`Captain Tommy Mason,' he introduced himself. 'The "Tommy" is purely honorary. They tacked it on when I was in the Army and the damn name stuck...'

`Bob Newman. No honorary titles...'

`I say, not the Robert Newman? The Kruger case and all that? I thought I recognized you. I'm market research. I've nearly completed my present assignment.' Mason smiled. `Really I'm not hurrying the job - I like this place. Marvellous hotel.'

Newman nodded agreement while he studied Mason. A military type. Early thirties. Trim moustache. Held his slim build erect. Shrewd eyes which didn't go with his general air of a man who would rise to captain and then that would be his ceiling. Mason continued chattering.

`They're all talking about some poor sod who took a dive from that square by the Castle - no, Cathedral - earlier this evening. Ended up like mashed potato on top of a car, I gather..

`Who says he took a dive?'

Mason lowered his voice. 'You mean the old saw — did he fall or was he pushed?'

`Something like that...'

`Well, that's a turn-up for the book. I was trotting round that square earlier today myself. Peered over the wall and nearly had a fit. Like a bloody precipice. In Berne too, of all places...'

`Berne is getting as dangerous as Beirut,' Newman remarked and drank the rest of his whisky. 'Thanks. It tastes better going down the gullet...'

`Berne you said was getting dangerous? Watch your back and all that? Don't walk down dark alleys at night. Place is full of dark alleys.'

`Something like that. A research trip, you said?' Newman probed.

`Yes. Medical. Standards of and practice in their private clinics. They rate high, the Swiss do. Their security is pretty formidable too. Here on a story?'

`Holiday. I think I'd better go. My fiancée will be going up the wall. I've been out all evening...'

`Nice of you to join me in a drink — especially considering the first one I gave you. But don't let me keep you. May see you at breakfast. Avoid the dark alleys...'

As Newman threaded his way among the packed tables Mason sat quite still, watching the Englishman until he had vanished out of the bar. Then he stood up and strolled out, his eyes flickering over the other drinkers.

`Who is this stranger I see?' Nancy enquired when Newman came into the bedroom. She raised a hand as though to shield her eyes. The gesture irritated Newman intensely. He took off his jacket and threw it on the bed along with the folded coat he had carried over his arm.

`You should keep the bedroom door locked,' he told her. `Criticism the moment he does eventually decide to come back.'

`Look, Nancy, this is a busy hotel. If I wanted to get at you I wouldn't use the main entrance — the concierge might see me. I'd come in by the coffee shop entrance and up those stairs from the basement. The lift is then waiting for me. I'm simply thinking of your safety...'

`Have a good evening? Your jacket stinks of alcohol. Did she spill her drink in her excitement?'

`A man in the bar bumped into me. He bought me a drink to say sorry. So, before you comment on it, I also have alcohol on my breath. I've had a swine of an evening...'

Dear me,' she said sarcastically, 'was it very rough?'

`A man who was following me earlier, a man I've used in the past for the same purpose, a nice little man, ended up spread like a goulash over the top of a car. He went over the wall behind the Munster. He was probably pushed. That sheer drop must be a hundred and fifty feet...'

`God, I've just had a very large dinner. You do have a way of putting things...'

`A large dinner. Lucky you. I've got by on a couple of bread rolls...'

`Room Service...!'

They both said it at the same time. Newman couldn't help recalling how Blanche had asked whether he had eaten. He undid his tie and loosened his collar, made no attempt to phone down for a meal. He was beyond it. She didn't press him.

`Who was killed tonight then?' she asked.

`The little man you said you didn't see passing the window of the Pavillon in Geneva when we were having breakfast...'

`Oh, I remember.' She was losing interest. 'Flotsam, you called him. One of life's losers...'

`Sympathetically I said it. You know, you should hail from New York. They divide the world there into winners and losers. He was a refugee who fled from Hungary in fifty-six. He made his living any way he could. He deserved a better epitaph.'

`I had company at dinner,' she told him, changing the subject. 'Another Englishman. Beautiful manners I think he had been in the Army. We got on very well together...'

`Some crusty old colonel of about eighty?' he asked with deliberate indifference.

`No! He's very good-looking. About thirty. Very neat and with a moustache. Talks with a plum in his mouth. I found him very amusing. What time do we meet Dr Novak on Thursday?'

`We don't. I go alone. He won't open up in the same way if you're present. And Thun is getting a dangerous place to visit. Or have you forgotten what nearly happened to us on the motorway?'

`No, I haven't!' she burst out. 'Which is why I think you might have made more of an effort to get back earlier — to have dinner with me. I needed company. Well,' she ended savagely; 'I got company...'

The phone started ringing. Newman glanced at Nancy who shrugged her shoulders. He suddenly realized she was wearing a dress he hadn't seen before. Another black mark, he supposed. No comment. The bell went on ringing and ringing. He picked up the receiver.

`A M. Manfred Seidler to speak to you,' the operator informed him.

`Newman, we must meet tomorrow night. I will phone details for the rendezvous late tomorrow afternoon...'

Truculent. Hectoring. Was there also a hint of desperation in Seidler's tone? Newman cradled the phone on his shoulder while he lit a cigarette.

`Newman? Are you still there?'

`Yes. I'm still here,' Newman replied quietly. 'Tomorrow is out of the question...'

`Then we do not meet at all! You hear me? Other people will pay a fortune for the information I have..

`Sell it to the other people then...'

`Newman, people are dying! I told you that before. Don't you even care?'

`Now you listen to me, Seidler. I can probably meet you three days from now. That's my best offer. And I need to know in advance the rendezvous...'

`You have a car?'

`I could get hold of one.' Never give out even the smallest item of information to someone who is a completely unknown quantity. 'And if you don't come to the point I'm going to put down the phone.

`Don't do that. Please! For God's sake! Newman, I will call you again tomorrow at five o'clock. No, not tomorrow. Five o'clock on the day we meet. You must have a car. And, believe me, it is. too dangerous over an open line to give you details of the rendezvous. Dangerous to you — as well as to me..

`Five o'clock the day we meet. Good night...'

Newman replaced the phone before his caller could say one word more. He lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed, smiling at Nancy who sat watching him intently.

`You were pretty tough with him,' she said.

`In a two-way pull situation like that one participant comes out on top — dominates the other. When we do meet I'll get a lot more out of him if he's at the end of his tether. I think he's pretty near that point now. For some reason I'm his last hope. I want to keep it that way.'

`And the day after tomorrow you see Dr Novak in Thun?'

`Yes. I'm banking a lot on that meeting. I suspect we may have a similar case with Novak to the Seidler situation. Both men living on their nerves, scared witless about something. I just wonder if it's the same thing...'

`Bob, there's something I didn't tell you. But first you've got to eat. An omelette? Very digestible. Followed by fruit?'

He nodded and sat smoking while she called Room Service. The atmosphere between them had changed, had turned some kind of corner. They'd needed that phone interruption to quench their irritation with each other. Seidler had done them a favour. He waited patiently until she'd given the food order, asking also for a bottle of dry white wine and plenty of coffee. She then sat on the bed beside him.

`Bob, what do we do next? I don't know.'

For Nancy Kennedy it was a remarkable comment. She sounded bewildered, as though it was all happening too fast and she couldn't take it in. He put it down to her American background. Europe functioned differently, was infinitely complex.

`First, as I said, I see Novak. Find out what is really happening inside the Berne Clinic. That's why we are here. I'll have to find some way of putting the pressure on him, break him down. That's Item One. Next, the following day, we meet Seidler, find out what he knows. I have a feeling it's all beginning to come together. Fast. What was it you'd omitted to tell me?'

`When I was talking to Jesse at the Clinic while you occupied Novak's attention he told me they were conducting some kind of experiments...'

`Experiments? You're certain he used that word?'

`Quite certain. He didn't elaborate. I think he was worried Novak would hear us talking...' There was a knock on the outer door. 'I think this is your food. Eat, drink and then bed...'

Half an hour later they had undressed, turned out the lights and Newman knew from Nancy's shallow breathing that she was fast asleep. Exhausted by the day's events. He lay awake for a long time, trying to see a pattern to what he had learned.

The weird business of the rapid incidents which Beck couldn't understand. The theft of an Army mortar. The theft of one Army rifle plus twenty-four rounds of ammo. The snowplough incident he had good reason to understand, Newman thought grimly.

Then the murder — it had been murder, he was convinced — of Julius Nagy. The disappearance of Lee Foley. And Blanche had told him Foley had been in the vicinity of the Berne Clinic at the time of his visit with Nancy. So everything — excluding the Nagy killing — was happening in the Thun district.

The Gold Club business which seemed to bother Beck so much. And Seidler's reference in his Geneva phone call to bringing in a consignment across an eastern border. A consignment of what? Across which border? Newman felt certain that if only he could arrange these different factors in the right sequence a pattern would emerge.

He fell asleep with a disturbing thought. The photo showing Bruno Kobler, administrator of the Berne Clinic — again Thun — in conversation in front of the Taubenhalde with — Arthur Beck.

Seventeen

Wednesday, 15 February. Lee Foley had been sitting in the cinema for an hour when he checked his watch. He had spent most of the day inside different cinemas — there are over half-a-dozen in Berne. It had been a more restful activity compared with the previous day's expedition to spy out the lie of the land round the Berne Clinic.

He had used this technique before when he went under cover, when an operation reached the stage of a loaded pause. After leaving the Savoy Hotel, he had parked the Porsche at different zones. He bought food he could take away and eat while he sat inside a cinema. He slept while inside a cinema. He emerged into the outside world well after dark.

Leaving the cinema, he took a roundabout route to where the car was parked. Satisfied that no one was following him, he headed straight for the Porsche. He approached the car with caution to be certain no one was watching it. He strolled past it along the deserted arcade, then swung on his heel, the ignition key in his hand. In less than thirty seconds he was behind the wheel, had started the engine and was driving away.

Tommy Mason had finished writing his report for Tweed which included details of his brief trips to Zurich by train. He was stiff from sitting in one position in his bedroom for so long and he wanted to think. Mason thought best while he was walking and wanted to ease the stiffness out of his limbs before he went to bed.

He walked out of the main entrance to the Bellevue Palace. At that time of night the huge hall and the reception area beyond — the area which within days would be used for the Medical Congress reception — were empty. The night concierge looked up from behind his counter, nodded to Mason and went back to checking his schedule for early morning calls.

Mason, protected against the freezing cold of the night with his British warm, woollen scarf and a slouch hat, made his way down to the river. He had taken the same walk the night before. It crossed his mind he was breaking a cardinal rule. Never keep to a routine. Vary your habits — daily. Worse still, he had left the Bellevue about the same time the night before. He had become so absorbed by his report he had not realized what he was doing.

Still, it was only the second night. He damned well had to get some exercise or he wouldn't sleep. His mind was active. Mason guessed that he was close to promotion. The fact that Tweed had pulled him out of Vienna and stationed him temporarily in Berne indicated that.

The wind caught him as he reached the Aarstrasse. He stepped it out, heading for the Dalmazibrucke, a much lower bridge than the Kirchenfeldbrucke he would eventually use to cross back over the river to reach the Bellevue.

Absorbed as he was by his thoughts— the report for Tweed, his coming promotion — Mason continued to look round for any sign of life. No traffic. No other pedestrians. To his left, in the dark his eyes were now accustomed to, the ancient escarpment on which Berne is built rose sheer in the night. He continued walking.

He reached the Dalmazi bridge, and still the whole city seemed to have gone to bed. The Swiss started their day early so they were rarely up late. Below him the dark, swollen flow of the water headed for the curious canal-like stretch below the Munster. At this point the Aare empties itself through a number of sluices to a lower level before continuing its curve round the medieval capital. He heard the car driving slowly behind him. It stopped. He turned round.

At the same moment the driver switched his headlights on full power. Mason was temporarily blinded. Bloody nincompoop. The headlights dipped and the car remained stationary. A courting couple, Mason guessed, oblivious to the cold of the night inside their heated love nest. The driver had probably intended to turn them off and had operated the switch the wrong way, his mind on more enticing prospects.

He was in the middle of the bridge when he resumed his walk. The lead-weighted walking stick — the most innocuous of weapons — struck him with tremendous force on the back of his skull. He was sagging to the pavement when powerful arms grasped him, hoisted him and in one swift, final movement propelled him over the rail of the bridge.

Unconscious, Mason hit the ice-cold water with a dull splash. Less than half a minute later a car's engine fired at the entrance to the bridge and was driven away. In that half- minute Mason's body had been carried close to the Kirchenfeldbrucke. Passing under the high, vaulted arch supporting the bridge, the body was suddenly swept to the right as the flow of the Aare increased in power and speed.

Caught up in a frothing whirlpool, Mason's skull hammered with brutal force against the sluice where it lay trapped. Time and again the river hurled the body into the sluice with the action of a sledgehammer. The slouch hat had gone its own way, bobbing along the surface until it, too, was swept sideways through a more distant sluice. It passed through effortlessly, soggy now with water. Somewhere before the next bend in the Aare it sank out of sight. Bernard `Tommy' Mason would never see his cherished promotion.

Gisela, assistant to Arthur Beck, looked up from her desk as her chief came into the office, took off his overcoat and hung it by the loop. He sat down behind his own desk, unlocked a drawer and took out the file on Julius Nagy.

`It's terribly late,' Gisela chided. 'I thought you'd gone home. Where have you been?'

`Walking the arcades, trying to make some sort of sense out of this apparently disconnected series of events. One stolen mortar, one stolen rifle with its ammunition, the disappearance of Lee Foley. No news about him yet, I suppose?'

`None at all. Would you like some coffee?'

`That would be nice. Then, talking about going home, you push off to your apartment. As you said, it's very late...'

When she had left the room Beck pushed the file away. Sitting gazing blankly into the distance, he began drumming the fingers of his right hand on the desk.

Behind the wheel of the Porsche Lee Foley was careful to keep inside the speed limit as he drove along N6, even though the motorway from Berne to Thun was deserted. He had divested himself of his English outfit and now wore jeans and a windcheater. Pulled well down over his thick thatch of white hair he wore a peaked sailor-style cap of the type favoured by Germans.

He would spend the night at a small gasthof outside Thun. By the time the registration form reached the local police in the morning — or maybe even twenty-four hours later as he would be registering so late — he planned to be away from Thun.

When he got up in the morning he would use a public booth to make the agreed phone call at the agreed hour. This, Foley was convinced, could be the first decisive day. And very shortly he would surface, come out into the open again. It was all a question of getting the timing right. Foley was very good at sensing timing: he had established the right contacts.

He drove on, his profile like that of a man carved in stone. Taken all round, it had been a strange day. He dismissed it from his mind. Always tomorrow — the next move — was what counted.

In Basle it was well past midnight as Seidler paced back and forth across the sitting room. On a sofa Erika Stahel stifled a yawn. She made one more effort.

`Manfred, let's go to bed. I have been working all day...'

`That bastard Newman!' Seidler burst out. 'He's playing me like a fish. People don't do that to me. If he knew what I've got in that suitcase he'd have seen me when I first called him in Geneva...'

`That locked suitcase. Why won't you let me see what you have got inside it?'

`It's a sample, a specimen...'

`A sample of what?'

`Something horrific. Best you don't know about it. And it's the key to Terminal. It's worth a fortune,' he ranted on, 'and I'll end up giving it to Newman for a pittance, if I'm not dead before then. A pittance,' he repeated, 'just to gain his protection...'

`I've banked a fortune for you in that safety deposit,' she reminded him. 'Surely you don't need any more. And when you talk about it being horrific you frighten me. What have you got yourself involved in?'

`It will soon be over. Newman said he'd meet me. The rendezvous will have to be a remote spot. I think I know just the place...'

