Midnight Plus One

by Gavin Lyall

  ‘I think I died. Does God know you’re starting the Resurrection early?’

  I grinned and began to feel a bit better myself. His voice was still thick, but it had lost the dull petulant tone. He was beginning to think again. I led the way to the hedge.

  When we’d found a place we could crawl through, I stuck out my head. The customs post was there all right, hardly more than a hundred yards away. A small bungalow flooded with light, with a couple of parked cars, and several people just standing around.

  At that distance they wouldn’t hear us – but we’d be crossing straight into the glare of the airport beacon, throwing out its several-thousand-candlepower only a few hundred yards away by now. And some of the men at that bungalow would be there just to keep a watch up this road.

  I pulled my head back. ‘Sorry. We’re going to have to move a bit back up the road before we cross.’

  Behind us, somebody called softly:‘Qui va là?’

  Miss Jarman whispered: ‘It looks as if your password’s worn off.’

  She was right. By now it must have struck them as odd that the sergeanthadn’t found them. By now they were looking for him. Now, we had to cross where we were.

  Up the road, in the opposite direction from the customs post, an engine hummed. Then something coming fast, its headlights blazing, rushed past us. The girl ducked: Harvey and I froze. Maganhard just went on being Maganhard.

  When it had passed, I hissed at the girl: ‘If there’s a light on you, stand still; they notice movement more than anything.’

  She straightened up slowly. ‘And when it gets a bit quiet, give a shout. Yes, I’m learning the rules.’

  Harvey said: ‘D’you see what that was? Your girlfriend’s van. The Clos Pinel truck.’

  I rammed my head through the hedge again. The van was just pulling up at the customs house, people running out to yank open its doors.

  The damn fool! Why was she taking this risk? But I knew why. I’d told her the route I planned, and she’d known this road would be the difficult place. So she’d waited somewhere until we’d had time to reaeh it – then come charging up.

  They’d be pretty suspicious of her: a van that could easily hold four passengers, from a place not far from yesterday’s shooting, coming on an odd route at an odd time. But she’d known that, of course – and was deliberately using it to distract them.

  ‘Through the hedge,’ I snapped. ‘Quick! ‘

  Harvey piled through, without asking questions. I shunted the girl after him, then Maganhard. Then myself. Long before Ginette was clear of the customs we were safe on the other side.

  I wanted to stay and make sure she got through okay, but that might waste everything she’d gained for us. We had to move on. It was an old rule.

  We went crouched, along a hedge towards the airport. Now the beacon was flashing straight in our faces. The high fence was only two hundred yards ahead.

  Miss Jarman asked: ‘We’re going to come up against the airport, aren’t we?’

  ‘That’s the idea. They had to borrow some French territory to lengthen their runway a few years ago; now the frontier runs along the fence, here. Once we’re in the airport we’re in Switzerland.’

  Harvey said: ‘Airports don’t have the sort of fences you can just climb through.’

  ‘I know. I borrowed some wire-cutters off Ginette.’

  A couple of minutes later we reached the fence.

  It was seven or eight feet of strong wire mesh strung between metal posts. I got the long-handled wire-cutters out of my briefcase and chewed away at a strand. It snapped with a loud click. I tried the next one more carefully, but still got a click. It was going to be a slow job: the mesh was only two inches wide and I had to cut a vertical slice about three feet high to give us a flap I could bend back.

  Suddenly light poured over me. A searchlight, coming -impossibly – from the middle of the air. I froze. Then, behind the light, the soft whistle of throttled-back jets. An airliner on the approach had switched on its landing light.

  I stayed still. The pilot would never see us, but the light could silhouette us for anybody in the fields behind us.

  The airliner hit the runway with a squeak of rubber, then a sudden roar as the jets went to reverse thrust for braking. Under that noise, I snipped up the fence as fast and silently as scissors going through chiffon.

  I turned to Maganhard. ‘Welcome to Switzerland.’

