Prelude to Terror (23 page)

For a moment he felt a terrifying paralysis of the mind. What next? Confront them with the facts—no, not that. Play it their way, and perhaps make sure of an exit through the delivery entrance. He said to Sigmund, who stood gaping while a startled Frau Klar seemed transfixed, “Have you some cardboard we could use?” Quickly he made his way around the table to Sigmund’s work area, kicking the discarded sheets of styrofoam lightly aside, then the pile of straw. His toe touched something solid, and his foot halted.

“Not there, sir,” Sigmund was saying, suddenly galvanised into action. “One moment—I’ll find some cardboard.”

Trying to laugh, Frau Klar said, “Is this really necessary, Mr. Grant? Surely you take too much trouble.”

Grant pointed to the delivery entrance. “Better deal with him, I think.” The truck driver, hands on hips, had taken a definite stance well inside the doorway, and was studying a collection of bric-à-brac waiting to be crated.

Frau Klar looked and saw him. “Max, Max! Get him out of here! Start unloading! And keep him out—you know the rules—no unauthorised personnel allowed.”

The second she had turned her attention away from him to rivet it on the intruder, Grant reached into the straw where his toe had struck something hard. He pulled out a blue vinyl carrying-case, its buckles still unfastened, and replaced it with the duplicate that Sigmund had given him. There was just time to kick the straw back into place—not a perfect job, but it would do—and swing his discovery neatly on to the table, before Frau Klar had completed her tirade and was ready to deal with him again. She hadn’t noticed. Grant drew a long, steadying breath.

And Sigmund? He was now returning across the wide stretch of floor with a sheet of cardboard, which—bless his efficiency and the delay it had caused—was already cut to size. Yes, Sigmund might have noticed that final moment of substitution: he could have had—if he wasn’t too occupied in admiring his handiwork—a clear view of Grant setting the original carrying-case on the table. Or perhaps he just didn’t believe that an American had enough brains to discover he had been duped. At any rate, he said nothing at all as Grant seized the cardboard from his hand, saying, “I’ll attend to it, thank you.” But he was frowning and not altogether happy when Grant pulled the picture out of the vinyl carrier.

One quick check, Grant had decided: glimpse the date and the signature; make sure. Yes, this was the genuine article. He had the Ruysdael.

Frau Klar was impatient. Again she told him that he was taking too much trouble. He only smiled and concentrated on getting the cardboard to fit into the carrying-case along with the painting. He buckled the three straps, gripped the handle. “Ready to leave. Now you can go back to the auction, Frau Klar. When do you expect it to be over?”

“Oh, around two o’clock. Today we didn’t have too many items to dispose of.”

“Sorry I took up so much of your time.” Keep it all natural and easy, he warned himself. He took her hand and shook it quickly. “Goodbye. Many thanks.”

“But I’ll show you out,” she remonstrated. “This way, Mr. Grant.” She gestured towards the door into the corridor.

“Better not disturb the auction.” He began walking to the delivery entrance. “This is nearer anyway,” he called back over his shoulder, and saw Sigmund bending down to look at the heap of loose straw beside his table. Easy does it. Grant told himself again, and resisted increasing his pace. There was no shout of alarm from Sigmund: perhaps he had been reassuring himself that a blue vinyl carrying-case was still in place.

Just ahead was the wide open door. The trucker and his mate were unloading long thin planks of cheap pine.

“Mr. Grant—one moment, please!” the woman called, and he heard her high heels clacking over the cement floor as she tried to catch up with him. But he was almost at the threshold, about to step into sunlight and fresh clean air.

“Klaus!” she cried out, pointing frantically at Grant’s back. Klaus, the biggest and burliest of the workmen, who was helping Max check the delivery of timber, looked up, got the message, and moved quickly to stop the American. But the truck driver, two long planks balanced on one shoulder, let Grant pass and then swung round just as Klaus was reaching him. The planks caught Klaus flat across the chest.

“Sorry, chum,” said the truck driver. He dropped his load to help Klaus regain his footing. “Sorry, lady,” he told Frau Klar who had reached the delivery entrance. “Nearly got your legs, these planks did. Could have broken them.” A pity they hadn’t, thought Frank.