Erika realized he could go on like this for hours. He was nervy, strung up, maybe even close to a breakdown. She stood up, walked into the kitchen and came back with a glass of water and a bottle of tablets.

`A sleeping tablet for you tonight. You'll need to be fresh for your meeting, all your wits about you. We're going to bed now. To sleep...'

Ten minutes later Seidler was sprawled beside her in a deep sleep. It was Erika who stared at the ceiling where the neon advertising sign perched on the building opposite flashed on and off despite the drawn curtains Horrific. Dear God — what could the suitcase contain?

The same atmosphere of restlessness, of moody irritability which infected Basle was also apparent all day in Berne. Gisela had noticed it in her chief, Arthur Beck, and both Newman and Nancy had found the day a trial. They had felt lethargic and everything seemed such an effort they passed the whole day trying not to get on each other's nerves. Before going to bed, Newman went out for a long walk by himself.

Returning, he tapped on their bedroom door and heard Nancy unlock it. She was wearing her bathrobe. The second thing Newman noticed as he walked into the bedroom and threw his coat on the bed was a fresh pot of coffee, two cups and a jug of cream on a tray.

`I've had a bath,' Nancy said as she lit a cigarette. Did you enjoy your walk? You've been out ages...'

`Not especially. Enjoy your bath?'

`Not especially. Trying to bathe myself was one hell of an effort. Like paddling through treacle. What's wrong with us?'

`Two things. The concierge explained one cause — the fohn wind is blowing. You get edgy and tired. Yes, I know — you don't feel any sense of a wind but it drives people round the bend. And the suicide rate goes up...'

`Charming. And the other thing?'

`I sense this whole business about the Berne Clinic is moving towards a climax. That's what is getting to us …'

The unmarked police car with the two plain clothes Federal policemen drove slowly along the Aarstrasse towards the lofty span of the Kirchenfeld bridge. The river was on the far side of the road to their left. Leupin sat behind the wheel with his partner, Marbot, alongside him. They were the two men Beck had earlier in the week sent to the Bahnhof to watch for Lee Foley. It was Marbot who saw the sluice.

In the middle of the night it was freezingly cold. Because they had the heater on full blast the windscreen kept misting up with condensation. Leupin cleared it with the windscreen wipers while Marbot lowered the side window at intervals to give him a clear view.

`Slow down, Jean,' Marbot said suddenly. 'There's something odd over there by that sluice...'

`I can't see anything,' Leupin replied but he stopped the car.

`Give me the night-glasses a sec...'

Shivering, rubbing his hands as the night air flooded in through the open window, Leupin waited patiently. Marbot lowered the binoculars and turned to look at his companion.

`I think we'd better drive over there — where we can get on to the walkway to the sluices...'

As the car was driven away to cross the Aare, Mason's battered, waterlogged body continued to be churned against the sluice, a sodden wreck of a man with the head lacerated in a score of places.

Eighteen

Thursday, 16 February. The headquarters of Army Intelligence in Berne is located in the large square stone building next to the Bellevue Palace if you turn left on emerging from the hotel. This is Bundeshaus Ost.

Newman entered the large reception hall beyond glass doors, walked up to the receptionist and placed his passport on the counter. His manner was brisk, confident and he spoke while his passport was being examined.

`Please inform Captain Lachenal I have arrived. He knows me well. I am also rather short of time...'

`You are expected, M. Newman. The attendant will escort you to Captain Lachenal's office...'

Newman gave no indication of his astonishment. He followed the attendant up a large marble staircase. He was escorted to Lachenal's old office on the second floor, an office at the rear of the building with windows overlooking the Aare and the Bantiger rising beyond on the far bank of the river.

`Welcome to Berne again, Bob. You come at an interesting time — which no doubt is why you are here...'

Lachenal, thirty-five years old, tall and thin-faced with thick black hair brushed over the top of his head, exposing an impressive forehead, came round his desk to shake hands. The Swiss was an intellectual and in some ways — with his long nose, his commanding bearing, his considerable height and his aloof manner — he reminded Newman of de Gaulle. He was one of the world's greatest authorities on the Soviet Red Army.

`You expected me,' Newman remarked. 'Why, Rene?'

`The same old Bob — always straight to the point. Sit down and I will help you as far as I can. As to expecting you, we knew you had arrived in Berne, that you are staying at the Bellevue Palace. What could be more natural than to expect a visit from you? Does that answer your question?'

`No. I have come here with my fiancée whose grandfather is a patient in the Berne Clinic. Why should that involve a visit to you?'

`Ah! The Berne Clinic...'

Seated in a chair facing the Swiss, Newman studied his friend. Dressed in mufti, he wore a smart, blue, pin-striped business suit, a blue-striped shirt and a plain blue tie. Newman shifted his gaze to the uniform hanging on a side wall. The jacket carried three yellow bars on shoulder epaulettes, bars repeated round the peaked cap — indicating Lachenal's rank of captain.

But what interested Newman were the trousers. Down each side was a broad black strip. Lachenal was more than a captain — he was now an officer on the General Staff. The Swiss followed his gaze.

`Yes, a little promotion since last we met...'

`And you report to?'

`Again the direct question! To the chief of UNA which, as you know, is the Sub-Department Information chief and a certain two-star general. I have direct access to him at all times...'

`So you are working on a special project?'

`You will not expect me to reveal information which is not only confidential but also classified,' Lachenal replied drily. `Why have I come at an interesting time?'

`Oh, that is simple... Lachenal spread his long, slim- fingered hands. 'Certain military manoeuvres are taking place.'

`Military manoeuvres are always taking place,' Newman countered. 'And why did you perk up when I mentioned the Berne Clinic? Incidentally, is that place being guarded by Swiss troops?'

Lachenal shook his head, more in sorrow than anger. 'Now you know I can neither confirm nor deny what establishments in this country come under military protection. Bob, what a question!'

`It's a damned good question,' Newman persisted aggressively. 'I actually spotted a man wearing Swiss Army uniform inside the place...'

He watched Lachenal's dark, steady eyes for any sign of anxiety. You might just as well hope for de Gaulle himself to reveal his real feelings. There was only one tiny out of character reaction. Lachenal took a king-size cigarette from a pack on the desk and lit it, then remembered his manners.

`Sorry.' He offered the pack and lit Newman's cigarette. `Can I talk about something for a few minutes?' he began, sitting very erect in his chair. 'As you know, we are preparing for military conflict. All able-bodied men serve specific periods annually in the forces until they are forty-five. When the war will come from the East we shall be ready to defend ourselves. What we are worried about is the enemy's massive use of helicopters. Still, that problem may soon be solved. At this very moment we are testing certain missiles in the Bernina Pass area — because in that zone we have deep snow and it is very cold. War in low temperatures, Bob...'

Newman was puzzled. At first he had thought Lachenal was skilfully guiding the conversation away from the subject of the Berne Clinic. Now he sensed the General Staff officer was telling him something quite different, something he wished to get across by subtle means.

`I do know the general attitude of the Swiss,' Newman remarked. wish to God our War Office would send a team here so it could study your techniques for use in Britain...'

`Please!' Lachenal held up a slim hand. 'Let me continue so you get the complete picture. Then ask questions.' He puffed at his cigarette and continued. 'What I am about to tell you is highly confidential — on no account to be reported. You see, we have two competing military philosophies, two schools of thought, if you like. One is held by the majority — at the moment — of the regular Swiss Army. They believe we should continue to stick to orthodox strategy. But there is a second school, mostly made up of officers who spend most of the year working at their civilian jobs. Like the regulars they also subscribe to the theory of defence tous azimuts...'

They were conversing in French. Lachenal had an excellent command of English but when he was absorbed in what he was saying he preferred to use his own language. Newman was familiar with the phrase tous azimuts. It expressed all-round defence — fighting to hold back the enemy on every Swiss frontier regardless of geography.

Lachenal had paused to stub out his cigarette and light a fresh one. Newman had the impression the pause was really intended to emphasize the phrase just used — as though in some way this was the key to the conversation.

`But,' Lachenal went on, 'unlike the regulars this faction, which is very influential, takes an even more ruthless view. After all, we are a small nation — but we are determined to do everything in our power to protect the few millions who make up our population. The civilian school takes tous azimuts very seriously. That is why I said you come at a very interesting time.'

`The civilian officers...' Newman threw the question at him... they are controlled largely by bankers?'

Lachenal froze. Outwardly his expression hadn't changed it was the sudden total lack of expression. He leaned back in his chair, speaking with the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

`What makes you say that?'

`I also have my sources. Inside and outside Switzerland.'

Newman emphasized the word to throw Lachenal off the track. It might be important to protect Arthur Beck. Something very strange was happening inside Switzerland.

`I can't imagine why you say that,' Lachenal commented eventually.

`It's obvious,' Newman rapped back quickly. 'You referred to the civilian group being very influential — your own words. Influence suggests power, power suggests money, money suggests bankers.'

`Theories are abstract, abstractions are misleading,' Lachenal said brusquely.

Newman stood up to leave and slipped on his coat. He chose the moment deliberately. Lachenal was a brave, very able man but he was also sensitive. He had just spoken almost rudely and Newman knew he would regret it. Lachenal followed his visitor as the latter put his hand on the door handle.

`You must realize, Bob, that none of us really believe_ you are here on holiday. You have to be working on a story..

`I am here with my fiancée for the reason I gave,' Newman said coldly. 'Check up on me, if you wish to...'

`Instead of that, let us have dinner together one evening. I am truly glad to see you again. But you must admit that your reason for being here would make an excellent cover story...'

Newman paused in the act of turning the handle, looking back at Lachenal. The Swiss was one of the shrewdest, most intuitive men he knew. He took the hand Lachenal had extended and shook it.

I accept your invitation with pleasure. Rene, take care of yourself …'

Tous azimuts. That had been the key phrase, Newman felt sure as he descended the marble steps and walked out of Bundeshaus Ost. And Lachenal was genuinely deeply worried about something. Newman had the strongest hunch that if he knew what that worry concerned it might unlock the whole strange business.

Nancy came running towards him as he pushed his way through the revolving doors inside the Bellevue Palace. She had been sitting where she could watch the entrance. Looping an arm through his, she guided him quickly to an obscure corner table.

`Now we have the Swiss Army on our backs,' he told her. 'I don't like the way things are developing..

`I've got something to tell you, but what are you talking about. Who have you seen?'

`A high-ranking Swiss Army officer, an old friend. We had coffee at that restaurant across the street. Don't ask me his name. I think he was warning me off the Berne Clinic...'

`You said an old friend. If he's that he should know the one way to encourage you to go on is to threaten you...'

`That occurred to me. Curious, isn't it? Now, I can see you're agog to tell me some news...'

`There's been a phone call from a man called Beck. He says will you go and see him at once. He said it was very urgent.'

Nineteen

`Newman, do you know this man?'

Beck was hostile again. His manner was stiff. His voice was flat, toneless. His official voice. Three people stood in the morgue. The room was cold. The floor and walls were tiled. The place had all the comfort and cheerful atmosphere of a public lavatory, a spotless public lavatory.

The third person was Dr Anna Kleist, Federal Police pathologist. A tall, dark-haired woman in her late thirties, she wore a white gown and watched Newman through tinted glasses with interest and a sympathetic expression. He had felt she liked him from the moment they had been introduced.

Newman gazed down at the body lying on the huge metal drawer Dr Kleist had hauled out for his inspection. The sheet covering the corpse had been partly pulled back to expose the head and shoulders. The head was horribly battered but still recognizable — mainly from the sodden moustache. Newman suddenly felt very angry. He turned on Beck.

`Am I the first person you have asked to identify him?' `Yes...'

`Well, Beck, you had better know I am getting fed up. Why choose me? This is the second time you've dragged me to view the wreck of a corpse...'

`Just answer the question. Do you know this man?'

`He told me his name was Tommy Mason. That he was engaged on market research. Medical. Something to do with clinics — Swiss clinics...'

`You do know this man then? You were using him as a contact?'

Tor Christ's sake, Beck, shove it. I was brought here without a hint as to what was waiting for me. I've answered your question. If you want to ask me anything else we'll go straight back to the Taubenhalde...'

`As you wish...'

Beck turned away to leave the room but Newman lingered. Dr Kleist had considerately closed the drawer. A tag was attached to the handle by a piece of string, a tag bearing a number. Tommy Mason was no longer a person, only a number.

`Dr Kleist,' Newman requested in a normal voice, 'have you any idea how he died — or is it too early?'

`He was found floating...'

`Anna!' Beck broke in. 'No information...'

`And why not, Arthur?' She removed her glasses and Newman saw she had large pale blue eyes with a hint of humour. 'Mr Newman has answered your question. And remember, I am in control here. I intend to answer Mr Newman...'

`You have the independence of the devil,' Beck grumbled. `Which is why you had me appointed to this position.' She turned her attention to Newman. 'The body was found in the river. His injuries are due in part to the fact that for some time before he was found he was caught in one of the sluices below the Munster.'

`Thank you, Dr Kleist.'

As he left the room Newman hoped she would get married and leave this place before her emotions became as dead as the body she had just shown him.

He said nothing to Beck during the drive back to the Taubenhalde. Inside the building the same routine. The ascent to the tenth floor. Beck producing the key which unlocked the lift. Outside Newman gestured towards a punch-time clock on the wall.

`Do you still clock in and out morning and night? The Assistant to the Chief of Police?'

`Every time. It is the regulation. I am not exempt...'

Beck was still stiff and unbending but once inside the office he did ask Gisela to make them coffee and then please leave them on their own. Newman, his mind still focused on his interview with Captain Lachenal, made a great effort to push that into the past. He needed all his concentration on this new development. Beck stared out of the window, hands clasped behind his back, until Gisela brought the coffee on a tray and left the office.

`I'm sorry, Bob,' he said, walking wearily round his desk and sagging into his chair before attending to the coffee. 'You see, this is the second body you have been directly linked with. First, Julius Nagy...'

`You said that was an anonymous phone call to Pauli...'

`This was an anonymous phone call to Gisela. A man. Someone who spoke in broken German — or pretended to. Last night you were seen with Bernard Mason, or so the caller alleged...'

`Bernard?'

`Yes, I noticed you called him Tommy in the morgue. When we fished him out we found he carried his passport in a cellophane folder which protected it to some extent against the water. He is — was — Bernard Mason. How did you come to know him, Bob?'

`In the bar at the Bellevue Palace. I went in for a drink and he turned round with his glass in his hand and bumped into me. The contents of the glass spilt over my jacket and he insisted on buying me one to compensate. We sat talking for maybe five minutes. That's how I know him. It's also how I know the data I gave you on him back at the morgue. He told me. A chance acquaintance...'

I wonder...'

`And what do you mean by that?'

`Could he have spilt his drink over you deliberately — to contrive this chance acquaintance? Chance always worries me.'

How could he have contrived anything?' Newman demanded. only decided to pop in there for a drink at the last moment. Any more questions?'

`I'm only doing my job, Bob. And I'm getting a lot of flak from the British Embassy. A chap called Wiley. He's a British citizen and was apparently an influential businessman. First, this Wiley wants to know exactly how he died...'

`How did he die?'

I think it was murder. I called the Embassy to see if they had any information on him. Wiley asks a lot of questions — then he puts in an urgent request for the minimum of publicity. So who was Mason is what I keep asking myself. And, like it or not, two men have now died in peculiar circumstances — both less than a kilometre from the Bellevue Palace, both who had links, however tenuous, with you..

Newman emptied his coffee cup and stood up. Beck watched while he slipped on his coat, buttoned it up. The Swiss also stood up.

`You haven't asked me why I think this Mason was murdered.'

`That's your job...'

`He's number two. Julius Nagy ends up at the bottom of the Plattform wall, which faces the sluice where Mason was found floating. Mason was thirty-three — I got that from the passport. He ends up in the river. You think he stumbled into the Aare? Two very convenient accidents. Were you outside the Bellevue late last night?'