  From there it was fairly simple. Geneva-Cointrin is just one long runway with narrow grass areas on both sides. The airport buildings and workshops were all on the’far side; on ours, there were just heaps of building materials, banks of bulldozed earth that somebody hadn’t got around to smoothing down, little brick huts that had something to do with power or radar or somesuch. Plenty of cover.

  We walked half a mile along between the runway and the fence and then, when it was Switzerland on the other side as well, just cut ourselves out again. In both places I jammed the wire back into place and it might be a few days before anybody noticed the cuts. And even when they did, it wouldn’t prove anything about a man called Maganhard.

  We walked out into the suburb of Mategnin – tall new blocks of flats standing in the sea of mud that one day somebody was going to turn into a green lawn, unless he got another contract first, of course. It would have been dawn except for the clouds and the mountains, but the streets were still empty.

  Maganhard asked: ‘How do we reach the city now?’

  ‘We walk round to the airport front entrance and pick up a bus or taxi.’

  He digested this, and then said: ‘We could have walked across the airport – it would have been less distance! ‘

  ‘Of course – and pretended we were passengers? And shown our passports and explained how we got our feet wet on the plane?’

  After that, he saved his breath for walking.

  TWENTY

  It was after six, in a dull dawn twilight, when we reached the airport buildings. The lights were still on inside, but were beginning to look pallid in the mauve light seeping over the, mountains on the east.

  There were a few cars parked opposite the entrance, and a smallish bus towing a luggage-trailer parked alongside. Its lights were off.

  ‘We’ll go inside and clean up,’ I said. ‘Meet back at the door in five minutes.’

  Miss Jarman headed off in her own direction. Even in the bright lights, she didn’t look as if she’d been driven for nearly five hours in the back of a van and then gone for a two-mile hike across wet fields and through hedges. She had the natural glossiness which mud won’t cling to. Just a little pale around the face and wet around the feet.

  Maganhard looked as if he’d just lost a serious argument with a wildcat. His neat bronze raincoat was rumpled, smudged, and torn in two places; his trousers were wet and muddy, his hair was shaggy. He just stood there, looking ruffled and unhappy and determined to go on looking that way. He still thought I’d brought him across an unnecessarily rough route, and was damned if he saw why he should make the best of it.

  We hustled him into the washroom, shielding him on either side. Harvey and I didn’t look so bad, but mostly because our clothes had never looked so good. Harvey was pale, his eyes sunk in craters and the lines on his face deeper, but he looked alive again.

  I’d hardly got started cleaning myself up when Maganhard said: ‘You have not forgotten that we must ring up Monsieur Merlin.’

  I had managed to forget it, of course, and would have been happy to keep it that way. But he was still paying for the trip. I brushed down my raincoat, washed my face, hands, and shoes, combed my hair, and was out looking for a telephone inside four minutes.

  I rang Merlin’s hotel, told them it wastrès important, and finally got Merlin himself.

  ‘Mon Dieu!‘he exploded. ‘What has happened to you? I have heard nothing – not since Dinadan. For more than a day! All I get is the radio, the newspapers – all about shootings in the Auvergne! What is-‘

&nbs
p; I said: ‘Shut up, Henri. We’ve got here now. If you want to see us, we’ll be at Cornavin station in about twenty minutes.’

  There was a pause, then he said: ‘I meet you there.’

  ‘Just walk through the booking hall up to the buffet.’

  Somebody slipped into the telephone box next door. I glanced casually through the glass – and then said quickly: ‘Cornavin in twenty minutes, then,’ and slapped the phone back.

  I was out and into the next box before she’d finished dialling. I smashed a hand down on the phone, breaking the connection, and jerked her out with the other hand.

  She turned on a look of innocent, babyish surprise. ‘Now why did-‘

  ‘You were doing well back on the frontier,’ I said grimly. ‘Don’t spoil it all now. I told you phoning was out.’

  ‘But only at the Château.’

  ‘You could have asked me.’

  I had one hand under her elbow and we were doing a twosome across the hall that couldn’t have looked like a honeymoon at any distance.

  She said sweetly: ‘I thought you might say no.’

