He rode in sullen silence, irritated by the proximity of the two bodyguards on either side of him. Such routine precautions seemed suddenly irrelevant. It was not those staring crowds outside in the streets that he now had to fear.
CHAPTER 14
The motorcade had disappeared down the road to Klosters; the police had dispersed to their own cars; and the tourists at the foot of the slopes were making their way up to the Kulm Hotel. One of them was a tall figure with lank black hair sprouting from under a powder-blue pixie hat, orange sun goggles, a faded khaki-green jacket and white doeskin boots over his skiing trousers. Round his neck was slung a Polaroid camera, with a telescopic lens.
He climbed to the hotel terrace and sat down at a table where Owen Packer was drinking lemon tea. A small pair of binoculars lay half hidden under his leather mittens. He looked up and nodded. ‘Same time, same place. I made it just two minutes up on his time yesterday. We don’t need a computer to work out a schedule like that.’
Ryderbeit ripped the last exposure out of his Polaroid and pushed it across to Packer. It was still tacky, and showed a blurred silver-haired skier in a red, white and blue anorak coming to a halt among a crowd of men. ‘Family snap,’ he said, smiling. ‘I could pick him off with a peashooter.’
‘Sure. But you wouldn’t get fifty yards.’
Ryderbeit pushed up his goggles and squinted for a moment at the still-deserted slopes above. ‘I grant you, the sod doesn’t stint himself on hired help. It’s just a question of how good they are.’
‘They’re lousy,’ said Packer. ‘They miss the first and most important trick of the game — the art of standing around doing bugger all and looking convincing about it. Those boys look like stand-ins out of central casting for some thirties B-movies. They’re not only lousy, they’re laughable!’
Ryderbeit had turned and snapped his fingers for a waitress. ‘Could try a Magnum .38 with a silencer, plus a diversion. Bit of plastique explosive under one of the tables — then perhaps toss a couple of grenades. Ten, twenty people killed lots more wounded. It might work.’
Packer brought both hands down on the table and slopped tea into his saucer. ‘Listen, Sammy, we’re not organizing a cheap hit-and-run massacre. You’re a big boy now — you’re not playing in the bush anymore. This time it’s serious. Which reminds me —’ he looked more closely at Ryderbeit’s khaki jacket, which was of a distinctly military cut, and of a thin material more suited to jungle than to snow. On the left arm was a ragged shoulder flash bearing the remnants of an embroidered yellow lion’s head. ‘Do you have to stick out like the bad fairy at the princess’s christening? I mean, I know you’re not conventional, but that outfit rather demands attention, don’t you think?’
Ryderbeit looked up as a plump blonde waitress appeared. He ordered a bottle of white wine, gave her a lewd wink with his good eye, and she walked swiftly away.
He looked back at Packer and grinned. ‘Look, soldier, I don’t mind listening to your advice, just as long as you don’t expect me to take it. You were taught by the rule book — the British army rule book. That means you’re a professional. And the professionals teach you that top-grade assassins, like master spies, are supposed to be grey, faceless men — they merge with the crowd and disappear in the mist. You think I look like a top international assassin?’
Packer stared irritably at the slopes, where the first skiers were appearing above the woods, now that the Gotschnagrat had been reopened following the Ruler’s afternoon run. He had to concede that Ryderbeit’s reasoning contained a degree of specious logic.
‘Out of the four days we’ve been here,’ he said, ‘on three of them the Ruler’s come down the same run, at exactly the same time. The cable car’s closed to tourists at 3.30. At 3.40 he and his entourage go aboard, and at four o’clock he gets out at the top of the Gotschnagrat. We know from yesterday that he doesn’t hang around at the restaurant, except to put on his skis.’
The waitress arrived with a bottle of wine, showed it to Ryderbeit, then drew the cork and poured a glass, keeping her face averted from his Cyclopean leer. He lifted the glass and squinted over the rim, watching her broad hips swaying away between the tables. ‘I could sure slip her a length,’ he murmured. ‘You don’t suppose the Fat Man could fix me up with something, do you? I mean, do you think one of the big hotels here might run a service?’ He saw Packer’s grin and stopped. ‘Ah, forget it. I guess a Swiss brothel’s what you’d call the ultimate contradiction in terms, like a driving licence in Braille?’
