“I’ve never been to Montreal in my life. I don’t know anything about this.”
“Drop the act, Harry. I’m your audience. And I can do much worse than throw rotten fruit.”
“It’s no act. It’s the There was a sound elsewhere in the house. A clunk, followed by a slither. Harry knew what it was at once. Neptune, fed in his and Mrs. Tandy’s absence by Mrs. Edwards from number 75, was making his entrance via the cat-flap, in search of whatever gourmet dish Mrs. Edwards had prepared for him. But Lazenby was ignorant of such pet-minding trivia. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“What the hell was that?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
The kitchen door creaked. It sounded as if Neptune had detected their presence and was coming to investigate.
“There’s someone out there,” murmured Lazenby. He half-turned towards the door. The barrel of the gun slipped away from Harry’s throat. It was the glimmer of a chance he knew he had to take. He lunged to one side, swung his right arm back and struck Lazenby across the jaw with his elbow. Lazenby grunted and fell against the sofa, then down onto the floor as if stunned. Hoping he was for the few seconds needed to escape Harry flung himself towards the door.
He was halfway there when he tripped. He knew from the squeal behind and beneath him that Neptune the stupid overweight interfering mouser was the cause. He heard the cat scampering away as he toppled onto all fours. Then his ears were booming and his brain whirling in the gale of an explosive roar. There was a crater in the wall where the light-switch had been. Plaster was raining down around him, brick-dust and cordite stinging his eyes and nostrils.
“Stand up very very slowly,” said Lazenby.
Harry stood up just as slowly as his trembling muscles could manage, fixing his eyes on the mangle of exposed wires in the wall where the bullet had hit and imagining the bloody mess it would have made of his bones and arteries.
Turn round.”
Harry obeyed and found himself staring straight into Lazenby’s face. Hollow-eyed, unshaven and wearing a suit so crumpled and creased he might well have slept in it, he was a far and desperate cry from the slick-toned businessman Harry had met in Washington. A horrible realization was seeping through the fear. Lazenby was telling the truth. He had been set up. And he had every reason to believe Harry was one of those who had set him up.
“Guess you borrowed one of the cat’s nine lives there, Harry. You won’t get lucky a second time, believe me. It just doesn’t work like that. Let me explain something to you. Whether I kill you or not is a marginal decision. It could go either way. Depending how much my jaw aches when the numbness wears off, for instance. Or whether I like your choice of phrase. Know what I mean? You’re on a fraying tightrope, friend. Over the deepest drop there is. I don’t advise you to try anything that might tip the balance.”
This is the truth, Byron. As God’s my witness. I am David’s father. Hammelgaard did ask me to carry a message to his friends about the tape. I had nothing to do with his death or any of the others. I stole the tape in good faith, to prevent more of the murders I believed you were responsible for. I thought you had to be stopped. I thought you were behind it all.”
“What do you think now?”
“I don’t know what to think. If it wasn’t you … then who? And why?”
“It was you and Slade. Like I told you. As to the why, you tell me’ Lazenby stepped closer, raised the gun and pressed the point of the barrel against Harry’s forehead. For a second, Harry felt sure he meant to pull the trigger without another word. He wondered if his heart would stop from sheer fright before the bullet entered his brain. Then Lazenby said: “Come on, Harry. What’s it all about?”
“It’s about Project Sybil and David’s attempt to blackmail you. It’s about the steps you took to stop their report seeing the light of day. What else can it be about?”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It’s all I know.”
“It can’t be.”
“It is.”
This is no time to hold out on me. You’re bluffing with a losing hand.”
“I’m not bluffing.”
“Goodbye, Harry.”
“Wait. For Christ’s sake…”
“I’ll squeeze the truth out of Slade. D’you realize that? I’ll find out anyway. You’ll die for nothing.”
“I’ve told you as much as I know.”
“This is your last chance. Your very last chance.”
