Prelude to Terror (29 page)

“Looking for a house to rent for August.”

The answer was acceptable. Curiosity died. The boy’s attention switched to the hunter, who was now out of sight. “Fritz!” he yelled. “Wait!” He grabbed his youngest brother by the hand and followed at a fast run. Soon they had vanished from sight.

One long deep breath of relief, and Grant was heading in the opposite direction. He paused to look back as he reached the clump of firs that Renwick had selected as his starting-point. The brown Porsche, its colour blending with the tree trunks, its body sheltered by the spread of boughs, was unobtrusive. Nothing stirred. The voices had faded into silence. Reassured, he stepped into the trees.

The small group of fir trees led Grant into the wood itself. Branches were thick, heavily leaved. There was no regular trail, only a natural path where maples and beeches receded enough to give space to move. Renwick must have followed this, he decided, and started down the gentle slope. Underfoot the earth was soft and moist, giving little grip for smooth-soled shoes. Twice Grant skidded. His pace eased, but not his anxiety. He pulled off his tie, jammed it into a pocket, opened his shirt, let his skin breathe. Too damned eager, he told himself: Renwick may have taken another trail back to the car—he could be reaching it right now. He halted, wondering if he should return to wait by the Porsche. And lose more time? Or be accosted by someone from the chalet, who’d be more curious than the boys? Just at that moment of mounting worry, he saw Renwick walking slowly uphill towards him. “What kept you, damn it?”

Renwick’s face was taut, his words clipped. “It’s no go.”

Grant stared at him blankly.

“No Fiat. Only a jeep parked at the side of the house. One man sitting at a table under a tree, reading a newspaper. A dog, sleeping at his feet. That’s
Waldheim
,” Renwick ended in disgust.

“He was in front of the house? How about the back?”

“All windows shuttered tight except for two—his room and the kitchen, probably. No one is there. Nothing stirring. Not a sound.”

“What lies
behind
the house?”

“A meadow.”

“No hill?”

“Beyond the meadow, yes. A small hill. Mostly wooded.”

“Come on, come on,” Grant urged. “We’ll talk as we go. Plenty to tell you. Frank came through at four fifteen. Here, help me unload some of this arsenal. Take these.” He handed over the automatic and its extra clips; the silencer, too. “I’ll keep the knuckle-duster. And this.” Briefly, he showed the grenade. That shook Renwick out of his mood. “Where the—”

“You were sitting on it.” Grant was already starting down the slope.

“Okay, okay,” said Renwick as he caught up with Grant. “I’ll let you see for yourself.” The sooner this was over, the better. “This way.” He changed their direction. “We head to the west, or else we’ll strike the
Waldheim
road—it’s down there, south of us. There’s no one guarding it. I checked. Crossed over, in fact, to get to the wood on its other side and see the house from that angle. Better lower our voices. We’ll be there in three minutes.” Their voices had been low enough. Now Renwick’s approached a murmur. “You had plenty to tell me?”

“About that hill beyond the meadow. How far is it from
Waldheim
itself?”

“Not too far. Scarcely a hundred yards.”

“Any road across the meadow?”

“The road stops at the house.”

“No sign of a trail? Or tracks of car wheels on grass?”

“What are you getting at?”

“There’s a small house, or barn, somewhere on that hill. The Fiat is there.”

Renwick’s quick stride came to an abrupt halt. “Did Frank tell—”

“No. I have my own sources.” Grant’s smile was brief. “Now let’s keep moving.” He set an even faster pace.

“What sources?” Renwick was not amused.

“Three kids, car-struck. I got them off the subject of the Porsche on to a nice new black Fiat.”

“The three that were wandering through the woods? I heard them, didn’t know what to expect, jumped for cover.” Renwick pointed to his right trouser-leg smeared with drying mud. “A bad moment, actually. We were just above
Waldheim
, and the man down there heard them. I thought he was about to rise, come searching. Then the kid with the gun yelled. ‘Bang! I got you!’ and they ran off.”

“So that’s the game they play. No peace for old Gruber.”

“Gruber? Your sources are excellent. Or imaginative?”

“Their argument was real enough. The mighty hunter called this place in the woods a barn. Older brother said it was a house—because people were there.”

People were there... “The kids
did
see the Fiat?”