They both laughed. ‘Why a brothel?’ said Packer. ‘Surely there’s enough stuff running around on the slopes?’
‘Yeah.’ Ryderbeit emptied his glass and poured himself another. ‘It’s okay for you, soldier. You’ve got that nice bit of fluff tucked away waiting for you down in the Chesa Hotel — while all Samuel D. Ryderbeit’s got is a B-grade pension with a narrow little bed and a few dirty handkerchiefs. Incidentally, just when am I to have the gracious honour of meeting your famous Miss Duval-Smithington-Jones, or whatever she’s called? Even Fat Man says she’s quite an eyeful — and that’s some compliment, considering the krauts chopped off his nuts more than a quarter of a century ago.’ He leaned closer to Packer. ‘He says she’s a pretty classy number. You worried I might frighten her?’
‘She can look after herself,’ Packer said dully.
‘Yeah, I bet she can. Your English upper classes aren’t licked yet, that’s for sure. They stick together like the bloody Masons.’
Packer said nothing: he was thinking of Sarah, preening herself in the tearoom of the Chesa Grishuna — she was too lazy to ski — and no doubt succeeding, with that subtle, effortless allure, in insinuating herself into some smart corner of Klosters’ international set.
The day after they had arrived here from Geneva, Packer had phoned her in London, catching her on the third call at 2.20 a.m., and had invited her out, paying for her air ticket, first-class return, from his £50,000 — a symbolically extravagant first nibble at his numbered nest egg.
She had accepted at once, telling him that the owner of the Bond Street gallery had gone to New York and she had a free week. Packer, who had not consulted Pol beforehand, had anticipated some resistance from the Frenchman — perhaps for fear that Sarah would attract the attention of the Ruler’s ubiquitous retainers, who were to be found at all times of day, and most of the night, sitting alone or in pairs in every big café and restaurant in the town. But Pol, who had taken up residence in the Silvretta Hotel — where he was rarely to be found — had been quite delighted by the prospect of her arrival.
Ryderbeit had finished his third glass of wine and was lighting a cigar. ‘Let me tell you something, soldier — you get yourself snarled up in the ruling classes, and you’ve got to be either a masochist or a sadist. In my case, I preferred the role of sadist.’
‘You’ve had experience, then?’
‘Three times. My first two wives were Brits out of the top drawer — South African Brits, which is even worse. The third was heiress to a Bolivian tin mine, and Big Daddy didn’t approve of her marrying a Red Sea Pedestrian.’ Packer looked puzzled. ‘Jew to you, soldier. Anyway, they were three real rich bitches, no worries. And they all loved me madly, and I treated them like dog shit. The second one didn’t just divorce me, she got me thrown out of the bloody White Republic.’
‘For what?’
‘We had a bit of a fight.’
‘Just a fight?’
‘Well —’ Ryderbeit peered over his glass at a pair of slim tanned girls in matching white fur hats — ‘well, I did a bit of handiwork with some scissors. Snipped off a nipple. Jo’burg police weren’t too pleased about that. I did a year in the can, then they stamped something rude in my passport and bade me farewell.’
Packer sat and watched the skiers winding gracefully down the slopes. He tapped the Polaroid snap on the table. ‘You don’t need guts or brains to maim a wife, Sammy. But this fellow’s different. I want your views
.’
‘He’s not a good skier. Not bad for his age, but nothing like as good as he wants people to think. You noticed those fancy Christies he did just before he stopped? All crap. He’s like a diver making a lot of splash. That boy’s strictly in the après ski playboy class.’
‘I agree. And that’s why he always chooses the Mähder run — the easiest. There are several down the Gotschnagrat, some of them very difficult, including the Wang, but none of the spectators down here in Wolfgang are going to know which one he’s taken.’
Ryderbeit frowned. ‘According to the map, there are half a dozen other runs that are just as easy — here and in Davos. And why does he always choose exactly the same time? It’s too simple, soldier. If I wasn’t a trusting bastard, I’d start suspecting it might be a set-up.’
