Nobody saw me to or through the white door with the big letter A on it.
I was packing my B-4 bag that afternoon at the Du Rhône when my phone rang. “Dram,” I said.
“Thank God I reached you in time.” It was Axel Spade.
I waited. His voice was breathless with tension.
“A woman called me. Not young I should say. They have Francesca.”
“What? Who has her?”
“Whoever the woman was calling for. They’ve abducted her. They’re holding her right now. Unless I tell them where Howard Ridgway is, they’ll kill her. They’ll kill her.”
“Keep your shirt on,” I said. “How do you know they’ve actually got her?”
“Francesca has a small mole, under her left—”
“I know,” I said.
“The woman described it, and the ring I had given Francesca, and the inscription on the ring, and—other things. They want Ridgway. They want the money. Otherwise Francesca dies. They’re going to call back. In an hour.”
A woman, not young. I thought of Madame Piaget. Who else could it be?
“Obviously I can’t go to the police,” Spade was saying. “Or they would find Ridgway—and Helen. What can I—”
“Stay glued to that phone. I’ll get back to you inside the hour.”
The boulangerie on Rue Ferdinand Hodler was shut. There was no bread in the windows. I tried the tobacconist next door.
“It is odd, monsieur,” he told me. “She did not open the shop this morning. In fact, she shut it at noon on Saturday, not re-opening at two o’clock, as is customary. Saturday, it is her busiest day, as then people buy bread and cake for Sunday as well. Still, her son came at noon, the biggest of them, that François, in their Volkswagen bus. She locked the boulangerie. They left together. That was Saturday, as I have said. Around the corner on Boulevard Helvetique you will find another boulangerie. I can recommend.…”
“They call?”
“Not yet,” Axel Spade said. “In ten minutes if she is prompt.”
We were in his office on Rue du Rhône again. I had gone straight there from Reu Ferdinand Hodler.
“It’s Piaget,” I said. “He got back. Probably the same way Ridgway did, by boat across the lake.”
“You are sure?”
“Just about.”
He winced. Piaget wasn’t a guy who would play games. Piaget was in this for keeps. Spade knew that.
“What can I do?”
“One of three things. Piaget’s only guessing Ridgway made a fast move for the money, but it’s a good guess and he knows it. The first thing you can do is try to convince him the money’s still in the bank, except that that would have been more convincing the first time they called. And anyway, they could just hold onto Francesca and sit tight.” I lit a cigarette. “Or, you could call the cops.”
“No. You know I can’t.”
I took two puffs and put the cigarette out. That made me think of Francesca standing at the window on Quai Gustav Ador. “Or, you could tell them where Ridgway is. And then tell me.”
He stared out the window, over the mansard roofs toward the lake. “Trading the safety of my daughter for that of my fiancée?”
“They have no reason to hurt Helen. All they want is the money.”
“And you think Howard Ridgway is carrying three million dollars—in his pocket?”
“Access to the money then,” I said, and the telephone rang. Spade glanced at me sharply. I waited. On the fourth ring he touched the receiver. On the sixth he picked it up slowly.
“Yes,” he said in French, “this is Spade. I understand, Madame. Yes. But how can I be certain that you … I see. Yes, I realize you have no reason to harm Mlle. Artemi, but …” He glanced at me again, sharply again. He nodded his head half an inch, as if making up his mind. “No, of course they do not have all the money with them. A sizable sum, but not the bulk of it. What? Transferred to the Banco de Torino. Yes, in Turin, Italy. No name, Madame. Transferred to the credit of the holder of a certain number, a numbered account, in the Union Bank Suisse. I do not know the number, Madame. Ridgway does.” He looked at me. His face was shiny with sweat. And Helen knows the number too, I thought: his daughter.
Then he spoke quickly, as if, finally, determined to get it over with. “No, they are not in Italy now. The transfer of a secret account from Switzerland to a foreign country by number rather than by name is unusual. It takes the co-operation of the foreign banker, and indeed, there likely will be a commission paid under the table. Meanwhile they are waiting. Yes, naturally in hiding until the transfer is accomplished.” He sighed, mopped at his face with a handkerchief and said: “The Cantine de Proz at the top of the Great St. Bernard Pass on the high Alpine road to Italy.” He held the receiver away from his face and stared at it. Gently he replaced it on the prongs.