The gun seemed to bore into Harry’s skull as Lazenby’s stare bored into his eyes. His last chance was no chance. There was nothing he could say or do. Instinctively, he closed his eyes and took a deep final breath. There was a click, the prelude, he assumed, to oblivion. Then
“OK. You win.”
Harry breathed out and opened his eyes. Lazenby was frowning at him curiously, as if events had surprised and puzzled him. He slowly withdrew the gun to his side and cocked his head.
“You thought I was going to kill you, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I was. But you worry me. I thought you’d tell me everything I wanted to know.”
“I can’t.”
That’s what worries me. The possibility you might be on the level. The chance you might just be somebody else’s dupe.”
“I think I must be.”
“Slade’s?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. But I reckon we ought to find out. Time we paid the magician a call.”
That’s right, Harry. You and me. Right now. I have an automobile outside. I need a driver. And you just volunteered for the job.” He took a car key from his pocket and tossed it to Harry, who fumbled the catch but somehow managed to hold on to the key. “Let’s go.”
FIFTY-SIX
Harry was out of practice behind the wheel of a car. Even had he not been, nightfall on the streets of London, with a passenger aiming a loaded gun at his midriff, would have sufficed to spoil his technique. The only meagre blessing was that they were heading into the centre while everybody else seemed to be heading out. Told to aim for Mayfair, he set off south along Ladbroke Grove, riding the clutch at every stop for fear of stalling the engine and steering semi-blind on account of a fogged windscreen until Lazenby took pity on him and started the de mister
“Do I really need to tell you Slade’s address?” mused Lazenby as they tracked east along Bayswater Road. “Maybe you know it anyway. Maybe you’re a frequent visitor.”
“I’ve met Slade just once. At a restaurant in Soho. I’ve no idea where he lives.”
“So you say.”
“You’re going to have to tell me.”
“OK. Waverley Mews. Near Berkeley Square. Go down Park Lane and hang a left by the Dorchester. You know that, I suppose.”
“Yes. I know it.” Harry’s mind cast back to his meeting with Hope Brancaster at the Dorchester less than three months that seemed like years ago. Hindsight was a bitter business. But maybe foresight was even worse. “Can I ask a question?”
“You can ask’
“If you really are innocent ‘
“Of this crime, I’m innocent as a new-born babe.”
“All right, then. So what did you plan to do about David and Torben? Pay them enough to set up HYDRA? Allow yourself to be blackmailed by them?”
“Not a chance. Giving in to blackmail’s not my style. Nor’s murder. Too messy. I prefer… circumvention.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I already had someone to do what Yenning and Hammelgaard were offering to do at a cheaper price. It means I’d already catered for the contingency they thought they were springing on me. Gerard Mermillod was acting as my spy inside their camp from April on.”
“What?”
“You really didn’t know, did you? Keep the surprise going, Harry. It’s doing a lot for your chances of getting out of this alive. Yuh, Mermillod was my mole. I figured there was a chance the others
would get together and try to publish their findings after I’d dispensed with their services. Mermillod was my insurance against that happening. He was to supply early warning plus a dissentient voice if and when the time came. He’d already told me what they were planning before Yenning and Hammelgaard came to see me. I acted dumb for their benefit. Turns out I acted too well for my own good, though, thanks to the goddam tape.”
“Mermillod was the real traitor all along?”
“Yup. I kept him on the payroll with a covert and it has to be said generous salary. He had expensive tastes. I like people like that. It makes them easily corruptible.”
“But in that case ‘
“I had absolutely no interest in seeing him dead. You’ve got it in one. I never had any intention of paying Yenning and Hammelgaard three million dollars. Instead, I meant to use their attempt at a side-deal to discredit them in the eyes of the others. And I planned to make them look like screwballs to the outside world by subjecting their hyper-dimensional research to some cogently reasoned rubbishing by the scientific establishment. I put Mermillod onto arranging that. He had contacts all over academia. Plus a blank cheque from me for cases where a little encouragement was needed. With two out of the seven lined up to lose all credibility and another happy to say whatever I told him to say, I had every option covered. Without the least need of putting out a contract on anyone’s life.”