Gudrun Klar ignored him. And Frank, for his part, was happy she wasn’t paying any attention to him. She was determined to get into the street. Curious about Grant’s direction, was she? He nodded to his mate, heavily loaded with the cut timber across his shoulders, to stand just where he was—sideways, at the threshold—and block any other exit for the next minute. Grant was out and away. Frank, glancing briefly along the narrow street, saw a burst of speed that could have won the hundred metres at any Olympics.

Frank began helping his mate to get through the doorway, and bumped up against Gudrun still trying to squeeze past. “Careful, lady,” he told her. “You’ll get a black eye if you don’t look out.” He steadied the swinging planks, and then—Grant must have reached the Volkswagen by this time, judging by the rate he had been travelling at—helped his mate to lower them on to the floor. They slithered and fell. Frau Klar jumped back with a gasp. “Dangerous, I told you,” Frank said, and handed the invoice to Max. “Sign here.” Max, who had been trying to look as stupid as possible, scribbled quickly. Frank, stuffing the invoice back into the breast pocket of his leather jacket, averted his face quite naturally from Madame as he began talking with his helper about their next delivery.

She was too engrossed, anyway, by the street. Grant had vanished. There were some parked cars, two girls, three men, a boy on a bicycle. Nothing else.

What is she thinking? Frank wondered. That their agent is waiting at the front entrance to Klar’s Auction Rooms, ready to follow Grant? “Some wait,” he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat and switched on the engine. Slowly, at walking pace, he eased the truck along the narrow street.

She had given up. In his rear-view mirror, he saw her enter the warehouse and its doors begin to close. He increased his speed. Even if she had an afterthought and stepped back for another look, the truck would block her view of the white Volkswagen which was at last pulling away from the kerb. “Did you have much of a view from across the street?” he asked the young man beside him.

“Just enough to let me see Grant and Klar come into the warehouse, and give you the signal. I worried about my timing for that. Too quick?”

“It was just right.” Frank was in a jovial mood. “You saw no argument? No sign of trouble?”

“No. She was all smiles, then. What changed her?” She had been one worried woman, mouth pulled down, eyebrows knitted.

“She and her friends were caught flat-footed, that’s what.” Frank’s grin was broad. “One thing I’ll say for that guy—” He paused and laughed.

“Grant?”

“He can sprint.”

* * *

Renwick had the Volkswagen door open for him. Grant stumbled in, breathing in heavy gasps, the blue vinyl carrying-case safely clutched to his side. The car didn’t move. The motor wasn’t even running. Renwick, his eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror, only said, “Keep low! Stay out of sight.”

In this sardine-tin? But Grant did his best, sliding down in the seat until his knees almost touched his chin. Slowly he regained his breath. My God, he thought, I never ran so hard in my life. Strange what desperation can do...

“Just a minute or two,” Renwick said encouragingly. He too had slumped as much as possible without losing his rear view of the street.

“Okay,” he said at last, and switched on the ignition. Behind them Grant heard the beginning growl of the truck’s engine. Still watching the mirror, Renwick pulled away from the kerb. “She’s back inside the warehouse,” he reported, smiling for the first time. “And there was no one to follow you. They messed that up, they really did. Congratulations, Colin.” He made a careful turn into a busy street, and glanced back once more to make sure Frank wasn’t far behind. “Congratulations, everyone.”

Grant said nothing.

“Are you all right?”

“Just coming out of shock.” Grant tried to smile. “It was a near thing.”

“Did you get it?”

“Sure.” Grant patted the vinyl carrying-case. “Right here. They tried a switch. They had the reproduction in a duplicate case.” He began to laugh, and then, remembering Max’s blank stare that had given him warning, he fell silent again. A damned near thing, he thought sombrely.

“Did you get it?” Renwick repeated sharply. “The name on the cheque?”

“Henri Bienvenue.”

“Spell it.”

Grant did. “Also, I saw the amount being paid to him. In American money—250,000 dollars. My winning bid was 168,454 dollars. So figure that out.”

“Have
you
?”

“Yes. I’m a dead man.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Renwick. “And so far we’ve done pretty well. Don’t you agree?”

“You expected I might be—eliminated?”

“The possibility crossed our minds.”

“From the beginning?” Grant was aghast.

“Right from the start.”

Grant shook his head as he remembered Avril among the roses, hinting at danger, talking of protection, while he insisted—big man that he was—he could look after himself. Big man indeed. Without Max’s help, or without Avril’s warning about Old Closed-Lips, where the hell would he have been? “Avril—where is she?”

