The Power (72 page)

'One thing I forgot to tell you, Tweed,' Marler broke
in. 'The glider is a complete write-off. I warned you. Cost
you a bomb.'

'Don't worry about that. Jennie has raised the question
of transport. I've discussed that with Newman and we've
made some changes in the sequence of the convoy.
Object, to confuse the opposition.'

'I insist I'm driving back down those mountains in the
BMW,' Gaunt barked out. 'Feel comfortable behind the
wheel of that car. Eve, are you joining me? If not
...'
He
turned to Jennie. 'You'll be most welcome as a passenger.
And I'm a good chap as escort - with my trusty Colt.'

Gaunt appeared to be adopting a jovial manner to
lighten the atmosphere. Watching him, Paula couldn't
decide whether he was just a show-off, full of his own
importance, or a formidable personality.

'I'd like to ride back with Tweed,' Eve said, gazing at him. 'If that's all right with you.'

'Newman will head the convoy, driving the station
wagon this time,' Tweed explained. 'He has the advan
tage of being armed with the Uzi, a deadly weapon.
Marler will travel next to him. He has the advantage of
carrying his Armalite and the tear-gas pistol. The station
wagon becomes the spearhead of the convoy.'

'What about the Espace?' Paula asked.

'That will follow behind the station wagon and I will be
driving it with you alongside me. Cardon, armed with
grenades, will travel in the row behind us. That leaves
Butler and Nield, who will ride the motorcycles. But this
time the convoy will maintain its sequence come hell or high water - with Butler as outrider in front of the station
wagon all the time and Nield bringing up the rear. Eve sits
next to Cardon in
the Espace.'

'Hold on!' Gaunt boomed out, raising a hand. 'I'm with
this party in case you've forgotten.'

'Which I hadn't,' Tweed shot back. 'You're car number
three, following my Espace, with Nield behind you. And
Philip,' he said, addressing Cardon, 'I know that inside
your hold-all you have a collection of walkie-talkies. Give
one to Marler, one to Paula, who has sharp eyes, one to Butler, one to Nield, and one to Jennie, who proved on
the way up she also has sharp eyes.'

Cardon unfastened his hold-all and had distributed the walkie-talkies in less than a minute, including a clear instruction to Jennie as to how to operate it. Holding the instrument, Jennie looked at Eve with a mocking expres
sion. She spoke to her in a whisper.

'You're lucky, darling. Nothing to do except make up
to Tweed. They call it spare luggage.'

'Not too spare, dear.' Eve reached behind a couch,
came up holding an automatic rifle in both hands, the
muzzle pointed at the ceiling, Tweed noted with
approval. 'And I'm a crack shot,' Eve went on, also in a
whisper.

'Modesty really has become an old-fashioned virtue,'
Jennie flashed back. 'I'll look after Greg for you.'

Tweed's acute hearing had picked up the catty
exchange. He put his hands round the shoulders of both
women.

'I am relying on both of you to back up the team when
it comes to a crisis. Both of you have my full confidence.'

'What about me?' asked Amberg, who had remained
silent and still while he listened to the arrangement of the
convoy. 'I do have a Mercedes in the garage ...'

'Leave it there,' Tweed told him. He'd purposely not mentioned the banker earlier, exerting a little more
psychological pressure. 'You will be sitting in the Espace,
in the second row of seats between Eve and Cardon.'

'Will you be carrying that rifle?' Amberg demanded,
staring at the weapon Eve was holding.

'Bet your life I will,' she told him cheerfully. 'So when we're attacked, keep your head down. Now, what are we waiting for, everybody?'

'I'm waiting for you all to get a move on,' Tweed said brusquely.

'Amberg,' Newman snapped, 'you'd better hurry out to the garage and lock it up. Has anyone else a key to this
place?'

'Yes. The woman who acts as housekeeper in my
absence and lets in the other servants.'

'Wouldn't want them poking around in that garage,
considering what it contains besides your car.'

'No, of course not. ..'

The convoy was drawn up in the deep snow in the
courtyard and everyone was aboard their allotted vehicles
when an ashen-faced Amberg, huddled in a fur coat,
returned. Only Newman stood outside the Espace. He
gestured for the Swiss to get aboard.

'I saw that car - and what was inside,' Amberg
remarked. 'The garage is like a charnel house.'

'And may I remind you,' Newman said brutally, 'that
all those men came here to kill us? Get in your seat and
shut up.'
-

'This could be a memorable journey,' commented Eve
as the banker climbed in beside her, the rifle across her
lap. 'Who knows? We might even survive it...'