“They saw it. How do we get this news to Frank? He’s aiming for
Waldheim
at five fifteen, approaching from the south. Your two men will reach the Porsche just about that time too, but what good is that to us?”

Renwick tapped the transceiver he carried in his breast pocket. “No problem with them.” With Frank? That could be more difficult. “What about Mittendorf?”

“Arrested on schedule. So were the two Klars, and Sigmund. Neat job, expert. No fuss.”

“No alarm sent out?” Renwick asked sharply.

“Frank didn’t think so. There wasn’t time, he said. And yet—” Grant hesitated.

“Yes,” Renwick agreed, “there could be some joker in Mittendorf’s office—” He didn’t finish. “What about Gene Marck?”

“He hasn’t been found so far.” Grant almost smiled as he added, “Perhaps he’ll show up at the Majestic tonight.”

“Why should he do that?”

“He wants to get in touch with me. He arranged it—even set the time to suit me. Around midnight.”

At first, Renwick had been amused; then thoughtful. But he made no comment, cut off any further remark from Grant by placing a warning hand on his arm. They slowed their footsteps, came to a halt. Renwick drew Grant to the side of a large tree and knelt, gesturing to him to keep low as he pointed down the steep bank in front of them to a patch of partially cleared ground. Grant had a clear view of a large wooden house in Austrian country style. Broad eaves, two rows of balconies that stretched the full length of the walls, carved shutters that were tightly closed over a multitude of small windows.
Waldheim
... Grant took a more detailed look with the binoculars. The place was deserted, except for the man sitting under one of the remaining trees with a large German shepherd dog at his feet.

Suddenly the dog was alert. Uneasy. It rose, faced the wood, seemed to look directly at Grant. He saw its hackles rise, heard the distant growl. Old Gruber (old?—he was middle-aged, heavily built) spoke to it sharply. On command, the dog sat. Another command, and it lay down, its ears still pointing, its eyes on the trees above. Gruber’s lips moved. (Those damned boys again—was that what he was saying under his breath?) For a long moment, he glared up at the wood. Then he picked up his newspaper and began reading.

Carefully, Grant and Renwick got to their feet, slowly backed away to move swiftly along the top of the bank, keeping a safe screen of trees between them and the house. Again Renwick pointed. Down there, Grant saw, was the meadow—a green carpet sprinkled with wild flowers, stretched between
Waldheim
and a wooded hill. Not really a hill, more like a gentle slope that began flush with the meadow, and rose very gradually for the first hundred yards or so. Only then did it begin to push up, swell into a rounded crest. But the important thing was that its lower stretch of trees curved round to meet the wood in which Renwick and he now stood. He raised Frank’s excellent binoculars.

The difference was astonishing. To the naked eye the meadow had seemed virgin pure. With the field-glasses picking out texture and shades of colour, there showed faint but definite tracks where the fine short grass had been pressed down. Pressed down in one direction: parallel lines, a car’s width apart. They began where the
Waldheim
road ended, crossed the meadow obliquely, and disappeared into the trees that edged this side of the wooded slope. The near side to us, thought Grant. His excitement grew as his eyes found the gap between the trees, wide enough to let a car pass through them. And the small house, or barn? Surely it must be in that clearing almost at the edge of the wood, just beyond the car’s entrance. “Damn this elevation,” he said softly: it wasn’t good, the bank on which he stood was only eight feet high at this point, impossible to look down into the clearing. As his eyes searched desperately, he thought he saw the corner of an eave, a sharp jut of something more solid than the leaves that screened it.

“Yes; that could be it.” He passed the binoculars to Renwick.

Renwick adjusted them. He began with the meadow, traced the parallel lines to the edge of trees. There he paused, looked intently. He nodded. “A house. Definitely. Well hidden.” The car must be there too: only one set of tracks over the meadow, and recent tracks at that—the flowers in the path of the tyres were crushed but still fresh, unwilted. He lowered the field-glasses, handed them back to Grant. He glanced at his watch, lips tight, eyes worried. Do we wait, or do we move in?

“Shouldn’t be too difficult to reach,” Grant was saying. “Come on, Bob, let’s have a closer look.”

“Frank won’t be here for another twenty-three minutes.”

“And headed for the wrong house. No way of warning him?”