“You heard?”
“Yeah.”
“She said Francesca would be released after they got the money. After.”
“What’s this Cantine de Proz?”
“An inn at the very top of the Great St. Bernard, the pass over the mountains between Switzerland and Italy. The inn belongs to the Great St. Bernard Hospice and is run by Augustinian monks. It has been, for hundreds of. years.”
I was surprised. “Ridgway’s holding up with Helen—in a monastery?”
“The Hospice is open to the public,” he explained. “It provides shelter and food for travelers across the Alps, though now there are hotels as well along the mountain road south from Martigny. The Augustinian monks who run it in winter must be expert mountaineers. They save scores of lives every year, even now—a thousand years after St. Bernard of Menthon built the first buildings of the Hospice.”
Axel Spade smiled a small, reluctant smile. “You find it hard to believe that a monastery would harbor fugitives? Well, naturally the Augustinian brothers are unaware that Howard and Helen are fugitives, but even so, a man in my position needs readily available routes of escape just as a religious order needs money. Over the years I have been very generous indeed to the Hospice. They owe me a favor, and now they are paying it.” Once more the reluctant smile. “If they are taught to turn the other cheek physically, why not morally as well? What they do not know about the people they harbor at the Cantine de Proz in the dead of winter will not hurt them. They are, after all, only doing their job.”
We looked at a map of Switzerland. Spade jabbed a finger at the Col du Grand St. Bernard. “The Cantine is just north of the monastery,” he said. “Here.”
“Roads open?”
“South from Martigny, open but difficult. You will need chains.”
I studied the map again. “Figure the Piaget brothers are here in Geneva. Figure they start the same time I do. I can beat them to the Hospice.”
“How?”
“After what happened in Chamonix they wouldn’t dare cross through France. They’ll have to stay on the north side of the lake, in Switzerland all the way, driving through Nyon, Lausanne, Montreux, then south from there. But I can cut east, cross into France along the south shore of the lake, then back into Switzerland—” I touched the map “—at St. Gingolph, and south toward the pass at Bouveret.”
“Straight up the valley of the Rhône, once you leave the lake.”
“Yeah, and with a sixty or seventy mile headstart on them. Not only that, but if they’re still pushing a VW bus, I’ll beat them all hollow. They’re under-powered for mountain driving. What can you let me have with a few hundred wild horses under the hood?”
“A Facel Vega,” Spade said, but my enthusiasm was not contagious. He looked at me glumly and asked: “And exactly what will you do after you beat them to the Cantine?”
It was a good question. They had Francesca as their insurance that they’d get the money. They sure as hell wouldn’t tote Francesca with them to the Hospice. I might beat them there by a few hours. But what difference would it make even if I beat them by a few days?
There was no answ
er to Spade’s question. He wasn’t the sort you could satisfy with high hopes and wild promises. Finally he shrugged. “Forgive me,” he said. “A man in my business achieves whatever success he achieves thanks to his reputation, and it is the same in your business. You were the best man I could find. Do you think I flew you here, sight unseen across the ocean, on a whim? What must be done you will do if anyone can. Nor will you be entirely alone. At the Hospice ask for Brother Bartholomew and tell him what ever you think it necessary to tell him.” Spade grinned, this time not at all reluctantly. “Brother Bartholomew, I think, will surprise you.”
I hoped the surprise would be a pleasant one. I knew I would need all the help I could get.
chapter nineteen
SOUTH FROM BOUVERET on the lake the road began to climb, and by the time I reached Vouvry it was dark. I drank coffee, hot, black and strong, from a thermos Spade had supplied. Somewhere behind me in the darkness, I kept thinking, were the brothers Piaget. Figure Yves with his bum leg would stay behind, but that still left three of them, and three of them could drive in shifts all night. If I didn’t keep pushing it I’d lose whatever lead I had.
