The Care of Time (38 page)

‘Mr Halliday, Simone, we can all go,’ he said. ‘We will leave our rifles up here for the police to find and take the Uzis down. But quickly, please. We haven’t much time.’

‘What about the ammunition box?’ I asked.

‘Leave it where it is,’ said Simone. ‘Be kind enough to take that Uzi down with you. But pick it up by the sling. We don’t want to leave any prints.’ She was wiping hers off the rifle with a handful of paper tissues.

I smeared the handles of the ammunition box before I picked up the Uzi. ‘Aren’t the police going to wonder how four men with four rifles managed to kill each other and end up in these positions?’ I asked.

‘Certainly. They are also going to wonder who fired the other kind of bullets, those in the tree trunks here and in the van that Guido was driving. There will be a lot to puzzle them. That is why we must move quickly now, so that we are not here to help them solve these mysteries.’

I went down to the trail. Zander, with pine needles clinging to his mohair suit, was using a silk handkerchief to wipe the rifle he held. When he saw me carrying the Uzi he nodded to the one lying on the ground beside Bourger’s corpse.

‘Perhaps you will take that too, Mr Halliday. We will leave
them in their car. It will all help to confuse the police inquiries.’

‘Aren’t
we
going to take their car then?’

‘No, I don’t think we’ll need to do that.’ The eyes were weary. He looked strangely old, I thought, and wondered how long it had been since winning battles by force of arms had lost its appeal for him.

I picked up the second Uzi. ‘With the Ortofilm van and Guido shot up,’ I said, ‘isn’t the Ortofilm station-wagon going to be an object of special interest to the police on these roads? Things are surely bad enough already without our being picked up for questioning now. ORF will connect Ortofilm with both me and Jean-Pierre. I don’t know about him, but I certainly don’t want to have any explaining to do right here in Austria.’

He sighed. ‘I see that you have lost confidence in our ability to plan, Mr Halliday. I’m sorry that you feel that way, but perhaps it was to be expected. You weren’t prepared for casualties. However, let me reassure you about one thing.
Your
anxieties are groundless. We planned for all the contingencies we could. Jean-Pierre will make himself responsible for any explanations to the police that can possibly involve you. Now, please, go down and put those machine pistols with the others. Mokhtar and Jasmin are already below. Wait with them. Simone and I will join you in a minute.’

I did as I had been told. Then, as Simone backed the station-wagon down to the beginning of the trail with Zander guiding her, a big Ford sedan with a rental sticker on the windshield came bouncing up the track from the road. Jean-Pierre was driving it.

He stopped when he saw me. ‘Are they all right?’ he asked as he climbed out.

‘We are, and so are the patron and Simone, but we’ll be leaving four corpses behind us. Did you see the van with Guido in it back there?’

‘Yes. The police are in charge and an ambulance was just arriving. I could not stop of course. Is he badly hurt?’

‘We couldn’t stop either, but we saw him hit. They shot him up to get him out of their way.’

‘And now they are dead. That is good.’

‘I guess it is. Where did you rent this? Judenburg?’

But he had no more time for me. He had seen the patron and was hurrying to confer with him. Moments later Zander was issuing orders. At once, Mokhtar and Jasmin began to empty the station-wagon of our bags and stuff them into the trunk of the rental car. When Zander beckoned to me to join the conference Jean-Pierre’s two-suiter was the only piece of baggage left in the back of the wagon.

Zander gave me one of his hard stares before he spoke. ‘The following scenario has been agreed,’ he said finally. ‘It seems reasonable, however, to ask if you have any comments. So. Listen carefully please. After your friend in ORF had taken delivery from you of the film of your interview, we decided to celebrate our success. But without Jean-Pierre and Guido. They were left to drive the Ortofilm transportation back to Geneva. Jean-Pierre last saw us in a bar drinking wine. We had spoken of taking the train to Vienna. He does not know if we did, but he resented slightly being left out of the festivities. As a result, he proposed to Guido a minor change of route. Instead of going straight to Geneva via Milan and the Mont Blanc tunnel, they would first make a detour via the scenic route to Ljubljana and Trieste. It was so agreed. Then, nearing the frontier at the Wurzenpass, Jean-Pierre noticed that Guido in the van was no longer following. He stopped and waited. He is not at that stage at all worried. Guido is young. If he has a flat he can change the wheel. Only after an hour has gone by does he begin to think of possible accidents. So then, he goes back. He is as bewildered as the police at what he finds. Have you any comments, Mr Halliday?’

