Terminal (30 page)

`What do you want to know?' Novak asked in a tone of resignation.

`What is the nationality of the patients in the Berne Clinic? Mixed?'

`It's odd. No Swiss. They're all American — with a few from South America when they can afford it. Grange charges enormous fees. Most of them come to him as a result of his lecture tours in the States. He's into cellular rejuvenation in a big way. So, it's a two-way pull.'

`What does that mean?'

`Look, Newman...' Novak, ashen-faced from his encounter with Foley, turned to look at the Englishman. `... this isn't an ideal world we live in. There are a lot of American families reeking with money, often new money. Oil tycoons in Texas, men who have made millions in Silicon Valley out of the electronics boom. Others, too. Grange has a sharp eye for a set-up where the money is controlled by some elderly man or woman whose nearest and dearest are panting to take that control away. They send the head of the family to the Berne Clinic for this so-called cellular rejuvenation. That gets them out of the way. They apply for a court order to administer the estate. You get the picture?'

`Go on...'

Novak's voice changed and he mimicked a man making out a case to a judge. 'Your Honour, the business is in danger of going bankrupt unless we have the power to keep things running. The owner is in a Swiss Clinic. I don't like to use the word "senile" but...' He swallowed more of his drink. 'Now do you get the picture? Grange offers the patient, who is seriously ill, the hope of a new lease of life. He offers the dependants the chance to get their hands on a fortune. At a price. It's a brilliant formula based on a need. Professor Grange is a brilliant man. Has a hypnotic effect on people, especially women.'

`In what way — hypnotic?'

`He makes the relatives feel what they want to feel — that they're doing the right thing in exiling to Switzerland the manor woman who stands in their way. Loving care and the best attention.' Novak's voice changed. 'When all the bastards want to do is to get their hands on the money. Grange has worked out a perfect formula based on human nature.'

`There's nothing specifically criminal so far,' Newman commented.

`
Criminal?
'

Novak spilt some of his drink on the table. The watchful waiter, ready for a fresh order, appeared with a cloth and wiped the table. Novak, shaken, waited until they were alone.

`Who said anything about criminal activities?'

`Why is the Swiss Army guarding the Clinic?' Newman threw at him.

`That's a peculiar business I don't want to know about,I do my job and don't ask questions. This is Switzerland. The whole place is an armed camp. Did you know there is a military training base at Lerchenfeld? That's at the other side of the town. In Thun-Sud...'

`But you have seen men in Swiss Army uniform inside the Berne Clinic?' Newman persisted. 'Don't forget what Foley said.'

`I've been here a year. In all that time I've only seen men in some kind of uniform. Once inside the main gatehouse, once patrolling the grounds near the laboratory...'

`Ah, the laboratory. What goes on inside that place?'

`I have no idea. I've never been allowed there. But I have heard that's where the experiments with cellular rejuvenation are carried out. I gather the Swiss are very advanced with the technique of halting the onset of age.' Novak warmed to his theme, relaxing for the first time. 'The technique goes back before the war. In nineteen-thirty-eight Somerset Maugham, the writer, first underwent treatment. He was attended by the famous Dr Niehans who injected him with cells scraped from the foetus of unborn lambs. Timing was all-important. No more than an hour had to elapse between the slaughter of the pregnant ewe and the injection of the cells into the human patient. Niehans first ground up the cells obtained from the foetus and made them soluble in a saline solution. The solution was then injected into the patient's buttocks...'

`It all sounds a bit macabre,' Newman remarked. `Somerset Maugham lived to be ninety-one...'

`And Grange has a similar successful track record?'

`That is Grange's secret. His technique, apparently, is a great advance on Niehans'. I do know he keeps a variety of animals in that laboratory — but what I don't know. There's also another clinic which goes in for the same sort of treatment near Montreux. They call it
Cellvital
'

Newman quietly refilled his glass with Perrier from the bottle Foley had left. He found the information Novak had just given him interesting. It could explain Jesse Kennedy's reference to 'experiments' — an activity no more sinister than the fact that it was not yet accepted by the medical profession everywhere.

`You've told me the nationality of the patients,' he said after a short pause. 'You're American. What about the other doctors?'

`They're Swiss. Grange asked me to come during one of his American tours...'

`And you came for a very normal reason — the money?' `Like I told you, two hundred thousand dollars a year. I make a fortune — at my age..

So, Novak hadn't been clutching a figure out of the air to impress him, Newman reflected. He felt he still wasn't asking the right questions. He flicked Novak on the raw to get a reaction, posing the query casually.

`What do you do for that? Sign a few dummy death certificates?'

`You go to hell!'

I get the impression there may be some kind of hell up at that Clinic — and that you suspect more than you're telling. You live on the premises?'

`Yes.' Novak had gone sullen. 'That was part of my contract.'

`And the Swiss doctors?'

`They go -home. Look, Newman, I work very long hours for my money. I'm on call most of the year..

`Calm down. Have another drink. What about the staff — the guards, cleaners, receptionists. Where do they come from?'

`That's a bit odd,' Novak admitted. 'Grange won't employ anyone local — who lives in Thun. They also live on the premises. Most of them are from other parts of Switzerland. All except Willy Schaub. He goes to his home in Matte — that's a district of Berne near the Nydeggbrucke. Goes home every night.'

`What job has he got?' Newman asked, taking out his notebook.

