The Predator

by Denis Pitts

  He remembered the softening of his mind which had taken place earlier, and now the new softness of the music and the beauty of the girl flooded through him.

  He knew the picture was wrong; that the boy should not be there; he was ugly and sordid in the presence of something too beautiful to understand.

  The girl stopped playing. She folded her arms momentarily. Then she put her hands on her lap. He saw that she was crying now. He was aware of that feeling of warmth and oneness for the girl which he had felt for her father earlier.

  He took a step backward, away from her, and was nearly overcome by panic when he heard her voice.

  “Oh, you silly, silly boy,” she said. “Why did you have to die?”

  He realized she was scolding her dead brother; her soft voice was charged with a terrible anguish. He looked once more at the scene that had been so vividly frozen in the mirror, and he saw the boy moving slowly out of the picture, turning toward the door. As he turned, the door opened and Jacques d’Isigny stood there in dressing gown and pajamas.

  In true panic now, the boy tried to duck past the banker, but he found himself gripped hard by both arms and held firmly against the lintel of the door.

  Jean-Paul could have used a lot of devices at which he had been thoroughly trained to get away from that grip. Normally they would have come instinctively. He could have butted the man hard with his head; or brought up his knee into d’Isigny’s groin. Or allowed his body to go completely limp and then rolled away.

  But he did none of these things. He merely stood there, a boy so petrified he didn’t even question his sudden incapacity to fight.

  The gentle music had stopped. The girl had turned and was looking at them, her face more curious than shocked.

  D’Isigny said calmly: “Claudine, my love, bring a candle here.”

  She came across the room to them.

  “Let me see his face.”

  She held the candle close to both of them.

  “So the art lover has returned,” he said quietly. There was a trace of humor in his voice. It was mocking, but not hurtful.

  Neither he nor the girl could hear it, but Jean-Paul was pushing the button on the transceiver in his pocket, warning Blum that all had gone wrong.

  He heard the distant roar of the Citroen engine and he knew at least that his partner was safe.

  OVER GENOA, 1700

  The aircraft had climbed through the thick cumulus clouds that had gathered over northern Italy. It rode high and level now at forty thousand feet in the bright evening sunshine, its engines throttled back to an easy cruising speed of seven hundred miles per hour.

  All trappings of luxury had been removed from its main stateroom. The soft seats and walnut-veneered tables had been replaced by banks of equipment. Two Telex machines ticked away continually. One carried the Reuters news service, the other was a repeater of the Becker Group’s service messages. Occasionally a soft bell rang, warning of a bulletin or an urgent news flash. There were four computer terminals and a mass of highly functional radio equipment.

  Four operators, all of them young men, serious and intent in expression, sat at the various machines checking and testing each in turn. Their talk was subdued.

  Between this highly functional room and the flight deck was a small suite; a sitting room and bathroom. Becker sat alone here, watching the setting sun, hearing only the distant whine of the engines and the sound of voices in the next room.

  He was relaxed and very much at ease. He read the Pisa evening paper and then looked at his watch. He took a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and folded it into a band which he placed over his eyes. He reclined his seat and slept.

  *

  Earlier, on a dull, overcast afternoon at Newbury Racecourse in Berkshire, England, a slim, middle-aged man, wearing well-cut Harris tweeds, parked a country-green Landrover in the owners’ parking lot.

  He locked the car and then walked a hundred yards through the race crowds to the Silver Ring bar, where he ordered a large whiskey and soda. The bar was crowded with men similarly dressed and women who also tended to favor tweeds.

  It was a noisy bar, with thirty conversations being carried on simultaneously in the characteristically loud voices of the English racing and hunting fraternities. The talk was of horses and hunt meets and parties and automobiles.

  The man drank his whiskey and walked briskly to the door. He was obviously quite well known; several people talked to him as he crossed the room. They were vaguely deferential to him — no one pressed him to join them or to have a drink.