The sleek Facel Vega handled like a dream. On the few straight stretches of two-lane blacktop I opened it up all the way, and the speedometer needle climbed to a hundred and fifty kilometers. Then the wind howled past, the amber headlights picked pock-marked stone farmhouses out of the night and hurled them behind and to either side, and the Facel Vega’s powerful engine purred contentedly. But mostly the road climbed and turned and climbed again, and then my right foot did a grim dance from gas-pedal to brake and back again as the low-slung car swerved and lurched on its Michelin-X tires, their steel cords groaning, as I negotiated switchback after switchback in what a racing driver calls a controlled skid.
Out of Collombey I saw the first snow. Plows had piled it high on either side of the road, but except for a few icy patches the surface was still clear. I looked at my watch and had another swig of coffee. Almost eleven. They’d drive all night: no reason not to. There were three of them. I wondered how long I could keep it up. That would depend more on the road than on me. Driving all night by yourself over ice and snow on an unfamiliar mountain road was as good a way to get yourself killed as any I knew.
At a village called Massongex I had to pull off the road. I’d been driving on hard-packed snow for fifteen minutes, and it would get worse, not better. “Gas station,” I’d said out loud. “Find a gas station. They’ll put the chains on for you.” My voice sounded distant and thick. I knew, suddenly, I was sleepy. I switched on the radio and listened to Edith Piaf telling “Milord” to take a good long look at her. No help there. The thermos of coffee was empty. I lit a cigarette and saw a gas station and pulled into the service area.
It was shut for the night. I climbed out, opened the trunk and removed the jack and chains. The night was dark, no stars, no moon, and very cold. This was mountain country.
I found a block of wood in the trunk and wedged it under the jack to keep it from slipping. Ice crunched underfoot. Though I had worn my skiing gloves for the drive, my fingers were stiff with cold. I beat my hands together before tackling the chains.
Fatigue clawed at my eyelids, trying to drag them down. I was driving again, past more pock-marked farmhouses wearing peaked white hats. The grade was steeper, the switchbacks sharper, and there was nobody at all on the road south of Massongex except me. The chains rumbled, biting into hardpacked snow. Some time after one A.M. I lost a link on the left rear tire. The loose chain kept clanking against metal, rhythmically, soporifically. I turned the fly-window in toward my face. The steady blast of cold air kept me awake.
Say you’re lucky, I thought. Say you don’t kill yourself driving like this all night. Say you reach the Cantine de Proz ahead of the Piaget brothers. Then what? Helen Spade was playing on Ridgway’s team again, even though he’d taken a pot-shot at her. She’d gone to the Union Bank Suisse for him, hadn’t she? He wasn’t about to surrender the money meekly to Axel Spade, and neither was she. But that could wait; I could play that part of it by ear. The important thing was the Piaget brothers. They could tell me where to find Francesca.
I passed through St. Maurice, Evionnaz and the three towns called Martigny. Dawn mist was shrouding the mountains by the time I reached Bourg-St.-Pierre. I stopped for a tank of gas and three cups of coffee. When I went back to the Facel Vega, snow had started to fall. It had melted on contact with the warm hood but was sticking to the roof of the car. The mist had settled, exposing bare crags and icy fangs of mountains, biting at a sky like lead. Bourg-St.-Pierre was above timberline, the Cantine de Proz still higher. I started driving again, waiting for but not getting the lift from those three cups of coffee.
A fire was burning on the big hearth in the entrance hall of the Cantine. Resting on either side of it were two huge St. Bernard dogs, as big as Shetland ponies. They gave me the once-over with their warm brown eyes and went back to dreaming whatever daydreams dogs will dream when they are snug near a fire while a storm is raging outside. “Don’t look so smug,” I told them out loud. “There were times last night when I thought you might have to come looking for me.”
A man cleared his throat. I turned to see an Augustinian monk in a brown habit, who had just come in from outside. A third St. Bernard was with him. The dog shook snow from its coat, the monk banged it from his habit with his pink hands and removed his cowl.
