Siege at the Villa Lipp (26 page)

‘To fill a glass tube with sulphuric acid and seal it would be tricky,’ Yves said. ‘The best way would be to use a well-greased rubber cork with a hole in it for the bolt to slide through and break the bottom of the tube. You’d also have to see that the bolt was clear of the acid, or it would simply be eaten away. The whole thing would have to be carefully handled.’

‘It wouldn’t be something you might decide to do on the spur of the moment?’

‘No. With those materials you would not wish to be hurried. An accident could be most painful.’

‘So this device was made yesterday or before?’

‘Certainly.’

Connell could no longer let Henson score all the points. ‘How about siting the ambush? How about digging the hole for the device and doing the installation?’ he asked. ‘Would you do that at night?’

‘Not unless you could use bright lights to see by.’

‘So this harassment, or whatever you want to call it, must have been planned well in advance?’

Krom snorted. ‘Of course it was planned well in advance. Mr Firman plans all his special effects well in advance. Think how carefully he planned to wave his magic wand and turn the unfortunate Carlo Lech into Beelzebub. Planning to conjure up, out of thin air, this band of goblins and evil spirits to frighten the children into being good, and obedient, and uncritical, would be easy by comparison.’

They all looked at me except Henson who was still watching Yves.

‘What would
you
say to that, Mr Boularis?’ she asked. ‘Why should Professor Krom or Dr Connell or I, or anyone else who has read what Mr Firman is prepared to admit about himself, accept anything he now says at its face value? You see the difficulty?’

‘What difficulty?’ Yves asked. ‘I am a skilled person who recognizes and respects managerial intelligence. What old piss-and-wind there is accusing him of is planning to play pointless, 2nd therefore unintelligent, practical jokes on
me!
’

‘And why shouldn’t he?’ demanded Krom. ‘He is perfectly capable of hiring other skilled men to do just that.’

‘Of course he is,’ said Connell; ‘but why should he? I mean where’s the mileage in it?’

‘In your very own words, Dr Connell,’ retorted Krom.
‘That’s
where the mileage is. You and Dr Henson are now arguing Firman’s own case for him.’

‘Professor, that’s not quite true. You say he’s trying to fool us. Okay. That’s likely enough. All we’re asking is, “why should he try fooling us
in this way?
” Where does it get him? To a point where he can say that he’s sorry, folks, but he’s being harassed by enemies so we’ll just have to take rain-checks? He can’t be as dumb as that. He’s still over a barrel. You just take what papers he has now and re-convene at a later date. So there has to be another explanation. Either he’s stalling for some reason that we haven’t yet figured out, or there’s an explanation that
he
hasn’t yet figured out.’

They looked at me again.

‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘I haven’t yet figured it out. If Professor Krom can contain his disbelief for a moment or two, or at least keep it inaudible, I’d like to try again.’ I glanced at Yves. ‘Either sit down or go to bed. Don’t just stand there please.’

He sat down again.

Krom sighed heavily. ‘Now comes the rabbit out of the hat.’

I ignored him. ‘Nothing can be figured out,’ I said, ‘until we know who is playing these tricks. The
why
can be answered later. Yves, Melanie and I have the advantage of knowing for certain that I’m not the trickster. Perhaps you too will accept that as true for a moment. The only other things we can be certain of so far are, first, that all the elaborate security precautions we took have been penetrated and, second, that whoever did the penetrating wants us to know it beyond all doubt. As I say, we’ll have to leave the “whys” for later. Let’s start with the “who?”. Yves doesn’t think that we’re dealing with a French agency because of the methods being used. I agree with him. It could be, though, a foreign agency. German or British say, acting with consent on French territory.’

Dr Henson smiled slightly. ‘Unless Dr Connell has some CIA connection that we don’t know about, that leaves the Professor and me as those possibly responsible.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Krom and wagged a finger at me. ‘Either you have a bad memory, my friend, or you are hoping that I have. Yesterday, you told us that if any of us had been under surveillance we would have come no nearer to you than Turin. You had us carefully watched all the way. How could we possibly have led what you call a “foreign agency” to you, even if we had been prepared to act against our own interests as scholars as well as to breach our security pledges? If we did so unwittingly, then it can only have been because your vaunted supervision of our journey here failed. That is if it ever existed.’ He grinned at Connell. ‘You commented that it must have been expensive. If it had existed, I dare say it would have been -
very
expensive,
too
expensive. Composing a Firman fairy tale about it would be an easier operation and an infinitely cheaper one.’

