Midnight Plus One

Harvey was still watching me, still with the curious look on his face. 'You know, Cane – this might have been something worth planning for.'

I nodded. 'I thought about that. The trouble was, I couldn't think of any plans.'

'Christ.' He looked down at his empty champagne glass. 'I could use a drink.' He looked up at Morgan. 'Have you got anything stronger?'

I said: 'Stick to champagne for the moment.'

He said: 'Youstill sound calm about it.'

'Of course. The General's got a plan. He's going to sell it to us.'

After a little while the General said: 'Have I, Cane?'

'Oh yes. You haven't made any money out of us yet, General. And it was you brought this problem up. Yes, you've got a plan.'

'Ah.' He gave a gentle sigh. 'Perhaps I have. But can you afford it, heh?'

I shrugged. 'That's up to Mr Maganhard. Still – he knows Liechtenstein. He knows the problems.'

I looked sideways at Maganhard. He was staring down at the General with a look that suggested he was prepared to bid about two pfennigs – and stick there.

I said quickly: 'I think we need this plan. But you can make most of the payment on results – it may not work, after all.'

He got the iron filings back into his voice and said: 'I agreed to pay you a certain amount to get me to Liechtenstein. Now-'

'And expenses,' I said.

'Yes. The expenses are more expensive than I had estimated,' he said thoughtfully. 'We have crashed one of my cars; my yacht is in custody in Brest, my luggage is somewhere in France, and now you want-'

'Sure,' I said soothingly. 'It's getting to be hardly worth your ten million quids'-worth of Caspar, isn't it? I'd just jack the whole thing in and catch a train down to Como for a few days' holiday.'

He gave me the steely stare. 'Do we need this plan? Have you no ideas of your own?'

I spread my hands. 'I've got a few. And we can try them if you say so. But they won't be as good as the General's.' I was just trying to keep down his price. I wanted his plan, all right.

Maganhard swung round on the old man by the fire. 'All right. How much? I will pay you one-third now.'

The General said: 'Ten thousand francs. And half now.'

Maganhard said: 'Five thousand and I will give you half.'

'Ten thousand. But I'll take one-third.'

'I'll pay you one-third of seven. What plan is it?'

'A damn good plan. I'll take a third of nine.'

I said: 'Give him a third of seven and a half.'

The General said: 'I'll take a half of six.'

Maganhard said quickly: 'Right. Three thousand now and the same if we get through.'

The General's head moved in a fractional nod; he closed his eyes and sighed. 'I'm getting old. All right, Maganhard. Give me a cheque on one of your Swiss banks, and make it cash. Sergeant! I want the file on the Upper Rhine.'

Morgan stumped off into the next room. Maganhard hauled a sheaf of cheque-books out of an inside pocket, and started sorting through them. 'Geneva?' he asked. The General nodded again, and Maganhard started writing the cheque.

Harvey was looking at me curiously. I winked at him, and he turned away and stared out of the window down across the grey windswept lake.

Morgan came back with a green folder, and the General started sorting through it. Finally, he came up with a large sheet folded double. He opened it, stared at it, then carefully tore a corner off it.

Maganhard finished writing the cheque and dropped it on the General's table. The General gave him the paper in exchange.

'Show that to Cane. He may make some sense of it.'

For a moment it seemed unlikely. It was a large photostat of a drawing: a number of wavering, curling lines, overlaid by hard geometric lines: zigzags, rows of little triangles, lines with crosses every half inch. And wandering across the whole thing was one red ink line.

I stared at it. Then it snapped into place: a plan of the modern St Luzisteig defences. The wavery lines were the contours, the geometric ones the trenches, barbed wire, tank traps. And the red line- The General said: 'Well? D'you know what it is?'

'I think so. We follow the red ink and find the end of the rainbow. Just whatis that?'

'Patrol path. To let out the patrols.'

I waggled my head and kept a slightly doubtful look on my face. 'This plan's probably twenty years out of date-'

'Damn fool. They haven't changed those defences in twenty years. Why should they?'

Maganhard was peering over my shoulder. 'Is it worth anything?' he asked suspiciously.

'It's genuine, all right. Why should he keep a faked one lying around? He's probably had this on file since 1940, waiting for somebody to sell it to.'

The General let out his rasping chuckle.

Maganhard fingered the torn corner of the plan. 'What did you tear off here?'

'Name of the man I got it from,' the General said.

I folded the plan up and shoved it in a pocket. 'Okay,' I said briskly. 'So we can get across once we're there. But how do we get to the frontier?'

He leant back in his chair with his eyes closed. 'All in the same price. Morgan drives you there.'

'Yes? And what's so wonderful about that? I could hire a car down the road.'

His eyes stayed closed. 'And tell them exactly what car you're in. They'll check up on that first thing. But they'd never stopmy car. And they all know it.'

Harvey said: 'Must be some car.' He was looking suspicious. So was Maganhard, but with him it was congenital.

The General said calmly: 'It is "some car", as you put it.'

I was ready to believe him. And even if I wasn't, we still stood a better chance in his car than in any one we hired. Switzerland's a small country, and the area you can drive across before the southern passes melt is even smaller. Whatever we did, we were going to have to drive down the central valley which includes almost all the big cities -Fribourg, Bern, Luzern, Zürich – and that gave us a choice of only about three main roads.

Harvey said slowly: 'Look, I'm not sure I like the idea-'

'I'm running the ideas department,' I snapped. 'Shut up and look at the pretty pistols! '

He stopped as if I'd slapped him in the face. Then he turned slowly away, and went back to staring at the guns over the mantelpiece.

Miss Jarman glared at me.

Maganhard said: 'Shouldn't we be starting?'

I looked at my watch: nearly noon. Three hundred kilometres to go. Say five hours' driving.

'We're not in too much of a hurry,' I said. 'We can't cross the frontier until it's dark, after half past eight. And we don't want to spin out the road journey – we're safer sitting here.'

'Then you'll join me for lunch?' the General asked.

Maganhard said: 'We will not be in Liechtenstein until nine o'clock, then? We are cutting it very fine. What if the car breaks down?'

'Sergeant!' the General called. 'When did the car last break down?'

Morgan stiffened and started considering. 'We had the silencer trouble in 1956, sir. But that wasn't a real break-down. I think the last time was the electrical problem in – that would be in '48.'

I grinned. 'All right. Lunch up here?'

'Of course,' the General said.

The lunch arrived on the table at the other end of the room. Morgan took the trays at the door and handed round the food – presumably so that the waiters wouldn't set eyes on Maganhard. My first idea was that this would make them doubly suspicious, but then I remembered the General had been in this hotel over forty years. Forty years isn't enough to stop waiters being suspicious, of course, but it's time enough for them to learn to be forgetful when the police come asking questions.

We had troutau bleuand a straightforward veal escalope that was as soft as butter: the General obviously didn't belong to the overdone-roast-beef movement that most of Montreux's English guests insisted on. He went on with his glass of swizzled champagne, but the rest of us got a crisp cold Ayler Herrenberg.