Snare of the Hunter (37 page)

“You can leave right now. Kusak has gone. Irina with him. And that was not the house.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Bohn. “What’s the idea, Dave? What’s—”

Weber interposed. “Mr. Mennery is telling you the truth. Mr. Kusak and his daughter left some time ago—with a friendly escort. There has been no kidnapping of any kind.”

“And who’s this?” Bohn demanded. “Just who—” But as he looked more closely at the stranger’s face, his question faded.

“I am Ernst Weber of the
Geneva Gazette
. I am also a correspondent of several newspapers—in London, Paris, and Rome. But I think you know all that. We met in Prague. Two years ago?” Weber waited. There was no answer: not one word, not one comment from that extremely facile tongue. Weber half smiled. “You were correct about only one thing, Mr. Bohn. It is damned chilly out here. So why do you not leave, as suggested?”

Bohn rallied. “There seems little point in staying.” He gathered together some of his dignity and most of his assurance. “Dave—we can talk about this later—right?”

“Clear out!” David’s voice rose in fury. “All of you—clear out!” He took a step forward.

Bohn backed away. Then he turned to walk to the car. And for the first time he saw a uniformed man who had stood watching and listening; quite motionless, completely silent. Bohn’s pace increased. He reached the beginning of the road, almost broke into a run.

David kept watch, his hand still gripping the pistol in his pocket. The dark road swallowed Bohn up, leaving only the sound of his footsteps. They passed the first car, kept on going for several seconds. Then, abruptly, they stopped. A car door closed. Complete silence.

It was broken by a yell from somewhere overhead. David’s attention switched to the house behind him. He half turned, looked up at a window with its shutters flung open and an angry woman leaning out. He couldn’t understand one word; it was a language he had never heard before, but the meaning of her shaking fist was clear. Then David looked back at the two cars. The captain would have to take care of this protest. He did. He stepped forward, replied, and silenced the woman effectively. Or perhaps it was the uniform that reassured her. There was peace in the square again.

The captain walked over to stand beside David, and gazed down the dark road. “They are taking their time.” He didn’t approve of it, either.

“The second car—that’s the important one. That’s where Bohn is making his report.”

“Perhaps they do not accept it.” That would account for the delay. They may believe Jaromir Kusak and his daughter are still here.”

“Irina was never expected to arrive,” David reminded him.

“That makes a difficult situation,” the captain answered. He was younger than David, tall, well proportioned, neat and capable; at this moment he looked twenty years older. “If they believe Miss Kusak never arrived, they may also believe her father is still waiting for her.”

“I think not. Bohn saw Jo quite clearly. And she is proof that Irina did get here. The living proof,” said David grimly. We beat them at Santa Maria, he told himself.
That overpassing
,
this also may
.

“But the delay—”

“Cancelling one set of plans, improvising something else?” David suggested.

“Then the two cars must be in close communication.”

“Someone is in control. That’s for sure.”

“The second car, you think?”

“Yes.”

“Which side of that car did Bohn take?”

“He went down the left side of the road.”

“Then he entered the car’s right-hand door.”

“It sounded like that.”

“You have good ears.”

“That’s my job,” David said, and he had a sudden impulse to laugh. “I’m a music critic.”

The captain drew something out of his pocket. “Only a cigarette lighter,” he told David, and smiled. “Not a pistol.” Lightly, he tapped David’s pocket. “And I’m glad you did not use yours. What kind is it?”

“An automatic. A Beretta.”

“A simple solution, I agree. But of a type that always brings too many complications, usually unpleasant.” The captain smiled again, very briefly. “Do not use that automatic. We shall manage.” He was walking to the centre of the square. “The minute they start moving up the hill, get behind your car. Weber—”

Like hell I will, thought David. But he drew his right hand out of his pocket.

Weber, at the captain’s voice, looked round. He was still standing beside Jo. “Yes, Captain Golay—what can I do?”

“Get the girl out of this square.”

Weber took Jo’s hand. “Captain’s orders.”

“No.” Jo looked at the house behind her. Three windows were now unshuttered, with dark figures pressed against the glass. Its front door was open, too, and a man stood there half-concealed, with an army coat drawn over his shoulders. She saw a gleam of metal in his hand. “More captain’s orders?”