`Head porter. He's been there forever, I gather. The odd job man. Turns his hand to anything. Very reliable...'

'I'll take his address...'

Novak hesitated until Newman simply said, 'Foley,' then he changed his mind. 'I do happen to know where he lives. Once I needed some drugs urgently and since I wa-sin Berne I picked them up from his house. Funny old shanty. Gberngasse 498. It's practically under the bridge. There's a covered staircase runs down from the end of the bridge into the Gerberngasse. He probably knows as much about the Clinic as anyone — except for Grange and Kobler...'

`Thank you, Novak, you've been very accommodating. One more thing before I go. I'll need to see you again. Will you be attending the medical reception at the Bellevue Palace?'

`The Professor has asked me to be there. Most unusual... `Why unusual?'

`It will be the first public function I've been to since I came out here.'

`So you'll be able to slip away for a short time. Then we can talk in my bedroom. I may have thought of some other questions. Why are you looking so dubious? Does Grange keep you on a collar and chain?'

`Of course not. I don't think we ought to be seen together much longer...'

`You could have been followed?' Newman asked quickly.

He looked round the restaurant which was filling up. They appeared, from snatches of conversation, to be farmers and local businessmen. The farmers were complaining about the bad weather, as though this was unique in history.

`No,' Novak replied. 'I took precautions. Drove around a bit before I parked my car. Then 1 walked the rest of the way here. Is that all?'

`That laboratory you've never been inside. It has a covered passage leading to it from the Clinic. You must have heard some gossip about the place.'

`Only about the
atombunker
. You probably know that the Swiss now have a regulation that any new building erected, including private houses, has to incorporate an
atombunker.
Well, the one under the laboratory is enormous, I gather. A huge door made of solid steel and six inches thick — the way it was described to me made it sound like the entrance to a bank vault in Zurich. It has to accommodate all the patients and the staff in case of emergency..

So that could explain something else innocently which Newman -had thought sinister — the covered passage to the laboratory also led to the atombunker. Despite all his questions, there was still nothing positively wrong on the surface about the Berne Clinic. It was an afterthought: he asked the question as he was slipping on his coat.

`You thought then that you might have been followed?'

`Not really. Kobler said he had been going to suggest I took the evening off. He urged me to spend the night out if I felt like it...' Novak paused and Newman waited, guessing that the American had made a mental connection. 'Funny thing,' Novak said slowly, tut the last time he did that was the night when Hannah Stuart died …'

Twenty-One

Newman walked into a silent, freezing cold night. Deserted streets. He waited until his eyes became accustomed to the dark. He was about to light a cigarette when he changed his mind. Nothing pinpoints a target more clearly than the flare of a lighter. And he had not forgotten that one of the weapons Beck had reported stolen was a sniper-scope Army rifle — from the Thun district.

Checking for watchers, he strolled to the Sinnebrucke. He was still not convinced that Novak had told him everything. The American could have been sent by Kobler — to lure Newman to Thun. Later, after too much drinking, Novak might have decided to take out insurance by talking to him. Newman was convinced of one fact — he could trust no one.

Water coming in from the lake lapped against the wall below the bridge. Then he heard the sound of an approaching outboard motor chugging slowly. The small craft was flat-bottomed. As it passed under a street lamp he saw it was powered by a Yamaha outboard. One man crouched by the stern.

Newman stepped back into the shadows, unsure whether he had been seen. The man lifted a slim, box-like object to his mouth. A walkie-talkie. They had been watching film from the one area he had overlooked — the river. It would have been easy to observe Newman and Novak sitting at the window table inside the illuminated restaurant. Was he reporting that Newman had just left the restaurant?

Berne is like a colossal ocean liner built of rock and stone, rearing up above the surrounding countryside. Thun's centre lies on the island in a basin. Newman glanced up at the northern bank where the forested hillside climbed steeply, a hillside where the lights of houses glittered like jewels. He left the bridge, crossed the street in the shelter of one of the numerous smaller arcades — smaller than Berne's.

He followed a roundabout route to where he had left his car parked in the Balliz. He was looking for a red Porsche, any sign of Lee Foley, any sign of more watchers. With its network of waterways Thun is like a tiny Venice or Stockholm.

Looking south, at the end of a street he saw the vague outline of a monster mountain, its upper slopes white with snow. He continued walking slowly, listening. He passed one of the old covered bridges on his right and had a view to the north. On the highest point immediately above the town reared the great walls and turrets of the ages-old Schloss, a sinister, half-seen silhouette in the starlit night. The only sound was the slosh and gush of the river flow. He made up his mind.

Newman had not only been checking for watchers: he had taken his lonely stroll while he wrestled with a decision. He could not get out of his mind something Novak had said.
Kobler said he had been going to suggest I took the evening off... the last time he did that was the night when Hannah Stuart died
.

He walked swiftly back to where the Citroen was parked, got behind the wheel, fired the motor and drove off through the empty streets uphill towards Thun-Nord, towards the Berne Clinic.

The horrific scene jumped towards Newman's headlights as he came over the brow of a hill. He had followed a route which would take him to the main gatehouse of the Berne Clinic — coming in from the north-west. To his right alongside the narrow road was the wire fence guarding the Clinic's extensive grounds which, at this point, included some rough country. He had crossed the snow-line some time earlier and he knew the laboratory was beyond the fence, hidden by a fold in the landscape.