Line of Succession (35 page)

The Englishman was smug. By openly volunteering his services he had forestalled similar eviction. That was all right; Lime needed to keep a few friends.

He rubbed his eyes. Yaskov's not showing himself wasn't very surprising. Yaskov wasn't fool enough to crowd in with the pack.

He's around here somewhere.

Forget it, he thought. Other fish to fry. Where's Mezetti's contact? What do you suppose the bastard's waiting for?

There were other leads and they weren't altogether standing still. The “Venezuelan handyman” who'd been hired by the chief groundskeeper at Perdido—the one who'd evidently sabotaged Fairlie's original helicopter and killed the Navy pilot—had been identified by the groundskeeper from mug shots: Cesar Renaldo.

Together with the Corby fingerprint in the glove it banished any possibility this was anyone's caper but Julius Sturka's.

But still everything was flimsy. Hundreds of thousands of people were working on it, looking for Sturka and the rest, looking for Raoul Riva. Nothing. There was only one physical lead: Mezetti.

Mezetti sat in a chair reading a newspaper.

The wind came in through the open window. It came right down from Lapland, picking up chill moisture over the frozen Finnish lakes. The sun was a low thin rime in the south, weak pink through haze; it had risen late and would set within three hours.

“I say,” the Englishman muttered. Lime jerked awake.

Across the way there was movement. He snapped the glasses to his eyes and made the rapid search until he found Mezetti's window. Locked onto it and watched.

Mezetti had put the newspaper down and was at the wardrobe, shouldering into a coat, reaching for a hat.

Lime handed the glasses to the Englishman and wheeled to the telephone. “He's moving. Coat and hat.”

“Right.”

He got into the Mercedes. Chad Hill at the wheel craned his head around inquiringly.

“Don't get your hopes up,” Lime told him wearily. “He's probably headed for a drugstore to buy a toothbrush.”

They watched the face of the hotel. Lime plucked the two-way's mike from its dashboard hook. “Just checking the communications.”

“Loud and clear.”

After two or three minutes Mezetti appeared on the step. He looked around the square with a great deal of care before he walked the half-block distance to the Saab he'd hired in Helsinki yesterday.

Lime had planted a bleeper under the Saab's bumper. It gave off an intermittent radio pulse. Two vans were equipped to receive the signals and follow by radio triangulation but Lime still preferred line-of-sight tailing; you never knew when the car might trade drivers and then just keep moving with your radio eavesdroppers none the wiser.

Mezetti was having a little trouble getting the car started. Probably the damp cold in the carburetor. Lime flicked the microphone switch. “I'm on him but we'll want two other cars.”

“All set.”

Finally smoke puffed from the Saab's pipe and it moved away from the curb.

“Here we go.… Heading into the middle of town.”

“Two vans and three cars on him.”

Lime latched the microphone and spoke to Chad Hill. “Hang back. Don't tailgate him.”

The Mercedes threaded the narrow streets. Mezetti had turned on his foglights and the red taillights were easy to follow.

A sharp turn into a narrow passage. “Don't follow him in there,” Lime said. “We'll go around the block.” And into the mike: “He's turned into an alley. Maybe checking his tail—I'm letting him go. You're on the parallel streets?”

“Alcorn's picked him up. Going west on Alpgatan.”

Lime looked at his map. It was the next boulevard over, running parallel. He spoke terse directions and Chad Hill took the Mercedes around a corner. Lime said, “Slow down. We'll let the others ride him for a while.”

From the radio: “He appears to be driving around a block now.”

“Not looking for a parking place?”

“No. Trying to make sure he hasn't got a tail. It's all right, we're swapping relays every other corner. He won't spot us.”

“What's he doing now?”

“North on the main drag.”

Lime pointed and Hill turned the Mercedes into the main street.

The radio: “He's going around another block.”

“Sure?”

“It looks that way—okay, he's made the third turn. One more and he's gone around the block. Where are you?”

“Near the north edge of town.”

“Keep going. He'll probably catch up—right, he's behind you.”

Lime said to Chad Hill, “Can you see him in the mirror?”