`Yes, as a matter of fact I was. I went for a walk along the arcades. I couldn't sleep. And no one saw me. May I go now?'

`Gisela, what is it?' Beck asked his assistant who had opened the door to the connecting office where she worked most of the day.

`He's on the phone. Would you like to take it in here?'

Newman waited while Beck disappeared into the next room. He would be the Chief of Police, he imagined. Gisela asked if he would like more coffee but he refused and asked her a question, keeping his voice low.

`Mr Beck tells me you took that mysterious call reporting that I knew Mason, the man they dragged out of the river. I gather the caller spoke in broken German?'

`Yes, I had only just arrived. I ran to the phone, expecting it to stop ringing before I got there. The voice sounded muffled — like someone talking through a handkerchief. I had to make him repeat what he said, then he rang off. I've just realized something — I think I detected a trace of an American accent.'

I should tell your boss that,' Newman suggested. 'Had Beck arrived in the building when the call came through?'

`No. He came in about a quarter of an hour later.,,'

`Thanks. Don't forget that bit about an American accent. I was leaving — tell Beck I couldn't wait any longer. I'm in a rush …'

Lee Foley was humming Glenn Miller's In the Mood as he drove the Porsche back along the motorway towards Berne. He had spent the night in a gasthof, had breakfasted in Thun, made the agreed call to Berne, and now he was coming into the open.

Despite his almost infinite capacity for patience, he found it highly stimulating that the time for action had arrived. He had most of the data he needed, the equipment, he thought he knew at long last what was going on. The moment had come to stir things up, to raise a little hell. He pushed his foot down on the accelerator and let the Porsche rip.

`Who was that on the phone?' Newman asked as he came into the bedroom. 'And you left the door unlocked again...'

`A wrong number.' Nancy had replaced the receiver. She came towards him with an anxious expression. 'Forget about the door — I've been worried sick. What did the police want?'

`Pour some of that coffee. Sit down. And listen!' `Something is wrong,' she said as she handed him his cup and sat down, crossing her legs.

`Everything is wrong,' he told her. 'On no account are you to take the car and visit the Berne Clinic on your own...'

`I'll do so if I want to. And I do want to see Jesse today. You have your date with Dr Novak tonight in Thun. You won't want two trips...'

`Nancy, listen, for God's sake. There's been another killing. At least, that's the theory the police are working on. This time some Englishman — and he was staying at this hotel. They hauled his drowned body out of the river in the middle of the night. A man called Mason. There's something odd about him — the British Embassy is making too much fuss.'

`That's dreadful. But that is a problem for the police...'

`Nancy! We can no longer trust the Swiss police. I have also visited an old friend in Swiss Army Intelligence — counter-espionage it comes to the same thing. We can no longer trust Army Intelligence. They're both trying to manipulate me. I'm almost certain they're using me as a stalking horse — and that is very dangerous. For you as well as for me.'

`A stalking horse?' She wrinkled her smooth brow. Nancy really did have a superb complexion Newman thought. He had a vivid recall of the state of Tommy Mason's complexion in the morgue. 'I don't understand,' Nancy said.

`Then I'll try and explain it, so you'll understand, so maybe just for once you'll listen to me. And — no maybe — do as I tell you...'

`Give me one good reason.'

She annoyed him by standing up and walking over to gaze out of the window. It was another overcast day. A cloud bank like a grey sea pressed down on Berne. A white mist drifted closer along the river, heading in towards the city off the Bantiger.

`There's some kind of conspiracy,' Newman began. 'It's very widespread. I'm still vague on the details but I sense that it affects the whole of Switzerland — what you'd call in America the industrial-military complex. The police — the Federal lot — may be mixed up in it. Do you realize what that means?'

`I'm sure you're going to tell me...'

`I'm sure as hell going to do just that. You didn't understand my reference to a stalking horse. I happen to be a well-known foreign correspondent. I can't convince anyone I'm not here after another big story. The Kruger thing has caused them to think like that. So if we make one wrong move, take one step that disturbs them, the whole Military Intelligence and police machine will crash down on our heads. Are you with me so far?'

`I think so. The weather is beginning to look fantastic...'

`Bugger the weather. There appear to be two rival power groups fighting each other for supremacy. One group may be trying to use me to break the other — by exploding the whole conspiracy in a sensational exposé story in Der Spiegel. The group working underground is very powerful — I think it may have millions of Swiss francs at its disposal. Money means power — power to infiltrate the security organs of the state...'

Newman stopped in mid-sentence. When she turned round he was staring at the bottom of his cup. She went to him and placed her arm round his neck.

`What is it, Bob?'

`I may have missed something. What if we are dealing with patriots? Not villains in the normal sense of the word — men who sincerely believe they are protecting their country, who will go to any lengths to achieve their purpose?'

`And if that is the case?'

`It makes things far worse, more dangerous.' Newman put the cup on the tray and started pacing the room, hands clasped behind his back. 'I'm right, Nancy. There is no one we can trust. We're on our own. There are only two men who could crack this thing wide open...'

`Waldo Novak?'

`Yes. And Manfred Seidler. The police have put out a dragnet for Seidler. I have to reach him first. You make no trips to the Berne Clinic on your own. A certain Army officer went cold on me when I mentioned the place. So, we only visit the Clinic together. And when I'm out on my own — as I will be tonight when I see Novak — you stay in this hotel. Preferably in one of the public rooms …'

`You make me feel like a prisoner,' she objected.

He grabbed her by both arms and pulled her close to him. She stood quite still when she saw his expression.

`One more thing you'd better prepare yourself for. We might have to make a run for the border. I know places where it's possible to slip across quietly...'

`I won't go without Jesse...'

`Then we may have to take him with us. I don't like that remark he made to you about "experiments". God knows what is happening inside that place. Swiss Army guards. Dobermans. It's abnormal.'

`Bob, listen to me. In two days' time they're holding a reception here for that medical congress. I made some enquiries on my own from the concierge. He has a list of guests expected. One of them is Professor Armand Grange. Why don't we wait for him to come to us?'

He released his grip and she rubbed her upper arm. He had held her so tightly she felt bruised. She had never known him so alarmed and yet so determined at the same time. He went to the window. She had been right about the view. It was fantastic. The drifting wall of white mist now blotted out the lower slopes of the Bantiger so the flat summit appeared to be an island floating on a white sea.

`You could have an idea there,' he said slowly. 'So tonight it's Novak. Seidler as soon as we can arrange a rendezvous. Then I believe we shall know …'

A heavy grey overcast also shrouded lunchtime London, but here there was no mist creeping in. Inside the Park Crescent office Monica inserted the documents into the folder and handed it to Tweed who was checking the small suitcase he always kept packed ready for instant departure.

`Here are your air tickets for Geneva,' she said. 'A return flight booked for tomorrow. If anybody is checking at Cointrin they'll assume it's an overnight visit. You have that note with the train times to Berne?'

`In my wallet...'

Tweed looked up as Howard strolled into the office, again without knocking on the door first. He snapped the catches on his case shut and dumped it on the floor. Howard stared at it as Tweed, taking no notice of him, put a file in a drawer and locked it.

`I've just heard the appalling news,' Howard said gravely. `Are you off somewhere?'

`Berne, of course.'

`Because of Mason? The decoded telex from the Embassy refers to an accident...'

`Accident my foot!' Tweed allowed the contempt he felt to show in his tone. 'I talked to Wiley on the phone. Mason goes for a walk late at night, then falls into the river. Does it sound likely? Look at his age, his track record. Mason was murdered and I'm going to find out who did it.'

`Isn't that a job for the Swiss police?'

Howard brushed an imaginary speck from his sleeve, shot his cuffs and strolled round the office, glancing at the papers on Tweed's desk. Tweed sat in his chair and adjusted his glasses. He said nothing, waiting for Howard to go.

`The Swiss police,' Howard repeated somewhat peevishly.

`Have you forgotten what Mason brought back from Vienna? I gather you read the Ministry of Defence report on the object. I find the implications quite terrifying. I think that is why they killed Mason.'

`And who might be "they",' Howard enquired with characteristic pedantry.

`I have no idea,' Tweed confessed.

`You're going alone? No back-up?'

`I told you earlier I might have to call in outside help — that we're fully stretched with Martel being away. I've had someone out there for some time.'

`Who?' Howard pounced.

`The helper's safety — survival — may depend on secrecy, total secrecy. The person concerned knows Switzerland well.'

`You're being very coy about their sex,' Howard observed.

Coy. Tweed winced inwardly at the use of the word. Taking off his glasses, he polished them with his handkerchief until Monica gave him a paper tissue. Howard stared at Monica.

`Does she know?' he snapped.

`She does not. You can leave the whole matter in my hands.'

`I don't seem to have much choice. When do you leave?'

`This evening..' Tweed decided he had been very cavalier with Howard. 'I'm catching the nineteen hundred hours flight to Geneva. It arrives twenty-one thirty local time Then the express on to Berne. At that hour anyone watching the airport is likely to be less alert.'

`You'll contact Beck, I suppose?'

`Frankly, I have no idea what I'm going to do.'

Howard gave it up as a bad job. He walked stiffly to the door and then paused. It occurred to him that if Mason had been murdered this could be a dangerous one. If anything did happen to Tweed he'd regret an abrupt departure.

`I suppose I'd better wish you luck.'

`Thank you,' Tweed replied politely. 'I think I'm going to need a lot of that commodity …'

On the first floor of the Berne Clinic Dr Bruno Kobler had finished checking the medical files when the door to his office opened. A large shadow entered the room which was lit only by the desk lamp despite the darkness of the afternoon. Kobler immediately rose to his feet.

`Everything is ready for tonight,' he informed his visitor. `We are nearly there,' the huge man wearing tinted glasses commented in his soft, soothing voice. 'One more experiment tonight and then we shall be sure. Any other problems?' `There may be several. Newman for one...'

`We can deal with extraneous matters after the medical congress and the reception at the Bellevue Palace,' the large man remarked as though referring to a minor administrative detail.

His bulk seemed to fill the room. His head was large. He was plump-faced and had a powerful jaw. His complexion was pallid, bloodless. He stood with his long arms close to his sides. He created the impression of a human Buddha. He had a capacity for total immobility.

He wore a dark business suit which merged with the shadows. The huge picture windows were smoked plate glass, which deepened the gloom. He wore tinted glasses because strong light bothered his eyes. He was a man who would dominate every room he entered without speaking a word. And his powers of concentration were phenomenal.

`Once the medical reception at the Bellevue is over they will all go home,' he observed to Kobler. 'Then will be the time to clear up loose ends. Then we shall present Terminal as a fait accompli. Tous azimuts,' he concluded. The dream of a generation of the General Staff will be reality.'

He stared out of the window at the distant mountains. The massive butte, rugged and brutal, rearing above the low cloud bank. The Stockhorn. There was a similarity between the rock which had dominated Thun for cons and the man who stood, still quite immobile, staring at it.

`This is the subject I have chosen for tonight's experiment,' Kobler said, walking round his desk to show the open file, the photo of the patient attached to the first page. 'You approve, Professor?'

Twenty

For the rest of the day Newman encouraged Nancy to explore Berne with him. Anything to get her outside the hotel. He had not forgotten her remark, You make me feel like a prisoner. He expected to be away for a long time in the evening, interviewing Dr Novak in Thun. He wanted to be sure she did stay inside the Bellevue Palace.

Their exploration was also therapy for himself. He needed to clear his mind of two tense interviews which had already taken place. The trip to the morgue with Arthur Beck, followed by their conversation in his office. And his encounter — it had seemed like that — with René Lachenal kept running through his mind. Why was the normally cool Lachenal worried? Something, Newman was convinced, was preying on the Intelligence man's mind.

It was bitterly cold as they wandered along the arcades, stopping while Nancy gazed in shop windows. He took her the full length of the main street, the cobbled Marktgasse with an ancient tower at either end, continued along the Kramgasse and the Gerechtigkeitsgasse.

They were walking down the centre of the peninsula towards its tip at the Nydegg bridge where the Aare swings in a huge hairpin bend and sweeps on parallel with its earlier course on the other side of the city. Gradually the streets began descending until the arcaded walks were elevated above the street below. Slim, pointy-nosed green trams rumbled past but otherwise there was little traffic.

They reached the approach to the Nydeggbrucke and Newman peered over a wall down at a huddle of weird old houses that fronted on a street at a lower level. Nancy stared down with him.

`They must have been here for centuries...'

`It's the Matte district. No wars, you see. So the past is preserved. Let's hope to God it continues that way — it would be a crime for this lovely old city to be touched...'

He vetoed her suggestion that they should visit Jesse. She didn't argue the point when he explained.

`It could scare off Novak from coming to meet me this evening. I sensed he was nervous enough about the whole idea as it is...'

`I wonder why?'

`I think he's a frightened man. Frightened but at the same time desperate to talk to someone he can trust.'

`There seem to be a lot of frightened men. Manfred Seidler is another. What do I do if he calls while you're out?'

`Tell him I'm sticking to the arrangement we made. If he'll call me tomorrow, I'll meet him tomorrow..

They had lunch at the Restaurant Zum Ausseren Stand inside the heated Zeughauspassage off the Marktgasse. First, they walked through the snack place which was full of people eating and watching the Winter Olympics at Sarajevo on a colour television set.

The restaurant was comfortably furnished with heavily- upholstered green arm chairs, the walls covered with posters of Yugoslavia. Again, Sarajevo. They had an excellent soup, a plate of superbly-cooked chicken and finished the meal with ice cream which Nancy pronounced 'Gorgeous. And even the coffee is first-rate.'

`It has to be good, if an American approves...'

He watched her glowing eyes and didn't want the evening to come. For almost the first time since they had landed in Geneva there was a carefree atmosphere. Cynically, he hoped it wasn't the prelude to something quite different.

Newman timed it so they arrived back at the Bellevue Palace at 6.15 pm. Dusk had crept in over the city. The lights had come on-in the streets and on the bridges. He wanted her to be alone for the shortest possible period. Following her into the entrance hall where people were circulating back and forth, he paused.

`I'm off to Thun,' he told her. 'I suggest a leisurely dinner, a good bottle of wine. Expect me when you see me — I've no idea how long this will take. The longer I'm away the more information I'll be getting...'

He stopped speaking, staring over her shoulder. Lee Foley had just stepped out of the lift. The American appeared not to have seen him, turning right and disappearing down the staircase in the direction of the bar. Nancy also had turned to see what he was looking at.

`Is something wrong, Bob?'

`No. I was just making up my mind about something. You'd better know now I'm meeting Novak at a hotel called the Freienhof in Thun...' He spelt it out for her. 'The phone number will be in the directory. Just in case you have to reach me urgently. I'm off now...'

`Take care …'

The tall thin man hurried across the Kochergasse to one of the phone booths near the Hertz car hire offices. He had been waiting inside the café opposite the Bellevue for ages, pretending to read the Berner Zeitung, ordering three separate pots of coffee and making each last while he watched both the main entrance and the way in to the coffee shop. He dialled a number and spoke rapidly when he heard the voice at the other end.

`Newman has just got back. He's gone inside the hotel with a woman. About two minutes ago. Hold on. I think he's come out again. By himself ? Yes. He's walking towards me. Now he's crossed the street. He's heading for a silver Citroen parked by a meter. He's opening the door. I can't do a thing about it. He's driving off any second …'

`I can,' the voice replied. 'We have cars waiting for just such a development. I must go. And thank you …'

Driving down the N6 motorway to Thun, Newman felt tired. It had been a full day and it was only just starting. A lot of enjoyable walking round Berne, but still tiring.