  He walked across the macadamed surface of the enclosure to a white gate marked “Owners and Trainers Only” and entered the paddock. The attendant on the gate saluted him and said, “Good afternoon, General.”

  A sizable crowd had gathered in the main enclosures and was moving toward the paddock where the horses were paraded before each race.

  The twelve horses entered in the first race were being led around the paddock by stable boys and girls. A small knot of men stood in the center of the paddock talking to the jockeys, who were a sudden flash of color in the otherwise murky day.

  The man in tweeds was greeted by his trainer, a dumpy fellow with a dark military mustache. They talked for a few minutes and admired his entry in the race, a powerful stallion who walked the gravel path around them with the bored, restrained arrogance that only a great thoroughbred can achieve. He shook hands with the jockey, in silks of vivid blue and red, and listened to the trainer’s last-minute instructions. Then he watched the jockey strut across the paddock and mount.

  As the horse trotted toward the distant start, the man walked away from the paddock and entered Tattersalls Enclosure. He took twenty five-pound notes from his wallet and handed them to his bookmaker. He noticed from the course bookmakers that his horse was priced at eight-to-one, and as he walked past their yelling ranks, he saw the odds change rapidly to settle at five-to-two.

  Few things travel more quickly than news of an owner’s bet on an English racecourse.

  He was about to go to a good position from which to watch the race when he heard the soft sound of a bleep from his waistcoat pocket. He turned from the stand and walked quickly back to the parking lot. He opened a back door of the Landrover and sat down on a seat facing outward, closing the door behind him.

  There was a small computer terminal, consisting of a screen and a keyboard, in the rear of the Landrover. He pressed a key and the word SYMPHONY appeared instantly on the screen.

  The man typed a reply, BEETHOVEN. He waited for this to be acknowledged and then walked to a bank of red telephone boxes. The first two were out of order with jammed coins. From the third he dialed three numbers and had three very brief conversations.

  Then he climbed the stairs that led to the stand and watched the race. His stallion made a spectacular dash in the last two furlongs to win by two lengths.

  He waited in the winner’s enclosure and posed for a racecourse photographer. He shook the trainer’s hand warmly, congratulated the jockey, collected his winnings (paid to him in fifty-pound notes) and went back to the Landrover.

  A few minutes later, he was heading west on the A4 road.

  *

  The house was built of stern granite, in the severe style of Napoleonic architecture, and lay at the back of a tree-lined square in the city of Rouen, in northern France. The owner was a man in his mid-forties with crinkly black hair cut short, and the heavily bronzed skin of a man who prefers to spend much of his life outdoors.

  Today was his tenth wedding anniversary. That morning he rose early and drove out of the city before dawn in a dove-gray Citroen. Soon he was sitting in a hide blind in a forest high over the banks of the winding River Seine.

  It was chilly and he drank Scotch whiskey from a silver hip flask as he waited in silence with two shotguns that had been tailored for him by Purdy of London and given to him as a wedding present by his wife.

  He wore a paratrooper’s camouflage
d combat jacket from which the French army insignia had been removed. It was possible, however, to distinguish the markings — not weathered and shaded like the rest of the jacket — of a colonel.

  Occasionally he would light a Gitane and hold it between his teeth as he watched the woods. Otherwise he stayed completely still. It was only when he heard the rapid wing beats of a pheasant or the rusty-key calls of partridges that he moved.

  Then, with the very minimum of motion, he would select a shotgun and rise slowly in his blind, swinging the barrel with the bird with practiced ease. He never missed, and never wounded; each shell he fired was a kill.

  By eleven o’clock that morning he had twelve birds.

  He left the hide and walked around the woods, picking up the colorful carcasses. These he stacked in the back of the Citroen. He put the guns in long leather holders and drove home, stopping only briefly at the Bar Seine in the riverside town of Wandrille, where he drank two pastis and gave the proprietor a brace of pheasants.