“If he hears Rupprecht get off a shot or two, he’ll catch on. So will Gruber.” The element of surprise would be lost, and that was what Frank had been aiming for.

Another problem: Frank and his men would park their car and come in through those woods south of
Waldheim
. They’d be on foot. Like us, Renwick thought. And where will we be if an alarm is given and the Fiat starts racing for the highway?

“Will he catch on in time?” asked Grant. “All it will take is one warning shot from Gruber, and Rupprecht—”

“I know, I know!” They wouldn’t leave Avril behind, either. She had too much valuable information to give. Had they started questioning her? Or was she still half drugged? “We can’t wait for Frank. Let’s move.”

Their path through the trees began to descend. They approached the wooded slope. Voice very low, Renwick said, “We’ll have to scout around the house before we can plan an assault.”

Grant nodded. Plan? We are crazy, he thought, but his hopes were rising.

“We know they have three men. There could be more,” Renwick warned. “They’ll be armed.” And with something heavier than a .22 automatic.

“First we’ll concentrate on that Fiat.”

Renwick repressed a laugh, shook his head. “Colin, I think you’re in the wrong profession.” They began dodging from tree to tree, keeping total silence.

* * *

It wasn’t much of a place. The boys had both been right: half-farmhouse, half-barn. Old and decrepit. It was two-storied, with its three small upper-floor windows all closed. Their shutters, in bad repair, hung drunkenly on their hinges. Downstairs, the shutters were less neglected; they had been swung open. So were the windows, there. The house, even if it stood within a large clearing, was cosied by the heavy woods on the hillside. The air was still: not even the breath of a small breeze stirred the leaves.

Grant exchanged glances with Renwick. They nodded, and began to move around the trees that encircled the cleared ground. No one was on guard, at least on this side of the house. Careless, thought Grant. Or too confident that they couldn’t be traced to this hideaway? For a few moments he gave grudging credit to that wily bird, Bernie Mandel: the main house was not to be used—had that been his stipulation to Mittendorf? If anything went wrong and
Waldheim
was searched, neither police nor State Security would find one shred of evidence that it had been occupied—not even a cigarette-stub, or a bed disarranged, or food in the kitchen except for Gruber’s own small supply. Should the house in the woods be discovered, good old Bernie would play the injured innocent: some intruders must have invaded his property, arrived when the caretaker was out buying his newspaper and groceries, you just couldn’t trust anyone these days. An excuse for everything, and explanations galore—that was Mandel. No wonder Frank was so intent on nailing him.

They reached the trees at the back of the house. The door there was boarded over, but the shutters were open; so were two windows. In the breathless air, sound carried clearly. Voices... Renwick and Grant halted, stood motionless behind a spread of low branches. Two men’s voices: one pitched high and complaining; the other harsh and domineering. The complainer sounded familiar. Even his phrases seemed to be an echo of that earlier conversation which Frank’s men had taped on the Schotten Allee: how long had they to wait, when would the others arrive? That, thought Grant, is the one with ulcers. The other? No, not the big fellow... His memory flashed back to the Two Crowns, a man mounting a staircase, a harsh voice raised in contempt for the nervous woman at the reception desk.

Renwick’s expression showed he had identified the complainer, but he shook his head when the second voice cut the other down with “Acht, shut up! You’ve been yapping for ten minutes by my watch. Our replacements
will
be coming. Jacques is arranging it. Do you question
him
?”

Grant moved closer to Renwick. “Rupprecht,” he whispered.

Renwick nodded, kept listening, but the compulsive talker had been silenced. Where’s the third man? he wondered. He raised two fingers, and shrugged a silent query as he held up one finger alone. Grant got the message. He pointed to the second floor above them. Except, he was thinking, it had no windows in the rear, and only three at the front, all of them closed. If the big man was up there, guarding Avril, he would be finding it suffocatingly hot. They might see him out here, any moment, taking a quick breather.

Renwick had just the same idea. He pulled out the automatic and silencer, fitted them quickly together. Frank’s pop-pistol: only good for close range, but almost soundless. Then he beckoned towards the other side of the house where the barn stood, and they edged carefully through the trees. Grant fitted the brass knuckle-duster over his right hand, tried to force the binoculars into the empty pocket, found them too big, and held them out to Renwick. Renwick half smiled, dropped them under the nearest maple.