Hostage Tower (21 page)

Then both men came to within spitting distance of the line, and the commando spokesman said,
firmly, ‘Put them on the line. If you do not, Mister Smith says he will not be responsible for the consequences.'

The lieutenant shook his head. ‘I do not,' he said, ‘take my orders from Mister Smith. Mine come from General Jaubert. Those are the orders I obey.'

‘On the contrary,' spoke a new voice from behind the Saracen truck, ‘you will do as Mister Smith says.' Philpott walked out and stood squarely facing the young lieutenant, in the glare of the lights. ‘Put the suitcases on the line,' he directed.

‘I do not know you, Monsieur,' the officer replied.

‘My name is Malcolm Philpott, and I have with me the Red priority directive of President Giscard D'Estaing.' He thrust the affidavit before the lieuten ant's eyes. ‘I am in charge of this operation, Lieutenant,' Philpott went on, calmly.

‘I have told General Jaubert once today already, that when I wish him to take an initiative, I will give him leave to do so. He has disobeyed my orders, and he will be held to account for it. Now –' his voice grew sharper, ‘put the suitcases on the line.'

The lieutenant shuffled uncomfortably, and said, ‘One moment. I will check.' He rounded the truck to the driver's seat, and picked up a walkie-talkie. Two minutes later he was back. ‘It will be as you say, Monsieur,' he muttered. He gestured towards
the cases, and two burly paras moved them carefully up to the phosphorescent marker, with their bases touching the gleaming paint.

Philpott barked, ‘You two – get what you came for.' The commandos grinned, picked up a suitcase in each hand, and walked back to the tower.

They reported to Smith in the restaurant, where a team had been assembled to make a rough count of the fifteen million dollars. Smith listened in silence, and when the commando had finished, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Describe Philpott,' he ordered, ‘describe him minutely.'

Both men obliged, and Smith ordered Leah to contact the château and run Malcolm Philpott through the master computer. It took the computer less than five minutes to deliver details of a man and an organization of which Smith had known next to nothing.

‘UNACO?' he mused, incredulously. ‘Not the CIA, nor INTERPOL, nor the FBI? Not the US Army, or NATO? UNACO? Malcolm Philpott can afford to pay C.W. more than I can? I am opposed by a toothless professor, a bunch of civil servants and a few crank scientists? And I was getting worried?'

Smith laughed an ugly, barking laugh. He caught Leah by the arms and drew her to him. ‘Now I can afford to relax,' he whispered. ‘I have been too long without your body. We will celebrate.'

She smiled up at him. ‘Then let us drink first,' she suggested.

‘Capital,' Smith agreed. He called for champagne, and he and Leah, joined by Sabrina and Mike Graham, drank a toast, jubilantly proposed by Smith.

‘To the United Nations Anti-Crime Organization – and Malcolm Gregory Philpott.'

Graham looked across at Sabrina, and treated her to a long, slow wink.

C.W. crouched on the window-sill of the VIP room. The sole illumination came still from the chink of light peeping through the shield around the bulb. The black agent reached out, grabbed the nylon rope, hauled its trailing end up, and pulled it into the room.

C.W. looped the strong thread around him in mountaineer style, and paid out the spare line. He turned to Adela Wheeler and said, ‘We're stuck in here, and it gives me bad vibes. I want out.'

‘I do, too,' she replied, gamely.

‘OK,' C.W. nodded. ‘So how do you feel about heights?'

‘They terrify me,' she admitted.

C.W. nodded again. ‘That figures,' he grunted. ‘Then close your eyes.'

The count in the restaurant was going well. Two of Smith's commandos were trained in the so-called ‘banker's flip', and their moistened fingers flew at extraordinary speed through the
neatly wrapped bundles of tens, hundreds, and thousands. Smith had left the menial work to his staff. He and Leah were now languorously joined, on a mattress in a room right next door to the VIP room.

Graham and Sabrina stood on the fringe of the counting group, hunched over a table in the centre of the café. Occasionally, Sabrina let her attention wander. She never appreciated seeing other people's money, unless she had stolen it.

A vague flash of movement outside the restaurant window crept into the corner of her eye. She looked – and hissed a warning to Graham.

Clearly visible through the patchwork of girders, they saw C.W. sliding down the rope. Riding him piggy-back, clutching his neck for dear life, her eyes tightly shut, was Adela Wheeler, in dark, bloodstained combat fatigues.