“What did you think when you heard about David’s illness?”
“Same as I thought when I heard Mermillod was dead. That events weren’t going according to plan. But what could I do? After Kersey died, the others made themselves scarce. I came over here in an attempt to pick up their trail, but it ended at Venning’s bedside where you and I first had the pleasure of bumping into each other. I had no way of tracing Hammelgaard and Co. or second-guessing them. I just had to sweat it out. I knew the media couldn’t make their conspiracy theory stick because I knew there wasn’t a conspiracy. Leastways, not the kind they wanted to believe in. As to what the hell was going on if it wasn’t just an incredible series of accidents, that is I was as much in the dark as anyone else. Till the tape appeared and a landslide of unanswerable allegations hit me. It didn’t take long for me to realize Globescope was finished. But whose doing was it? I’ve had more than a month of living out of a suitcase to ponder that one.”
“Whatever Rawnsley Ablett may have said, I can assure you I had no hand in it.”
“But what are your assurances worth, Harry? I know for a fact you’ve been holding out on Ablett, Steiner and Trangam. The guy scheduled to play Cornford to your Page broke his leg, right? And you told them you went through with it alone. But you didn’t, did you? So, who was Cornford?”
They were at Marble Arch now, Harry drifting uncertainly between lanes as he steered into the southerly flow. Struggling in his mind with the problem of how to answer Lazenby’s question when the truth might sound less plausible than any number of lies, he suddenly had to brake violently to avoid rear-ending a coach. The engine cut out on him as they shuddered to a halt.
“Jesus, will you watch what you’re doing?” Lazenby glared at him, his face bathed in the blood-red glow of one of the coach’s giant brake-lights. “You won’t get out of this by staging a crash, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
The coach moved on. A taxi behind them blared its horn. Harry started the car and drew jerkily away. Smooth acceleration and noiseless gear changes were beyond him because of the tension that had gripped every muscle in his body, but in Park Lane things were simpler. He headed south, training his eyes on the traffic in front.
“Who was Cornford, Harry?”
“A fellow-countryman I met in a bar in Washington and paid to act the part. I never told him why I wanted the tape or what was on it.”
“You should have carved out a career for yourself as straight-man to a comedian, you know that? I just can’t tell if you’re as dumb as you seem. It’s worthy of a pro. But then maybe you are a pro. What kind, though, I wonder.”
“No kind.”
“What is it you and Slade have going?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll find out soon enough. We’re nearly there.”
“What if he isn’t in? There’s no saying he ‘
“Pray he is in, Harry. Pray he hasn’t gone away on vacation. I want answers. And I want them now. If I don’t get them, somebody will suffer for it. Care to take a guess who that somebody might be?”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Waverley Mews seemed quieter and emptier than anywhere so close to Park Lane had a right to. The air was cold and still, the atmosphere discreet and affluent. There was no way to tell from the porch-lit exteriors who was in and who was out. The curtains were drawn, the garage doors closed, the shutters up. And Harry’s number quite possibly with them.
But outside number seventeen, where Adam Slade lived, there was a hopeful sign, in the form of a casually parked jet-black Porsche, registration number AS 100. The front wheels, their tyres looking as fat as they were squat, had been left angled towards the street, ready for the swiftest of getaways. At least one resident of Waverley Mews did not believe in denying his neighbours the opportunity to admire his purchasing power.
Lazenby walked Harry from the car, the gun prodding ominously in his back, past the Porsche and up to the front door. There he pressed the bell and nodded at the entry-phone. “You talk our way in,” he whispered, apparently still labouring under the illusion that Harry was qualified to do so.