He switched off the heater, lowered his window. Icy night air flooded in. He welcomed it. He had to be alert when he met Novak. The four-lane highway — two lanes in either direction separated by a central island — swept towards him in the beams of his headlights. He immediately began to feel better, sharper.

The red Porsche appeared from a slip road, headlights dipped as it followed him at a proper distance. He idly noticed it in his wing mirror. No attempt to overtake. Newman was driving close to the limit. The Porsche was behaving itself.

Bridge spans flashed past overhead. Occasional twin eyes of other headlights came towards him in the lanes heading back towards Berne. He checked his watch. As planned, he should arrive at the Freienhof before 7 pm. Ahead of Waldo Novak. He drove on. He would know about the Porsche when he reached Thun. If it was still with him …'

Behind the wheel of the Porsche, Lee Foley had two problems to concentrate on. The Citroen ahead. The black Audi behind his car. He had first noticed the Audi as two specks of light a long way back. It attracted his attention because the two specks swiftly became large headlamps. It was coming up like a bat out of hell.

Then it lost a lot of speed, began to cruise, keeping an interval of about a hundred yards between itself and his tail-lights. Foley swivelled his eyes alternately between the Citroen and the Audi in his rear-view mirror.

Why break all records — and the speed limit — and then go quiet? He came to a point where the normally level motorway reached- a gentle ascent at the very point where it curved. A car heading for Berne beyond the central island came over the brow of the rise. Headlights full on.

Foley blinked, looked quickly again in the rear-view mirror as the other vehicle's undipped lamps hit the Audi like a searchlight. Two men in the front. He thought there were two more in the back. Full house.

Turning off the motorway, Foley came into Thun behind the Citroen along the Bernstrasse , then turned down the Grabenstrasse as Newman continued along the Hauptgasse. He pulled in to a parking slot almost at once, switched off his motor and watched his rear-view mirror.

The Audi paused at the corner turn, as though its driver was unsure of his bearings. Two men got out of the rear of the car which then drove on quickly along the Hauptgasse, the route the Citroen had taken. Foley still waited, hands on the wheel.

One of the men — something about his manner, a man in his forties with a moustache, suggested he was in charge — let an object slip from his right hand. His reflexes were very good. He caught the object in mid-air before it hit the cobbles. An object which looked exactly like a walkie-talkie.

Foley smiled to himself as he climbed out of his car and locked it. He thought he knew their profession.

Unlike Berne, the town of Thun is as Germanic as it sounds. The river Aare, flowing in from Thunersee — Lake Thun, too far from the town to be seen — bisects it. The river also isolates the central section on an island linked to both banks by a series of bridges.

Arriving in Thun, as with Berne, is an excursion back to the Middle Ages. Ancient buildings hover at the water's edge. Old covered bridges, roofed with wood, span stretches of the Aare which, leaving Thun behind, flows on to distant Berne.

Driving along the Hauptgasse, Newman saw the red Porsche as it turned down the Grabenstrasse and decided his suspicions were groundless. He drove on, turned right on to the island over the Sinnebrucke and parked the Citroen in the Balliz. He then walked back through the quiet of the dark streets to the Freienhof Hotel which overlooks a stretch of the Aare. The first surprise was Waldo Novak had got there before him.

Taking off his coat and hanging it on a hook in the lobby, he studied the American who sat at a corner table in the public restaurant. Two empty glasses on the table told Newman that Novak had arrived early to tank up, to brace himself to face the Englishman, which suited Newman very nicely.

`Another Canadian Club,' Novak ordered from the waiter and then saw Newman.

`I'll have the same...'

`Don't forget — doubles,' Novak called out to the waiter's back. 'Okay, Newman, so you made it. Where do we go from here?'

`Why did you take that job at the Berne Clinic?' Newman enquired casually.

He sat waiting while Novak downed half his fresh glass and sipped at his own. The American wore a loud check sports jacket and grey flannel slacks. His face was flushed and he fiddled with the glass he had banged down on the table.

`For money. Why does anyone take any job?' he demanded.

`Sometimes because they're... dedicated is the word I'm seeking, I think.'

`Well, you found it — the word! Found anything else recently I should know about?'

`A couple of bodies.'

Novak stiffened. The high colour left his young-looking face. He gripped his glass so tightly, the knuckles whitened, that Newman thought he was going to crush it. Although the tables close to them were unoccupied he stared round the restaurant like a hunted man.

`What bodies?' he said eventually.

`First a little man called Julius Nagy. There's an ironclad link between him and Dr Kobler. Someone shoved Nagy off the Munster Plattform in Berne the other night. It's a drop of at least a hundred feet, probably more. He ended up on top of a car. Mashed potato.'

`You trying to frighten me?'

`Just keeping you informed of developments. Don't you want to know about the second body?'

`Go ahead, Newman. You're not scaring me...'

`An Englishman called Bernard Mason. He had been investigating Swiss clinics — which I'm sure we'll find was a cover for checking on the Berne Clinic. He ended up in the river — his body pounded to pulp by a sluice. It doesn't seem to be too healthy an occupation — taking an interest in the Berne Clinic. Waiter, another two doubles. We like reserves...'

`I don't think I want to talk to you, Newman.'

`You have someone else you can trust? What makes it worth your while to work for Professor Armand Grange?' `Two hundred thousand bucks a year..

He said it with an air of drunken bravado, to show Newman he counted for something, that even at his comparatively early age he was a winner. Newman discounted the enormous salary — Novak had to be exaggerating. Wildly. He paid the waiter for the fresh round of drinks and Novak grabbed for his glass, almost spilling it in the process.

`What kind of a boss is Grange to work for?' Newman enquired.

`I've come to a decision, Newman.' He made it sound like Napoleon about to issue orders for the battle of Austerlitz. `I'm not talking to you any more. So why don't you just piss off?'

That was the moment Newman knew he had lost him. It was also the moment Lee Foley chose to walk in and sit down in the chair facing Novak.

`I'm Lee Foley. You are Dr Waldo Novak of New York. You are at present assigned to the Berne Clinic. Correct?'

Bare-headed, Foley wore slacks and a windcheater. His blue eyes stared fixedly at the doctor. He had not even glanced in Newman's direction. There was something about Foley's manner which caused Novak to make a tremendous effort to sober up.

`So what if I am?' he asked with an attempt at truculence.

`We are worried about you, Novak.' Foley spoke in a calm, flat tone but his voice still had a gravelly timbre. 'The fact is, we are growing more worried about you day by day,' he added.

`Who the hell is "we"? Who the hell are you?'

`CIA...'

Foley flipped open a folder and pushed it across the table. Novak put down his glass without drinking. He picked up the folder and stared at it, looked at Foley, then back at the folder. Foley reached across and wrenched it out of his hand, slipped it back inside his breast pocket and the blue eyes held Novak's as he went on talking quietly.

`I'll tell you-what you're going to do. You're going to give Newman answers to any and all questions he may ask. Do I make myself clear?'

`And if I don't?'

`Nothing to drink, thank you,' Foley said, refusing Newman's offer, his eyes still holding Novak's. 'If you don't. I think you should know we are already considering withdrawing your passport. And I understand the Justice Department has gone further. Discussions are under way on the possibility of revoking your American citizenship...'

Foley still spoke in a cool, offhand manner. He glanced at Newman and said yes, he would have a drink, just some Perrier water. His throat was rather dry. It must be the low temperatures. He checked his watch.

`I'm short of time, Novak. And don't approach the American Embassy in Berne. That will only make matters worse for you. This comes direct from Washington. Make up your mind. Are you — or are you not — going to cooperate with Newman?'

`I'd like a little time to consider...'

`No time! Now! Yes. Or no.'

Foley drank his Perrier and stared away from Novak, gazing out of the window. Beyond a narrow road was an arm of the river. Beyond that old buildings whose lights reflected in the dark water. He finished his Perrier, checked his watch again and looked direct at Novak.

`And you haven't met me. I don't exist. That is, if you value your health. Now, which is it to be?'

`I'll cooperate. This will be kept confidential, I hope?'

Foley stood up without replying, a very big man, nodded to Newman and walked out into the night. Novak gestured to the waiter who brought two more glasses. Newman waited until he had downed more Canadian Club and left his own glass on the table.

`What do you want to know?' Novak asked in a tone of resignation.

`What is the nationality of the patients in the Berne Clinic? Mixed?'

`It's odd. No Swiss. They're all American — with a few from South America when they can afford it. Grange charges enormous fees. Most of them come to him as a result of his lecture tours in the States. He's into cellular rejuvenation in a big way. So, it's a two-way pull.'

`What does that mean?'

`Look, Newman...' Novak, ashen-faced from his encounter with Foley, turned to look at the Englishman. `... this isn't an ideal world we live in. There are a lot of American families reeking with money, often new money. Oil tycoons in Texas, men who have made millions in Silicon Valley out of the electronics boom. Others, too. Grange has a sharp eye for a set-up where the money is controlled by some elderly man or woman whose nearest and dearest are panting to take that control away. They send the head of the family to the Berne Clinic for this so-called cellular rejuvenation. That gets them out of the way. They apply for a court order to administer the estate. You get the picture?'

`Go on...'

Novak's voice changed and he mimicked a man making out a case to a judge. 'Your Honour, the business is in danger of going bankrupt unless we have the power to keep things running. The owner is in a Swiss Clinic. I don't like to use the word "senile" but...' He swallowed more of his drink. 'Now do you get the picture? Grange offers the patient, who is seriously ill, the hope of a new lease of life. He offers the dependants the chance to get their hands on a fortune. At a price. It's a brilliant formula based on a need. Professor Grange is a brilliant man. Has a hypnotic effect on people, especially women.'

`In what way — hypnotic?'

`He makes the relatives feel what they want to feel — that they're doing the right thing in exiling to Switzerland the manor woman who stands in their way. Loving care and the best attention.' Novak's voice changed. 'When all the bastards want to do is to get their hands on the money. Grange has worked out a perfect formula based on human nature.'

`There's nothing specifically criminal so far,' Newman commented.

`Criminal?'

Novak spilt some of his drink on the table. The watchful waiter, ready for a fresh order, appeared with a cloth and wiped the table. Novak, shaken, waited until they were alone.

`Who said anything about criminal activities?'

`Why is the Swiss Army guarding the Clinic?' Newman threw at him.

`That's a peculiar business I don't want to know about,I do my job and don't ask questions. This is Switzerland. The whole place is an armed camp. Did you know there is a military training base at Lerchenfeld? That's at the other side of the town. In Thun-Sud...'

`But you have seen men in Swiss Army uniform inside the Berne Clinic?' Newman persisted. 'Don't forget what Foley said.'

`I've been here a year. In all that time I've only seen men in some kind of uniform. Once inside the main gatehouse, once patrolling the grounds near the laboratory...'

`Ah, the laboratory. What goes on inside that place?'

`I have no idea. I've never been allowed there. But I have heard that's where the experiments with cellular rejuvenation are carried out. I gather the Swiss are very advanced with the technique of halting the onset of age.' Novak warmed to his theme, relaxing for the first time. 'The technique goes back before the war. In nineteen-thirty-eight Somerset Maugham, the writer, first underwent treatment. He was attended by the famous Dr Niehans who injected him with cells scraped from the foetus of unborn lambs. Timing was all-important. No more than an hour had to elapse between the slaughter of the pregnant ewe and the injection of the cells into the human patient. Niehans first ground up the cells obtained from the foetus and made them soluble in a saline solution. The solution was then injected into the patient's buttocks...'

`It all sounds a bit macabre,' Newman remarked. `Somerset Maugham lived to be ninety-one...'

`And Grange has a similar successful track record?'

`That is Grange's secret. His technique, apparently, is a great advance on Niehans'. I do know he keeps a variety of animals in that laboratory — but what I don't know. There's also another clinic which goes in for the same sort of treatment near Montreux. They call it Cellvital'

Newman quietly refilled his glass with Perrier from the bottle Foley had left. He found the information Novak had just given him interesting. It could explain Jesse Kennedy's reference to 'experiments' — an activity no more sinister than the fact that it was not yet accepted by the medical profession everywhere.

`You've told me the nationality of the patients,' he said after a short pause. 'You're American. What about the other doctors?'

`They're Swiss. Grange asked me to come during one of his American tours...'

`And you came for a very normal reason — the money?' `Like I told you, two hundred thousand dollars a year. I make a fortune — at my age..

So, Novak hadn't been clutching a figure out of the air to impress him, Newman reflected. He felt he still wasn't asking the right questions. He flicked Novak on the raw to get a reaction, posing the query casually.

`What do you do for that? Sign a few dummy death certificates?'

`You go to hell!'

I get the impression there may be some kind of hell up at that Clinic — and that you suspect more than you're telling. You live on the premises?'

`Yes.' Novak had gone sullen. 'That was part of my contract.'

`And the Swiss doctors?'

`They go -home. Look, Newman, I work very long hours for my money. I'm on call most of the year..

`Calm down. Have another drink. What about the staff — the guards, cleaners, receptionists. Where do they come from?'

`That's a bit odd,' Novak admitted. 'Grange won't employ anyone local — who lives in Thun. They also live on the premises. Most of them are from other parts of Switzerland. All except Willy Schaub. He goes to his home in Matte — that's a district of Berne near the Nydeggbrucke. Goes home every night.'

`What job has he got?' Newman asked, taking out his notebook.

`Head porter. He's been there forever, I gather. The odd job man. Turns his hand to anything. Very reliable...'

'I'll take his address...'

Novak hesitated until Newman simply said, 'Foley,' then he changed his mind. 'I do happen to know where he lives. Once I needed some drugs urgently and since I wa-sin Berne I picked them up from his house. Funny old shanty. Gberngasse 498. It's practically under the bridge. There's a covered staircase runs down from the end of the bridge into the Gerberngasse. He probably knows as much about the Clinic as anyone — except for Grange and Kobler...'

`Thank you, Novak, you've been very accommodating. One more thing before I go. I'll need to see you again. Will you be attending the medical reception at the Bellevue Palace?'

`The Professor has asked me to be there. Most unusual... `Why unusual?'

`It will be the first public function I've been to since I came out here.'

`So you'll be able to slip away for a short time. Then we can talk in my bedroom. I may have thought of some other questions. Why are you looking so dubious? Does Grange keep you on a collar and chain?'

`Of course not. I don't think we ought to be seen together much longer...'

`You could have been followed?' Newman asked quickly.

He looked round the restaurant which was filling up. They appeared, from snatches of conversation, to be farmers and local businessmen. The farmers were complaining about the bad weather, as though this was unique in history.

`No,' Novak replied. 'I took precautions. Drove around a bit before I parked my car. Then 1 walked the rest of the way here. Is that all?'

`That laboratory you've never been inside. It has a covered passage leading to it from the Clinic. You must have heard some gossip about the place.'

`Only about the atombunker. You probably know that the Swiss now have a regulation that any new building erected, including private houses, has to incorporate an atombunker. Well, the one under the laboratory is enormous, I gather. A huge door made of solid steel and six inches thick — the way it was described to me made it sound like the entrance to a bank vault in Zurich. It has to accommodate all the patients and the staff in case of emergency..

So that could explain something else innocently which Newman -had thought sinister — the covered passage to the laboratory also led to the atombunker. Despite all his questions, there was still nothing positively wrong on the surface about the Berne Clinic. It was an afterthought: he asked the question as he was slipping on his coat.

`You thought then that you might have been followed?'

`Not really. Kobler said he had been going to suggest I took the evening off. He urged me to spend the night out if I felt like it...' Novak paused and Newman waited, guessing that the American had made a mental connection. 'Funny thing,' Novak said slowly, tut the last time he did that was the night when Hannah Stuart died …'

Twenty-One

Newman walked into a silent, freezing cold night. Deserted streets. He waited until his eyes became accustomed to the dark. He was about to light a cigarette when he changed his mind. Nothing pinpoints a target more clearly than the flare of a lighter. And he had not forgotten that one of the weapons Beck had reported stolen was a sniper-scope Army rifle — from the Thun district.

