The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

by Michael Yudov

  “Humm. Meanwhile, I was scheduled to be in Geneva today, and for the next two days as well. At a meeting called by the boys in Interpol, actually, who’re the guys trying to coordinate this whole mess. I wouldn’t want the job. There are five national police forces with representatives at this thing. Six, if you consider yourselves as representing Canada. Which I take it you are?”

  Godsen saw an opportunity, and took it.

  “Colonel Natison, we are involved in tracking down an international conspiracy, involving many countries, and some very bad people.” Very Bad People. She actually said that. “There has been a tie-in recently with our case and the case that Mr. Claxton was working. A homicide, actually. We are teamed, to track that lead down to its source and verify it or dismiss it. I have a representative from my department at the conference you previously alluded to taking place in Geneva right now. The body armour you mention is one of the possible theories for how the bank robbery in Toronto went down the way it did. I believe we may be working in a parallel direction.”

  I tried taking back the floor, but I wasn’t quick enough. Mark was all politeness and light when he spoke to Godsen, addressing her as ‘Colonel’, and so on. For some odd reason it was beginning to get on my nerves. He turned on all the charm he could muster.

  “It would be a pleasure to coordinate with you, Colonel Godsen.” His smile to her couldn’t have been more disingenuous. Mark never gave anything away for free. That’s how he got to the top. Long before the ‘information age’ was foisted off on the masses, all of the major countries and a sprinkling of the minor ones as well were dealing in ‘information.’ That was the currency of the spooks. He was making me look around for my rubber boots, though, as he assured Godsen that she would be kept abreast of every breaking clue to be had.

  I tapped him on the shoulder, forcing him to give his attention back to me. Westwood kept quiet through the whole exchange, just watching and listening. Therese had pretended to be asleep. Godsen waited for another opportunity to ‘participate’.

  “Mark, old boy. Shall we get down to it?”

  “Might as well.” He checked his watch. I checked mine. He looked at me and smiled.

  “Remember the ‘Castle Feldschlösschen Brewery’?”

  I sure did. A Swiss buddy of mine had taken us both there for a visit, many years ago. It was a day that stood out in my mind, until it started getting fuzzy around the edges. There are quite a few Swiss who, when asked what blood type they have, will reply, ‘Feldschlösschen’. The Swiss like their beer. Feldschlösschen in particular.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “Raise the window shades.”

  I knew what was coming next. We were approaching that stretch of track that passed by the lands that the Feldschlösschen Brewery were situated on. It was a beautiful view, as the Castle Feldschlösschen itself. Designed and built originally in the 19th-century, it was modernized thereafter during subsequent years. What you were left with was a beautifully designed castle with all of the modern amenities, and, without a doubt, the best beer produced in Switzerland.

  Evie raised the blind on her side, so Godsen followed suit. We had slowed somewhat for the curve that put us on the straight stretch of track that ran parallel to the castle. The shrubs and trees had been removed centuries ago. From the fence at the edge of the track bed, to the Castle Feldschlösschen itself, was about one kilometre, just. The view was unmarred as the intervening land had been a perfectly manicured lawn for more generations than I cared to count. It made an impressive sight, and inevitably was the one thing the tourists remembered about their train trip to Berne.

  I was getting impatient though, while the ladies admired the sights, I hit on Mark again. “Mark. This is lovely, all this reminiscing, but what I need, I need fast, and I need it to be confidential. It can’t go beyond you. I’ll explain what that’s all about by tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. If I can.”

  He stared off into the distance for a moment or two. “Alright. Tell me what you want, and I’ll see if I can do it for you.”

  “I want a house in Zurich, near Inwestek Head Office, with a Range Rover, or similar vehicle, and an Audi. Totally safe, unknown, and legit. And only you and I get to know about it.”