The look Connell gave me was hostile. ‘How about that, Firman?’

I motioned to Yves. ‘Tell them.’

‘About the cost?’

‘About what was done.’

‘Ah.’ He cast his mind back. ‘Well, there were several good, clean checkpoints. The first stage, you will remember, was air from Amsterdam to Milan and then, by rented car, to the Palace Hotel in Turin. Only Professor Krom knew even that much in advance. At the Turin hotel, you were still clear. The next appointment was waiting, addressed to the Professor. It was for lunch the following day at the Tre Citroni restaurant in Cuneo. There, the sketch-map was handed to you in a sealed envelope with the bill.’

‘Aren’t you forgetting?’ asked Connell; ‘we all knew the night before that we were going on to that restaurant in Cuneo for lunch the following day. Any one of us could have blown that.’

Yves nodded. ‘You could have, yes. That was why you were given the opportunity. If any one of you had taken it there would have been no sketch-map at Cuneo. But none of you did take it. None of you made a telephone call either that night or in the morning except to order from room service. None of you left letters or notes behind you at the hotel to be picked up later. Overnight your car was examined carefully for beepers. The road to Cuneo is mostly through flat, open country of the kind which makes tailing difficult to conceal from alert observers. You were not followed then, nor when you took the road over the mountains beyond Cuneo. At the French frontier you were also clear. Nevertheless, as you began the final descent to Nice an extra precaution was taken. There was an accident on the road just behind you. Only a minor affair, but it blocked the road for nearly ten minutes. By then, you were either well lost in the late-afternoon Nice traffic jams or already out of Nice and heading along the lower road in this direction.’

They thought it over for a moment or two. Connell was the one who broke the silence.

‘Murphy’s Law?’ he asked.

I shrugged.

‘What did you say?’ Krom was suddenly on the edge of his chair. ‘What law is this?’

Connell smiled kindly. ‘Sorry, Professor, I was using an American folk-expression, a sort of joke proposition called Murphy’s Law. It holds that, in all human affairs involving advance planning, anything that can unexpectedly go wrong will invariably do so.’

‘What has that to do with Firman’s precautions?’

‘Well, it means that even if this security leak he’s trying to trace was caused by one of our group, it could only have been caused by some outlandish mishap, like a tail, who hadn’t for some reason been spotted earlier, accidentally picking us up again outside Nice. Personally, I think it more likely to have been the French police. A little thing like an accident blocking the road wouldn’t have stopped them radioing ahead.’

Henson objected instantly. ‘It simply doesn’t work, you know. Suppose we’d been heading for a high-rise apartment in Monaco. Where were they going to put the booby-trap they’d been working on? If there really is anyone hostile out there, they couldn’t have found this place by following us. They must have known in advance.’

‘And since,’ said Krom, ‘we have no evidence that there is anything out there more hostile than the insects who bit Mr Boularis we may conclude that Mr Firman, after a lifetime of successful chicanery, has at last lost his grip. In his anxiety to get rid of me, he has accused us, his guests, of doing something to place him and his employees at risk, something that,
on his own showing
mark you, none of us could possibly have done. I find it very sad.’

Such leaden fatuities ought not to have angered me, but they did. My inner anxiety must have been telling on me. Worse, the invitation to reply in kind proved quite hard to refuse. I started to tell him to save his tears, but stopped myself only just before the words were out.

‘No one so far is losing his grip,’ I said instead, ‘and no one has been accused. As your host, I am simply telling you that the arrangements for our safety and security here seem, in spite of all the care taken, to have broken down.

It was my duty to warn you, so I have done so. There will be no more meals served at the round table by the balustrade over there. So far, these people have only annoyed us. However, they may have plans for more aggressive acts. Whether they have or not, I don’t intend to present them with sitting targets.’