They disappeared from view, and the tautened rope slipped back into its box-girder shell.

C.W. eased the rope out through clawed hands. Sweat ran down his face, and the wind blew Adela's thick, lustrous grey hair across his eyes. He stopped his descent, balanced on a cross-strut, and moved so that she could stand alongside him, with his arm about her waist. C.W. cleared his brow on his sleeve. Adela was breathing heavily. ‘How much further?' she gasped, and made to look down at the ground.

C.W. caught her by the chin. ‘Don't even think of it,' he commanded, fiercely. ‘Just remember,
you're safe with me. I'm the best there is.' She nodded mutely. C.W. helped her on to his back again, and muttered, ‘Not far to go, love. Not far now.'

He swung out and inched down the face of the tower, his hands paying out rope, his bare feet caressing the struts. He drew in close again as he thought he heard movement from above. He looked up. Mike Graham and Sabrina, crouched by the gallery railing, waved and urged him on.

C.W. smiled, and started the downward haul. And a protruding rivet caught a button of his combat safari jacket.

There was a soft ripping sound. C.W. froze, and looked about him. He dropped a few inches lower – and the ripping noise intensified. This time C.W. felt the tug on his clothing. He tried feeling his way back up but the snagged cloth would not release him.

The rivet now rested on the part of his jacket where the metal safety tag was pinned. Sabrina, on the gallery, gasped in horror, and Graham muttered a meaningless prayer.

C.W. said, ‘Hold tight, Adela. We're caught up on something.' She got his neck in a vicious lock, and he allowed them to fall another foot down the rope.

With a final, ugly tearing sound that invaded the black man's brain like a death knell, C.W.'s safety tag pulled free in its square of cloth.

It glided away into the darkness, lost amongst the tangle of ironwork.

C.W. was now defenceless against the laser-guns, though Adela still wore Claude's metal tag on her breast.

Commissioner Poupon put the telephone down, and leaned back in his fragile, canvas-framed chair with an expression of beatific contentment across his pugnacious face. ‘So, my friend,' he murmured to Philpott, ‘at last, action.'

There was no reply. Poupon glanced over at his colleague: Philpott had slumped into a corner of the van, his head sunk on his chest. Poupon regarded him gravely, then rose, crossed the floor, and gently shook the sleeping man's shoulder.

Philpott jerked awake, looked up into Poupon's face, and rubbed his eyes. ‘Christ,' he murmured, ‘that's a fine time for a cat-nap.' He yawned, shook his head to clear the cobwebs, and asked the Commissioner if there had been any news.

Poupon indicated that there had. ‘We parachuted a hundred soldiers into the château,' he said proudly. ‘It was all over in less than half an
hour. The Château Clérignault still stands, as glorious as ever, but now it's in our hands.'

Philpott climbed groggily to his feet. ‘Fantastic,' he grinned. ‘And the chopper pilot? Did you get him?'

Poupon nodded. ‘Well?' Philpott demanded.

‘His instructions,' Poupon answered carefully, ‘are to pick up Smith at a particular point – on the River Seine.'

‘On the river?' Philpott exploded. ‘Where, for God's sake?'

‘Well down from the Tour Eiffel,' Poupon explained. ‘Between the Statue de la Liberté and the church of Notre Dame D'Auteuil – a kilometre and a half, perhaps.'

Philpott jammed a fist petulantly into the palm of his hand. ‘Then how's he getting there?' he wondered. ‘It's a fair step from the tower to the river – all of it across open ground, most of it outside the laser perimeter. Even if he leaves the lasers on, he's vulnerable as soon as he's out of their range. It doesn't make sense, Poupon. It's crazy … no tunnels, no passages, no sewers. Is he going to burrow like a gopher?'

Poupon shrugged. ‘Je ne sais pas, Monsieur … we shall wait and see. But we have more urgent matters to consider, n'est-ce pas? Mrs Wheeler, for example. Not to mention your agent – if he's still alive.'

Philpott grimaced wearily. ‘Yeah,' he admitted.
‘No word from C.W. for half an hour, at least. What the hell's happening up there?' Philpott punched the van wall, and rubbed his knuckles in frustrated rage.