  His six-year-old daughter was playing in the garden of the house as he drove in. She ran forward and hugged him and he swung her around several times. Then she helped him carry the pheasants into the cool, airy larder at the rear of the house. He strung them into braces and hung them head-downward on metal hooks.

  He showered and put on soft denims.

  His wife was waiting for him in their dining room. She was a tall woman with the kind of superb elegance found in the ranks of the French upper middle class. Her face was molded with classic haughtiness; her eyes were alert and intelligent.

  It was a happy, animated lunch. They ate cold river trout and pheasant cooked in the Normandy style with Calvados, tart apples and fresh cream. Their young daughter led most of the conversation; the man would look up occasionally to see his wife watching him with love. When the child was dispatched for her customary after-lunch nap, her mother and father sat at the long table of polished oak and drank one glass of cognac each with strong black coffee.

  Then, hand in hand, they walked up the wide staircase to their bedroom where he undressed her very slowly. Outwardly, he appeared unmoved by the sight of her body, but she knew, from the delicacy of his touch, the slight tremble in his fingertips, that he was strong with desire. She lay on the four-poster bed, which had been his wedding present to her, and watched him remove his shirt and wristwatch. His muscular body, like his face, was heavily tanned. His eyes had not left hers from the moment she climbed into the bed.

  The bleeper sounded as he began to remove his trousers.

  He cursed, and then smiled wryly at his wife. Buckling his heavy leather belt, he went into an adjoining room and saw, at once, the word SYMPHONY on his terminal. He tapped out the reply on the keyboard with one finger and picked up the telephone.

  He called six numbers — one in Paris, the others in Lyons, Bordeaux, Rennes, Clermont-Ferrand and Marseilles. The call to Marseilles could not be dialed and he waited impatiently for the long-distance operator to connect him. He said very little to each of the six men with whom he spoke.

  He went back into the bedroom and made love to his wife for the next thirty minutes. Then he showered and changed again.

  He went downstairs and took the two shotguns from the car. He disassembled them, washed and oiled the barrels and put the guns away in their presentation cases. Then he opened the Citroen, removed a canvas cover from a box, and checked the computer terminal the canvas concealed.

  Back in the house, his wife was waiting in a silk dressing gown. He kissed her gently on both cheeks and then on her mouth.

  He drove quickly through the medieval city center, heading northwest through the industrial area of Rouen toward Route National 29, following the signposts to Abbeville.

  *

  The newly completed golf course at Pesaro was acknowledged to be the most difficult in Italy. The narrow fairways demanded total accuracy with every shot; sand traps twelve and fifteen feet deep could tame the most confident professional; and the greens appeared to change their speed and temperament with every gust of wind that came in from the adjacent Adriatic.

  Today it was raining, and the wind was increasing in strength as two golfers trundled up the center of the eighteenth fairway in separate electric golf carts. They had both shot well from the tee; in fact their drives were almost dead in the middle of the fairway, teed on the springy grass for their second shots.

  The younger of the two men, made careless by the rain and the wind, hurried at his second shot; he swung down hard on the ball and caught it awkwardly with the heel of his club. It flew savagely to the left of the fairway into a clump of almost impenetrable rough. With a look of mock shame at his fellow player, the younger man climbed into his cart and drove in the direction of the ball.

  The second man, with receding black hair, was probably fifty. He was short and he carried a slight paunch. He walked quickly, with a loping gait. He ignored the rain and made a careful study of the lie of his ball and the approach to the green.

  To reach the green he would have to traverse three large bunkers; and to be close enough to the flag to win the match, his ball would have to stop short and roll only a few feet. It was a difficult shot and he was grateful for the delay caused by his partner. He selected a two wood and took two practice swings. He changed his mind and took a three wood, which would give him more elevation but would need a more powerful shot. He tore up a handful of grass and threw it into the wind to gauge its strength.

