‘Ah, it’s dirty,’ Ryderbeit growled; then looked up with a bright leer; ‘but I grant you, it’s beautifully dirty! To be truthful, I was being a bit jealous just now. You see, we never got anything fancy like that in the Congo or Biafra — just the usual lousy old hardware. Perhaps it’s made me a little conservative.’ He poured the last of the second bottle of wine. ‘But you think the Fat Man can get hold of a couple of Armalites — in Switzerland?’
Packer smiled. ‘If somebody’s prepared to pay enough to give me a cut of half a million, I guess an Armalite’s going to be about as difficult to buy out here as a tin of Nescafé.’ He called for the bill and waited while Ryderbeit drank his wine.
‘Where is Pol, by the way?’ Ryderbeit said at last.
‘I don’t know. He’s phoning me at the Chesa. He hasn’t been in Klosters since yesterday morning.’
Ryderbeit made no comment; nor did he make any move to help settle the bill. Only when they were halfway to the Fiat did he say, ‘Just to be on the safe side, soldier, ask the Fat Man for six rounds each. It’s a quick-firing weapon, you know.’
Packer nodded. They drove most of the way back down to Klosters in silence. Over the last stretch, Ryderbeit was leaning forward, straining his one eye for a glimpse of the cables up to the Gotschnagrat, which was already in heavy shadow.
‘You know, soldier — and I don’t want you laughing until I’ve finished — I’ve got half an idea to hire a twin-engined Executive jet and fix a nice sharp piece of metal between the undercarriage, then fly down that valley and nick those cables like pieces of string. Remember that accident on Mont Blanc a few years ago? — when a Mystère fighter cut the traction cable halfway up the mountain, and the pilot didn’t even know what had happened until after he’d landed?’
‘And what speed do you think he was doing?’
Ryderbeit shrugged. ‘A few hundred knots.’
‘And how fast do you think you could fly down that valley, keeping right up against the trees or the Wang in order to cut the cables near the top?’
Ryderbeit snarled something in Afrikaans; then got out a cigar, snicked the end with his teeth, and lit it from the dashboard lighter. ‘Okay, soldier, you win again. I guess those Executive jobs are best left to giving the fat cats a smooth ride without upsetting their secretaries’ champagne. A pity, though.’
Packer turned off the main road, just before the stony river, and drove down between two rows of dank grey houses which led to Ryderbeit’s pension. ‘Till tomorrow at eight o’clock sharp, at the Gotschnabahn Hut,’ Packer said, stopping the car.
Ryderbeit got out and gave a gallant wave. ‘My regards to the Fat Man — the sod! And give your girl a big something from me.’
He waved again, this time with a hint of loneliness as he mounted his dingy doorstep and fumbled for his key, following Pol’s instructions to keep a strictly low profile during their stay in Klosters.
CHAPTER 15
When Charles Pol was shown into the Ruler’s presence, shortly after noon next day, he had been kept waiting only forty minutes. He was received in the same room, where the Ruler sat behind his desk, wearing a lounge suit and his horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘Welcome, Monsieur. Be seated.’ He sat back and gave Pol his long oily stare. ‘Are you a chess player, Monsieur Pol?’
‘I have played. But I am not good.’
‘You surprise me. I am an excellent player. I have taken on some of the Grand Masters, and often it is I who have called shah-mak. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the term? It is an ancient word in my language meaning, literally, “Death to the King”. You call it, I believe, “checkmate”?’
There was a pause. Pol sensed something disquietingly casual about the Ruler’s manner. ‘You have surely not invited me here to play chess?’ Pol asked, with his mischievous grin.
‘No. I mentioned the game because it has a certain irony — one which you, as a Frenchman, may appreciate. When I first summoned you here, I had selected you from a long list of international scoundrels. I preferred you because your record proved you to be not only a professional — ruthless and ingenious — but also an eccentric. You enjoy intrigue. You enjoy it like a game, and the higher the stakes, the greater the pleasure. You do not contradict me, I see?’
Pol waited, saying nothing.