C.W.'s rope ran out while he was still forty-odd feet from the ground. He shifted the burden of the woman on his back, adjusted her hold on his neck to a less suffocating angle, and muttered, ‘Hold on real tight now, baby. From here, it's the hard way. I may have to fly a little. But remember – you're safe. It'll be just like taking a bumpy elevator ride.'

Adela Wheeler gave a scarcely audible squeaking reply, and C.W. committed their souls to providence and the formidable strength of his arms and legs.

Up aloft, the mouse-ear detectors sniffed the air and sought out the strange, moving mass descending the tower like a hunch-backed tarantula.

C.W. blinked the sweat out of his eyes, sniffed, and measured a cross-strut until he found a diagonal. He curled his toes around it, bent his body into a bow, and slid down to the next horizontal. Then he repeated the process.

Another Lap-Laser joined the gun monitoring their progress. It, too, twitched and stirred. Inside the computer, lying unwatched in the restaurant command post, a helix of silicon chips and wheels tried to sort out what was happening.

C.W. was tiring fast. His arms were straining
from their sockets. His heart pumped blood around his body with a thud that he felt must penetrate even to Smith's lair. He knew he must rest … yet he could not be separated from Adela Wheeler. To do so was certain death – for both of them.

Unprotected, the lasers would seek him out for sure. And Adela Wheeler had no earthly hope of getting down by herself. She would stay rooted to the ironwork until fatigue claimed her body. And she would be grateful for the last despairing plunge into oblivion.

He gritted his teeth and swore fiercely, repeating one four letter word over and over again. Mrs Wheeler moaned through her pain. ‘I trust it's not me you want, Mr Whitlock. And if it is, I only pray to God that you can wait for a more suitable time and place.'

It was too much for C.W. He guffawed, and swung her off to stand by him, being careful to hold her close. He planted a big, smacking kiss on her lips. ‘You know, Mrs W.,' he said, ‘you're some doll. And a widow, too. And rich! I could do a great deal worse.'

Adela smiled, and kissed him back on the cheek. ‘You're a naughty boy, C.W.,' she murmured, ‘and I'd have been proud, proud and privileged, to have had you as a son, as well as Warren. You're my kind of man, and if you don't watch out, I'll ignore the forty years between our ages and show you a thing or two.'

C.W. rolled his eyes, and did a passable imitation
of a rampant stallion. Adela giggled, and C.W. said, ‘OK now. Back up. Hold on real well. The last bit's going to be a picnic.'

At the first level gallery rail, Mike grinned his relief. He had sent Sabrina back into the restaurant to cluster with the gloaters. Now he made to rejoin them himself. He ran into Smith and Leah, still flushed from their love-making.

‘Taking the air, Mike?' Smith enquired.

‘Money bores me, Mister Smith,' Graham replied. ‘It's only spending it that I like.'

‘Then you'll enjoy the – uh – aftermath of this splendid little caper,' Smith promised. Mike thought he heard the grunt of C.W.'s exertions below, and coughed to cover the tiny sound.

‘Shall we go in with the others?' he suggested. Smith stood by and ushered first Leah, and then Graham, into the brightly lit café. He stayed for a second on the gallery, head cocked to one side, trying to make sense of the melange of buffeting wind and noises of the city and the night. Then he, too, walked into the restaurant …

Although his rest, and the exchange with Mrs Wheeler, had re-charged his batteries, C.W. knew with total certainty that he could not face a prolonged, slow descent of the tower.

He gambled everything on his enormous strength. Grasping a horizontal, he bowed his body again and searched for the next cross-beam, perhaps eight feet away.

‘Fasten your safety belt,' he shouted to Adela
above the wind. The pressure on his throat and chest increased. He gritted his teeth, and launched himself into thin air down the concave curve of the tower. His grasping hands clutched the cold beam, and he let out a shriek as the tremendous inertia cruelly racked his biceps and shoulder muscles.

‘Are you going to do that again, C.W.?' Adela whispered.

‘Uh-huh,' he said. ‘And again, and again – and again.' As the last word left his mouth he threw himself out once more, and dropped like a stone to the next horizontal strut.

Two to go … He half-shinned, half-slid down one, and triumphantly dropped the last few feet to the tarmac, with Mrs Wheeler still desperately leeched to his back. C.W. took most of the impact, but the President's mother came in for her share, and she almost shouted as the breath was forced from her lungs.

C.W. said, ‘Whatever else you do, don't let go of me. We're on the ground, and the difficult part could begin right now.'