  After two more practice swings he glanced once more at the green and addressed his ball, his head cocked slightly on one side.

  The bleeper sounded just as he reached the end of his backswing.

  Most amateur golfers, indeed, most professionals, would have been thrown completely. But he had put so much concentration into that critical shot that he carried the swing through in a powerful arc. The bleeping continued as he watched the ball in perfect flight until it landed past the third trap, bounced twice and rolled to the very lip of the hole.

  He heard a shout of congratulation from his opponent in the rough and walked back to the cart. The wind and rain had increased, and he opened a bright yellow-and-red golf umbrella. There was a black attaché case on the back of his golf cart. He opened it and took out what appeared to be an ordinary domestic telephone. It was attached by a spiral cord.

  He said, “Pronto.”

  A voice said: “Ammiraglio.”

  “Sí.”

  “Centra, Centra, Sinfonia, Sinfonia.”

  He said, “Sinfonia?”

  “Sinfonia.”

  “Grazie.”

  “Risposta, per favore.”

  “Beethoven.”

  “Ancora.”

  “Beethoven.”

  The voice said, “Grazie.”

  He put the telephone back in the briefcase.

  The wind had turned into a howling Adriatic gale. The rain slashed horizontally across the fairway.

  The younger man had given up the search for his ball and had obviously conceded the game. They drove back together to the futuristic clubhouse. The younger man went straight to the locker room; the older went to the bar, removing his spiked shoes at the door, and bought four gettone from the barman. He apologized for his appearance to fellow members.

  From a bank of public telephones in a corridor at the side of the clubhouse, he dialed three numbers in Rome, Naples and Milan.

  A few minutes later he had changed into a lightweight suit tailored for him by Giacoma of Florence. In the bar, he accepted a coffee from his younger opponent. For a few minutes they talked about the game and then made an appointment for a return match.

  He apologized to the other man and left the clubhouse. It was still raining hard and he ran to his car, a silver-gray Fiat, which stood in a space marked “Capitano.”

  He drove away fast, but did not allow his tires to squeal on the concrete. Six minutes later, driving considerably above the speed limit, he was on the Autostrada del Sol, heading north alon
g the coast.

  *

  The small town of Wasserburg, in southern Bavaria, affords a pleasing prospect, being — unlike so many towns in that province — unspoiled by tourists or artificial baroquery or souvenir shops selling ugly meerschaum pipes and multicolored lederhosen. But for all that, it is a town typical of the nontourist south of Germany.

  It was here that the fourth message was received. There was no mistaking the nobility of the young woman who received it.

  She was tall and regal and blond, with a face so Nordic that it could have been taken directly from a Nazi propaganda poster. She was in a dressing room in her half-timbered house; in jodhpurs, she struggled into a pair of highly polished riding boots and was just reaching over for her bowler and crop when the bleep sounded.

  Like the three men, she made telephone calls, in her case to Munich, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, but, unlike them, she did not delay at all. She undressed quickly and put on a heavy sweater and a pair of loose-fitting slacks. She packed a suitcase quickly with spare clothing.

  There was a picture of Jean-Paul Becker on her bedside table. It was one of the rare photographs ever taken of him. She paused for a few moments, looking at it. And then, shrugging her shoulders, she saluted it with “Good luck to us all.”

  Three minutes later she was sitting in a helicopter that had been waiting in the wide garden to take her to the Westphalia International Horse Show. Instead, the helicopter wheeled and flew west toward Munich.

  *

  The Petite Concorde banked slightly to join the main air corridor over Milan. In an hour there would be confirmation from Centra that the operation below was succeeding in its first stage.

  Each of the leaders would make a few telephone calls; each person they called would in turn telephone fifteen others, who would call a further fifteen each. It was the inverted pyramid system of mobilization and it had been rehearsed with considerable success on several occasions. It was a system used by the protest movements to jam switchboards. It had also been used by the Israeli army.