The Power (82 page)

'Barton, from now on I guess it would be best if any further communication was sent direct to Wingfield ...'

The message was very direct - and highly dangerous if
it got into the wrong hands. The Oval Office, for
example. Events appeared to be moving to a climax and the Senator knew he was going to have to devote thought as to how to handle a potentially explosive situation. The
ball was now in his court.

Have positive evidence as to identity of six-serial murderer
in the South. Expect soon to have conclusive data. Will then communicate with you again - in person if at all
possible. Barton Ives.

'Meet Joel Dyson,' Newman said, introducing his captive to Tweed, who had climbed down from the Espace. 'At long last,' he added.

Garden, who always seemed equipped with everything,
had produced a pair of handcuffs inside the Zurcher
Kredit Bank. Dyson's hands were now pinioned behind his back and Butler, who was holding him by one arm,
had shown him his Walther. The slim little man, his hair dishevelled, stared at Tweed.

'I'm going to complain to the British consul. I'm still a British citizen.'

'I have a better idea,' Tweed suggested. 'We can hand
you over to the American Embassy in Berne. I'm sure
there's a man very high up in Washington who would be
happy to meet you.'

'Blimey, guv, for Gawd's sake don't do that. Like
handing a Christian to the lions,' he pleaded in his best
cockney mimickry.

'Some Christian,' Newman commented. His voice
hardened. 'Don't play silly games with my chief. He
means what he says.'

'God, no! I'm begging you
...'

Dyson's nerve had broken suddenly. Tweed looked
down at the man who had sunk to his knees, his body
shaking with terror. He pursed his lips with distaste,
nodded to Butler.

Take him to the station wagon. Keep him quiet while
we drive to Ouchy. I'll question him later.'

Dyson opened his mouth to scream. Newman clamped
a gloved hand over the mouth before it could utter a
sound. Nield twisted his handkerchief into a gag, inserted it inside Dyson's mouth, tied it at the back of his neck. Butler and Nield carried him away to the station wagon.
Tweed and Paula listened as Newman gave a brief
account of what had happened inside the bank.

'Karin, Amberg's kidnapped assistant, is in better
shape than you'd expect,' Newman reported. 'She insisted on staying back to make coffee for herself and the
guard Dyson coshed when he first arrived with Karin.
You're looking impatient,' he ended.

'I think we ought to get out of Basle like bats out of
hell,' Tweed ordered. 'The sooner we reach Ouchy the
happier I'll be.'

'Who was that funny little man your people carted
away?'

The voice called out from the back of the Espace - Eve
Amberg's.

'A minor member of the opposition,' Tweed called
back quickly.

'Eve does like to know what's going on,' Paula com
mented. 'Unlike Amberg, who seems to have thrown in his hand.'

A door slammed. Newman and Cardon were aboard. Cardon took up his old position next to the Swiss banker while Newman sat behind Paula. Tweed replied as he
started the Espace moving, heading out of Basle,
'Amberg is sitting there with a grim expression. Typical that he hasn't enquired if Karin is all right. But he always
was the cold fish of the two brothers as I recall. Let me
concentrate on driving,' Tweed said brusquely.

Paula glanced at him. What he really meant was - let
me concentrate on thinking this thing out.

They were well south of the city, driving with the Jura mountains rearing up to their right, when Tweed began talking to Paula in a voice which wouldn't carry to his passengers in the rear.

'I was right in my theory about two different jigsaws
interlocking, that one wouldn't exist without the other.
Two quite different styles of murder have been commit
ted, which suggests two different groups are involved.'

'Two different styles of murder? That's a graphic
phrase,' she remarked. 'Explanation, please.'

'The blowing up of our headquarters at Park Crescent,
the bomb thrown at me in Zurich, the planned demolition
by explosives of the Kaysersberg bridge, the second use of
demolition by explosives of that cliff up in the Vosges. All
those are what I'd call organization acts, requiring the
services of a large and powerful apparatus. In short,
Norton and the Americans. That is one distinctive style of
attempted murder.'

Tweed accelerated a little more. There was no other
traffic on the road below the mountains. He was anxious
to reach Ouchy, to question Joel Dyson, to compel

Amberg to produce the film and the tape, and to hear the
rest of Barton Ives' story. Paula glanced back and saw
Ives, seated next to Newman, staring out into the night
with a far-away look.

'You said
two
different styles of murder,' she reminded Tweed. 'What about the second style?'

'Highly individual. One person, disguised as the postman, arrived at the manor, knifed the butler, walked into the kitchen, sprayed the staff with tear-gas, then marched
into the dining-room with a machine-gun and mowed
down the seven people sitting there. Cold-blooded, audacious.'