Checking for watchers, he strolled to the Sinnebrucke. He was still not convinced that Novak had told him everything. The American could have been sent by Kobler — to lure Newman to Thun. Later, after too much drinking, Novak might have decided to take out insurance by talking to him. Newman was convinced of one fact — he could trust no one.

Water coming in from the lake lapped against the wall below the bridge. Then he heard the sound of an approaching outboard motor chugging slowly. The small craft was flat-bottomed. As it passed under a street lamp he saw it was powered by a Yamaha outboard. One man crouched by the stern.

Newman stepped back into the shadows, unsure whether he had been seen. The man lifted a slim, box-like object to his mouth. A walkie-talkie. They had been watching film from the one area he had overlooked — the river. It would have been easy to observe Newman and Novak sitting at the window table inside the illuminated restaurant. Was he reporting that Newman had just left the restaurant?

Berne is like a colossal ocean liner built of rock and stone, rearing up above the surrounding countryside. Thun's centre lies on the island in a basin. Newman glanced up at the northern bank where the forested hillside climbed steeply, a hillside where the lights of houses glittered like jewels. He left the bridge, crossed the street in the shelter of one of the numerous smaller arcades — smaller than Berne's.

He followed a roundabout route to where he had left his car parked in the Balliz. He was looking for a red Porsche, any sign of Lee Foley, any sign of more watchers. With its network of waterways Thun is like a tiny Venice or Stockholm.

Looking south, at the end of a street he saw the vague outline of a monster mountain, its upper slopes white with snow. He continued walking slowly, listening. He passed one of the old covered bridges on his right and had a view to the north. On the highest point immediately above the town reared the great walls and turrets of the ages-old Schloss, a sinister, half-seen silhouette in the starlit night. The only sound was the slosh and gush of the river flow. He made up his mind.

Newman had not only been checking for watchers: he had taken his lonely stroll while he wrestled with a decision. He could not get out of his mind something Novak had said. Kobler said he had been going to suggest I took the evening off... the last time he did that was the night when Hannah Stuart died.

He walked swiftly back to where the Citroen was parked, got behind the wheel, fired the motor and drove off through the empty streets uphill towards Thun-Nord, towards the Berne Clinic.

The horrific scene jumped towards Newman's headlights as he came over the brow of a hill. He had followed a route which would take him to the main gatehouse of the Berne Clinic — coming in from the north-west. To his right alongside the narrow road was the wire fence guarding the Clinic's extensive grounds which, at this point, included some rough country. He had crossed the snow-line some time earlier and he knew the laboratory was beyond the fence, hidden by a fold in the landscape.

In his headlights he saw a gate in the wire fence wide open. Two police cars, the blue lights on their roofs flashing and revolving, were parked in the road by the gateway. A woman inside the grounds was running up the rocky slope towards the gateway, a woman wearing some kind of robe. Behind her in the gloom a vague shape bounded after her. One of the bloody Dobermans. The woman ran on, a stumbling run. In front of one of the police car's lights stood two people. Beck and, Oh, Christ! Nancy...'

The Doberman was going to get her, the running woman. She was just too far from the open gateway. Jesus! It was a nightmare. Newman pulled up near the gateway as Beck raised both hands and stood very still. He was gripping a gun. Behind him a third car appeared. Not a police car. It braked savagely and someone jumped out. That was the moment when Beck fired. The dog leapt vertically into the night, seemed to stay there in suspension, then flopped to the ground. So much was happening it was difficult to take it all in.

Newman left his car. The man who had just arrived was Captain René Lachenal. In full uniform. The running woman staggered through the gateway and collapsed on the road. Her robe fell open and Newman saw she was wearing pyjamas underneath a thick dressing gown and sensible shoes caked with snow.

Nancy was already bending over the inert form. Beck was using his walkie-talkie. Newman counted six uniformed policemen, all wearing leather overcoats and automatics holstered on their right hips. Beck slipped his weapon into his pocket and put on gloves. He closed the gate and stooped over it, fiddling with something. Newman couldn't see what he was doing.

`You are trespassing inside a military zone,' Lachenal called out angrily. 'We will look after this woman...'

`Military zone?' Beck straightened up and walked away from the gate which Newman saw was now padlocked. 'What the hell are you talking about? And I have summoned an ambulance for this woman. It will be here very shortly...'

`We are conducting military manoeuvres,' Lachenal insisted. 'There was a barrier at the entrance to this road...'

His tall, gaunt-faced figure towered over Beck who was staring in the direction of Berne where an approaching siren could be heard, growing louder every second.

`Yes, we saw the barrier,' Beck told him. 'We drove through it. And, it appears, a good job we did. In any case, there was no formal notification beforehand of any manoeuvres. And, we have saved this woman. You saw that dog...'

Newman had a series of vivid impressions he recalled later like pictures taken by flash-bulbs. An armoured personnel carrier pulling up behind Lachenal's car. Troops jumping out clad in battle gear — helmets, camouflage jackets and trousers and carrying automatic weapons — who spread out in a circle. Lachenal lifting a pair of field glasses looped round his neck and briefly scanning the grounds beyond the wire fence, lowering them with a grave expression. Nancy, who was close to Newman, standing up slowly and whispering to Beck so the only other person who heard her was Newman.

`We haven't saved her, I'm afraid. She's dead. I don't like the look of her. I can't be sure, of course, but all the signs are she died of asphyxiation. More serious still, I detect distinct signs of some form of poisoning. If you asked me to guess — it could be no more than that — I diagnose cyanosis...'

`Say no more,' Beck suggested. 'I have all I need.'

The ambulance had arrived. The determined driver eased his vehicle past the personnel carrier and Lachenal's car, drove on until his bonnet almost touched Newman's Citroen, backed into the gateway area, turned so the ambulance faced back towards Berne, and stopped it alongside the woman's body in the road. The rear doors opened, two men in white emerged carrying a stretcher, and this was the moment when Lachenal intervened.

`What are you doing?' he demanded. 'I can have her taken for immediate attention to a military hospital...'

`She's dead, Lachenal,' Beck told him in a cold voice.

It was extraordinary. The lofty figure of the Intelligence captain, a member of the General Staff, was dominated by the much smaller figure of Beck by sheer force of personality. The policeman took out his automatic again and held it so the muzzle pointed at the ground.

`We can still take her,' Lachenal said after an interval. 'This may be a matter for counter-espionage..

`Forget it, Lachenal. I'm taking over jurisdiction. And I am treating this as a case of suspected homicide. It is a matter entirely for the Federal Police. Incidentally, if you do not immediately order your men to lower their weapons I'll bring a charge against you for obstructing the course of justice the moment I arrive back in Berne...'

`They are not threatening anyone...'

`I am waiting.'

Lachenal gave a quick order to the officer in charge of the detachment. The troops boarded the personnel carrier which was then, with some difficulty, reversed before it was driven off towards Berne. Beck watched these proceedings with an icy expression, the gun still by his side. Lachenal turned and stared down at him.

`Homicide? I don't understand...'

`Neither shall I — until after the autopsy has been performed. One more thing, I have a fully-qualified doctor here who has examined the body. She states the dead woman shows clear signs of having died from cyanosis or some other form of poisoning. Just in case you have second thoughts. You have your own walkie-talkie, I imagine, to keep in touch with these manoeuvres which sprung up so suddenly? Good. Let us synchronize wavebands. I wish to keep in direct touch with you until we reach Berne safely. Perhaps you would be so good as to follow in your car?'

`I find the implications behind that request outrageous …'

`But you will comply,' Beck told him grimly. 'Homicide was the word I used. That takes precedence over everything with the sole exception of a state of war. Agreed?'

`I will accompany you in my car to the outskirts of Berne. Perhaps you would like to drive off first, then the ambulance, and I bring up the rear?'

Beck nodded, still in full psychological command of the situation. The bearers had carried the woman's body inside the ambulance and closed the doors. At Newman's request Beck had agreed one of his own men should drive the Citroen back to the Bellevue so Newman could travel in Beck's car with Nancy.

Before leaving, Beck gave the remaining policemen orders to pile into the other car and patrol the entire perimeter of the Berne Clinic. Passing the ambulance, he clapped a gloved hand on to the edge of the driver's window to indicate he should follow him. As they left, he exchanged not one more word with Lachenal, maintaining his total control of the situation to the last.

He opened the rear door of his car, ushered Nancy inside and introduced her to his subordinate, Leupin, who joined her on the other side. He made the remark as he climbed behind the wheel and Newman settled himself alongside.

`I'm not too happy yet about Lachenal. He seems to have so many troops at the snap of a finger. You do realize that he must have called up that armoured personnel carrier when he'd arrived but before he got out of his car?'

Beck had started driving when Newman pointed to the walkie-talkie lying in Beck's lap. The communication switch was turned to off.

`You can keep tabs on him with that, can't you?' Newman observed.

`But who is he calling at this moment — on a different waveband? I simply don't know. Certainly, Lachenal looked very worried and uncertain about the whole business. He's a very complex character, our Rene Lachenal — but basically a man of integrity. His one concern is Switzerland's security..

`And how far would he go to protect that? The military do live in a world all their own.'

`A great deal may depend on how he reacts during the next few minutes— before we reach the motorway to Berne... My God! I think he's gone over the top. Look at that...'

Ahead of them as they went downhill, blocking the road like a wall, was a gigantic tank with a gun barrel like a telegraph pole. Newman went cold. It was a German Leopard 11.

The tracked monster was stationary. Except for one moving part. The immense gun barrel, with a massive bulge of a nozzle at its tip, was elevated at a high angle. Slowly it began to drop. In the rear of the car Nancy, stiffened with fear, bit her knuckles, unable to take her eyes off the muzzle which was being lowered. Soon it would be aimed at them point-blank.

Beck had stopped the car. Newman had an awful premonition. He knew the capacity of the Leopard. One shell could blow them into fragments. The car would disappear. The ambulance on their tail would disintegrate. They would have to scrape the remnants of the two vehicles — and their occupants — off the road. The elevation continued to fall.

`They must have gone mad,' Beck said hoarsely.

He reached for the walkie-talkie to contact Lachenal, then dropped the instrument back in his lap. Newman shook his head in agreement. There simply wasn't time to reach Lachenal. Always supposing the officer was tuned in to the agreed waveband.

`No time for Lachenal,' Newman warned.

Know...'

The gun barrel seemed to move in slow motion, remorselessly. Originally it had pointed at the sky. Now it had lost half that elevation. Now it only had a few more degrees to lose before they would be staring straight at that diabolical nozzle.

Nancy glanced at Leupin, a tall, thin-faced man. His face was moist with sweat. He seemed hypnotized by the inevitable descent of the huge tube. Still gazing ahead, he reached out his left hand and grasped her arm, an attempt to bring her a little comfort.

`Hold on tight!' Beck shouted suddenly.

He released the brake and rammed down his foot on the accelerator. The Audi shot forward down the icy road, skidded, recovered its equilibrium under Beck's iron control as they went on speeding towards the tank which was growing enormously in size as it rushed towards them through the windscreen. The gun tip was almost facing them. Newman had a horrible preview of the huge shell hitting. A fraction of a second and the explosion would be ripping through metal, tearing apart flesh, incinerating it in one horrendous inferno under the hammer-blow force of the detonation.

Beck, facial muscles tensed, drove on — passed underneath the gun barrel extending far beyond the tank's chassis. He jammed on the brakes. Although braced, everyone inside the car jerked forward. Beck had stopped within inches of the massive caterpillar tracks. It was no longer possible to fire the cannon. He snatched up the walkie-talkie.

`Lachenal! Are you there? Good. What the fucking hell are you trying to do. There's a bloody great tank which aimed its gun at us. I'm in direct radio communication with Berne. They've heard it all. Get this piece of scrap metal out of my way. Tell it to back off, clear the road... Do you read me...?'

`I've been trying to call you...' The strain in Lachenal's voice came clearly over the walkie-talkie. 'You kept talking. It's all a mistake. Kobler is waiting in a car to speak to you. The tank was to stop you driving past him. He caught me at the main exit from the Clinic.

`Tell Kobler to go jump off a cliff,' Beck rapped back as he reversed the car a few inches, using one hand to drive. 'I'm telling you just once more. Tell that tank commander to back off. There will be an enquiry...'

`I've already given the order,' Lachenal reported when he came back on the walkie-talkie. 'You must understand there are manoeuvres...'

`Dr Bruno Kobler's manoeuvres?'

That silenced Lachenal. They sat without speaking as the Leopard began its reverse movement, its tracks grinding ponderously as the commander backed it and turned it up a fork road just behind him. Beck glanced in the rear view mirror and briefly saluted the driver of the ambulance to show him the crisis was over. As soon as the road was open he shot forward, turning left away from the Leopard and downhill on the road which led to the motorway.

Twenty-Two

`I think, Bob, I should explain Dr Kennedy's presence,' Beck said as he drove along the motorway. 'One of my men — Leupin, in fact, who is sitting behind me — was watching the Bellevue Palace when he saw her leaving. He asked her to wait and called me. It is only two minutes by car from my office — using the siren,' he added with a ghost of a smile.

`I told you on no account to go anywhere, Nancy... Newman began.

`Please!' Beck interjected. 'Let me finish. Her help back there at the gateway was invaluable. She told me she had received an urgent phone call from the Berne Clinic. Her grandfather had taken a turn for the worse. I persuaded her to come back with me to the hotel and I called Dr Kobler. He said they had made no such call, that Jesse Kennedy was fast asleep. We still don't know who tried to lure her out. I was on the way to the Clinic myself and she agreed to come with me in the police car. I thought it best to keep an eye on her...'

`What took you to the Clinic tonight of all nights?' `I have someone inside,' Beck replied cryptically. `Who?'

`You, as a foreign correspondent, are in the habit of revealing your sources?' Beck enquired in a mocking tone. `We drove past the main gateway to that second gate...'

`Which was open,' Newman commented.

`I opened it myself. In the boot is a pair of strong wire- clippers I used on the padlock chain. Quite illegal, of course, but we could see that poor woman fleeing for the gate. Afterwards, I locked it again with an identical padlock I had taken the precaution of bringing with me.'

`You seem amazingly well-organized,' Newman remarked.

`I know the file on Hannah Stuart backwards. I told you of a certain witness I can't use. Afterwards, I paid a visit to that gate from the laboratory and noticed the type of padlock used. I was banking on a second opportunity — although I did not foresee the consequences would be so tragic.'

`What are you going to do?'

`First, you must realize everything I have told you has to be in the strictest confidence. I am walking a tight-rope — I explained that to you also. Now, we are proceeding with the ambulance to the morgue. I have already alerted poor Anna Kleist who will lose yet another night's sleep. But I wish her to hear Dr Kennedy's diagnosis. And you should be thanking her for being there — not chastising her!'

`You are grateful for her help?'

`Yes!' Beck settled himself more comfortably behind the wheel. They had passed the turn-off to Belp and would soon be approaching the outskirts of Berne. He glanced in his rear-view mirror before continuing. 'Dr Kennedy completely neutralized any authority Lachenal might have asserted by her diagnosis of asphyxiation and possible cyanosis. That made it potential homicide. That put it in my court. That check-mated Lachenal...'

`There is some borderline between yourself and Military Intelligence, I gather?'

`Yes. Tricky on occasion. Officially we always cooperate. We are both concerned with the security of the state. A very flexible phrase. If Lachenal could have made out a case that it concerned counter-espionage the dead woman would have been his. Once it became homicide, even suspected, I had him.'

`I suppose as regards Nancy I should really thank you... `You really should!'