‘All the other runs,’ said Packer, ‘the Parsenn, the Weissfluhjoch, the one down to Küblis — are either too difficult or too long. And length’s important, because every extra metre means an added security risk. But there’s another reason — and it also explains his regular timing. As we know, whenever he goes skiing, he gives an hour’s warning so they can empty the cable car up the Gotschnagrat and have the runs clear by the time he gets to the top. If he decided to make a different run every day, at a different time, he’d have half the ski lifts, cable cars and runs round Klosters and Davos more or less permanently suspended or closed. And that wouldn’t fit in with his image as the happy monarch on holiday.’
Ryderbeit had squashed out his half-smoked cigar and sat for some time with his lips moving silently; then his good eye swivelled round to Packer. ‘So it looks like being the Mähder run? High-velocity rifle with telescopic sights, at a range of up to 1000 metres. We’d have to do it from one of the higher runs. Pick him off at a downward angle, taking into account rising air currents, distorted distances, as well as snow glare, which in these altitudes can make it seem like you’re shooting underwater. Also, the target’s going to be moving downhill — weaving, changing position every second.’ He paused. ‘I still prefer the idea of the cable car — especially with this schedule he keeps. Fat Man agreed to get me the plastique, and thought it a very smart idea smuggling it into the hut at the bottom, hidden in a big pâté sandwich.’
‘It sounds smart,’ said Packer, ‘but it’s not. Because even if you got into the hut and put the plastique under one of the cable drums — with, say, a two-hour fuse stuck into it — and if the Ruler decided to ride up that afternoon, they not only use that one hour’s notice he gives them to clear the car, but to check every inch of cable as it passes through all the huts — up at the Gotschnagrat station, and the Gotschnaboden, the halfway stop. You might not get caught, but you wouldn’t kill the Ruler either.’
‘Just a lousy old pâté sandwich that someone chucked away behind the winding machinery? Do you think they’d actually taste the pâté — let alone look for the detonator?’
‘You forget you’re in Switzerland, Sammy. They’d hate that sandwich dirtying up their clean little Gotschnabahn hut, whether it contained pâté or plastique.’
Ryderbeit sat back and sighed. ‘You’re not the first person to shoot me down in flames, soldier. But I’m always up there, flying again. Now, try this one for size. I get up in the woods, just under where the cable car passes up to the Gotschnaboden. I’ve got perfect cover, and I’ve also got a .417 Magnum — commonly known as an “elephant gun”. Just as the car gets over the halfway mark, I let fly at the traction cable and twang! — the whole caboosh and its Imperial load goes zinging down the wires, splatter! into that tidy little hut at the bottom. Okay?’
‘Not okay at all. You’re supposed to know about ballistics, aren’t you? Or are guns to you just things with triggers and barrels which are used to blast off at black men and wild animals when they’re not looking?’
‘Easy, soldier.’ Ryderbeit’s eye had become a bright yellow slit, and his knuckles had whitened round his empty wine glass. ‘You tell me what I ought to know about ballistics.’
‘I’ll tell you what you ought to know about those Gotschnabahn cables. The traction cable is over an inch thick, and made up of several hundred spliced steel wires that would take half an hour of oxyacetylene to cut through. It’s also greased twice a day. Any bullet would just bounce off. You could get a hundred bullets hitting the same spot, and they’d hardly make a scratch.’
‘What about the tension cables?’
‘Same story. Except there are two of them.’
Ryderbeit emptied the wine bottle into his glass, and gave his wild cackle. ‘You’re all right, soldier. I was only feeling you out. That idea was just a lead-up. But on the right principle, mind. We both agree that trying to pick him off in the cable car itself would be something like thirty to one against — bearing in mind that he goes up with the thing packed with bodyguards, all about the same height and build as him, and after the first shot — unless one of us got him first time round — they’d all be lying on the floor and we’d need an armour-piercing weapon to get any closer.’
He grinned cunningly. ‘Which is what I propose we do. People walking around on mountains carry a lot of heavy equipment, and there’s no reason why a couple of innocents like us shouldn’t wander up into those woods one sunny morning lugging a couple of 122mm rockets with sticky bomb shells. That way we could roast the whole car-load alive — in memory of your old pal, Chamaz, if the papers yesterday were anything to go by.’
Packer was shaking his head. ‘I have to disappoint you again, Sammy. At eight o’clock this morning I was stopped by four Swiss police with guard dogs only 200 yards beyond the Gotschnabahn hut. By 3.30 this afternoon you can bet they had those woods sealed off like the Gulag Archipelago.’
