The beat of the chopper's motor was louder now the Citroen was silent. Newman craned his neck but it was somewhere behind the copse and going away from them. He slapped his gloved hands round his forearms.
`God, it's freezing,' commented Nancy.
At that height it was Arctic. No wind. Just a sub-zero temperature which was already penetrating Newman's shoes and gloves. Another row of stiletto-like icicles was suspended from the house's gutter. Newman made no effort to help with the two suitcases Seidler carried up the steps.
`Whose place is this?' he asked as Seidler took a key out of his pocket.
`A friend's. He dwells here only in the summertime…'
`Sensible chap…'
To Newman's surprise, the key turned in the lock first time. They entered a huge room which seemed to occupy most of the ground floor. At the far end on the left-hand side a wooden staircase led up to a minstrel's gallery overlooking the room below.
The floor, made of wooden planks, was varnished and decorated with worn rugs scattered at intervals. The furniture was heavy and traditional; old chairs, tables, sideboards and bookcases. Nancy noticed a film of dust lay over everything.
Along the right-hand wall was the only modern innovation – a kitchen galley with formica worktops. She ran a finger along them and it came away black with dust. Opening a cupboard she found it well-stocked with canned food and jars of coffee.
`I will demonstrate at once what this is all about,' Seidler informed Newman in German. 'Please wait here…'
He disappeared through a doorway in the rear wall, dumping one suitcase on the floor and carrying the other. Newman turned to Nancy and shrugged. She asked him what Seidler had said and he told her. Even inside the house with the front door closed it was icy – and they could still hear the chopper in the distance as though it were circling. Nancy opened her mouth and screamed at the top of her voice. Newman swung round and stared at the back of the room.
A hideous apparition had appeared in the doorway through which Seidler had disappeared. Newman understood the scream as he gazed at the man with no head standing there, the man with the blank goggle-eyes of an octopus. Seidler was wearing a gas mask, a mask with strange letters stencilled above the frightening goggle-eyes. CCCP. USSR.
Twenty-Eight
`I brought half-a-dozen consignments of these gas masks over the border… smuggled them across the Austrian frontier from the Soviet depot inside Czechoslovakia.. I speak Czech fluently which helped…'
The words tumbled out of Seidler – like a man who has carried too much locked away in his mind for too long. After the macabre demonstration he had removed the mask and Nancy was now making coffee. She had broken the seal on one of the jars of instant coffee, found a saucepan inside a cupboard and had boiled a pan of water on the electric cooker. Pouring the water into each of three chunky mugs containing some of the coffee, she stirred and then handed them round.
`We need some internal central heating in this ice-box,' she observed. 'And I do wish that bloody chopper would go away…'
Newman heard a car approaching along the icy lakeside road from the direction of Le Pont. The shuttered windows made it impossible to see outside. He ran to the front door and heaved it open – just in time to see the tail-lights of the car vanishing towards Le Brassus. A red car. It was moving like a bat out of hell despite the icy surface. He closed the door again.
`Who employed you for this job, Seidler?'
`You'll write a big story – get it in the international press, expose them… otherwise I'm finished…' 'I'm giving you the scoop of a lifetime…'
Seidler was badly rattled, self-control gone, almost on the verge of hysteria as he rambled on in German. He wore an expensive camel-hair coat, a silk scarf, hand-made shoes. Newman drank some of the scalding coffee before he replied.
`Answer my question – I'll decide how to handle it later. Keep to the point. I think we have very little time left,' he warned in English for Nancy's benefit.
`That car which shot past worries you?' she asked.
'Everything worries me. That car, yes. Plus the Audi, the Saab and the Volvo which kept passing us on our way up here. And that military chopper up there. Add the carnage back at the station and we all have a great deal to worry about. So, Seidler, who employed you? One question at a time…'
`The Berne Clinic. Professor Grange – although mostly I dealt with that brute, Kobler. Grange used me because of my connections inside Czechoslovakia…'
'And how did you obtain these consignments? You can't just walk in and out of a Soviet military depot.'
For the first time a bleak smile appeared on Seidler's cadaverous face. He sat down gingerly on the arm of a large chair as though it might blow up under him. He gulped down some of his coffee, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
'You've heard of the honey-traps the Russian secret police use? They get a girl to compromise someone, take photos…'
I know all about honey-traps. I told you to keep to the point! Any moment now this house may become one of the most dangerous places in Switzerland…'
'This honey-trap worked in reverse. By pure chance. The brilliant Czech they use to operate the computer for stock control at the depot met an Austrian girl on holiday while he was in Prague. He's crazy over her. She's waiting for him in Munich – waiting for him to get out. For that you need money, a lot of it. I provided that money. He provided the gas masks and fiddled the computer…'
'Why does Grange want this supply of Soviet gas masks?'
'To defend Switzerland, of course – and to make another fortune. Seventy per cent of the Swiss population have atom- bunkers they can go to in case of nuclear war. Imagine how many gas masks it would take to equip the same number of people to protect them against Soviet chemical warfare.'
But why have them delivered to the Berne Clinic? The place isn't a factory. I still don't get it…'
'He tests the gas masks there…'
'He does what!'
'Bob,' Nancy interrupted, 'do we have to talk to him here? There's something about this place I don't like…'
The wind had started to rise in the Juras. The timbers of the ancient house began to creak and groan. The place seemed to tremble like a ship in a choppy sea. Newman guessed it was the low temperature – the wood was contracting. During their brief drive from Le Pont he had noticed in the glare of the headlights places on the verge of the road where the snow had melted. The sun must have shone down on the Vallee de Joux; hence the criss-cross of ski-tracks on the slopes. It was the extreme change in temperature which was affecting the old building – plus the onset of the wind.
`We have to talk here,' he said rapidly in English, hoping Seidler would miss his meaning. 'I told you, I think we have very little time. God knows what's waiting for us outside when we do leave…'
`Thank you. You are so reassuring…'
Newman's callousness was deliberate. He was preparing Nancy psychologically for the dash to the French frontier. He continued questioning Seidler.
`How does Grange test the gas masks?'
`He started using animals. I once saw an obscene sight – a chimpanzee escaped. It was wearing a gas mask, clawing at it to try and get it off its head…'
`And then?'
`He decided he had to progress to testing the masks on human beings. He uses the patients – they're terminal, anyway. I arrived late in the Lear jet from Vienna a few weeks ago with the previous consignment. A cock-up at Schwechat Airport outside Vienna. The driver of the van waiting for me at Belp was ill – food-poisoning, he said. I had to take over the wheel and drive to the Clinic well after dark. I saw a woman – one of the patients she must have been – running in the grounds wearing a gas mask and a bathrobe. She was trying to tear off the mask while she ran. They were firing canisters from something at her – the canisters burst in front of her…'