The Power (55 page)

'Santé!'

'Santé!'
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. Grand
jouan 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. Pro
ducing 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 ser
vice. 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 hunch
back 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 Château 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 fort
resses, 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 Ger
many beyond the Rhine.