45

'Ives, whichever route Tweed and his team use to come
back down off the mountains they have to pass this point,' said Cord Dillon. Seated inside his car, his window open,
Dillon had the hood of his coat pulled well down over his
head.

He was speaking to a man astride a motorcycle parked
next to the open window. At the front of his machine a
Union Jack fluttered in the icy breeze, attached to the top
of the extended radio aerial.

Barton Ives, Special Agent of the FBI, was even more
muffled up. Wearing a helmet and goggles, the lower part
of his face was masked with a thick woollen scarf. He had
lifted it above his firm mouth to converse with Dillon.

'Tweed knows the Union Jack is partial proof of your
identity,' Dillon went on. 'But he'll need more than
that...'

'I have my papers . ..'

'He'll need more than those,' Dillon warned. 'So he has your description. When you contact him show him your
face and hair immediately. He has a tough bunch with
him who don't hesitate to shoot any suspect character.'

'I'll tell him my story as soon as I get the guy on his
own. Trouble is,' Ives went on, 'he'll never believe it. Too
goddamn earth-shaking.'

'It's all of that,' Dillon agreed. 'Didn't believe it myself
when you first told me. It's quiet here but we'd better not
be seen together any longer.'

That gas station over there,' Ives commented. 'It has a
coffee shop. I'll buy myself a drink, sit at a window table. I'll have a good view of the road from there.'

'OK,' Dillon agreed, reaching for the brake. 'But make
contact before Tweed and his team hit the heavy traffic. I
saw him go up in a Renault Espace, with a Renault station
wagon and two motorcycle outriders as escort. The
Espace is a grey colour. On your own now, Ives. So stay
lucky...'

The convoy's journey down through the Vosges had been
uneventful so far. That is discounting the fact that an icy breeze combined with a fall in temperature had made the
twisting road like an endless skating rink. Inside the
Espace, even with the heaters turned up full blast, Paula
felt the chill penetrating her gloves, her clothes.

Several times Tweed, behind the wheel of the Espace,
had felt the insidious slide of a skid. On one occasion he
had a cliff wall to his left, a bottomless abyss to his right.
He had driven with the skid, which had taken the front right-hand wheel within centimetres of the drop.

'Oh, my God!' Amberg cried out, jerking upright.

'Shut up, like Newman told you to,' snapped Paula.

She glanced at Eve, saw her hands had tightened on the
rifle. Paula's own hands had stiffened inside her gloves.
Eve turned on Amberg.

'Walter,' she said in a cold voice, 'I'm beginning to
suspect you are the real target. After all, whoever those
people were, they attacked the Château Noir. So you
could be the one who is putting our lives at risk. That
being so, kindly shut your face. I hope you are understanding my message, Walter.'

Cardon turned slowly sideways and nudged the banker
before he spoke.

'Do keep quiet, old chap. The driver needs all his
concentration. Ready for the next skid.'

Tweed heard all this with a corner of his mind as he
stared ahead at the next bend, trying to detect whether
there was more ice under the treacherous covering of
snow on the steep downward spiral.

Ahead of them, Newman, behind the wheel of the
station wagon with Marler next to him, had negotiated
two skids and had been driving slowly. Now he reduced his speed to a crawl. It was only a few minutes later that
the road levelled out, widened on a small plateau. He
signalled that he was stopping.

Tweed pulled up behind him after signalling to Gaunt
who was following them in the BMW with Jennie huddled
in a sheepskin next to him. Newman had alighted and
Tweed, his arms aching with tension, was glad to join him
in the snow as Paula and Cardon followed him. Marler then stepped out, the Armalite gripped in his right hand.
Newman pointed to a large sign in front of a large single-
storey wooden building which appeared deserted. Paula read it.

LA SCHLUCHT 1139.

'I don't believe it,' she said. 'We're still over three
thousand feet up in the Vosges. I assume that height is in
metres.'

'You assume correctly,' Tweed responded, banging his gloves together to get the circulation back into both his
hands. 'In summer I imagine that place is open for
refreshments. This is what is called a panoramic viewing
point on maps - something like that.'

'A panorama it is,' Paula agreed.

To the north and south stretched the Ice Age world of
the peaks and crevasses of the Vosges, the white summits
reminding Paula of shark-like teeth. They had emerged from the zone of shadow and everywhere the sunlit snow
sparkled like a million diamonds.

The cold was intense and Paula, like Eve and Jennie,
who had run down from the BMW, began stamping her booted feet, which felt like blocks of ice. Gaunt came
striding up as Tweed conferred with Newman, Marler and
Cardon.

'I don't like it,' Tweed warned. 'So far there has been
no sign of the opposition, no attempt to stop us. Yet!
Something pretty nasty has to be waiting for us beyond
here.'