‘I summoned you here, on that first occasion, to ask you to play a very special game with me. I even paid you a fortune to do so. I invited you to shah-mak me.’ He smiled like a razor. ‘In such a context, do you not find the word magnificently ironic? Perhaps we should have invented a new word — “Death to the King of Kings, Prince of Princes”? But I fear I must disappoint you, Monsieur Pol. Our little game is over. I have put away the chessboard, and the pieces. Including you.’ He raised his hand, as though he expected Pol to interrupt. ‘I am not asking for the money back. I am asking simply that the operation be cancelled and all evidence destroyed.’
‘Evidence?’
‘You are being dull, Monsieur Pol. You have recruited accomplices — professional assassins whose only loyalty is to the money you pay them. I do not want them to become an embarrassment to me.’
‘Your Majesty, let me explain something. You have referred to this operation as a game. I prefer to compare it to a clock — a highly complex clock which, on your instructions, I have wound up, and which is now beginning to tick. It is not easy to stop a clock once it has started.’
‘It can be broken.’
‘That was not part of the contract.’
‘Do not be ridiculous. You have received from me a very large sum of money. So far you have done little to deserve it. You have, however, remained discreet about your plans. I know, at least, how many accomplices you have, although I still do not know their identity.’
‘No. You lost a useful pawn there. According to the papers, it was burnt to a cinder on a lonely road in south-east France. The French police are treating the case as one of political murder.’
The Ruler’s stare was black and unblinking. ‘I have no knowledge of the case, beyond what I too have read in the Press.’
‘The man’s name was Pierre-Baptiste Chamaz. Before his accident, he had been following me for several days, and had taken photographs of myself and my accomplices. Those photographs were fortunately intercepted.’
The Ruler gave a bored shrug. ‘You should report such information to the police, not me. I am not interested.’
‘It is perhaps as well that I have not reported it to the police, Your Majesty. By the way, why was Chamaz wearing an identity bracelet?’
‘I do not know. Many people wear St Christophers. You are beginning to waste my time, Monsieur Pol.’
‘St Christophers, Your Majesty, are not usually made of heat-resistant alloy. However, it certainly ensured that poor Monsieur Chamaz got his name in the papers.’ Pol’s face softened into a grin. ‘Your Majesty, may I ask you a question?’
The Ruler waited, expressionless. Pol went on: ‘Why, precisely, did you hire me to kill you?’
There was a pause before the Ruler replied. ‘Monsieur Pol, it seems I must give you some advice. You are like a man who puts his hand into the fire to see if it will get burned. You enquire into matters which do not concern you. However, I suspect that you are also a man who could prove more troublesome if your curiosity is not satisfied. Let it be sufficient for me to say that I have recently had cause to question the loyalty of certain of my subjects. By allowing them to know that my life might be in danger from foreign assassins, I was able — by a relatively simple ruse — to test their loyalty, and find it wanting.’
‘An expensive ruse,’ Pol murmured, without enthusiasm. He was too old a hand to be impressed, let alone daunted, by the fantastic machinations of this inflated modern satrap. But Pol was also too careful to let any such disbelief show. He waited for the Ruler to continue.
‘But a small price to pay for the security of my State.’ He paused again, his eyes not moving from the Frenchman�
��s face. ‘Monsieur Pol, I must remind you once more that it is unwise to become too concerned in the affairs of a country like mine. I have been reluctantly obliged to implicate you, and certain other outsiders, in what has strictly been a matter of internal politics. Unfortunately, once outsiders become involved, they find themselves in a quicksand — the more they struggle, the deeper they are sucked in, until they are buried. Let your accomplices struggle, Monsieur Pol. You relax and listen to what I now have to say.’
From the moment that he walked out of ‘Le Soupir du Soleil’ and entered the chauffeur-driven car that was to take him back into Klosters, Pol knew that he was frightened.