A few seconds passed. Lazenby was reaching out to press the bell again when the entry-phone crackled into life. “Yeh?” It was Slade, sounding like a man in a hurry. Perhaps, if they had been a few minutes later, he would already have vanished into the night on a gust of high-performance exhaust fumes. If so, his luck was out. But Harry’s was in.
“Could I have a word with you, Mr. Slade?”
“Who’s that?”
“Harry Barnett. Remember? David Venning’s father. We met… some while ago.”
“Barnett? Christ, yes, I remember. Get lost, will you?”
“It’s important I speak to you.”
“Not to me.” The entry-phone went dead.
“Get us in there,” snapped Lazenby.
“How?”
“I don’t care. Just do it.”
Harry pressed the bell, waited for a second, then pressed it again.
“You still there, Barnett?” Slade sounded angry now as well as impatient. “Get off my doorstep, will you? This is becoming ever so slightly boring.”
“It could become ever so slightly expensive if you don’t open up. I’m about to take a bradawl to the paintwork of your Porsche.”
“You what?”
“Just a brief chat, Mr. Slade. That’s all I want. It comes a lot cheaper than a re spray But the last remark was addressed to a dead line. Slade was already on his way.
A few seconds later, the door was flung open by a barefoot figure wearing a dragon-patterned bathrobe. The left side of his face was pink-flushed and newly shaved, the right still covered with soap. His eyes darted from Harry to Lazenby and back again, then slowly tracked down to the gun in Lazenby’s hand.
“What the ‘
“That’s right,” said Lazenby. “It really is a gun. It’s loaded. And I won’t hesitate to use it. Why don’t we all step inside?”
Slade’s mouth sagged open. He stepped back into the hall. Lazenby signalled for Harry to follow. He brought up the rear, closing the door behind them.
They found themselves in a narrow passage, leading towards a kitchen. An open door on their left led into a lounge. Lazenby nodded towards it and Slade backed his way in. Harry went after him. The room was rectangular, with the shutters closed on its windows. It was furnished in clean-cut contemporary style, with glass-topped tables, chrome-limbed sofas, matt black hi-fi towers and a glossy green cactus in one corner reaching nearly to the ceiling. A matching pair of wall-mi
rrors faced each other across the width of the room, reflecting an endless regression of themselves. An infinite number of ever smaller Slades stumbled into view as Harry glanced into the one opposite him.
“You,” said Slade, frowning at Lazenby and running a hand round his chin, apparently unaware of the soap still covering it. “Don’t I… Haven’t I… Shit, you’re Byron Lazenby, aren’t you?”
That’s right, Adam. What’s the matter? Thought I wouldn’t figure it out so quickly?”
“He thinks you arranged the murders and let him carry the can,” put in Harry. “Matter of fact, he thinks we arranged them.”
“We?”
“Harry denies it,” said Lazenby. “And I’m almost tempted to believe him. Why don’t you settle the matter? Are you in it together? Or is it just you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The murders, Adam. Yenning, Mermillod, Kersey and Hammelgaard. Your handiwork? Murder by magic, was it?”
“Are you crazy? I never ‘
“Shove the denials! I’m serious.” Lazenby stepped close to Slade and prodded the gun into his groin. Slade crouched forward in a reflex reaction, then slowly straightened up, the breath hissing frantically through his clenched teeth. “Why did you do it?” For a second, Harry was tempted to make a run for it. He was closer to the door than the others. But something stronger than the memory of what had happened at Foxglove Road held him back, something closer to sheer curiosity. “Come on. I want the truth. Just fractionally more than I want to blow your balls off.”
“I haven’t murdered anyone. I know nothing about any of those deaths.”
“You were the last person to speak to Yenning before he was found in a coma.”
“He invited me to dinner, for Christ’s sake. What’s the big deal? Somebody had to be the last person to speak to him.”
“But that somebody was also in Paris nine days later when Mermillod was killed on the Metro.”
Out of the Sun Page 28