'Not Norton, you mean?'

'A different style from Norton. Then take the hideous
garrotting of the call girl Helen Frey and her friend Klara.
I think the killer had a wire garrotte disguised as a string of pearls - hence the single blood-stained pearl found in
Prey's apartment.'

'How do you think it was managed with such horrific
skill?'

'Oh, not difficult. You offer to loop the pearls round Prey's neck so she can see how she looks in them. What woman could resist such an offer? Same technique with
Klara.'

'A man,' Paula said thoughtfully. 'Maybe he even
offered to give them the pearls. That
would
be
irresistible.'

'Again an individual murder - as opposed to Norton's
mass killing attempts.'

'But what about that nice detective, Theo Strebel? He
was shot,' she reminded him.

'You'd hardly play the murderous trick with the pearl garrotte on a man, would you? But I'm sure he was shot by someone he knew, who put him off his guard. Again
an individual murder. Don't forget the Shadow Man with the wide-brimmed hat who stalked Jennie Blade.'

'Butter wouldn't melt in Jennie's mouth. That type of
woman always makes me suspicious.'

'It couldn't be simply that you dislike her?' Tweed probed.

'Men can be very naive about attractive women,' Paula
persisted. 'Especially when a woman like her gazes at a man adoringly. And much earlier Jennie remarked she'd
seen Eve in Padstow about the time of the massacre. I
think she was lying, but it could be a significant lie.'

'In what way?' Tweed enquired.

'It suggests that
Jennie
herself could have been in
Padstow at the time of the massacre.'

'You could be right, I suppose.'

'And,' Paula went on, in full flood, 'I only caught a
glimpse of the fake postman who killed all those people, riding along the drive up to the mansion.'

'Which suggests something to you? Remember Jennie has a mane of golden hair.'

'There again men don't know enough about women.
Jennie could have piled up her hair on top of her head.
That fake postman wore a uniform cap which could
conceal the hair. It was a cold day so I didn't think it odd
that the figure on the cycle wore a cap - it was a
very
cold
day.'

'I still find it difficult to believe,' Tweed commented.

'And now she's gone off with Gaunt, who, according to
Butler, was in the devil of a hurry to get to Ouchy in his
BMW.'

'If you add Gaunt to the equation you do make out a
very strong case,' Tweed admitted. 'I have an idea we'll
break this mystery open in two bites. First the film and the
tape will tell us the Washington angle - solving Norton's
frantic efforts to stop us. Later we may have to return to
Padstow to pin down who was responsible for the
massacre. To say nothing of the murders of Frey, Klara
and Theo Strebel.'

'You think you know who is guilty of those murders, don't you?' Paula challenged him.

'I've known for some time. The key is Jennie Blade's references to the so-called Shadow Man appearing in
Colmar.'

When Marvin Mencken left the restaurant in Basle
Bahnhof - he had carefully waited for fifteen minutes to be on the safe side - he hurried to where his Renault was parked. He was about to climb behind the wheel when he
noticed his front right tyre was flat.

He swore aloud, then began the time-wasting task of changing it for his spare tyre. He had no way of knowing
it was sabotage. While Tweed was confronting him inside
the restaurant Butler had
used a simple method of disab
ling the car.

Crouching down by the front tyre as though lacing up
his trainer, he had taken out a ballpoint pen, unscrewed
the cap, inserted the end of his pen and pressed down the
valve, holding it there until all the air had escaped. He
had then replaced the cap.

Mencken worked frantically in the vain hope of arriving
in Ouchy before Norton. Sweating with the effort, despite
the bitter cold, he eventually got behind the wheel and
started the car. The delay meant that when Norton
reached his destination there was no one to tell him where
his troops were located in different hotels.

The Hôtel Château d'Ouchy was one of the weirdest,
most intriguing hotels Paula had ever seen. Tweed had
driven the Espace down a steep hill, had turned on to a
level road and as the moon came out from behind a cloud
Paula had her first view of Lake Geneva, the largest of all
the Swiss lakes. The water was calm, without a ripple,
stretching away towards distant France on the southern
shore.

Butler overtook them in the station wagon as Tweed
paused, crawling ahead to sniff out any sign of danger. As
Tweed waited Paula peered up at the Château d'Ouchy.
Illuminated by external arc lights, it was built of fawn-coloured stone and its steep, red-tiled roofs were decorated with a black, almost sinister zigzag design. At the corners steepled turrets reared up and it looked very old.