'The reservations manager who took the call – it was late in the evening – thinks it was a man. But can't swear to that. He has taken so many calls since.' The Parrot paused. 'I need back-up. There are two exits from the Ritz.'
'I'll send someone. And you'll be relieved by a fresh team before morning…'
Lasalle put down the phone, pursed his thick lips and thought. He looked at the two officers, obviously waiting to go off duty. It was almost midnight.
The Lara girl is at The Ritz,' he said eventually. 'For six days. Reservation booked earlier by a man. Perhaps. The significant thing is she phoned no one before retiring for the night. That suggests she's waiting to meet someone. And at Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseilles a man stood alongside her for several minutes on the terrace. The Parrot couldn't get a picture of him – as he did of her. Had the feeling the man would have spotted him. Interesting, that last bit. Maybe we'll find out who he is when he arrives at The Ritz.'
One of the officers chuckled. 'Sounds like a liaison. A married man having it off with this Lara Seagrave.'
'Since you find it so amusing,' Lasalle informed him, 'you can get your backside over to The Ritz now. Liaise, so to speak, with The Parrot…'
Chabot gritted his teeth, refused to show any fear. Hipper was driving the Volvo station wagon like a madman. Leaving Luxembourg City behind, they turned up a side road into a dense forest. The damned road curved viciously, Hipper was driving at a hundred kilometres an hour, skidding round the bends.
On his side great rock outcrops protruded into the road. Chabot estimated they missed the rocks by millimetres, almost scraping past. It was black as pitch, the undipped headlight beams swung round another hairpin bend, flashing over great limestone crags. They had not, thank God, met another vehicle since leaving the main highway. Chabot was constantly waiting for the sight of headlights coming the other way.
Hipper crouched over the wheel, enfolding it with his shoulders, his pudgy hands clutching the rim near the top. They began to descend, they passed an old stone cottage, falling to pieces. Hipper grunted.
'Larochette…'
Silhouetted against a moon which had appeared, the relics of an ancient castle perched on a hilltop. In the gaunt walls were window spaces, like skeletal eyes. Buildings appeared on either side. No lights. No sign of a human soul. Like a village abandoned by villagers who had fled from a plague.
'We are here. The Hotel de la Montagne.'
An ancient stone structure standing back from the road with a wide drive leading up to the entrance. Chabot frowned. The shutters were closed. Some windows were boarded up and the headlights showed a layer of moss on the drive.
'What is this bloody place?' Chabot demanded.
The Montagne. Closed for renovation. No staff. We look after ourselves. You stay inside during daylight hours. If you must walk you go out after ten at night. Klein's instructions…'
'For how long?'
'Who knows? You will have plenty to occupy you when the timer devices arrive. The most sophisticated in the world.' Hipper drove the Volvo round the side, straight inside a vast shed. When he switched off the engine the only sound Chabot could hear was the oppressive silence of a dead village.
Klein was driving through the night, the autoroute far behind, heading for Grenoble which he planned to pass through before dawn. He would hand back his hired Renault in Annecy. Driving into Switzerland was not a good idea.
At Annecy he would catch a train. Eventually he would cross the Swiss frontier and alight at the small Swiss station of Eaux-Vives in southern Geneva. Security took very little interest in travellers arriving by train. And Eaux-Vives was a backwoods station.
Seeing a lay-by ahead, he checked his rear view mirror again. No traffic in sight. He slowed, swung into the lay-by, stopped. Taking out a notebook, he inserted a piece of cardboard under a sheet and began to write, leaving no impression on the sheet below.
Timers. Scuba divers. Marksman. Lara. Explosives. Banker.
Like other lone wolf characters, Klein had a habit of talking aloud to himself, but was always aware of what he was doing. It helped to concentrate his thinking. He began now.
Timers. Let's hope Gaston Blanc has them ready. A genius with miniature instrumentation. The only problem is after he hands them over. No loose ends… Scuba divers. Luxembourg swarms with them. Marksman? Paris. The Englishman would be ideal. Lara…'
The problem with Lara was to keep her occupied until the time came for her to piay a role she had no idea -fortunately – she was destined for. A member of one of Britain's most distinguished aristocratic lines. Again, ideal. He'd send her on more wild-goose chases, Klein decided.
The last two items were all organized. It took money to persuade people to cooperate in an unknown operation -a lot of money. Well, he'd already obtained that.
Klein reckoned he'd calculated the amounts just right. Four thousand for Lara. With the promise of a quarter of a million pounds. Four thousand was not enough to tempt her into walking away. Not with a fortune dangled in front of her.
Louis Chabot had been a different proposition. A professional. Ten thousand francs for starters. The promise of two hundred thousand, the equivalent of?20,000. More money than Chabot had ever earned before. Not too much, not too little – that was the delicate balance.
Greed. That was the motive force. Estimate the level of greed with a man – or a woman – and you had them in the palm of your hand. A compulsive checker, Klein looked at his list again. Explosives. In place. Banker. Everything arranged.
Whichever way he looked at it, Klein felt sure he had overlooked nothing. Already rumours about the hijacking of an unknown vessel were spreading. The essential smokescreen. You couldn't recruit people on the scale he was operating at without whispers reaching the authorities. So, give them something to chew on, the wrong thing.
Of course there would be casualties. Hundreds of them. But you couldn't mount the biggest operation since World War Two – against the biggest target in Western Europe -without casualties. You couldn't make an omelette without breaking eggs – a two hundred million pound gold bullion omelette.
And, Klein, a careful man, thought, as he used a lighter to set fire to the sheet from his notepad, then dropped the blackened remnant into the ash-tray, he hadn't left a single clue behind. Who in the world was there to stop him?
13
Tweed returned to Park Crescent at 7 p.m. Howard and Monica were waiting for him in his office. They looked up expectantly as he walked round his desk, sank into his chair.
'Well,' Howard pressed, 'what did the PM say?'
'I have to investigate the Zarov thing. Sheer waste of time, I'm sure…'
'You didn't tell her that?'
'Of course I did. She's frank, expects frankness. But I have to check it out.'
'How on earth are you going to do that?' Howard crossed his well-creased trousers carefully and drank more of the coffee Monica had supplied. 'Not a damned thing to go on,' he continued. 'Doesn't she realize that?'
'It's that conversation she had when Gorbachev phoned her. I don't think she's told me everything that was said. I'll just have to get on with it.' Tweed waved a hand in the air. 'A search for a phantom.'
'With not a damned thing to go on?' Howard repeated.
'Not quite true.' Tweed fingered his tie, a sure sign to Monica he wasn't happy about the situation. 'First, there is Yuri Sabarin, the Russian in Geneva who swears he saw Igor Zarov a few weeks ago.'
'What about him?'
'I'm flying to Geneva tomorrow to interview him. Grill him, if you like. He'll probably back-track under pressure…'
'And what else is going for you?' Monica asked. 'Like some coffee? Yes, you look fagged out. I'll make a fresh pot.'