Marta would understand. It would give her a much-needed vacation.
Turning these thoughts over in his mind, McGarvey continued downtown, the city coming alive with the morning. Lausanne was a wonderful town, filled with contrasts of which the Swiss were inordinately proud but which tourists often found disconcerting. Rising from Lac Léman (here never Lake Geneva), the city hastened up into the hills in tiers on which the old and the new were situated in sharp defiance of any sort of convention. An eighteen-story modern skyscraper on a low tier might compete with a lovely Georgian cathedral perched on a hilltop. Old shops and homes, within rabbit warrens of narrow twisting streets and alleys, were being gutted in one section of the city to make way for the new, while all around the Notre Dame, the selfsame architectural style was being faithfully restored. It was a city of footpaths, of quaint bridges and overpasses, yet the din of heavy (at times even crazy) traffic was nearly constant.
He arrived at the busy Place Saint-Francois across from which his bookstore was located. As he did every morning, he stopped at the news kiosk and picked up a copy of the Paris edition of the Herald-Tribune. When he arrived here five years ago he had been a basket case. His nerves were shot to hell. Around every corner, in every doorway, under every overhang, in every shadow lurked some dark figure from his past. Perhaps friends of the Chilean general he had assassinated. They believed in vendettas. Perhaps the KGB, perhaps the Bulgarians who had been so active just recently, according to the newspapers. Perhaps any of dozens of people he had crossed could have come here to watch for him, to wait for the one moment of weakness, the moment when he would be vulnerable. As he had been doing since he had come here, McGarvey stood a few moments beneath the kiosk’s awning, pretending to look at the headlines of the other papers on display while he scanned the large square and his approaches to the bookshop.
An exercise in futility, nothing more, he thought, although to adequately cover the square would require several teams, some of them stationary, at least one mobile. They’d stand out, especially here given the Swiss penchant for routine. He shook his head and started to turn. All a moot point. He himself had fallen into the bad practice of routine; up at the same time each morning, the walk along the same route, the newspaper, the quick scan, and then off to the store. Even an amateur could nail him after a few days’ observation.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a dark blue van pulling up across the square. A tall man in a dark overcoat materialized out of the crowd, hopped into the passenger side of the van, and a moment later another figure, this one dressed in a tan mackintosh and wearing a wide-brimmed hat, stepped away and walked off in the opposite direction. The van took off, merged with traffic, and disappeared around the corner toward the Regina. McGarvey held himself in check against the instinct to look directly across. Instead, he stuffed the newspaper in his sodden jacket pocket and headed around the square along his usual route.
There was no way of knowing for sure, of course, but he decided that he would bet his next six months’ income that the two from the van were not Swiss. They did not have the look.
McGarvey had to hold up for a break in traffic before he was able to cross, and then he hurried, head bent low, apparently in deep concentration. The man in the tan mack was fifty yards beyond the bookstore pretending to take refuge from the rain in a shop doorway.
Across the square he spotted the van coming up from the lake. Two legmen, one van. They were amateurs. Lookers. No hit men here.
The tan mack looked directly his way, then stepped out of the doorway and hurried off in the opposite direction. The Ford van came around the square, and it headed again toward the Regina Hotel. As it passed, McGarvey saw the driver and the man in the dark overcoat riding shotgun, both studiously watching traffic. The plates were Swiss, but it was a rental.
Americans? He got the impression they might be. They had the look. But what did they want? Why the hell had they come after all these years? He was no threat. He wasn’t writing a tell-all book like so many expatriate Company men had done … were doing. He had no ax to grind. Not now. He was merely trying to live his life here, out of the fray.
His store, International Booksellers, was a two-story yellow brick affair, rare books and the office on the top floor, the main body of the store on the first. It was nestled between a tobacconist and a perfume shop. McGarvey stepped across the sidewalk, dodging the heavy pedestrian traffic, and went into the shop. Several customers were browsing. Füelm, a short, scholarly-looking man with white hair and steel-rimmed glasses, was on his hands and knees, holding his glasses up with one hand as he myopically searched the spines of a row of books on the bottom shelf.
He looked up. “Good morning, Kirk, is it still raining?”
“Cats and dogs,” McGarvey said, hurrying up the iron spiral stairs off to one side.
At the front window he looked down on the busy street for a minute or two, but the blue van did not make another swing, although he thought he saw the tan mack round the corner across the way.
Why had they come now? Marta would say he was imagining things. He knew better.
He turned away from the window and hurried back to his office where he closed and locked the door, then unlocked the big bottom drawer of his old oak desk. Reaching underneath he slipped the wooden stop and pulled the drawer all the way out, setting it aside. From beneath the main pedestal he withdrew a small bundle wrapped in oilcloth, which he quickly opened. Inside was a well-used, well-oiled Walther PPK automatic, loaded, two extra clips with it. The compact weapon had been his companion in the old days. On more than one occasion it had saved his life, and at times he thought of it as an old friend. He handled it with great respect now, wiping off the excess oil with his handkerchief, then working the slide back and forth, pumping out several shells. He released the clip from the automatic’s butt, reinserted the rounds, and reloaded the gun.
Possibly they were Americans, he thought, stuffing the gun and spare clips in his coat pocket. Possibly they were the opposition here with an ax to grind. He put the drawer back in his desk, locked it, then left his office and went downstairs.
Fuelm was at the bottom of the stairs. “I was just coming up.”
McGarvey hesitated on the bottom tread. Outside, the blue van passed on the street.
“Kirk?” Füelm said softly. “Are you feeling well this morning?”
“Just fine, Dortmund. What was it you needed?”
Füelm eyed his wet jacket. “Are you going back out?”
“An errand to run. Was there something you wanted to ask?”
“I can’t quite seem to put my hands on the Oxford Aquinas.”
“Upstairs on my desk. There’s a hold on it for Herr Bergmann. He said he’d be in later this week for it.”
“That explains the mystery,” Füelm said, stepping aside to let McGarvey pass. “Everything is fine with you?”
McGarvey looked at him. “Marta telephoned?”
Füelm nodded. “She was worried.”
McGarvey patted him on the arm. “It’s all right, believe me, Dortmund, it’s all right. But just now I have to run.”