‘Yes, it stinks.’

‘Why?’

‘Where are
we
at this moment, now I mean? Whooping it up in a bar in Arnoldstein or on a train to Vienna?’

‘What does it matter? By tonight we should be in Germany. After that …’ He shrugged.

‘What was the time of the train we took? Supposing there isn’t a train from Arnoldstein or Villach that we
could
have taken? Don’t forget, please, that I’m not expecting to disappear and assume a brand-new identity with official North American help.’

‘Neither is Jean-Pierre.’

‘But he has answers ready for the questions he’s going to be asked. They’re not bad answers either. At least they’re simple and reasonably convincing. I don’t have any that’ll stand up for a moment. And if you believe that when the Austrians come asking the FBI for help they aren’t going to get some really enthusiastic co-operation, forget it. I’ve told some unpleasant truths about the FBI from time to time and they have long memories there.’

‘You have committed no crime,’ Simone said. ‘It may be disgraceful that you can’t remember how you reached Germany from Arnoldstein because you were in a drunken sleep most of the time, but they can’t extradite you for that. Besides, why should they want to inconvenience Mr Halliday, that good man who rescued an Austrian silver mine from the clutches of a crazy foreign decadent? Those four men up there all have criminal records. Clearly, they attacked Guido because they mistook him for someone else. Which someone else? Obviously, the person or persons who attacked and killed them. Mr Halliday could not possibly have any knowledge of such matters.’

‘She is right, of course,’ said Jean-Pierre, ‘though I cannot wait to tell you why. The longer I stay here, the weaker my story becomes. Goodbye, Mr Halliday.’ He shook my hand. ‘Good luck and bon voyage.’

He didn’t say goodbye to the others, he just smiled and nodded to them as he climbed into the station-wagon and
drove away. He would be hearing from the patron again, no doubt, but that would be when the heat was off. Until then, he had the Paris office to take care of and, perhaps, the problem of finding a replacement for Guido.

We waited for five minutes after he had gone. Then, we left too.

Where Guido had run off the road the police had flashing-light barriers out and one-way traffic control in operation. We had time, as we went slowly by, to see Jean-Pierre having an animated discussion with the traffic police. The ambulance crew were in the process of moving a stretcher with Guido on it from the shoulder of the road to the ambulance. A young man in a white tunic who looked like an intern was holding up a plasma drip-feed while the loading was done.

‘You see, patron?’ Simone remarked. ‘Guido is not lost to us. Jean-Pierre will see that he gets the best of attention.’

‘Yes, I see. Some wounds, even wounds in the back, can look more dangerous than they really are. We may hope.’

He was in the front passenger seat beside her. By the time we reached Villach on our way north, he was asleep.

We drove non-stop to the airport at Salzburg and turned in the rental car. From there, we took a taxi to the German frontier and walked through passport control and customs carrying our bags. No one took any particular interest in us. On the German side there was an all-night café that served snacks. After I had made a phone call, we sat there drinking beer and eating sandwiches.

His long nap in the car had restored Zander. He ate and drank with appetite. My lack of interest in the food did not go unnoticed.

‘You look tired, Mr Halliday.’

‘I feel it.’

‘You behaved with courage. You will sleep soundly.’

‘Sure.’

He glanced at a group of truck drivers drinking coffee at a
nearby table, but they were taking no notice of us, not even of Simone. He went on.

‘That General I met yesterday, General Newell. Did he interest you?’

‘Very much. He seemed an able man.’

‘He said something curious to me.’

‘Oh?’

‘He said that I had an unusual smile.’

‘Patron,’ Simone said, ‘I think cars for us are arriving.’

He moved a hand slightly. The cars could wait. ‘The General said that I had a kind of smile that he had seen only once before. It was the smile of a warrant officer he had known who was chief instructor at a school for unarmed combat. Curious, eh? He said that soldiers would arrive at the school for courses of instruction and believe that, because the chief instructor had a pleasing smile, they were going to have a pleasing experience. It never happened that way though.’