It was not a rational fear; for Pol had learned to distinguish degrees of fear as the police distinguish types of crime. As the Ruler’s dossier had said, the Frenchman had tangled with some of the roughest outfits in the game. Not just hoodlums, but the real professionals. Yet all these organizations — the Falange, the Gestapo, the OAS and CIA and KGB — all had one common characteristic. They employed craftsmen. They had a job to do: a job to extract and evaluate information; sometimes they paid for that information with cash, asylum, immunity from arrest, sometimes by sparing their clients the maximum pain, mutilation, death.
But his Serene Imperial Highness, the Ruler of the Emerald Throne of the Hama’anah, belonged to another breed altogether. And as the car drew up outside the Silvretta Hotel, and Pol stepped out into the dry cold air, he realized that the Ruler was probably the one man of whom he had ever been really frightened in his life.
The Ruler was not merely a tyrant; nor even a simple megalomaniac. He was a mortal living in the centre of a fantastic dream, which had been turned to reality by billions of barrels of oil, and by his capacity to hold, single-handed, the intricate economies of the Western world perpetually hostage to his slightest whim. His domestic politics, in which he had temporarily involved Pol, he treated as no more than a casual game; and Pol — who, as the Ruler had accurately observed, loved to play games himself — was all too aware of the frivolous menace of such a man.
The fact that Pol had already deposited detailed accounts of his dealings with the Ruler at two banks — one in Switzerland and one in France — and a separate copy with a highly placed friend in the Palais de Justice in Paris, would not, he realized dismally, cause the Ruler much discomfort. Pol’s reputation, both in France and abroad, was not, unhappily, without blemish.
He felt tired and cold as he entered the lobby, and thought he might have a chill coming on. At the desk he left some lengthy instructions, including an order for a double club sandwich to be sent up to his room, where he did not wish to be disturbed until 6.30.
Upstairs he poured a stiff brandy which he drank in the bath; but afterwards, as he sat naked on the bed, he felt no better. The first bite of the sandwich had made him feel queasy and he had put the tray outside the door. He sat and watched the sweat trickling over the rolls of flesh, gathering in a salty pool in his massive navel and spilling over into his pubic beard, above the withered suture between his legs where a series of surgeons had spent months repairing what was left of his manhood.
Besides his own safety, what worried him most was how to protect Packer long enough for them to come to some arrangement about the money in Aalau. Pol had already cleared well over a million pounds on the operation, after paying both Ryderbeit’s and Packer’s shares. But even in such a crisis, it seemed to him immoral that he should risk losing his half of the further £500,000 in that joint account with Packer.
The one thought that finally lulled him into a fitful sleep was the memory of the 21,000 Swiss francs he had spent yesterday in Geneva, after his pleasant little detour to Talloires. For if events worked out as he now anticipated, Mademoiselle Sarah Laval-Smith was probably the best investment he owned.
When the telephone by the bed woke him at exactly 6.30, his malaise had returned; the sheets were rumpled, and his whole body ached as though it had been expertly beaten all over.
CHAPTER 16
Ryderbeit was already in the hut when Packer arrived. He sat sprawled back against the wall, one hand holding a tumbler of mahogany liquid, the other, one of his eight-inch coronas.
Packer had already discovered, during the run that morning, that although the Rhodesian had only one eye and had spent most of his life in the tropics, he was a recklessly adroit skier; while Packer was tired and out of practice. This second run of the day, down one of the fastest pistes on the Gotschnagrat, had left him bruised and bad tempered, as he unclipped his skis and clumped into the hut, which smelled of sauerkraut and wet wool. The only other customers were a group of noisy Germans ranged along a table, drinking glühwein.
Ryderbeit had a pile of Polaroid exposures spread out like playing cards, next to a large cloth-backed military map. As Packer stood in front of him, shaking the snow off his clothes like a dog after a swim, he noticed several rings in red felt-tip down the spine of brown-shaded mountain. From the last of these a straight line — in the same red — stretched diagonally across the map and ended in a spray of arrows, each touching a black line broken with little strokes, like a centipede.
‘Okay, soldier?’
Packer nodded, pulled off his mittens, unhoisted his rucksack, and took out a similar map; sat down and drew another stack of photographs from his anorak pocket.
