage is like a charnel house.'

'And may I remind you,' Newman said brutally, 'that all those men came here to kill us? Get in your seat and shut up.' -

'This could be a memorable journey,' commented Eve as the banker climbed in beside her, the rifle across her lap. 'Who knows? We might even survive it…'