  “You’ve waited for a long time to pull this one out and use it, Jeffry, so I should have been expecting something large. I can do it, but I’ll need to come up with a good cover for it. Eventually everything gets back to head office.” He sat for a moment, thinking. “Very well, I have just the place. There’s a whistle stop coming up in a few minutes. I’m going straight back to Zurich; I have a car waiting. It’s large enough for us all. We’ll go to a drop-off point in town, of your choosing, and you can make your way to the address I’m going to give you now.” He pulled a notepad out of his jacket pocket, along with an exotic gold pen. He jotted down the street and number and the spot where I could find the keys. Then he ripped out the first few pages of the notepad which had writing on them, and handed me the pad. “Nowadays we can read the print from the missing top page all the way down to the cardboard back cover. Lasers or some such. I haven’t been able to keep up with the technology for quite a while now. We have ‘Specialists’ to handle that. All university grads that would wet themselves the first time someone pointed a gun at them. Anyhow, this way nobody gets the address from me.”

  I nodded and tucked the notepad into my jeans pocket.

  “There’s a Mazda MPV in the garage, with only five hundred klicks on the odometer, so be kind will you? That will have to do as a substitute for your Range Rover. I’ll call the house line with the location of an additional car later today. I can’t tell at this minute if it’ll be an Audi, but you’ll get something drivable and inconspicuous which is why you asked for the Audi, right?” I smiled my agreement.

  “The Mazda has All-Wheel-Drive, and a few enhancements as well, so I hope it helps. There’s no way I can get a Range Rover on short notice without a lot of questions being asked, so that’s out.” He turned and looked at me straight on. “This safe house and the Mazda are my personal bolthole and escape vehicle should it ever be required. You still understand what that means, right?”

  What he meant was clear. If either the house or the car were compromised in any way, I’d have used up my cards with no more to call in. At least not from Mark and to top it off, I’d have left him in a vulnerable position until he could get himself set up again. Knowing Mark, that wouldn’t take too long, but still, “Yes Mark, I do. If there are any… complications, I’ll make sure that somehow, one of the agencies in this thing will help to straighten them out for us. Me and you. Fair enough?”

  He let out a long sigh, and for the first time since he’d showed up in the corridor I saw just how much the intervening years and the job had taken out of him. He wasn’t the wild card he once was, and thinking about it, if he needed a personal bolthole, things were hotter in the Swiss office than they’d ever been when we’d hung out together a lifetime ago.

  I took his hand in mine to shake it and held it while I talked. “Mark, this means a lot to me, and maybe we can even get some glory smeared onto your office if we meet our mandate on this one.” He looked back at me, seemingly more tired than I initially thought.

  “This time it’s me that understands. I appreciate it.” Then we broke contact, and I stood up. Facing the group, I said, “Ladies, let’s get ready to jump ship, shall we? Here are the rules. Number one, no one will do any talking until we’re safely ensconced in our new home. Number two, keep alert, but keep your heads down until I say otherwise. That’s it for now. Get your gear.”

  I turned back to Mark. “Will we follow you off en masse, or trail behind, meeting up after the train has pulled out again?”

  “We all go together. I’ll tell my man. We’ll be in the corridor waiting.” Checking his watch, he said, “We have four minutes to the station.” Then he got up and I let him out.

  The train was already slowing down for its brief s
top, so we hopped to it and piled out into the corridor, various bits of luggage in our hands or draped over the shoulder as the train shuddered to a slow stop. There was no hissing of steam or any of the sounds you would normally attribute to train travel. It was electric power all the way on this route.

  We all stepped lively and made for the door nearest to us towards the front of the railcar. As we stepped off the train, I could immediately see why Mark had said he would drive us back. In fact, it was hard to miss. There was a big Mercedes limousine waiting in the carpark along with two Volkswagens and an ancient Renault. I figured his was the big one. The ladies were surprisingly muted as we stowed gear and got comfy inside. The driver was standing beside the car as we debarked the train. As soon as we had gone down a short flight of steps, we were able to walk under the track exiting in the parking lot. To call Mark’s driver anything less than a professional chauffeur would have been insulting. His uniform was impeccable, his peaked cap just so on his head. The crease in his trousers would have done for a knife in a pinch, and the doors, along with the trunk, were opened as we needed them. He was always one step ahead.