“Is that your car outside, sir?” he asked me.
I nodded. “You wouldn’t be Brother Bartholomew, would you?”
“I am terribly sorry, but I am only Brother Sebastian. I am also terribly sorry that we cannot accommodate you at the Cantine,” he said in excellent English, “but it has been snowing on and off for a week in the Col, we have but few rooms, and many stranded travelers already are doubling up. Perhaps if you’d care to proceed a few kilometers further up the Col they could find room for you at the Hospice itself. That is, if you are traveling south?”
“That depends, brother,” I said. “I’d like to see Brother Bartholomew.”
“He does God’s work at the Hospice itself, sir. That’s where you’ll find him.”
“I’m also looking for a couple of friends of mine who probably passed this way over the weekend. Two Americans, both young, a big guy about my size and a very pretty blonde.”
He smiled a shy, friarly smile at my mention of a very pretty blonde, as if I had brought up the subject of suntan oil to an albino. I hadn’t mentioned any names. The monks who ran the Cantine and the Hospice wouldn’t be strict about passports, and there was no telling what names Ridgway and Helen Spade had given them.
Brother Sebastain told me: “If your friends came this way any time after Friday then I’m afraid there was no room for them. Perhaps you’ll find them at the Hospice.”
I thanked him. “God grant you a pleasant journey,” he said, and I was on my way again.
The massive gray stone buildings of the Hospice loomed ahead of me through the snow. They had stood there for centuries, defying time and Alpine storms. I thought they would still be standing there, guarding the second highest mountain pass in Europe, after atomic war had made memories of New York, Paris and Geneva.
A few cars and two big snow-cats, shrouded with snow, were parked in the lot in front of the main building. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t asked Axel Spade what kind of car they were driving. I got out of the Facel Vega and wiped snow off a couple of license plates. One was the white-on-black of Italy, the other the black-on-white of Switzerland, but with a Z for Zurich, not a GE for Geneva. There was no Volkswagen bus to give me the great news that the Piaget brothers had beaten me here.
With a beamed ceiling, a coal fire glowing on the hearth and paneling on the walls, the entrance hall of the Cantine had been cheerful. By contrast, the interior of the main building of the Hospice was like a dungeon. My footsteps echoed on a cold stone floor. The stone-block walls and high bare ceiling were
bleak and foreboding. In the faint light from two high windows I could see a faded tapestry of the Pietà hanging on the far wall. It was the only decoration.
A frail old monk appeared out of nowhere and shuffled toward me on his sandals. He spoke no English. In French I asked for Brother Bartholomew. He smiled toothlessly and showed me the palms of his ancient hands and said something in Italian. “Fratello Bartholomew,” I said. “Dov’ é? Dove Fratello Bartholomew?”
“Ah,” he sighed, “ah,” and motioned for me to follow him down a cold and damp corridor. It led to an oaken door on which the old man knocked delicately with his scrawny knuckles. A mighty, echoing voice boomed in French: “Entrez!” The old monk winced, nodded to me, mumbled “Fratello Bartolommeo” as if it were a contagious disease, and quickly shuffled back along the corridor, shaking his head.
I opened the door. The room on the other side of it was not quite the size of the rotunda at Union Station in Washington. The air was thick with soft-coal fumes from three fireplaces, all of which were blazing away. Books lined the walls all the way up to the ceiling. It would have taken a giant of a man to reach the top shelf without a stepladder, and a giant wearing the brown Augustinian habit was sitting behind an oak desk the size of a pool-table, and almost managing to dwarf it. He stood up, slammed a book open and face down on the desk top and glared at me. He must have been seven feet tall in his sandals, four feet across at the shoulders and four more at the hips. His absolutely bald head was ruddy with reflected firelight. A pair of small rimless glasses perched incongruously midway down his bread loaf of a nose. He removed the glasses, glared at me, and boomed a question at God in French, wondering why he wasn’t permitted the small luxury of reading in peace. God probably was listening intently and maybe even anxiously.
“My name is Drum,” I said. “Axel Spade suggested I look you up, Brother Bartholomew.”
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