Newman glanced in his own wing mirror and then turned as though to speak to Nancy. The ambulance had dropped back to give reasonable clearance. Some distance behind it was a red streak, a Porsche. He wondered whether Beck had seen it.

`I hate the stink of these places,' Newman remarked without thinking as they sat round a table drinking coffee. 'And an empty stomach doesn't help...'

`There you go again!' Nancy flared in a sudden rage. `Anything to do with a medical atmosphere and you're off — and maybe that includes doctors, too?' she ended savagely.

`We are all tired,' Beck intervened. He clasped Nancy's hand affectionately. 'And we have all had a series of most unnerving shocks.' He glanced at Newman. 'Maybe the best solution would be not to take him with you when you visit patients,' he suggested humorously.

They were sitting in the ante-room of the morgue and they had been quarantined there for a long time. At least, that was how Newman termed it to himself. There was the usual smell of strong disinfectant. The walls, painted white, were bare. There was the minimum of furniture. The single window was frosted glass so there was nothing to look out at in the street beyond.

`Anna does a thorough job,' Beck remarked to break the new silence which had descended on their conversation. am sure she will be here soon...'

Dr Anna Kleist, the pathologist, had been waiting to examine the body of the unknown woman as soon as they arrived. Beck had made brief introductions between Nancy and Kleist, who had asked no questions before she disappeared. Newman had just stood up to stretch his legs when the door opened and Anna Kleist appeared. She addressed herself to Nancy.

I'm so sorry to keep you waiting so long. I think I am now in a position to have a preliminary discussion as to how this unfortunate woman died …'

Tweed came into Geneva on Flight SR 837 which landed him at Cointrin at 21.30 hours. He moved swiftly through Passport Control and Customs, ran across the reception hall, clutching his small suitcase, and hailed a cab. He gave the driver a good tip and he was lucky. Green lights all the way along empty streets to Cornavin Gare.

He caught the 21.45 express by the skin of his teeth, panting as he sank into his first-class seat and the train glided out of the station. His short legs were not built for such sprints.

Reaching Bern Bahnhof — or Berne Gare — at 23.34, he took another cab to the Bellevue Palace and registered.

`Take my bag up to the room for me,' he told the porter and turned back to the receptionist, speaking in French. am the executor of the estate of the late M. Bernard Mason who, you doubtless know, was drowned in the Aare. My London office phoned you about this...'

`Yes, sir, we have a note...'

`Thank God for that.' He paused. 'M. Mason was also one of my closest friends. Can I see any papers he left in the safety deposit? I don't want to take them away — you can watch me while I scan them briefly. Something to do with his estate...'

`M. Mason did not have a safety deposit box...'

I see.' Tweed looked nonplussed. 'Could I make a rather unusual request? I would like to look at the room he occupied. That is, if it is still vacant...'

`I do understand, sir. And it will be quite possible.' The receptionist produced a key. The room has been cleaned and all his personal effects impounded by the Federal Police...'

`Naturally. May I go up alone? Just to look...'

`Certainly, sir. The lift...'

`I know where the lift is. I have stayed here before on several occasions.'

Tweed took the lift to the fourth floor and stepped out. The mention of the Federal Police worried Tweed as he inserted the key, opened the bedroom door, went inside and closed and locked the door. That suggested Arthur Beck. Still, they had no reason to suspect Mason had been anything but the market researcher he had registered as under the heading Occupation.

He stood for a moment just beyond the threshold, a mark of respect, and then the inhuman emptiness of the room hit him and he muttered, 'Sentimental old fool...' The thing now was where would Mason have hidden his report?

Tweed had no doubt Mason had compiled a written report on Professor Armand Grange — for just the appalling eventuality which had overtaken him. Mason was a professional to his fingertips. Had been, Tweed corrected his mental comment.

First, he checked the bathroom and the separate lavatory — without much hope. Chambermaids, especially Swiss chambermaids, were notoriously proficient in their cleanliness. He found nothing in either place.

So, that left the bedroom — and very little scope. Which was the same problem Mason must have faced. How had he solved it? Tweed climbed on a chair and searched behind the curtains at the top near the runners for an envelope attached with adhesive surgical tape. Nothing. Wardrobe empty.

He peered underneath two tables, getting down on his hands and knees. Standing up, he stood with his back to a wall and coolly surveyed the room. The only thing left was a small chest of drawers. He opened the top one. Lined with paper, it was impeccably clean — and empty. He ran his hand along the inner surface of the drawer. Zilch — awful word — as the Americans would say.

The notebook was attached with surgical tape to the lower surface of the third drawer down at the back. He found it when he was checking the bottom drawer. Even Swiss chambermaids could hardly be expected to dust this area.

It was a cheap, lined notebook measuring approximately three-and-a-half inches wide by five-and-a-half inches deep. Comparatively cheap. On the cover it still carried the tiny white sticker which gave the price. 2.20 francs. Also the shop where it had been purchased. Paputik. Am Waisenhausplatz Bern. Near Cantonal police headquarters. Which told Tweed nothing.

The neat script — a fine Italianate hand — inside the notebook, which was so familiar it gave him a pang, told him a great deal. The first page began, Professor Armand Grange, age: sixty... Standing by the chest of drawers, Tweed rapidly read everything in the notebook and then placed it in an inside pocket.

Tweed had exceptional powers of concentration — and total recall. In future, if it should be necessary, he would be able to recite Mason's last will and testament — because for Tweed that was what it amounted to — word for word.

He left the bedroom, locked the door and went down in the lift to the ground floor. He handed back the key and pushed his way through the revolving doors. He hardly noticed the cold night air as he turned right, hands thrust inside the pockets of his worn, patched sheepskin.

He covered the ground at surprising speed, his legs moving like stubby pistons. Crossing the road in front of the Casino, he walked on down the right-hand arcade of the Munstergasse, deep in thought. Another part of his brain kept an eye on the tunnel of the arcade ahead, the arcade across the street.

Reaching the large square in front of the Munster, he walked round rather than across it. A car could drive you down crossing wide open spaces. He entered the Plattform through the open gateway and between the bare trees the wind scoured his face as his feet crunched gravel.

He walked on to the low wall and stopped, staring down at the Aare far below. Tweed didn't realize at the time, but he was standing at almost the exact point where Julius Nagy had been tipped into the depths. Nor was he making a pilgrimage to look down where Mason had died. Such an idea would have made the dead man snort.

Tweed was trying to work out how they had killed him. It was the work of a professional, of course. A trained assassin, a commando-type soldier — or a policeman. No one else could have got close enough to Mason to do the job. His eyes scanned the river from the Dalmazi bridge to the Kirchenfeld.

Wiley, 'commercial attaché' at the British Embassy, had given him sufficient details when he phoned him in London for Tweed to work it out. He started from the premise as to how he would have planned the killing.

Dropping the body into the river so it would be battered by one of the sluices had been deliberate, he felt sure. It was a brutal warning, an intended deterrent. No good pushing Mason over the railings lining the Aarstrasse below — the body might easily have simply drifted into the backwater near the Primarschule in the Matte district.

The Kirchenfeld bridge was out — too great a danger of traffic. No, it must have been the small and much lower Dalmazi bridge he decided. A body — Mason must have been unconscious because he was a strong swimmer — dropped from the centre of that bridge would inevitably be carried by the river's natural flow until it was hurled against one of the sluices.

Satisfied that he knew now how it had been done, Tweed walked back to the exit from the Plattform and continued along the Munstergasse. It was very quiet. No sound except his own footsteps. He walked on into the Junkerngasse and the pavement was sloping downwards now. He paused just before he reached his destination, listening. He was very concerned to protect her.

He resumed his walk a short distance and stopped outside a doorway with three bell-pushes. He approved the sight of the newly-installed speak-phone. He pressed the bell-push alongside the name, B. Signer.

`Who is it?' Blanche's voice twanged through the metal grille.

`Tweed...'

`Come on up …'

Twenty-Three

Anna Kleist pulled up a chair to the table and sat down facing Nancy. The two doctors, Newman had already noticed, were on the same waveband. Kleist removed her tinted spectacles, clasped her hands on the table and began speaking.

`Now, this could be important to me, Dr Kennedy. I was told by Mr Beck you were the first person to examine the body of the unfortunate woman who was brought here. You may like to know I have phoned Dr Kobler of the Berne Clinic. He informs me the patient was called Holly Laird from Houston, Texas. According to his version she was suffering from a state of mental imbalance. She overpowered one of the staff, a woman called Astrid, stole her keys to their poisons cupboard and made off with a quantity of potassium cyanide. Although outwardly calm, I detected in Kobler a state of agitation. He qualified every statement he made. "Subject to further verification", was the phrase he used. Could you please tell me your impression after you examined Mrs Laird?'

`It was not a proper diagnosis, of course,' Nancy replied promptly. 'It was carried out under the least ideal conditions. I was surrounded with not only policemen but also armed soldiers. It was dark. I used a torch borrowed from one of the police. You understand?'

`Perfectly...'

`One factor I had to take into consideration was exposure. It was a bitterly cold night. The temperature was sub-zero. Mrs Laird was wearing only a pair of pyjamas and a thick dressing-gown. She may have run quite some distance before she reached the road.'

`Death due to exposure?' Kleist asked. 'That was what you concluded?'

`No!' Nancy began talking more rapidly. 'I had the strong impression she died from some form of asphyxiation. And the complexion of the face showed distinct traces of cyanosis. Her mouth was twisted in the most horrible grimace — a grimace consistent with cyanosis.'

`May I ask, Anna,' Beck intervened, 'what is your reaction to Dr Kennedy's on the spot conclusions?'

When she sat at the table Kleist had taken a scratch pad from a pocket of her pale green gown and she now produced a ball-point pen and began doodling on the pad. Newman guessed it helped to concentrate her thinking. She continued her doodling as she replied in her soft voice.

`My examination so far confirms precisely Dr Kennedy's impression. We have taken blood samples and they, in time, may tell us more...'

`How much time?' Newman demanded. 'That may be a commodity we are very short of — time.'

`A week. Possibly only a few days. Another pathologist is dealing with that aspect. I have requested that he give the matter the most urgent priority...'

`So we just have to wait,' Newman commented.

`I did find something else, something which puzzles me greatly,' Kleist went on. 'There are unexplained lacerations round the neck and over the crown of the skull...'

`You mean she could have been strangled?' Beck probed.

`Nothing like that. It is almost as though her neck and head had been bound in cloth straps...' She was still drawing something on her notepad. 'One explanation — although it seems bizarre to say the least — is that shortly before she died she was wearing some kind of headgear...'

`Some kind of mask?' Beck queried.

`Possibly,' she agreed, with no certainty in her tone. '1 can only be positive at this stage about the asphyxiation...'

`An oxygen mask?' Beck persisted. 'That would fit in with the equipment you'd expect to be available in a clinic. Maybe the oxygen supply was turned off, causing asphyxiation?'

Kleist shook her head. 'No. You have forgotten — she was seen running some considerable distance according to what you told me. It is the agent which caused death we have to isolate and identify. There we have to wait for the results of the blood tests.' She frowned. 'It is those lacerations which 1 find so strange. Still, I am probably saying far too much at this early stage. After all, I have not yet completed the examination.'

`You said she was a Mrs Holly Laird from Houston,' Newman remarked. Did you get any further information from Kobler about this woman's background? How old was she, by the way?'

`Fifty-five. And yes, I did press Kobler for more details. He was reluctant to say much but also, I sensed, wary of not appearing to cooperate fully. Mrs Laird is the nominal head of a very large oil combine. She was brought to the Berne Clinic by her step-daughter in one of the company's executive jets...'

`Any information on her husband?' Newman said quickly.

`He's dead. I couldn't obtain any further details.' She glanced at Beck. 'I had to use your name to get that much out of him...'

`Another similar case,' Newman commented.

`And what might that mean?' Beck enquired.

`I'll tell you later.' Newman stood up. 'And now I think we have taken up more than enough of Dr Kleist's time. I appreciate her frankness at this early stage...'

`My pleasure...' Kleist hesitated, staring at Newman. 'It is just possible I may be able to tell you more by morning.'

`You're working through the night?' Newman asked with a note of incredulity.

`This man...' Kleist also stood up and linked her arm in Beck's, `... is the most unfeeling taskmaster in Switzerland. You do realize that, Arthur?' she added mischievously.

Beck shrugged and smiled. 'You would do the job, anyway, but I appreciate your dedication. And I have the same premonition as Newman — time is what we don't have...'

`Dr Kleist,' Newman said as they were about to leave, wonder if you would mind if I took your doodle? I collect them...'

`Of course.'

She tore off the sheet, folded it and handed it to him. He slipped it inside his wallet and she watched him with a quirkish smile.

Beck drove them back to the Bellevue Palace in a police car and in silence. Nancy had the impression the experiences of the night had exhausted everyone. She waited until they were inside their bedroom before she asked the question.

`What is on that sheet of paper you took off her?'

`Exhibit A. When they doodle, clever people sometimes reveal what is in their subconscious. Prepare yourself for a shock. The Kleist is very clever. Here you are...'

`Oh, my God!'

Nancy sank on to the bed as she stared at the doodle the Swiss pathologist had drawn while she talked. It showed a picture of a sinister-looking gas-mask.

Twenty-Four

Tweed sat down on the sofa and Blanche Signer arranged a cushion behind him, treating him like a favourite uncle. She was very fond of Tweed. He was a nice man, a kindly man. He watched her as she disappeared inside the kitchen, walking with agile grace.

Settling himself against the cushion, he looked round the sitting-room to see if anything had changed since his previous visit. Then he spotted the silver-framed portrait of a late middle-aged man in the uniform of a colonel in the Swiss Army. He blinked, got up and moved swiftly across to examine it more closely.

`That's my stepfather,' Blanche called out as she returned and flourished a bottle behind his back. 'He adopted me when my mother — who died recently — remarried.'

`I don't think I've ever seen him before,' Tweed remarked slowly. 'He's a handsome-looking man.' He made a great effort to speak casually.

`Look!' she said exuberantly. `Montrachet. Especially for you, this one. See!' She held out the bottle for his inspection, so he could note the year. He felt it and the bottle was as chilled as the waters of the Aare. was going to ask for coffee...'

`No,' she told him firmly, 'you've had a beastly journey. All the way from Geneva — from London, in fact. And it's well after midnight. You need something relaxing.'

`I'm sorry to be so late...'

`But you phoned me first...' She was pouring wine into the two elegant glasses already waiting on a low table. `... and like you, I'm an owl, a creature who prefers the night, who perches on branches and hoots a mournful sound!'

I think I'd have trouble getting up a tree these days,' he observed. 'Cheers! And this is very welcome. Do you see your stepfather often?'

`Hardly ever. We don't see eye to eye on anything. He goes his way, I go mine. He doesn't even know what I do to earn my living — at least I don't think so. He is the sort of man who seems to know about almost everything that's happening in Switzerland. He's not regular Army.'

`I see,' said Tweed, and left it at that. imagine it's far too early for you to have found out anything about the man whose name I gave you?'

Shoeless, she was wearing her black leather pants with a white blouse which, even in the dim light of shaded table lamps, displayed in all its glory her cascade of titian hair. She had perched herself next to him on the arm of the sofa, her long legs crossed. He suspected she was capable of teasing him and for a moment wished he had such a daughter, a lively, mischievous girl you could carry on an intelligent conversation with for hours.

`I do already have some possible information about Manfred Seidler,' she said. 'The trouble is ethics are involved — and you were cryptic on the phone. Could I trace a man who had flown in from Vienna very recently on a private Swiss jet. And could I also get any info. on this Seidler type. Are they the same person?'