Hill had presence of mind enough to move his eyes to the mirror without moving his head. “Not yet.”

“Keep going.”

Things were thinning out; the Finnish pines crowded down toward the road, the paving got narrower, there was ice on the shoulders and snow under the trees.

“There he comes.”

“Keep it down. Let him pass us if he wants to.”

“I don't think he—oh shit.” And Hill was standing on his brakes.

Lime screwed around in the seat to look back.

Nothing.

“What happened?”

“He turned off back there. Side road.”

“All right. Take it easy, don't fly apart.”

Hill jockeyed the Mercedes back and forth across the narrow paving, scared to risk the ice shoulders. Finally they made the U-turn and Hill put his foot to the floor.

The acceleration jammed Lime back in his seat. “Slow down damn it.”

The sun flickered through the pines like a moving signal lamp. A car was coming toward them from Lahti; Lime squinted into the sun haze. He made it out to be a green Volvo, the old model two-door. Probably Alcorn.

Hill made the turnoff sedately enough. Lime looked over his shoulder and Alcorn was right behind them.

Ahead the road one-laned into the timber, snow banked close along both sides. The trees shut out the sun. Lime spoke into the microphone, reporting the turn. Afterward he consulted the map.

The road on the map ended at a T-junction with a secondary road that went northwest from Lahti to a string of villages farther north. There were no turnings between here and the T-junction.

“Step it up a little. Let's see if we can get him in sight.”

An S-curve that made the Mercedes sway on its springs, and then the Saab was there, its taillights just disappearing around a farther bend. “All right, let's stick to his pace.”

At the T-junction the Saab turned left and Chad Hill spoke a sour oath.

Lime reported: “He's headed back into town.”

“Son of a bitch. He's still shaking shadows.”

“He'll recognize this Mercedes if he sees it again. Tell Alcorn to pull past us. Get me a fresh car at this end of town. You've got about fifteen minutes.”

Mezetti drove straight through Lahti without going around any blocks. Alcorn relayed the Saab over to another shadow at the near side of town and at the far edge, going south on the main highway to Helsinki, a new tail picked him up. Lime swapped his Mercedes for a waiting Volvo and went on through along Mezetti's track. By the time they were out in the pine country Lime had caught up to the other tail; there was some radio chatter and then Lime took over the tail's position while the tail overtook the Saab and went on ahead, bracketing Mezetti.

They rode him fifteen or twenty kilometers that way. It was getting on for two o'clock—close to sunset in these latitudes. Scandinavians kept their roads cleared in weather far worse than this but there wasn't much traffic. Pines hugged the road, endless forests of them. Here and there the pavement skirted the edge of a lake and passed a cabin snug with its lights glowing through frost-framed windows: half the residents of Helsinki and Lahti had vacation places on the lakes.

Mezetti seemed oblivious to his company. After dark it would be harder because he would be more acutely aware of headlights if they rode constantly in his mirror.

A Porsche closed from behind, rode a few curves on the Volvo's bumper and then pulled out to go by. Lime tried to get a glimpse of the driver's face but the side curtain was steamed up. The Porsche pulled ahead and they were glad to have it between them and Mezetti for a while. Mezetti was doing a fair clip but the Porsche got impatient after a mile or two, put on a burst of speed and slithered past.

Time to switch on the lights. The road hit a quick series of sharp bends, slithering along the shores of linked lakes; occasionally the Saab's lights winked through the trees.

Mezetti's performance was amateurish. He'd obviously been coached on blowing a single tail but his maneuverings weren't the kind that would disclose a multiple shadow, or shake it.

If his people were listening in on the shadowers' radio chatter they would know he was bracketed but Lime's organization was not using the standard police-car band; Mezetti's people would have to know what frequency to monitor and that was unlikely. At any rate they had no way of knowing about the sneak bleeper affixed to Mezetti's car. It hadn't been mentioned on the air and it wouldn't be.

They,
he thought. Sturka. Was Sturka somewhere within a few miles, squirreled away in the pines with Clifford Fairlie?