  He looked vaguely familiar, a bit on the short side, Mediterranean complexion, black hair that belied his age with just a touch of grey at the temples, cut short on the sides and back but still thick on top. He walked with a touch of a limp as well. That all came together to keep me thinking for a few minutes. Then he turned to take my bag for the trunk and I got a good look at his face. Bony nose, big lips with a small mustache, and a pinched expression made by the way his eyebrows came together. It came to me then.

  Bobby Whitehouse. We’d all called him ‘Cas’, short for Casablanca, or whitehouse in Spanish. He was from a Spanish family that had immigrated to Canada before the First World War. I stopped and reached out my hand instead of my bag.

  “Bobby? Cas? Is that you?” He gave me a quick direct look, then turned slightly away in the direction of the train as it wounded its way around a curve just a few kilometers down the track. If I could have guessed what he was thinking at that moment, I would have said that he was wishing he was on that train headed away from all of this, not standing in the carpark of a whistle-stop dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform. He answered me without changing his gaze.

  “Yeah, Jeffry, it’s me.” Then he turned back to face me. Slapping his back just above the waistline with his left hand, he continued. “Took a bullet in the wrong place. Quite a while back, now. Too early to retire, and Mark, well, he swore up and down on a stack of Bibles that he needed me. Me. To drive for him. He was just being promoted at the time. He’s been good to me. Anyway, it’s nice to see you Jeffry. I thought that you were well out of the game. Being happy back home, like you always said.” This time when he reached for my bag, I handed it over.

  “I was Bobby, I was. Life has a way of throwing curveballs sometimes though. So here I am once more. Temporarily.” We both laughed at that old joke. It’s never temporary, although it can be short, but… that was the joke part.

  By this time everyone but Bobby and I were inside the limo, and before he shut the trunk I took advantage of the relative privacy walking around behind the car with him, as he sorted the seating for the luggage.

  “Are you doing alright Bobby? Is Mark doing alright by you?”

  He answered without looking up from his work. “Not only am I fine, Jeffry, I’ve got seventeen months to go before retirement, with full honours.” Then he looked up and smiled for the first time. “I’ll be in Alberta before the passing of one sunrise.” Then he shut the trunk lid and we both got into the car.

  Mark was sitting in the back seat, and so was Godsen. Mark’s point man was sitting up front with Bobby, and Therese and Evie were seated on the backward facing seat, which looked just as comfortable as the other one, but I hated traveling backwards. I sat down between Godsen and the window. Therese tried very hard not to react, but it was fairly apparent that she wasn’t comfortable inside herself.

  Meanwhile, Godsen had Mark chuckling over some administrative story or other. She seemed to be getting along well with him, so she’d managed to prove that she did have social skills after all. Surprise.

  The drive back to town was quiet, with only Mark and Godsen doing any talking, and Godsen was talking too much about her operation, as far as I was concerned. You can’t have an effective covert ops section if everybody and their mother knew about it.

  Twenty-five minutes later the limousine pulled up at the curb of a string of outdoor cafés. Our team piled out, and Bobby helped with the luggage, we shook hands once more and I wished him good luck with his Alberta Ranch, promising to come out there and do some riding with him when he got settled. He got back behind the wheel and closed the door pulling away from the curb almost instantly. The traffic consisted of mostly Japanese and European sub-compacts, and the flow gave way before the big Mercedes Limousine. Bobby floored it and they were out of sight in seconds. Leaving us standing on the sidewalk running down the length of a café with a tree-lined accent, large trees, most with thick green foliage, impenetrable by what sunshine there was. It had been getting greyer in the distance since sunup which I had watched. Now the grey sky was catching up with me, large clouds drifting by slowly with warm sunshine in between them, but they were getting bigger and bigger as the day wore on.

