Ben-Gadíz peered through the windshield. If it happened, it would happen shortly. The police car several hundred yards in front would be immobilized, the result, probably, of cleats coated with acid, timed to eat through tires; or a defective radiator filled with a coagulant that would clog the hoses… There were so many ways. But the police car would suddenly not be there, and Holcroft would be isolated.
Yakov hoped Noel remembered precisely what he was to do if a strange car approached. He was to start zigzagging over the road while Yakov accelerated, braking his Maserati within feet of the unknown automobile, hurling the plastic charges at it, waiting the precious seconds for the explosions to take place as Holcroft got out of firing range. If there were problems—defective charges, no explosives—the grenades were a backup.
It would be enough. Von Tiebolt would not risk more than one execution car. The possibility of stray drivers, unwitting observers, would be considerable; the killers would be few and professional. The leader of the Sonnenkinder was no idiot; if Holcroft’s death did not take place on the road to Köniz, it would take place in Zurich.
That was the Sonnenkinder’s mistake, thought the Israeli, filled with a sense of satisfaction. Von Tiebolt did not know about Yakov Ben-Gadíz. Also no idiot, also professional. The American would get to Zurich, and once in Zurich, Johann von Tiebolt was a dead man, as Erich Kessler was a dead man, killed by a man filled with rage.
Yakov cursed again. The snow was heavier and the flakes were larger. The latter meant the snowfall would not last long, but for the time being it was an interruption he did not like.
He could not see the police car! Where was it? The road was filled with sharp curves and offshoots. The police car was nowhere to be seen. He had lost it! How in God’s name could he have?
And then it was there, and he breathed again, pressing his foot on the accelerator to get closer. He could not allow his mind to wander so; he was not in the Symphony Hall in Tel Aviv. The police car was the key; he could not let it out of his sight for a moment.
He was going faster than he thought; the speedometer read seventy-three kilometers, much too fast for this road. Why?
Then he knew why. He was closing the gap between himself and the Geneva police car, but the police car was accelerating. It was going faster than it had before; it was racing into the curves, speeding through the snowfall … closing in on Holcroft!
Was the driver insane?
Ben-Gadíz stared through the windshield, trying to understand. Something bothered him, and he was not sure what it was. What were they doing?
Then he saw it; it had not been there before.
A dent in the trunk of the police car. A dent! There’d been no dent in the trunk of the car he had followed for the past three hours!
It was a different police car!
From one of the offshoots on the maze of curves a radio command had been given ordering the original car off the road. Another had taken its place. Which meant the men in that car now were aware of the Maserati, and, infinitely more dangerous, Holcroft was not aware of them.
The police car swung into a long curve; Yakov could hear continuous blasts of its horn through the snow and the wind. It was signaling Holcroft. It was pulling alongside.
«No! Don’t do it!» screamed Yakov at the glass, holding his thumbs on the horn, gripping the wheel as his tires skidded over the surface of the curve. He hurled the Maserati toward the police car, fifty yards away. «Holcroft! Don’t!»
Suddenly, his windshield shattered.
Tiny circles of death appeared everywhere; he could feel glass slice his cheeks, his fingers. He was hit. A submachine gun had fired at him from the smashed rear window of the police car.
There was a billow of smoke from the hood; the radiator exploded. An instant later the tires were pierced, strips of rubber blown off. The Maserati lurched to the right, crashing into an embankment.
Ben-Gadíz roared to the heavens, hammering his shoulder against a door that would not open. Behind him, the gasoline fires started.
Holcroft saw the police car in the rearview mirror. It was suddenly coming closer, its headlights flickering on and off. For some reason the police were signaling him.
There was no place to stop on the curve; there had to be a straightaway several hundred yards down the road. He slowed the Rolls as the police car came alongside, the figure of the young officer blurred by the snow.
He heard the blasts of the horn and saw the continuous rapid flashing of the lights. He rolled down the window.
«I’ll pull over as soon as—»
He saw the face. And the expression on that face. It was not one of the young policemen from Geneva! It was a face he had never seen before. Then the barrel of a rifle was there.
Desperately, he tried to roll up the window. It was too late. He heard the gunfire, saw the blinding flashes of light, could feel a hundred razors slashing his skin. He saw his own blood splattered against glass and sensed his own screams echoing through a car gone wild.
Metal crunched against metal, groaning under the force of a thousand impacts. The dashboard was upside down; the pedals were where the roof should be; and he was against that roof; and then he was not; now plummeted over the back of the seat, now hurled against glass and away from glass, now impaled on the steering wheel, then lifted in space and thrown into more space.
There was peace in that space. The pain of the razors went away, and he walked through the mists of his mind into a void.
Yakov smashed the glass of the remaining windshield with his pistol. The carbine had been jarred to the floor; the plastic explosives remained strapped in their box; the grenades were nowhere to be seen.
All the weapons were useless save one, because it was available, and in his hand, and he would use it until the ammunition was gone—and until his life was gone.
There were three men in the false police car, the third, the marksman, once again crouched in back. Ben-Gadíz could see his head in the rear window! Now! He took careful aim through the blankets of steam and squeezed the trigger. The face whipped diagonally up and then fell back into the jagged glass of the window.
Yakov crashed his shoulder once more against the door; it loosened. He had to get out fast: The fires behind guaranteed the explosion of the fuel tank. Up ahead, the driver of the police car was slamming it into the Rolls; the second man was on the road, reaching into Holcroft’s window, yanking at the steering wheel. They were trying to send the car over the embankment.
Ben-Gadíz hammered his whole upper body against the door; it swung open. The Israeli lunged out on the snow-covered surface of the road, his wounds producing a hundred red streaks on the white powder. He raised his pistol and fired one shot after another, his eyes blurred, his aim imperfect.
And then two terrible things happened at the same moment.
The Rolls went over the embankment, and a roar of gunfire filled the snow-laden air. A line of bullets kicked up the road and cut across Yakov’s legs. He was beyond pain.
There was no feeling left, but he twisted and turned and rolled wherever he could. His hands touched the slashed rubber of the tires, then steel and more steel, and cold patches of glass and snow.
The explosion came; the fuel tank of the Maserati burst into flames. And Ben-Gadíz heard the words, shouted in the distance. «They’re dead! Turn around! Get out of here!»