“Speed it up a little. I can't see his lights.”

Chad Hill fed gas and the Volvo started to lean on the turns. The headlights swept across thick stands of timber, the forest shadows mysterious in the farther depths.

The road squirmed through three sharp turns; Hill had to use his brakes. They weren't doing more than thirty kilometers an hour when they came out of the last bend and the headlights stabbed a car standing crosswise in the road.

Line's hand whipped to the dashboard and gripped its edge. The tires skidded on ice crystals imbedded in the road surface but the treads held and the Volvo slewed to a stop, just nudging the bole of a pine.

Lime dropped his hand and put his bleak stare on the car that stoppered the road.

It was the Porsche that had whipped past them ten kilometers back.

No keys in it; and no papers. “Find out who it's registered to,” he said to Chad Hill. They were pushing it off the road.

It crunched and bounced down into the trees and Chad Hill was jogging back to the Volvo to call in. Lime got into the driver's seat. Chad Hill stood outside the open right-hand window with the mike in his hand, talking. Lime said, “Get in,” and turned the starter.

The car rocked with Hill's weight. The door slammed and Lime backed onto the pavement and put the Volvo in gear and jammed his foot to the floor.

They clipped forward at ninety and a hundred kilometers per hour where the road permitted. But there were no taillights out ahead. “Ask him where those damned vans are.”

Hill into the mike: “Where are the vans?”

“Coming right along,” said the speaker. “We haven't dropped the ball yet.”

But they had. Fifteen minutes later the signal stopped moving and at half past three they found the Saab on a private road parked at the edge of the trees. Mezetti had got away.

It was a summer cottage. A pencil lake perhaps a mile long, a modern cabin large for its kind, a wooden dock with a gasoline pump. There was ice around the edge of the lake but it hadn't frozen over yet. Lime stood scowling at the Saab. One of the vans was parked behind it and they had headlamps and spotlights switched on; the place was lit up like an arena. A crew of technicians crawled around the car but what was the point?

The voice crackled on the car radio. “What about footprints in the snow?”

“Plenty of them. Mostly from the driveway down to the dock. Have you got a registration on that Porsche yet?”

“Rental outfit. We're trying to find out who they rented to. It's taking a little time—it's a small outfit, they're closed Sundays. We're looking for the manager.”

“He won't know anything.” Lime let the microphone hang slack in his fist and glared at the Saab.

One of the technicians was talking to Chad Hill down by the dock, making gestures toward the gasoline pump.

From the mike: “Maybe we ought to put out an all-points on him. Throw a blanket net, his picture on TV, the whole thing. What have we got to lose?”

“Forget it.” The manhunt until now had been massive but private. If it went public it might increase Fairlie's jeopardy.

Chad Hill came loping up from the dock. “Something here, sir. That's aviation gasoline in that pump.”

Lime growled in his throat and put the mike to his lips. “He may be in a seaplane. There's a lake here, a pier. An aviation gas pump on the dock.”

“I'll get coastal radar right on it.”

Headlights swung around the approaching bend and Lime squinted at the advancing car. Nobody would have any business here in wintertime.

The car stopped behind the van and one of the Finnish cops went over to talk to the driver. A moment's uncertainty and then the wave of an arm—the Finn was beckoning and Lime walked across the drive.

The newcomer was a fat man with a cropped gray head and a roll of flesh at the back of his neck. When he got out of the car Lime recognized the clothes right away—the heavy shoes and the Moscow serge suit.

“You are David Lime.”

“Yes.”

“Viktor Menshikov. An honor.” His little formal bow was anachronistic, it needed a clicking of heels to complete it. “I understand you are attempting to locate Mezetti.”

Menshikov strolled off toward the trees at the fringe of the van's splash of illumination. The studied casualness was too much; it was something out of a Stalinist movie, heavy-handed and full of melodrama, not the suave cleverness it was intended to provide.

Lime followed him to the trees. They were out of earshot of the others. Lime only stood and waited with a cigarette pasted to his lip.

Menshikov's face glowed in the chill wind. “It is possible we may be able to help.”