`Frankly, I don't know,' Tweed replied evasively. 'The man who flew in from Vienna is important. Seidler is purely an inspired guess on my part. I know a lot about him and his activities. Always close to the borderline of legality and, sometimes, probably over the edge.' He drank more of his wine and she refilled his glass. 'This is really excellent. What's your problem about ethics? Not another client?'

`You cunning old serpent..' She ruffled his hair. He couldn't remember when he had last let a woman do that to him but Blanche made it seem the most natural, affectionate gesture in the world. 'Yes, another client,' she said.

`It's important — to my country,' he said, gazing at the photo. 'So probably to yours. We're all in the same boat.'

`You know, I'd hate to be interrogated by you. You're too damned persuasive by half.'

He waited, sipping his wine. She had dropped her hand so it rested on his shoulder. He glanced up from behind his glasses and she was staring into space. He still kept quiet.

`All right,' she said. 'It means breaking a confidence with a client for the first time, but I'm assuming you wouldn't let me do that unless it was something very serious. I'm placing all my integrity in your hands. For me,' she continued on a lighter note, 'that's equivalent to entrusting you with my one-time virginity...'

`That's safe enough with me,' he said drily.

`Bob Newman, foreign correspondent. He asked me only this week to trace a Manfred Seidler. I may have got lucky - but I'm not sure. I have an address—and a phone number—for a Manfred. No guarantees issued that he's Seidler, but he does sound like him...'

`Address, phone number...'

Tweed had his small notebook on his lap, his old-fashioned fountain pen in his hand. She gave him both items of information out of her head. He knew that both would be correct. Like himself she only had to see a face once, hear a name, read an address or phone number, and it was registered on her brain for ever.

`What I've given you,' she went on, 'are the details of a girl called Erika Stahel. She may be Seidler's girl friend. Incidentally, Stahel is spelt...'

`It sounds as though he may be holed up in Basle,' Tweed suggested. 'If it is Seidler...'

`I've no idea. I have an idea I'm going to regret giving you this information.'

`You expect to see this foreign correspondent, Newman, again soon?'

`Why?' she asked sharply.

`Just that I wondered whether you had any idea what story he is working on...'

`You're going too far!' The annoyance showed in her tone and she didn't care. She stood up from the sofa arm, walked across to a chair and sat facing him, crossing her legs again. He gazed into her startling blue eyes and thought how many men would be clay in her slim hands, clay to mould into any shape she wished. She spoke angrily.

`Again you ask me to betray a confidence. Are you really working for the Ministry of Defence in London? I keep your secrets. If I give away other people's, you should cease trusting me!'

`I spend most of my life in a thoroughly boring way — reading files...'

`Files on people I have helped you track across Europe...'

`Files on people who are dangerous to the West. Switzerland is now part of the West in a way it never has been before. No longer is neutrality enough...'

He took off his glasses and started polishing them on his pocket handkerchief. Blanche reacted instantly, tossing her mane of hair as she clicked her fingers. He paused, holding the glasses in his lap.

`You're up to something!' she told him. 'I always can tell when you're plotting some devious ploy. You take off those glasses and start cleaning them!'

He blinked, thrown off balance for a moment. She was getting to know him too well. He put away the handkerchief and looped the glasses behind his ears, sighing deeply.

`Is Newman interested in the Berne Clinic at Thun?' he asked quietly.

`Supposing he was?' she challenged him.

`I might be able to help him.' He reached inside his pocket, brought out Mason's notebook and handed it to her. 'In there is information he might find invaluable. You type, of course? I suggest you type out every word inside that notebook. He must not see the notebook itself. Give him your typed report without revealing your source. Make up some plausible story — you are perfectly capable of doing that, I know. I'll collect the notebook when next I see you.'

`Tweed, what exactly are you up to? I need to know before I agree. I like Newman...'

The data from that notebook will keep him running.'

`Oh, I see.' She ran a hand through her hair. 'You're using him. You use people, don't you?'

`Yes.' He thought it best not to hesitate. 'Isn't it always the way,' he commented sadly. 'We use people. We all use each other.'

Reaching inside his breast pocket he brought out an envelope containing Swiss banknotes. He was careful to hand it to her with formal courtesy. She took it and dropped it on the floor beside her chair, a sign that she was still annoyed.

`I expect it's too much for what I've done,' she remarked. Her mood changed as the blue eyes watched him. Uncrossing her legs, she pressed her knees together, clasped her hands so the fingers pointed at him and leaned forward. 'What is it? Something is worrying you.'

`Blanche, I want you to take great care during the next week or two. There have been two killings, probably three. What I am going to say is in the greatest confidence. I think someone may be eliminating anyone who knows what is going on inside the Berne Clinic...'

Will Newman know?' she asked quickly.

`He is one of the world's top foreign correspondents. He will know. Providing him with that typed report may well be a form of protection. What I am getting at is this — no one must connect you even remotely with that Clinic. I am staying at the Bellevue Palace. Room 312. Do not hesitate to call me if anything happens that worries you. And use the name Rosa— not your own.'

She was astonished and perturbed. It was out of character for Tweed to reveal his whereabouts, let alone to suggest that she could call him. Always before he had called her. She gave a little shiver as he stood up to go and then ran to help him on with his coat.

`It's time you bought yourself a new sheepskin. I know a shop...'

`Thank you, but this is like an old friend. I hate breaking in new things — coats, shoes. I will be in touch. Don't you forget to call me. Anything unusual. An odd phone call. Anything. If I'm out leave a message. "Rosa called..." '

`And you take care, too.' She kissed him on the cheek and he squeezed her forearm. He was glad to see that before opening the door she peered through the fish-eye spyglass. `All clear,' she announced briskly.

As he trudged homeward up the Junkerngasse through the silent tunnel Tweed's mind was a kaleidoscope of conflicting and disturbing impressions. Berne was like a rabbit warren, a warren of stone.

As the raw wind fleeced the back of his head exposed above his woollen scarf he remembered standing by the Plattform wall, staring down at the frothing sluices where poor Mason had been found. Mason had done his job so well — the notebook was a mine of suggestive information.

But the image which kept thrusting into his mind was that silver-framed portrait of Colonel Signer in Blanche's sitting-room. That had been the greatest shock of all. Victor Signer who was now president of the Zürcher Kredit Bank, the driving force behind the Gold Club.

Twenty-Five

Friday, 17 February. Kobler stood behind the desk in his first floor office at the Berne Clinic, his back to the huge smoked glass picture window overlooking the mountains beyond Thun. It was ten o'clock in the morning and he was staring at the large man with the tinted glasses who again remained in the shadows. The soft voice spoke with a hint of venom.

`Bruno, you do realize that last night's experiment was a disaster.' It was a statement, not a question. 'How could the Laird woman possibly have left the grounds? Now we have no way of knowing whether the experiment succeeded or not...'

Kobler never ceased to be astounded by the Professor's colossal self-confidence, by the way he could focus his mind like a burning-glass on a single objective. Wasn't it Einstein who had said, 'Clear your mind of all thoughts except the problem you are working on' — or something like that? And Einstein had been another genius.

Kobler's mind was full of the problem of the police holding the Laird woman's body and the dangerous developments that could lead to. All of this seemed to pass the Professor by. As though reading his thoughts, the soft voice continued.

`I leave to you, Bruno, of course, the measures which may be necessary to deal with those tiresome people who had the impertinence to interfere last night.'

`It will be attended to,' Kobler assured him. 'I may have more positive news — about Manfred Seidler...'

`Well, go on. God knows you've been searching for him for long enough. Another tiresome distraction.'

`I concentrated men in Zurich, Geneva — and Basle,' Kobler explained. 'Knowing Seidler, I felt sure he would hide himself in a large city — one not too far from the border. The most likely, I decided, was Basle. Not Zurich because of the works at nearby Horgen he is too well-known there. Not Geneva because the place crawls with agents of all kinds who spend their lives looking for people. So, the largest number of men I put on the ground in Basle — and it paid off...'

`Do tell me how.'

The flat, bored tone warned Kobler he was talking too much. The events of the previous night had imposed an enormous strain on him. He came to the point.

`We got lucky. One of our people spotted Seidler walking into the rail terminal. He bought a return ticket to Le Pont up in the Jura mountains. It's a nowhere place, a dot on the map. The interesting thing is he didn't use the ticket right away. He just bought his ticket and left the station. We are covering that station with a blanket. When he does use that ticket we'll be right behind him. I'm flying Graf and Munz to Basle Airport from the airstrip at Lerchenfeld...'

`They leave when?'

`They are on their way now.' Kobler checked his watch. 'I expect them to be at Basle Hauptbahnhof within the hour. And Le Pont would be an excellent place to deal with the final solution to the Seidler problem. Everything is under control,' he ended crisply.

`Not everything,' the voice corrected him. 'My intuition tells me the main danger is Robert Newman. You will yourself delete that debit item from the ledger …'

Having gone to bed in the middle of the night, Newman and Nancy slept until the middle of the following morning. Newman, for once, agreed without protest to the suggestion that they use Room Service for a late breakfast.

They ate in exhausted silence after dressing. The weather had not improved: another pall of dense cloud pressed down on the city. Nancy was in the bathroom when the phone rang and Newman answered it.

Who was that?' she asked when she came back into the bedroom.

`It was for you.' Newman grinned. 'Another wrong number...'

`That's supposed to be funny?'

`It's the best I can do just after breakfast. And I'm going out to see someone about what happened last night. Don't ask me who. The less you know the better the way things are turning out...'

`Give her my love...'

Which, Newman reflected, as he walked down the Munstergasse, had been a shrewder thrust than Nancy probably realized. The brief call had been from Blanche Signer. The photographs she had taken of the Berne Clinic from the snow-covered knoll were developed and printed. The surprise, when he arrived at her apartment, was that she was not alone. Carefully not revealing his name, she introduced a studious-looking girl who wore glasses and would be, Newman judged, in her late twenties.

`This is Lisbeth Dubach,' Blanche explained. 'She's an expert on interpreting photographs — normally aerial photos. I've shown her those I took of the Fribourg complex. She's found something very odd...'

The Fribourg complex. Blanche, Newman realized, was showing great discretion. First, no mention of his name. Now she was disguising the fact that the photos were taken at the Berne Clinic. On a corner table where a lamp was switched on stood an instrument Newman recognized in the middle of a collection of glossy prints.

The instrument was a stereoscope used for viewing a pair of photographs taken of the same object at slightly different angles. The overall effect obtained by looking through the lenses of the instrument conjured up a three-dimensional image. Newman recalled reading somewhere that during World War Two a certain Flight Officer Babington-Smith had — by using a similar device — detected from aerial photos the first solid evidence that the Nazis had created successfully their secret weapon, the flying bomb. Now another woman, Lisbeth Dubach, years later, was going to show him she had discovered what? As he approached the table he was aware of a tingling sensation at the base of his neck.

`This building,' Dubach began, 'is very strange. I have only once before seen anything similar. Take a look through the lenses, please...'

The laboratory! The building jumped up at Newman in all its three-dimensional solidity as though he were staring down at it from a very low-flying aircraft. He studied the photos and then stood upright and shook his head.

`I'm sorry, I don't see what you're driving at...'

`Look again, please! Those chimneys — their tips. You see the weird bulges perched on top — almost like huge hats perched on top?'

`Yes, I see them now...' Newman was stooped again gazing through the lenses, trying to guess what he was looking at could mean. Once again he gave it up and shook his head.

`I must be thick,' he decided. 'I do now see what you've spotted but I can't detect anything sinister..

`Once while visiting England,' Dubach explained, 'I made a trip to your nuclear plant at Windscale, the plant where Sir John Cockcroft insisted during its design that they had to install special filters on the chimneys...'

`Oh, Christ!' Newman muttered to himself.

`There was a near-disaster at Windscale later,' Dubach continued. 'Only the filters stopped a vast radiation cloud escaping. The filters you are looking at now at the Fribourg complex are very similar..

`But one thing we can tell you,' Newman objected, 'is that this building has nothing whatever to do with nuclear power.'

`There is something there they are making which needs the protection of similar filters,' Dubach asserted.

Newman, still absorbing the appalling implications of what Lisbeth Dubach had detected in the photos, now found himself subjected to a fresh shock.

As soon as they were alone, Blanche produced a sheaf of papers from an envelope and placed them on the sofa between them. They were, Newman observed, photocopies of typed originals. He had no suspicion that — by making photocopies of the sheets she had typed from the notebook — Blanche was protecting her source, Tweed.

She had gone to the length of typing them single-spaced, whereas her normal typing method was double-spacing, as Newman was well aware. She was careful with her explanation.

`Bob, I can't possibly tell you the identity of the client concerned. I'm breaking my iron-clad rule as it is — never to show information obtained for one client to another …'

`Why?' Newman demanded. 'Why are you doing it now?'

`Bob, don't push me! The only reason I'm showing you this data is because I happen to be very fond of you. I know you are investigating the Berne Clinic. What worries me is you may not realize what — who — you are up against. If you read these photocopies it might put you more on your guard. The power wielded by this man is quite terrifying...'

`So I read these and give them back to you?'

`No, you can take them with you. But for God's sake, you don't know where they came from. They were delivered to you at the Bellevue Palace. See, I've typed an envelope addressed to you at the Bellevue Palace. They were left with the concierge at the hotel...'

`If that's the way you want to play it...'

`I'll make you coffee while you're reading them. I could do with some myself. What Lisbeth Dubach told us has scared the wits out of me. What have we got into?'

Newman didn't reply as he picked up the photocopies and started reading. The report on Professor Armand Grange had, he realized quickly, been prepared by an experienced investigator who wasted no words. There were also signs that he — or she — had been working under pressure.

SUBJECT: Professor Armand Grange. Born 1924 at Laupen, near Berne. Family wealthy — owners of watchmaking works. Subject educated University of Lausanne. Brief period military service with Swiss Army near end World War Two.

Rumoured to be member of specialist team sent secretly into Germany to obtain quantity of the nerve gas, TABUN, ahead of advancing Red Army. Note: Repeat, rumour — not confirmed.

After war trained as doctor at Lausanne Medical School, followed by post-graduate work at Guy's Hospital, London, and Johns Hopkins Memorial Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Brilliant student, always top of his class.

Military service not continued due to eye defect. After qualifying as lung consultant, trained as accountant. He proved to be as brilliant in this field as in the medical.

1954. Due to financial flair became director of Zürcher Kredit Bank at early age of 30. 1955. Founded Chemiekonzern Grange AG with factory at Horgen on shores of Lake Zurich. Chemiekonzern manufactures commercial gases, including oxygen, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and cyclopropane, a gas used in medical practice. Rumoured finance for foundation of Chemiekonzern provided by Zürcher Kredit Bank. Note: Repeat, rumour — not confirmed.

1964. Subject bought controlling interest in Berne Clinic. This establishment reported engaged in practice of cellular rejuvenation since subject took over. General comment: subject speaks fluent German, French, English and Spanish. Has made frequent visits to USA and South America. Believed to be millionaire. I was told by reliable contact no decision affecting Swiss military policy taken without reference to subject. One of the most influential voices in Swiss industrial-military complex. This comprises preliminary report based on sources in Zurich and Berne.

Newman read through the report twice and his expression was grim as he inserted the sheets inside the addressed envelope. Recent incidents flashed into his mind, triggered off by the report.

The doodle he had been given by Anna Kleist, a doodle of a gas-mask. Arthur Beck's comment about Hannah Stuart. 'The body was cremated...' The photograph Julius Nagy had taken of Beck outside the Taubenhalde — talking to Dr Bruno Kobler, chief administrator of the Berne Clinic.

Col Lachenal's reference to tous azimuts — all-round defence of Switzerland. And, most recent of all, Lisbeth Dubach's interpretation of the photos Blanche had taken of the laboratory at the Berne Clinic— `... something there they are making which needs the protection of similar filters.'

