Rhinoceros (70 page)

'Poison gas?' Milo said suddenly in a quiet voice,

'Worse, I suspect,' Rondel said savagely. 'Some of your scientists have been experimenting with bubonic plague. I wondered why they were ever engaged on such a project.

Now I see it all, too late. Some, maybe all, the missiles
will be filled with bubonic plague.'

Paula's mind reeled with horror. Milo still sat calmly smoking his cigar. The sheer callousness of the hunched
man appalled her. He must be the most evil man in the
world, she thought. When the missiles fell, aircraft would
take off to escape doom - carrying with them the plague
to America, the Far East and God knew where else. She
felt she couldn't move. Maybe that was why Tweed was
sitting so motionless. The same terrible thoughts had been
running through his mind.

Then she remembered the Slovak guards they had seen with rifles. They would be under the command of Milo. Maybe he spoke their language fluently. He had said he
came from Slovenia. That was not very far from Slovakia. Milo Slavic. A very Balkan name. Apparently none of his missiles were aimed at the Balkan region. Then Milo, who
had smoked half his cigar, spoke, the words spaced out
more than usual, as though his mind had left the realm
of sanity.

'Blondel is very good at telling amusing fairy tales.'

'Of course he would say that,' Rondel shouted. 'He has
fooled all of us. Even his own daughter, Lisa.'

Paula turned her head slightly, looked for the first time
at Lisa. She also sat very still, her gaze blank as she looked
at Milo. She's in a state of shock, Paula decided. No
wonder. She saw Lisa lick her lips briefly as she stared
at her father.

Suddenly, it seemed to Paula that she was watching a
nightmare tableau. Everyone so still. So little talk. And no
one moving a muscle. She recalled her reaction when, at
the quarry, the white-haired giant had aimed the gun at her, the gun with a mouth like a cannon. She had frozen
then as she was frozen still now.

'One of them is wrong,' said Tweed, speaking for the first time. 'The question is, which one?'

'You can decide that for yourself,' Milo replied blandly.

Too bland,
Paula observed. He sat behind his desk like
a man in total command of the situation. An attitude that
frightened Paula even more. A man out of his mind
would
react like that. Up here on this mountain he thinks he's
a god on Olympus, she realized. You can't argue with
insanity.

'Blondel always was clever at persuading people round to his way of thinking,' Milo observed, still gazing at the
blank wall opposite him.

'Rondel, not Blondel,' the tall figure said in a controlled tone of voice.

'It is his blond hair,' Milo explained, as though discus
sing a minor detail.

'I am puzzled,' Tweed said in a calm voice.

'By what?' asked Rondel.

'How missiles could be fired from such a device as we
have here. There was no sign of such a system when it was
elevated.'

'Elevated?' Now Rondel sounded puzzled. 'You don't
mean Milo elevated it while you were in the
locked room?'

'Yes. I'm not an expert on missiles. Far from it. But the complex of dishes we saw did suggest to me some kind of
radio and electronic system. But missiles? Never.'

Paula was looking at Milo, still smoking the last of his cigar. He had a faint, almost quizzical, smile on his face.
He stubbed out his cigar butt.

Rondel waved both hands in a confused gesture, as if to
say I don't see where you're going. Then his right hand had
whipped out an automatic from under his arm. He levelled
it at Lisa.

'Everyone except Milo stand up. Now! Or I'll shoot Lisa.
And place your hands at the back of your necks. Lisa has five seconds to live.'

They all stood up quickly. They placed their hands
behind their necks. Newman had thought of reaching for
his revolver, but the automatic Rondel was gripping in both
hands was a .32 Browning. A gun like the one Paula carried
inside her shoulder bag. The magazine had a capacity to
hold nine rounds. More than enough to kill them all. A
bullet for each of them. On top of that, his professional
eye noted the way Rondel held the weapon. He could
use it swiftly, swinging it from one target to another as
he pressed the trigger.

'How is Mr Blue, or M. Bleu if you prefer it? Or
Herr Blau as you are known in Germany?' Tweed asked
Rondel.

Surprise, followed by astonishment, flickered in Rondel's eyes. He looked taken aback, but still the Browning
remained steady, aimed at Lisa. He spoke to Milo out of the corner of his mouth.

'Old man, you sit still,' he sneered insultingly. He spoke
to Tweed, still staring at Lisa. 'What the hell are you
talking about?'