  Squeezed between the low-fenced patio areas of the bistros, pubs, cafés, and restaurants was a somewhat smallish entrance to the inside of one of the buildings that laid out side-to-side sharing double side-walls, and that was about the lot. Over the smallish entrance was a sign reading ‘L’Hotel St. Pierre’. There were three steps up to the door, and I crossed the sidewalk towards them carrying my bag and one of the aluminum cases. The gang picked up the thread of action at that stage grabbing the rest of our luggage and following suit.

  The door was opened when I hit the first step, and Hotel staff streamed out to aid us. Well, two took our bags, and one held the door greeting us each as we passed the hotel threshold. In French and English with a 60/40 mix and an accent a Quebec Canadian wouldn’t be able to get placed.

  I walked about five paces into the foyer and saw that it was much larger than the exterior view would indicate. Narrow stairs went up on both left and right to the second floor where a very elegant dining room, an espresso café, and the hotel cigarettes and sundries shop were located. All of that I gleaned from the signs along the walls, all with arrows pointing up to the appropriate side.

  Right in front of me was a small front counter with only one station to service guests checking in and out, and a small side counter with a lift gate built in. The front counter person was short with a medium blue sport jacket that had the crest of the hotel on the breast pocket, and jet black hair, oiled and slicked back, with the tiniest ponytail I ever saw. He had a thin long face that belonged on someone tall and thin, and worked with his hands like a farmer for example. On him, it didn’t do any justice, even though there was character showing. And teeth. His smile showed off the best set of teeth I’d seen on a man since the last time I watched a Hollywood movie. His brass name tag identified him as Claude Rejean-Dubois, General Manager. The foyer was small, as I said, but well decorated. Probably by a professional interior designer. Or possibly by Claude, our General Manager. He had the look of someone who could be perfectly happy doing interior design work.

  As soon as I reached the desk, Claude became almost jubilant, conveying the impression that any service we required wouldn’t be too much to tackle.

  “Bonjour Monsieur, welcome to the finest hotel in all of Zurich. May I infer from your luggage that you wish to check in?” Again the teeth. They just came with his smile. I suspected that particular smile was reserved for work and hotel guests. His English was far more polished than the doorman’s, and his accent in French was Parisian.

  “Yes, that would be an accurate assessment of the situation, thank you. What’s the top floor like? Do you have any vacancies there?”

  By
now we were a small crowd, all of my people, the two luggage handlers, and even the doorman had wandered over, evidently to direct the bellhops as his badge identified him as Marcel D’Angelo, Concierge. A key man in any hotel.

  From being dropped on the sidewalk to being enfolded in the cocoon of the Hotel St. Pierre, about three minutes had passed. I figured that was fast enough.

  Bobby was a good wheel man, and if we’d been followed, he would have announced it and then lost the tail easily. Mark would never assume that we hadn’t gone to the safe house as soon as we had gotten a cab. Not after the conversation we’d had. So I had to accept a small risk factor here.

  Without checking he responded easily and quickly. “Yes, sir, in fact at the moment the selection of rooms and suites on the top floor is very good. Would you be interested in two rooms or possibly a suite?”

  “A suite would be just right, actually. Two bedrooms, a sitting room for business, and both bedrooms must have full en-suite facilities, for the ladies.” I gestured with one hand, vaguely over my shoulder.

  “I would perhaps have exactly the Suite Monsieur wishes. The Gerard Suite, called after Monsieur Depardieu. He always stays at the St. Pierre when he comes up for a little…’Vacance,’ Yes? Vacation. He keeps his Suite at the St. Pierre and then travels to some of the… lessor know, shall we say, lodges in the Alps where the skiing is the very best.” Leaning over the desk in a semi-conspiratorial manner, he added: “Monsieur Depardieu has always enjoyed his stays at the St. Pierre. Believe me, Monsieur, when I say that you will be pleased, I am quite serious.” He straightened up, and tugged down the bottom of his Hotel jacket.

  I just wanted to get us checked in.

  “Fine. We’ll take the Gerrard Suite. I want all the luggage in our rooms in five minutes which is where my friends and I would like to be as well.” I reached into the inside pocket of my wind-breaker and discretely pulled out my billfold. Five thousand francs exchanged hands in the blink of an eye.