“The man, yes. But those upstairs—just curiosity.” Weber had felt more than a touch of it himself, as he watched David and Captain Golay in close conversation. He had missed that, damn it, because of this girl; but how could he have left her, cold and miserable, practically out on her feet? “Please,” he urged her.

“I’ve
got
to stay. Bohn’s friends must see me too. Or else they won’t believe him, and—” She stared at the road as the cars roared into sight. “David—look out!”

The lead car missed him, dodged the Mercedes by a few feet, made a frantic left turn to avoid a crash against a wall; the second car followed it exactly. And the men inside them had seen more than Jo in that split second: a house with shutters open, figures at the windows; a man at the doorway, rifle in hand. There was a shriek of brakes as the two cars pulled up abruptly, one almost on top of the other. The first car had just saved itself from smashing into the stone staircase.

The captain moved with incredible speed. He had readied the second car, taken its left side, rapped sharply on its window, gestured for it to be lowered, even before David could join him. The two men in the back had been badly jolted by the sudden stop. Bohn was one of them; he was heaped in the far corner, and shouting as he struggled up. “I
told
you I saw a policeman. I
told
you there must be others. I
told
you!”

The man in the left-hand seat said, “Stop it! Stop it!” He turned to face the captain, lowered the window with a finger on the electric control. “What do you want?” he asked in German. He looked more closely at the uniform. “I thought someone might have been injured.”

The man’s voice became less truculent. “Nothing, nothing. A small shake-up.”

“I understand you lost your way coming to Tarasp. Perhaps I could help you make sure of your direction when you leave.” Captain Golay had a small map ready in his hand; he extended it as he leaned on the car door. “Much too dark to see,” he said. “You need this.” He flicked on his cigarette lighter. Flicked again. It didn’t flare.

Sharply, the man turned his head aside. “We have maps.”

And who is he? David wondered. Someone, certainly, who doesn’t want the captain to have a clear view of his face. Too bad the lighter hadn’t worked, but a neat try. Curiously, David kept staring at the head firmly turned aside and held there.

“Very good.” The captain was as equable as ever. Then his voice changed. “Drive out!” He stood back, signalled the chauffeur to reverse, gave an authoritative sign when to stop. Now he took charge of the first car, backed it up slightly, eased it round the corner of the steps, and urged it on with a go-and-keep-on-going wave of his arm. It went partly round the square; stopped. The captain swore under his breath, signalled to it again. It stayed where it was.

“No!” Bohn had caught Hrádek’s arm as he raised the transmitter for his final instructions. “For God’s sake, Jiri—risk everything? And for what?”

“This matter is my own.”

“Will Prague listen to that?”

Hrádek shook off Bohn’s hand. But the warning had taken hold. The failure here was bitter, but if it spread to Prague—disaster. His hesitation ended: “Drive!” he told the man at the wheel. And then he said to Pavel, “The plan is cancelled. Follow me out. No delays.” Hrádek laid the transmitter aside. He sat well back, his face averted from the two men who kept watching his car as it moved towards the road.

“That’s Weber—the journalist,” Bohn said in alarm, pointing to a solitary figure at one side of the square. They had passed close to where he had stationed himself.

“He did not see me.”

“He tried.”

“What does he matter?” Hrádek asked impatiently. “Before his report can be published I shall be back in Prague.” With a sound alibi, already prepared, for this Saturday afternoon. Can Bohn really be so naive as to imagine I have not planned an alibi in advance? “Your Swiss journalist will be the joke of the newsrooms.” Hrádek glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Pavel and Vaclav were following dutifully. They were. “Hurry!” he told his driver. “Get moving!” He drew back into his corner, head bent, eyes half-shut, arms folded. But his rigid jaw and tightened lips were signs that he was far from sleep.

“You are well out of that,” Bohn tried. There was no answer. Bohn fell silent. He had enough brooding to do of his own. At least Dave Mennery had not been forced into Pavel’s car, to be, dealt with later. But it had been a damned close thing. Dave, thought Bohn, will never know how much he owes to me.

Behind them Tarasp had vanished. Only its bitter memory lingered in the car.