'You are Blue, Bleu and Blau. I took the trouble to
phone my assistant in London, asked her to get my friend, security chief at Heathrow, to check passenger manifests.
Computers enable him to do that amazingly quickly. He
came up with flights for M. Blon. That was audacious . . .'
He had nearly said 'arrogant', but decided it would be too
provocative with Rondel now living off his nerves. '—First
on a flight to Washington, a week before Jason Schulz,
aide to the American Secretary of State was murdered.
Second, M. Blon was flying to Paris five days before Louis
Lospin, aide to the PM of France was murdered. Third,
M. Blon is off again flying to Berlin from Hamburg a
day before Kruger, aide to the Deputy Chancellor of
Germany was murdered. Killing Jeremy Mordaunt can't have posed any problems - lure him down to Alfriston, near where you have a house, and he is murdered inside the tunnel. Why?'

'You've been a busy little bee,' Rondel sneered again.

'Why were they a danger to you?'

'Because they carried confidential and compromising
messages to their chiefs. I decided the time came when diey knew too much. And their chiefs were nervous.'

'So we had a unique case of an assassin who hired
himself.'

'That's rather a good way of putting it,' Rondel agreed,
with a hint of hideous pride.

'But at least you got a lot of the money needed to
finance the murderous bandits who would create chaos.
Not all of it.'

'What the hell are you talking about?' Rondel demanded.

'Some money had to be sent, otherwise you would have
become suspicious. It was sent from a deserved quarter.'

'What quarter?'

'An accountant friend of mine . . .' He was careful not
to name Keith Kent. '. . . Burrowing into the Zurcher
Kredit statements found Gavin Thunder had a secret and substantial deposit. To evade tax, no doubt. His money was sent.'

'Who by?'

'Irrelevant.'

'By me,' Lisa said quietly. 'I cleaned out his account.'

'You did
what?'

Rondel's hands gripped the Browning just a little tighter.
For an awful moment Tweed thought he was going to press
the trigger.

'Clever little lady,' Rondel sneered.

'And also,' Tweed continued, 'I'm convinced you are
the fifth man.'

Tweed was desperately keeping Rondel talking. In the faint hope that something would happen to make him drop the gun. Anything, he prayed, although his brain told him
a diversion was hardly on the cards.

'The fifth man?' Rondel queried.

'Yes.'

Tweed then recalled the scene he had witnessed at the
windmill near Sylt - when the FBI man had been told by a civilian that the fifth man had not arrived.

'The fifth member of the Elite Club,' he concluded.

Rondel's expression changed in a way that startled,
disturbed Paula. He grinned, one side of his mouth twisted
down. There was no mirth in the satanic grin. Only
arrogance and triumph. For brief seconds he held the
Browning with only his right hand, using the left hand
to flick back the lapel of his jacket. Pinned to it was the
Elite Club's symbol, the letter 'E' reversed so it had a
Greek look.

Then he was again gripping the Browning with both
hands, and again it was aimed point-blank at Lisa. Newman
had been calculating whether he could rush at Rondel.
Reluctantly he decided it would be committing suicide to
no purpose. The distance between where he stood and
Rondel, standing in front of the picture window, was too
great. Everyone would end up dead.

'We know what you plan for the Western world,' Tweed
informed Rondel. His brain was running out of subjects
to talk about which would hold Rondel's interest. 'I have
Thunder's outline of the plan in my pocket. It is even
initialled GT. Gavin Thunder.'

'I don't believe you,' Rondel snapped. 'You're just
talking for the sake of talking. Hoping for something -
something which will not occur.'

'I can show you the document if you will permit me to
take it out of my breast pocket. Slowly.'

'
Very
slowly,' Rondel ordered him. 'Any trick and Lisa
will have departed this world with one bullet.'

Tweed moved his hand in slow motion. He pulled the
corner of the folded sheet out inch by inch. Rondel's eyes
were watching him but kept switching to the others. Tweed pulled the sheet clear of his pocket. He screwed it up into a
ball and lobbed the ball of paper on to Milo's desk.

'Let Milo read it and then give it to you,' suggested
Tweed.

'Yes, read it, Milo,' Rondel agreed. 'You always said
what a master planner I was.'

'And a lot of it came from your brain, I suspect,' Tweed
added, playing on Rondel's vanity.

'Oh, it did. The other members of the Elite Club
made a few alterations but they were only minor changes.
Basically, it
is
my plan. Go on, read it, Milo.'

The hunched figure put a fresh cigar in his mouth.
Then, moving slowly, he unscrewed the paper, smoothed
it out, began reading it, far more slowly than he normally
absorbed a document. He picked up his lighter fashioned
in the shape of an automatic. He finished reading it and
nodded his head.

'Truly, it is brilliant. It should do the job, I'm sure. I congratulate you.'

Paula felt sick. They had got it wrong again. They were
in this together. Of course they were. They were partners
in the gigantic crime which was about to be committed
against the world. Milo raised the lighter close to the tip of
his cigar. In a lightning movement that Paula hardly saw he
turned the lighter so the muzzle pointed at Rondel, pulled
the trigger. Four bullets from the muzzle were embedded
in Rondel's chest.