‘There’s the second stage, above the Gotschnaboden,’ said Ryderbeit. He showed no sign of being disheartened; he was already signalling for another bottle of wine.
‘The second stage,’ said Packer, ‘is the Wang. I’m not for one moment questioning your ability as a skier, Sammy, but you’d have to be pretty good to come down holding a Kalashnikov 122 in your hands, firing it as you went — because there’s nowhere to stop on the Wang, where you’d be doing speeds of up to seventy mph.’
Ryderbeit said nothing until his wine arrived, and then drank two glasses straight off. ‘You’re a gloomy sort of sod, aren’t you?’ he said at last, ‘even for a Brit. Supposing you come up with some ideas. That’s what you’re being paid for, isn’t it?’
‘My idea’s been the same all along. If we’re going to get him, it has to be somewhere on that run —’ Packer nodded across the road — ‘between here and the Gotschnagrat restaurant. Or rather, just below the restaurant. In fact, somewhere on the T-bar.’
Ryderbeit frowned. ‘Sorry, soldier, but where I learned to ski we didn’t have any fancy time-saving gadgets. We walked, or rather climbed. What exactly is the difference between a T-bar and a chair lift?’
‘A chair lift carries the skiers in mid-air, suspended from a cable, and would make a much smoother target — while the T-bar is just an inverted T which scoops you up under the arse and pulls you up the mountain with your skis on the ground, following every contour of the track.’
Ryderbeit nodded gravely. ‘So it’s not only going to be a moving target — probably receding — but jerking and bumping all the way. Right?’
‘That’s what we’ll have to find out. Tomorrow morning we’re going up the Gotschnagrat to try those runs. We’ll take as many pictures as we can and compare them with the maps. There’ll be men spotting the slopes with binoculars, and maybe even a few choppers around. So anything under 500 metres is out. I suggest as near 1000 metres as possible.’
Ryderbeit let out a low whistle. ‘Holy Moses! You know what a man looks like through telescopic sights at 1000 metres? Like a tiny bloody tadpole — which means a head shot, or nothing. And that’s not all. If you’re right, and he only goes skiing at four o’clock, wherever we’re stuck overlooking the T-bar, we’re goi
ng to have the sun coming in low at around ninety degrees. So we’ll have shadows as well as snow glare.’
‘The more difficult it is,’ Packer said, ‘the more chance we have of getting away. If we can find a spot on any of the parallel runs that gives us a clear range of that T-bar — and we only need a few seconds — we can kill him and get down here to Wolfgang, pick up the car, and be through Klosters even before the alarm’s given.’
He had paused, leaning across the table until he could smell the wine on Ryderbeit’s breath. ‘Now the matter of the guns. I’m talking to Pol at seven this evening. He promises to get what we need by tomorrow night. I suggest a couple of Armalites — 5.56mm assault rifles — with self-adjusting anti-glare telescopic sights.’
The skin round Ryderbeit’s good eye crinkled into a sneer. ‘Those are gimmick guns, soldier — cheap and flashy — typical Yankee toys. Give me the old Lee Enfield .303, or the World War II Browning any day. Those were real guns, even if they don’t make them anymore.’
‘The Armalite isn’t cheap for a start. It’s also small — no longer than a racing ski — and it’s light.’
‘Yeah. It’s made of plastic.’ Ryderbeit spat deliberately between his doeskin boots. ‘No serious gun’s made of plastic,’ he added, and poured himself more wine.
‘The bullet is also plastic,’ said Packer. ‘And as you probably know, instead of the usual spinning motion, the Armalite round has a lobbing trajectory, so that its impact is even more lethal than a soft-nosed bullet or a dum-dum. And that, for us, is the vital factor — that, and the fact that it has a stopping power of up to nearly two miles, and is accurate up to around one mile. You pointed out yourself that the target’s going to be very small, very difficult — moving, shimmering and distorted. With any ordinary rifle, in order to hit him in a fatal spot — the spine, heart, or head — we have to be ninety per cent lucky. And we’re not going to have time for more than three shots each at the most. But with an Armalite, that little plastic bullet has only got to hit him, in the elbow or the ankle, or just wing him, and the lobbing movement sends the bullet tearing round inside his body, ripping his limbs off.’
Shah-Mak Page 14