David kept watching the road, listening to the two cars’ steady descent. Their sound lessened, diminished at last into nothing. Complete silence. “They have gone,” he told Jo, who had come to stand beside him. He couldn’t believe it.

“Can we be sure?” Jo asked.

“Yes,” said Captain Golay. He was jotting down some figures in a note-book.

“I don’t know,” said David. His nerves had tightened, his tensions had mounted; and suddenly—nothing. “They meant business. They came in here looking for trouble. And then—and then they just left. Why?”

Weber grinned. “We had a deterrent.” He pointed to the man who now stood in front of his doorway, well in view; so was the rifle held ready. “Captain Golay, I think you can dismiss your troops.”

Golay completed the last digits on the cars’ licence plates, and put his note-book away. He called over to the man. They both shared a laugh. The man added a sentence of his own, moved into his house, closed the door. Upstairs the shutters were closing too. Captain Golay was still smiling broadly. “I told him our visitors would not return. His description of them cannot be translated—” he glanced at Jo “—but I think we would all agree with it.” He noticed her strained face. “Believe me, Miss Corelli, the danger is over.”

Jo tried to cover her despondency. “They’ll come back. Perhaps not here. But—”

“No, no. I think we can make an end to this threat. Perhaps we have already made it tonight. Mr. Weber—did you recognise the man?”

“I had only a glimpse of his face. He turned his head away. For a moment I thought I had seen that profile before—when I visited Prague two years ago. But it could not be. Impossible.”

“It could not be Jiri Hrádek?” Golay asked.

“Hrádek?” David and Jo had spoken the name together.

Weber said, “Then it
was
Hrádek?” His astonishment gave way to jubilation. “And you actually recognised him. We are in business, captain.”

“I recognised him from a photograph I have seen. The likeness was exact.”

Weber’s smile faded. “Not sufficient. You will need my corroboration of what you saw. And I cannot give it to you. I did not see the man closely enough to swear that he was Jiri Hrádek.”

“This,” said Golay, “is all the proof that Colonel Thomon will need.” He drew out his lighter, held it up briefly before slipping it back into his pocket.

David said, “A camera—infra-red film—” He began to smile. Krieger, he suddenly thought, ought to have seen that little gadget at work. The captain’s performance would have delighted him. Krieger. David’s smile vanished. Krieger should have been here—by this time—surely...

“Now,” said Golay, “I have some messages to send. After that I can drive you out of here. I could take you as far as Zurich.”

“Oh no!” Jo said softly.

“Samaden,” said Weber, “would be better. It is only a short journey. I think that is what Miss Corelli wants.”

Miss Corelli, decided Jo, wants no journey at all. She glanced at David, but he was preoccupied with his own thoughts.

“We do not use Samaden tonight.” The captain was firm about that. He had several good reasons, but he kept them to himself. Bohn had let the name of St Moritz slip out. It was a mistake often made by adept liars when they were fabricating an explanation: they invariably added some provable fact to bolster their fictions.
Dinner at St Moritz
. Yes, that was where Bohn intended to be seen tonight. His mention of Innsbruck was interesting too: he must have been there, must have felt his journey to Innsbruck could be easily traced; and so, out came a little fragment of truth. But what he hadn’t realised—another mistake often made by liars—was that one fact can lead to another. So now, we know that Hrádek’s plane touched down in Innsbruck. We can trace its flight pattern into Switzerland. “Samaden,” Golay explained, “will soon be under close surveillance. We do not want to complicate matters.” Nor, he was thinking, do we want to have you come face to face with any of Hrádek’s rear guard. Hrádek was bound to leave at least one of his men behind as an observer. “Decide where you are going tonight,” Golay said, backing away. “Let me know before you leave.” There was a friendly salute for Jo, and he hurried off.

“Well?” asked Weber.

“Don’t worry about us,” David said. “We can stay here overnight,” It was the last thing he wanted, but Jo wasn’t fit to travel. And there was Krieger too. “Krieger said he had booked a couple of rooms—some place—” David looked around vaguely. God, he was tired; but even so, he would travel anywhere just to lose sight of that house. He stared at it now, and saw Captain Golay running up its flight of steps. The house where Irina had walked out of his life.