  I just looked at her.

  We reached the door at the same time as Harvey and Maganhard. Outside, the bus’s lights were on and people were climbing wearily aboard. From the number of beards and guitars, it looked as if they’d come off a cheap night flight from Paris or London. I’d hoped for something classier – for reasons of camouflage, not snobbery. However rumpled, Maganhard still didn’t look like a student on an Easter fling.

  But at least students don’t read the crime pages. We climbed in and paid our fare without attracting any interest.

  I sat beside the girl, Harvey and Maganhard just behind us. I leant my head back and said: ‘We may be meeting Merlin at the station.’

  ‘Station?’ Maganhard asked.

  ‘Cornavin, the railway station where the air terminal is. When we get there, we split up. Harvey with me.’

  Harvey said: ‘No.’ Rule One: the bodyguard sticks with the body.

  ‘I know.’ I nodded. ‘But nobody’s going to try any shooting in a station. The danger’s being picked up by the cops. I want you back with me, to make sure nobody starts tailing Maganhard – or up ahead to see if anybody’s waiting for him.’

  He saw the sense of it. ‘All right. I guess so.’

  Maganhard asked: ‘What do we do then?’

  ‘Catch a train to Bern.’

  ‘I thought we were going to hire a car?’

  ‘Well, we’re not – just yet. And anybody else who thought so is wrong, too.’

  Miss Jarman said coldly: ‘I suppose you mean me.’

  ‘I mean anybody.’

  The bus filled up and people started sitting too close for safe conversation.

  At that time of the morning, the bus belted through to the terminal in ten minutes. We came out under Cornavin station at half past six.

  The other passengers trampled each other down in the rush to get their guitars. I turned to Maganhard and said: ‘Go ahead with Miss Jarman. Get two second-class tickets to Bern – let her buy them. Then go up to the platform. Don’t recognise us.’

  The girl said: ‘If I’m buying tickets, I need some Swiss money.’

  ‘You’ve already got some. You were making that phone work, remember?’

  She gave me a look, and led the way off the bus.

  Harvey and I let them get ten yards ahead, then sauntered after.

  The booking hall was a tall, sombre art-nouveau affair, the sort of place that’s built to look grimy and cold and no amount of cleaning and heating will ever change it. Railway stations specialise in it.

  There were a few building workers going to out-of-town jobs, a few families coming off the overnight sleeper from Paris and London, but all wearing the same aimless, hopeless expression that you see in concentration-camp pictures. They didn’t look as if they could remember their own faces in a mirror at that time of day, let alone spot a wanted man.

  Harvey and I did a quick circuit, then he shook his head briefly. I agreed: nobody had smelt like a plain-clothes man.

  Only one ticket window was open. Maganhard hung back, while the girl went up to it. I nodded to Harvey and he went out up the long dim tunnel ramp that led to the platforms. If you were going to stake out the station, you’d wait up there at the top, at thebuffet express counter, where everybody had to come past you and you’d have an excuse for just standing and watching.

  I went up behind Miss Jarman to get our own tickets. As she turned away, she stared straight through me.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw her rejoin Maganhard, and start for the ramp. Then they stopped. I grabbed my tickets and turned around.

  Bouncing across the hall like a big white rubber ball in his natty raincoat came Henri Merlin. He had seen Maganhard, but missed me. Instinctively, I looked behind him.

  A slight man in a grubby trench-coat and narrow-brimmed green trilby shoved through the main doors, started to hurry, then checked and turned quickly off to read a timetable poster. Damn!

  I’d meant to tell Merlin to make sure he wasn’t being followed – and also not to speak to any of us until I’d had a chance to make doubly sure. But I hadn’t had time. Blast that girl and her telephoning!

  Merlin and Maganhard were talking rapidly. I turned my back and sidled away towards the doors, keeping an eye on the trench-coat. He looked round and gave them a stare that was far too bright and beady for 6.45 am.