Another aspect of the report intrigued Newman: it bore all the hallmarks of a military appreciation with its terse, precise phraseology. That took his mind back to his meeting in the bar at the Bellevue Palace with Captain Tommy Mason. What was it the Englishman had said during their conversation when Newman had queried his research trip?

`Yes. Medical. Standards of and practice in their private clinics...'

Newman had little doubt he had just read a report drawn up by Mason — Mason who had 'accidentally' bumped into him in that bar, who was now dead. He asked Blanche the question, feeling pretty sure he already knew the answer.

`At the end of the report the word "preliminary" is used. That suggests more to come. Did you get the impression from your other client this would be the case?'

`No, I didn't.' Blanche paused. 'Nothing was said about any further data coming from the same source.' She perched on the arm of the sofa next to him. 'Bob, that report is frightening. Where is all this leading to? There is a mention of the Zürcher Kredit Bank — my stepfather is president of that bank...'

`There really isn't a close relationship between you two?'

`If you don't do exactly what my stepfather wants you to — and I didn't — he just forgets all about you. He's very much the military man. Obey orders — or else...'

`Blanche...' He took her hand. `... this whole business is beginning to look far more dangerous than I ever suspected. Is there any way your father could know that we are friends?'

`Our lives have gone separate ways. He doesn't know who my friends are — and doesn't want to know. And he is my stepfather. My mother divorced my real father who is now dead. You see now why we're so far apart...'

`I'd like you to keep it that way.' Newman kissed her and walked across the room to collect his coat. 'I'm off now — and thanks for this report...'

`Take care, Bob. Please. Where are you going now?' `To blow someone up with verbal gelignite...'

Lachenal agreed to see Newman as soon as he arrived. It is only a ten-minute walk from the upper Junkerngasse to the Bundeshaus Ost. On that morning it had been a freezingly cold walk through the warren-like arcades and on the way Newman had taken the precaution of slipping into the Bellevue Palace to leave the report on Grange in a safety deposit box at the hotel.

Coming out of the safety-deposit room, he bumped into a small, plump-faced man who had turned away from the reception counter, a man who blinked at him through his glasses before he spoke.

`I'm sorry,' Tweed said. didn't see you coming... `No harm done,' Newman assured him.

`I haven't been here long,' Tweed rambled on as though pleased to encounter a fellow-countryman. 'Has the weather been as beastly as this recently?'

`For days — and I think we're due for snow. Best thing is to stay indoors if you can. The wind out there cuts you in two...'

`I think I'll take your advice. This is a marvellous hotel to take refuge in...'

Tweed wandered off across the inner reception hall and Newman paused by the door, taking his time putting on his gloves. Sitting in a corner with her back to him was Nancy and the plump Englishman was heading straight towards her table followed by a waiter carrying a tray of coffee — coffee for two.

Newman waited just long enough to see the Englishman sit down opposite her while the waiter served them with coffee. They were talking together when Newman walked out and turned left to the Bundeshaus Ost.

`Lachenal,' Newman began savagely in the Intelligence chief's office as he sat facing the Swiss across his desk, 'what was all that bloody nonsense out at the Berne Clinic? I'm referring to that Leopard tank — for a moment it looked as though it was going to blow us to kingdom come. My fiancée nearly had a fit. I didn't enjoy the experience too much myself. And what is a German Leopard 11 tank doing in Switzerland? If I don't get some answers I'm going to file a story...'

`Permission to reply?' Lachenal's tone was cold, hostile. Even seated he seemed a very tall man, his back erect, his expression mournful. He's not a very happy man, Newman was thinking as he remained silent and the Swiss continued.

`First, I must apologize for the most unfortunate incident due entirely to a brief lack of communication. It was a simple but unforgivable misunderstanding. The people responsible have been severely reprimanded..

`What's a Leopard 11, the new German tank, maybe the most advanced tank in the world, doing in Switzerland..

`Please! Do let me continue. That is not classified. As you know, we manufacture certain military equipment but we buy a lot abroad — including tanks. We are in the process of re-equipping our armoured divisions. We have just decided to buy the Leopard 11 after thorough testing at Lerchenfeld. It is no secret...'

`Tabun. Is that a secret? The special team sent into Germany near the end of the war to bring back Tabun gas. Is that a secret?' Newman enquired more calmly.

`No comment!'

Lachenal stood up abruptly and went over to the window where he stood gazing at the view. Even dressed in mufti, as he was that morning, Lachenal reminded Newman of de Gaulle more than ever. The same distant aloofness at a moment of crisis.

`You know the fohn wind has been blowing,' Lachenal remarked after a pause. 'That probably contributed to the incident outside the Berne Clinic. It plays on the nerves, it affects men's judgement. It is no longer blowing. Soon we shall have snow. Always after the fohn...'

`I didn't come here for a weather forecast,' Newman interjected sarcastically.

`I can tell you this,' Lachenal went on, thrusting his hands into his pockets and turning to face Newman, 'it is true that the Germans had a large quantity of Tabun, the nerve gas, near the end of the war. Twelve thousand tons of the stuff, for God's sake. They thought the Soviets were going to resort to chemical warfare. The Red Army captured most of it. They've now drawn level with the West in a more sinister area — in the development of organo-phosphorous compounds. They have perfected their toxicity...'

`I do know that, Rene,' Newman said quietly.

`But do you also know the Soviets have perfected far more deadly toxic gases — especially those highly lethal irritants which they have adapted for use by their chemical battalions? I am referring, Bob, specifically, to hydrogen cyanide …'

Hydrogen cyanide...'

The two words rang through Newman's head like the clang of a giant hammer hitting a mighty anvil. Lachenal continued talking in a level voice devoid of emotion.

`This substance is regarded in the West as being too volatile. Not so by the Soviets. They, have equipped their special chemical warfare sections with frog rockets and stud missiles. Artillery shells filled with this diabolical agent are also part of their armoury. Did you say something, Bob?'

`No. Maybe I grunted. Please go on...'

`The Soviets have further equipped aircraft with sophisticated spray tanks containing this advanced form of hydrogen cyanide gas. We have calculated that a single shell fired through the vehicle of a missile, an artillery shell or from a spray tank — aimed by a low-flying aircraft — would destroy all life over an area of one square kilometre. Just a single shell,' Lachenal repeated.

Newman heard him but he also heard Nancy's diagnosis of how Mrs Holly Laird had died. And the complexion of the face showed distinct traces of cyanosis. What was it Anna Kleist had replied? My examination so far confirms precisely Dr Kennedy's impression...'

Lachenal walked back from the window and again sat behind his desk, clasping his hands as he stared at his visitor who sat motionless. Newman shook his head slightly, brought himself back into the present. He had the distinct conviction that the Swiss was labouring under enormous tension, that he was concealing that tension with a tremendous effort of will.

`And so,' Lachenal concluded, 'all that started with Tabun. Which was what you came here to talk about — not the Leopard.'

`If you say so, Rene.' Newman heaved himself to his feet and reached for his coat. 'I'd better be going now...'

`One more thing, Bob.' Lachenal had stood up and he spoke with great earnestness. 'We all have to be the final judge of our own conduct in this world. No hiding behind the order of a so-called superior...'

`I would say you're right there,' Newman replied slowly.

It was this conversation which decided Newman as he left the Bundeshaus Ost — decided him that at the very first opportunity he would get Nancy out of Switzerland—even if it meant he had to crash the border.

Twenty-Six

`I'm going to visit Jesse — with or without you,' Nancy announced when Newman returned to their bedroom. `They're holding that Medical Congress reception here tomorrow evening. Are you, or are you not, coming with me?'

`I agree — and I'm coming with you.'

Newman dragged a chair over to the window and sank into it, staring at the view. The dark grey sea of cloud was lower than ever. He thought Lachenal had been right: they would have snow in Berne within the next twenty-four hours. Nancy came up behind him and wrapped her arms round his neck.

`I expected an argument. You're looking terribly serious. God, you've changed since we started out on this trip. Has something upset you?'

`Nancy, I want you to listen to me carefully. Most people think of Switzerland as a country of cuckoo clocks, Suchard chocolate and skiing. In one of his novels a famous writer made a wisecrack about the cuckoo clocks. There's another side to Switzerland most tourists never even dream exists.'

`Go on. I'm listening...'

`That makes a change. The Swiss are probably the toughest, most sturdy nation in Western Europe. They are ruthless realists — in a way I sometimes wish we were in Britain. They'll go a long way to ensure their survival. You know about their military service. This country has been on a wartime footing ever since nineteen thirty-nine. They still are. From now on we have to move like people walking through a minefield — because that's what lies in our path. A minefield...'

`Bob, you've found out something new since you left the hotel. Where have you been? And why the sudden turnabout as regards visiting the Berne Clinic?'

Newman stood up and began pacing the large room while he lit a cigarette and talked. He punctuated each remark with a chopping gesture of his left hand.

`We started out with four people who might have told us what is really going on. Julius Nagy, Mason — the Englishman I met briefly in the bar — together with Dr Waldo Novak and Manfred Seidler. The first two have been murdered — the police are convinced of that although they can't prove a thing. That leaves us Novak and Seidler.

`You want to see Novak again? That's why you agreed to go back to the Berne Clinic?'

`One reason. If I can get Novak on his own for a short time I think he will tell me more — especially after that appalling episode over the death of Mrs Laird. He's very close to cracking, I'm convinced. Incidentally, you mentioned the Medical Congress reception. Why do you want to see Jesse before that takes place?'

`To get more information from him, if I can. To find out, again if I can, what his real condition is. Then at that reception I'm going to confront Professor Grange. We know he's going to be there. Don't try and stop me, Bob — I've made up my mind. Now,' she continued briskly, 'what about Seidler?'

`He could be the key to the whole labyrinthine business. He's phoning me here at five and we'll meet him this evening. Better pack a small case for both of us — essentials for an overnight stay...'

`Why?' she asked suspiciously.

`Seidler sounds even more trigger-happy than Novak. My guess is he'll fix a rendezvous point a long way off — some place we can just reach in time after his call by driving like hell. That way he'll hope we won't have time to alert anyone else. He smells like a man who trusts no one.'

`Oh, by the way, Bob,' she said casually, 'Novak knows I'm visiting the Clinic today. I phoned him while you were out. I got lucky. That creepy old bitch, Astrid, must be off duty. A man answered the phone and put me straight through to Novak. And he told me Kobler is away some place.'

`Kobler's not at the Clinic?' Newman asked quickly.

`That's right. Neither is Grange. Novak did ask me if you would be coming. He sounded anxious that you would be. Can we leave soon?'

`After I've kept a brief appointment with someone in the bar. I met him on my way in. One of your own countrymen — a Lee Foley...'

`And who might he be?'

`A killer...'

He left her on that note, driving home again that she had better watch her step if she wanted to live.

The tall American with the thatch of white hair stood up courteously as Newman came across to his table inside the bar. He already had a drink in a tall glass crammed with ice. Newman said he would have a large Scotch and sat down on the banquette alongside Lee Foley who wore an expensive blue business suit, a cream shirt and a smart blue tie with small white checks. Gold links dangled from his cuffs.

`You're staying at the Bellevue, Lee?' Newman enquired.

`For the moment, yes. Unfinished business.' He raised his glass. 'Cheers! I've just had a visit from that bastard Federal policeman, Beck. I could feel sorry for the gentleman — he can't find a reason to throw me out of the country...'

`Not yet...'

By then I'll be gone...'

`You still keep up your flying — piloting a plane?'

`Just light aircraft. Pipers, stuff like that...'

`What about a Lear executive jet?' Newman suggested.

`Now you're reaching.' Foley smiled his dry smile which was not reflected in the ice-blue eyes. 'Beck,' he continued, 'is concerned with the way the body count is rising. Two so far. The little man you and I talked with — and now some Englishman...'

`Three,' Newman amended. 'An American woman has just died outside the Berne Clinic...'

`I know. Just goes on climbing, doesn't it?'

`I get the impression,' Newman ruminated, 'that Clinic is a place needing a lot of protection. They could afford someone expensive...'

`You'd better apply for the job …'

`More your line of country, I'd have thought...'

Foley put down his glass and stared at it. 'Remember that night we took the town apart on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg? You're the only man who ever drank me under the table...'

`The night you took the town apart,' Newman amended. `Do you still speak good German?'

`I get by. You know something, Bob? The West is getting too civilized. There was a time when the Brits. stopped at nothing when survival was at stake. I'm thinking of Churchill ordering the sinking of the whole goddamned French fleet at Oran — to stop the Nazis getting their hands on some real sea-power. Ruthless. He was right, of course...'

`You're trying to tell me something, Lee?'

`Just having a drink with an old friend, making a few random observations...'

`You never made one of those in your life. I have to go now. See you around, Lee …'

Newman let Nancy take the wheel of the Citroen for the drive to the Clinic. She handled the car with the confident ease of an expert driver along the motorway. In his wing mirror Newman kept an eye on the black Audi behind them which maintained its distance. Beck's minions were on the job.

`We're approaching the turn-off,' he warned.

`And who is driving this goddamn car?'

`You are, I hope — otherwise we're in trouble...'

`How did you get on with that man you went to meet in the bar? What was his name?'

`Lee Foley. I'm still trying to work out why he wanted to see me. He's a cold-blooded sod. As much a killing machine as that Leopard 11 we met. What I can't yet decide is who he is working for. If I knew that I might have the final piece of this enormous jigsaw in my hand.'

`We're both meeting some interesting people,' she observed as she turned off the motorway. He checked the mirror. Yes, the Audi kept on coming. 'This morning while you were out doing God knows what,' Nancy went on, 'I was having coffee in the reception hall with an intriguing little man, another Englishman. He seemed so mild and yet I sensed, under the surface, a very determined personality. Tweed, his name is.'

`What did you talk about?'

`I told him about the Berne Clinic...' There was a touch of defiance in her tone, challenging him to criticize her indiscretion. He said nothing as she chattered on. 'He's a very sympathetic type — easy to talk with. He advised me to be very careful...'

`He did what!'

I've just told you. He explained that as I was a foreigner I ought to tread carefully...' She glanced at Newman. `... that I should stick close to you from now on...'

`And just how did the Berne Clinic subject crop up?'

`No need to get piqued. He's a claims investigator for a big insurance company. It's weird, Bob — last month another American woman, a Hannah Stuart, died under similar circumstances to Mrs Laird. Why always women?'

`I've wondered that myself. Too many unanswered questions. And here we are. Brace yourself...'

They had arrived at the gatehouse to the Berne Clinic. But this time their reception was in surprising contrast to their previous visit. A man they had never seen before came out of the gatehouse, checked their passports, gestured towards the gatehouse and the automatic gates opened.

No sign of a guard, a Doberman, as they proceeded up the drive across the bleak plateau. It always seemed more overcast, more oppressive at Thun than in Berne. Newman thought it could have something to do with the big mountains holding the cloud bank.

`Novak told me to park the car in the lot at the side of the main building,' Nancy remarked. 'And I don't get the same feeling of being watched this time...'

`Maybe with both Grange and Kobler being away the hired help has gone slack. Or maybe they just want to give us that impression. Nancy, park the car in fresh snow...'

`Anything you say. I'm only the bloody chauffeur...'

`And when you get out disturb the snow as little as possible.'

`Christ! Any more instructions?'

`I'll let you know when I think of some...'

Waldo Novak, his fair hair blowing in the wind, came out of the glassed-in verandah entrance and down the six steps to meet them. Alone. No sign of the come-hither Astrid.

`I'll take you straight in to see him,' Novak told Nancy as he shook her hand. He stepped back alongside Newman to let her go first and dropped his voice to a whisper. 'Newman, on your way out, ask Mrs Kennedy to go to the powder room. That will give me the chance to tell you something.'