Further along the rampart Harry and Pete had both boulders moving together. Paula saw the panic-stricken driver swing to avoid them. He was broadside when both boulders hit him, turning the vehicle over as they crushed it.
The sudden silence over the Ardennes was a shock. Tweed focused his night-vision glasses, called out in a quiet voice. `No sign of life. They're all dead.' `Weapons,' Philip called back.
He darted downhill towards the carnage. Paula fled after him before Tweed could stop her. She caught up with Philip, who stopped to speak to her. `This will be grisly.' `No more than what I've seen in Professor Saafeld's lab,' she snapped back.
They reached the remnants of Benlier's car first. Protruding from an open door was half the body of a policeman who had tried futilely to escape. Taking off a glove, Paula bent down and grasped a telescopic truncheon from his belt. She wiped blood off the other end on his uniform. Philip had hauled out another truncheon from Heaven knew where. Then he gave a grunt of delight. From the belt of the same body he eased out a.32 automatic. He checked the weapon. It was fully loaded and uncontaminated with blood. `Paula,' he said, standing up and grinning, 'a present for you.'
He handed her the automatic and she grasped it with pleasure. First, she double-checked the mechanism, noted it was fully loaded. Then she lifted up her fur coat, slid the weapon inside her left boot, which served as the leg holster she was not wearing.
Philip ran across the slope to the police car which had ended up broadside on, pulverized by the boulder sent down by Pete and Harry. He could hardly believe what he saw strewn across the ground. Four more telescopic truncheons.
He knew the Belgian police kept spares stacked on a shelf above the seats. The violent impact must have hurled them out of the window. With great satisfaction he gathered up his find. Newman with Marler and Pete with Harry arrived to see what was happening. He handed each of them a truncheon. `Might I ask what is going on?' Tweed's stern voice called to them as he hurried down the slope. `Weapons,' Philip said. He handed his own to Tweed. `And why do we need these now that the police unit has been dealt with?' `Because there are four guards at the Chateau les Rochers' `Never known how those things work,' Paula commented.
Tweed gripped the handle, then whipped it sideways quickly. The extension shot out and he was holding a truncheon at least half as long again. He handed it back to Philip after retracting the extension. `You'll be more skilled with this that I am. So what's the next move, Philip?' `We race to the top of the Ardennes. Then we launch our assault on the Chateau'
Paula had expected the Chateau les Rochers to have a fairy-tale appearance. As they crawled over the last ridge she saw how wrong she had been. It was more like a medieval fortress with tiny turrets at the corners. In the centre of a flat roof reared a tall wide turret festooned with a system of wires and tall aerials. Tweed grunted as they paused. `There's his communications centre perched even higher than the trees behind it. From here he controls his banking empire. I hope he's at home.'
Calouste was at home.
It was a mania with him to remain the Invisible Man. So he had had constructed at his different HQs a series of rooms underground – as at Shooter's Lodge. The same method had been organized at the Chateau. He was now working in a large, luxuriously furnished cellar under the Chateau.
There were two entrances. One was a large trapdoor, now open from a ground-floor corridor which led down via half a dozen steps into his sanctum. The second entrance was above the desk where he was sitting. A flight of steps led up to a platform with a heavy iron door open. By the side of the door was a control system built into the wall with buttons numbered from one to twenty-four. On its own was a brown button which locked the less secure trapdoor.
Calouste was dressed in a velvet jacket, velvet trousers and tennis shoes. The room was dimly lit except for the powerful desk lamp by which he worked. He wore his tinted, gold-rimmed glasses through which he could see clearly. Above his spade-shaped jaw his mouth was moving rapidly as he issued instructions to various of his banks on his phone, linked to the sophisticated communications system on the top of the Chateau.
He had heard nothing of the commotion on the lower slopes of the Ardennes. Orion, his informant at Hengistbury, had warned him Tweed and his whole team had left the manor. His intuition had told him they were coming to Belgium. That was no problem. Inspector Benlier and his special unit would kill every member of that team. He was especially anxious to hear that Tweed was dead.
A coloured servant appeared on the platform above him. He was carrying a tray with a glass and a bottle of the finest cognac. Calouste poured a full glass from the bottle, then placed the bottle next to a Glock pistol. Calouste always bolstered his guards with his own weapon. It made him feel so safe. He drank to the end of Tweed, the major obstacle to his plans for the Main Chance Bank.
36
Skirting well clear of the grim fortress-like building with its tall communications turret, Tweed, with Paula by his side in the Land Rover, followed Philip's vehicle. Parked at the summit, he pointed as the others joined them.
Close to the rear fortress walls was a huge lake with a big dam at one end. Attached to the wall of the lake near the Chateau was a sizeable box with a thick coiled hose on top. `What's the plan?' Tweed asked. `Harry and I will lower the dam and a vast amount of water fed by natural springs on the top of that knoll will pour into the lake. Prior to that I'll have attached that hose to the inlet into the air-conditioning system. The other end of the hose I'll drop into the lake. On a recent recce I looked into a number of windows in the Chateau. All the rooms have a large air-conditioning grille let into the wall.' `Will it work?' Paula wondered. `You've forgotten Philip was a top engineer before he joined us. `And,' Harry remarked, 'the walls of the Chateau look shaky to me.' `And Harry was once in the building trade,' Tweed added.
They watched as Harry dug inside a deep pocket in his windcheater, produced a chisel. Paula was amused. Harry would not go anywhere without his tool kit, now hidden in his spacious pockets. They watched as he bent close to the wall of the Chateau, hammered quietly at the mortar, which fell out. Brick-shaped stones above started to slide down. `Whole miserable chute could collapse. No maintenance,' he said when he returned.
Philip waved to Harry to accompany him. First he hurried to the large aluminium chamber controlling the air-conditioning. Unscrewing a round plate with Feu stamped on it, he then forced one end of the thick rubber pipe inside the hole. The other end was dropped into the lake. `I think that plate he removed,' Tweed said, 'is in case the air-conditioning system ever catches fire. The whole Chateau would be enveloped in flames. Unless huge quantities of water poured into it.' `If you say so,' Paula replied dubiously.
Philip and Harry had now taken up positions at either end of the dam behind huge wheels they began turning. Paula gazed in fascination as the top of the dam, smeared with green slime, began to sink rapidly. A wave of water penned up on the far side poured into the lake, then became a great flood as Philip and Harry continued turning their wheels. `That's enough,' Philip said as he ran back with Harry.
Tweed felt in his overcoat pocket, pulled out something he'd forgotten was there. It was the crinkled-face mask worn by the thug he'd hurled over the chalk pit near Gladworth. He gave it to Philip. `A peculiar object…' `Made in Paris,' Philip told him, `by the most expert mask maker in the world. Costs a fortune – it's so flexible. I think I'll wear this. Might gain us entry through the main door without a fuss.'
Arriving at the door, he hammered the heavy iron knocker. A man's face appeared when a Judas window was opened. The face looked startled. `Oh, Mr Calouste. I thought you were in your office.'