‘No?’

‘No. They would find that the smile was a deception. Curious, wasn’t it, that he should say such a thing? I have never thought of myself as a man who smiled often, if at all. You should know that much about me now, Mr Halliday. I almost never smile. All the same, I liked General Newell. He would be a good man to serve with.’ He stood up. ‘Yes, Simone, you are right. There are cars here and people looking for us. Goodbye, Mr Halliday. I have enjoyed our collaboration.’ He raised his hands, scrubbed-up and ready, and for an instant I thought he was going to offer to shake hands with me.

Then he turned away. Simone and the young people gave me quick little farewell waves and were gone with him. I also received a nod from the man escorting them. He was the quiet one who had driven me from the Gasthaus to Velden and back thirty-six hours earlier. As they left, Schelm came over to the table and sat down facing me.

‘I’m glad to see you well,’ he said. ‘I have a hotel reservation for you not too far away and there’s a seat on the midday Lufthansa flight to New York if you want it. The Austrian police are reporting a couple of incidents near the Yugoslav border involving four killed and one seriously injured by gun-shot. Local radio is carrying a story about an Italian Red Brigades revenge shoot-out near the Wurzenpass. Do you want to tell me what happened yesterday after you left?’

I told him as briefly as I could. He ran a thoughtful eye over me.

‘What’s happened to your suit?’ he asked. ‘You look like a maternity case.’

‘It’s not a new suit and it’s not used to my falling around in it among the bushes on Austrian hillsides. The lining’s torn.’ I thought again of Simone’s suggestion that I might give the second can of film to my good friend Schelm and ask him to distribute copies of it to interested parties in the Gulf. Now, it didn’t seem to be such a good idea after all. If, in spite of the asking price and everything else that could be said against it, Nato was still going to flirt with the notion of making a deal for Abra Bay, a can of film showing an interview in which The Ruler exposed himself as a fool as well as a criminal psychopath might be thought of rather as a can of worms. It might easily get lost. I might never see it again. Better to keep it in my own hands. ‘Where will you be sending the Zander family?’ I asked.

The question outraged his sense of propriety sufficiently to distract him, for the time being, from the subject of my suit and the odd bulge in the front of the jacket. On the way to the hotel near Munich airport that he had chosen for me, I pretended to doze and very nearly did. When he dropped me he said that I should take the shuttle to Frankfurt for the New York flight and that he would send a car for me at ten o’clock. That way I should get at least three hours sleep.

I needed them badly but was determined not to take the
risk. Instead, I showered, shaved and changed into another suit. By then, it was nearly seven and I could order breakfast. I checked out at seven-thirty, leaving a note for Schelm to say that I had decided to try for an earlier flight home and that I hoped to sleep on the plane. I reached Frankfurt with two hours to spare. That gave me all the extra time I needed. I checked in for the Lufthansa New York flight with no trouble at all.

At Kennedy, immigration let me through with only a bored nod. Customs, however, were ready and waiting for me with tight-lipped relish.

‘Is this all your baggage, Mr Halliday?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘On this declaration you state that you have bought nothing while you have been in Europe. Is that correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘Have you
acquired
anything while you have been abroad? An article of commerce or a gift for instance?’

‘I have nothing. Do you want me to open the bags?’

‘Mr Halliday, this is a spot check. We’d like you to step into the office over there and discuss your declaration. No objection to that, have you? If you have nothing we’ll find nothing. Right?’

It took three of them half an hour. There was a body search too, though they didn’t get really intimate. They only patted me.

‘Do you mind telling me what this is all about?’ I asked when they had finished. ‘And don’t give me any more about spot checks. I may not be a reporter any more, but I can still make myself heard. So far I’ve co-operated. I haven’t started yelling about persecution or my civil rights. So, how about levelling with me? What were you looking for?’

The senior man hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Laundered money sealed in a can of sixteen-millimetre movie film. That’s what we were told. Information received. We had to check.’

‘Someone’s been kidding you. Do I look like a currency smuggler?’