“Calm down. She’s at home, waiting for you to turn up. She has an apartment near the Embassy—with a guest-room ready for any of our friends who need to stay out of sight. It’s our version of what the trade calls a ‘safe house’. How did she cope? She hadn’t much time to get down to Klar’s and warn you.”

“She was brilliant.”

“No suspicion aroused?”

Grant was slow to reply. He was remembering Gudrun Klar and her eyes on the balcony—emerald ring, big and bright, rearranging her hair. At first he had thought it was a habit of hers. Now that he recalled the gesture, nowhere else, at no time, had she raised a hand to toy with her curls. Not a habit. A signal, perhaps?

“Was there?” Renwick’s voice was sharp.

“I saw someone move—up on the balcony—just for a split second—as Avril was leaving. A man, I thought.”

“Could he have seen you and Avril together?”

“Yes. With Frau Klar.”

With
Klar
? Avril approached you when you were with—”

“Look—I was stuck with Klar. Avril had no choice. I was about to move into the auction room.”

“How did Avril leave? Was she slow?”

“Far from it. No one in that gallery could have got down to the front door in time to follow her.”

Except, Renwick was thinking, Avril had stopped to make a ’phone call. Yet without that call neither he nor Frank would have been in good position for Grant’s early exit. “I’ll get you to her apartment as soon as we visit the Embassy.”

“Why the Embassy?”

“You’ll deliver the Ruysdael to Basset. He arrived this morning.”

“Hell—do I have to see him?”

“Unless you’ll entrust that picture to a doorman.” I thought not, Renwick decided, as he saw Grant’s grip tighten on the carrying-case.

“What about you? Couldn’t you deliver—”

“I have messages to send.” The name of Henri Bienvenue, for a starter: the sooner NATO’s diplomatic approach to the Swiss could be made, the quicker they’d take action. And then there were typed copies to be made from the Korda tape. And Austrian Security to be informed. And—“Everything piles on top at once,” Renwick said. “It’s an avalanche. We could have done without Mr. Victor Basset complicating everything. He means well, but—apart from getting that blasted picture off our hands—he is one big pain in the butt. He decided he’d arrive
sub rosa
, so he came flying in on his own private plane. He has a couple of brawny types with him, ex-Secret Service men,
and
his lawyer,
and
a new secretary. How
sub rosa
is that with any inquiring journalist sniffing around the airport? The only goddamned thing he didn’t do to stir up interest was that he hadn’t the ex-Secret Service men running beside his limousine.”

A new secretary—replacing Lois Westerbrook? “He moves fast.”

“And the waves he’s making could swamp our boat before we haul in our catch. Replacing Westerbrook—a clear signal to Mittendorf, who has a hundred listening ears around this town.”

“Westerbrook—did you meet her last night?”

“No,” Renwick said abruptly.

“Didn’t you try?”

“Yes.”

“She wasn’t at the Three Guitars?”

“She left before I got there.” Renwick said no more, seemed to be concentrating on his driving, although he had angled the little car expertly enough out of blocked traffic lanes while he was talking about Basset.

“So,” Grant made a guess, “you think it was a trap. Sorry about that, Bob. Hope I didn’t land you in real trouble.”

“Do you think it was a trap?”

“I wouldn’t have ’phoned you unless I thought there was some truth in what she told me. For instance—she accused Gene Marck of being a trained secret agent. She had found a list of addresses and a microfilm concealed in a hairbrush and a tin of talcum—tricks of the trade, she called them. She wanted to hand them over to you.”

Renwick slowed down. “She actually said that?”

“Yes. That’s why I thought she might be telling the truth. And yet, she’s such a beautiful little liar—”

“Colin—if a trap was being set, she’d never have revealed so much about Marck. No, the ’phone call was for real. She thought it was a public ’phone—it is coin-operated, but that’s only a device to make the Three Guitars’ customers pay. Someone must have heard the call and reported it, and they had her picked up. She thought the guy was me. She walked out with him, smiling.” Renwick cursed softly, his face grim. “And where is she now?”

“There’s no trace?” Marck knew about that ’phone call:
wasn’t she in touch with you last night?
Testing me, was he? Instead, he gave himself away.