Krom gave the balustrade what was supposed to be a terrified look. ‘I am amazed,’ he said, ‘that you don’t call in the police.’

‘If it becomes necessary to do so, Professor, I shall leave you to handle the reporters. As a sensational news story, the siege of the Villa Lipp should be just the thing for newspapers like
France Dimanche.
I dare say your colleague Professor Langridge would find it enjoyable, too. Meanwhile, if you want to take a walk and inspect the booby-trap site, by all means do so. With luck, the enemy can try playing a practical joke on you. That would make the walk more interesting and, when you get back, you’ll be able to tell me how nearly you were killed. Meanwhile, I shall continue with my enquiries. You will be kept informed, of course, of my progress.’

The idea of sensational publicity had shaken Krom sufficiently to confine him to a sneer. None of them made any move to leave, however, and for several moments we all just sat there staring at one another.

Then Connell spoke. ‘Going to be a bit difficult for you now, isn’t it, Mr Firman?’

‘Difficult? I don’t think I understand.’

‘I mean that looking for leaks now is going to be difficult. Now that we’ve been eliminated, you’ve sort of run out of suspects, I’d say.’

I smiled at him. ‘Dr Connell, I said I was going to continue with my
enquiries.
I have no further need of suspects.’ I paused to let him interrupt if he wanted to. He didn’t. ‘With you three disposed of, the mystery, or part of it, anyway, is solved. I know now that the leak could have come from only one person.’

Melanie broke the silence that followed by emitting a little gurgling laugh.

They turned to look at her.

‘Mr Firman means me,’ she said.

Krom and Connell both looked startled. Henson was the only one amused by that odd laugh.

She offered Melanie a cigarette. ‘Is Mr Finnan denouncing you?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Melanie declined the cigarette with a graceful hand movement. ‘It’s just that, having reminded himself that he and I are the only persons who were supposed to know in advance that this was to be the meeting place, he now finds it convenient to think aloud.’

‘He doesn’t pause to wonder if he himself could conceivably be the culprit? Two persons were supposed to know in advance, but only one of them could possibly have leaked the information - you. Can that be right?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Of course? You mean that you really accept that verdict or that you have no choice?’

‘Oh, I accept.’

“The master is infallible?’

‘Naturally.’

Melanie was displeased with me, and her innate bitchiness, usually well hidden beneath the surface appearance of bright-eyed stupidity, was beginning to show through. Had I not intervened then, she would soon have been talking nonsense of a less acceptable kind.

‘You mustn’t take Melanie too seriously,’ I said. ‘She has a weakness for ornate overstatement. I am always warning her against it, aren’t I, my dear?’

Her instant over-anxious nod aroused Krom’s paternal instincts. ‘Are you always warning her, too,’ he demanded, ‘that, as your secretary, she must expect to be used as a scapegoat?’

‘No, Professor, I am not. No such warning would be necessary. As an acknowledged expert in the organization of undercover work, Melanie Wicky-Frey knows a great deal more about the selection and management of scapegoats than I do.’

Henson started to say something, but I shut her up by raising my voice as I went on: ‘For your further information, she chose this place herself, composed all the cover stories we are using, and advised me on general security matters at all planning stages. What she is complaining of now is that I am not treating her as if
she
were infallible. I don’t blame her. As you people should know very well, experts always tend to award themselves immunity from criticism.’

Krom looked expectantly at Melanie, ready to welcome and swallow whole any denials of my dastardly charges she cared to make. When all he drew from her was an empty stare, he sighed and returned heavily to me.

‘So, when you introduced her as your secretary, that was a lie.’

‘Don’t be absurd, Professor. Why should I need a secretary here? I was surprised that you didn’t ask. The idea’s so obviously preposterous. Actually, Melanie is a wholly special kind of PR expert.’

‘A wholly special kind of liar, you must mean. It’s hard to believe, though, that there could be anyone more special in that field than yourself.’

Yves cleared his throat. ‘Patron, I thought that these people were going to take a walk. If they are not, I suggest that you and Melanie talk in the dining-room. You won’t be overheard there.’