  I had to do something. I had to get Maganhard away before the trench-coat realised who he was. Except that he’d probably guessed already. As I watched him, he suddenly hauled a folded newspaper out of his pocket, opened it, and riffled quickly through it as if he was searching for something.

  I walked back past Merlin and Maganhard and the girl, still standing at the bottom of the ramp. A few yards inside it, I was out of sight of the trench-coat but not of them. I waved furiously.

  The girl came up to me. ‘Merlin was being followed,’ I said quickly. ‘Get Maganhard away, and up to the platform. And you still don’t know me or Harvey. Right?’

  She nodded. I turned and walked up the ramp. Harvey drifted out of the little crowd sipping coffee around the brightly lit buffet counter, and said: ‘We’re clean up here, too.’

  I jerked my head at the ramp. ‘Merlin’s got here – and he was tailed. I’ve told them to break it up.’

  Harvey said: ‘Christ!’ and started for the ramp. The bodyguard’s place is beside the body. But I stopped him. ‘If it’s a cop it’s too late, and if it isn’t there still won’t be any shooting down there. Just see if he’s spotted Maganhard.’ I hustled him back towards the buffet crowd. He gave me a stony look, then shrugged and let himself be hustled.

  Maganhard and the girl came up the ramp, passed the buffet, and went to consult a timetable. The man in the trench-coat drifted up behind them, half checked when he saw they’d stopped.

  I didn’t need to point him out. He couldn’t have been all that dim, so perhaps he was just unlucky in having to tail people who were moving briskly through a crowd that was walking like the awakened dead. But to anybody looking for him, his changes of pace were as obvious as a scream in the night.

  Harvey said grimly: ‘So he knows. We can’t risk a train now.’

  ‘We’vegot to take a train now. If he follows us on, at least he won’t be doing any telephoning.’

  ‘Something in that.’ Maganhard and the girl turned and went up the steps to platform three. The trench-coat followed. Harvey moved casually into place a few yards behind.

  I was about to go back down the ramp when Merlin came up it, a lot less bouncy now. He glanced at me, then left it to me to approach him. I did.

  ‘Caneton – what is happening?’ His fat face looked white and worried.

  ‘You were tailed, damn it. Now he’s after Maganhard.’

  ‘Pas possible!‘His face clenched in misery. ‘I am a fool! I have forgotten too much. What can I do?’ Then he de
cided. ‘I come with you. I help get finished with him.’

  He sounded as if he were ready to heave our new friend under a train. I said quickly: ‘No-you-bloody-well-don’t. I’ve got trouble enough. Is there anything useful you can tell me? D’you know anything about this man Calieron, the Belgian who’s supposed to be after us?’

  ‘I have tried. My friends in Bruxelles. But’ – his shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug – ‘but nobody knows him. I think it is not his real name. And for the bearer shares, he needs no name at all.’

  I nodded gloomily. That’s about what I expected. Well, he knows the business, all right.’ A train rumbled in overhead. ‘See you in Liechtenstein tonight. Don’t get followed all the way there.’

  As I ran for the steps, he was still waving his hands in remorse, misery, and despair. French lawyers are good at that.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It hadn’t been our train. Up on platform three, there were twenty or so people standing around in silent clumps under the dim underwater light that seeped through the frosted glass roof. Harvey was near the steps, Maganhard and the girl twenty yards along, the man in the trench-coat studying his Journal de Genèvein between.

  I asked: ‘When’s the train?’

  ‘Should be in now.’ He jerked his head at the trench-coat. ‘Who d’y ou think he is?’

  ‘I’d guess a cop. The other side can’t have enough men to stake out every station and airport.’

  ‘If he’s a cop, where’s his pal?’

  He had a point. Policemen go in pairs when they can’t go in packs. Even a tailing job really needs two or three people. But perhaps they’d been caught off balance by Merlin dashing out so early; they might have left just one man to watch the hotel at night.

  I shrugged. The train, labelled for Lausanne and Bern, pulled in.

  Maganhard and the girl climbed into one carriage; the man in the trench-coat got into the next back from them. Harvey and I walked up and got in behind him.