A large girl appeared in front of them. Ryderbeit eyed her with disapproval. ‘What are you having, soldier? Mine’s a teeny triple Scotch.’
‘Apfelsaft, bitte,’ Packer told the girl, and Ryderbeit cackled.
‘Still being a good boy, eh?’
Packer ignored him. He looked again at Ryderbeit’s map, then unfolded his own, on which he had made similar markings, but in green. He compared the two, nodded, and ran his finger down the red rings on Ryderbeit’s. ‘These are all possibles?’ he asked.
Ryderbeit said, ‘Uh-huh,’ and drew on his cigar. Packer tapped the black centipede on his own map.
‘This is the T-bar up to the Mähder run, okay? According to this, it covers almost exactly 600 metres. Taking into account the undulations, we’ll call it 700 yards. When I went on it this morning it took twelve minutes and nineteen seconds. That puts its speed at between four and five mph — a brisk walking pace.’
Ryderbeit took a deep drink and said, ‘Fine. But it gets worse.’
‘Yes, it’s a rear sighting. But it’s also at a thirty-two-degree angle, remember, so the target will seem slower.’
Ryderbeit shook his head. ‘Not through a telescopic lens, it won’t. You’re getting forgetful, Packer Boy. At 860-odd metres, his speed’s going to look twice as fast!’ He ran his finger along the red line he had drawn across the two white grooves of valley; then tapped the brown-shaded ridges between them. ‘But this is what’s going to give us the real shit. Even as late as four o’clock there’s still going to be a lot of shimmer, like panes of distorting glass.’
‘Which point have you chosen?’
Ryderbeit tapped the red ring from which he had drawn the line across the centre of the T-bar. ‘Barring accidents, it should take me ten minutes to get down to Wolfgang.’
‘And how long have you got up there?’
‘Seven seconds.’
‘And you’ll have him in your sights all the time?’
‘No.’ Ryderbeit shuffled through the pile of photographs and selected three, which he arranged in order. The first showed a small blurred figure in a half-sitting position, against a white background. In the second shot the figure’s head was disappearing over a ridge of snow; then reappearing in the third. ‘I got three to four seconds from when he first shows, and less than three when he’s over the hump,’ he added. ‘But for a hundred thou’ I can’t really complain.’
Packer smiled. ‘If you’re as good as you say you are, Sammy, he’ll be a sitting duck.’
‘Yeah. Trouble is, so will I.’ Ryderbeit swallowed the rest of his whisky and waved his tumbler at the girl behind the bar; then again t
apped the red ring on his map. ‘This gives me the best sighting, but it’s also a fucking horrible place to stop. I got to do a bloody smart turn, on forty-five degrees of ice, or I go smack over the edge, thirty feet down on to bare rocks. Then there’s always the danger of some bastard running into the back of me. This afternoon I was lucky — got three clear minutes to make the sightings and take a few snaps before anyone came past. That run gets pretty busy this time of day. So if I’m going to keep this thing nice and quiet — just between me and the Ruler — I’m going to have to be bloody quick and bloody lucky.’
‘It should be a lot clearer when he comes up,’ said Packer. ‘They empty the cable car for him, remember?’ He paused. ‘What about cover?’
‘Sod all. The back of the bend is a wall of soft snow going right up over the shoulder of the mountain. The map marks it as a green avalanche hazard — which is medium.’
‘What about trees?’
‘No chance. The nearest are well below the bend, and a good five minutes’ climb.’
‘These other sites —’ Packer brushed his fingers down the row of red rings — ‘what’s wrong with them?’
‘They’re all about the same, except the range gets longer and none of them give a sighting of more than five seconds. And even with an Armalite, that’s cutting the odds pretty fine.’
Packer nodded slowly. The waitress brought Ryderbeit another sturdy drink which he half emptied; then he sat eyeing Packer along the length of his cigar. ‘What about these Armalites, soldier? You think the Fat Man’s going to come through?’
‘You know him better than I do,’ said Packer.
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