Prelude to Terror (33 page)

“After we’ve arrived.” This road was running through easy countryside now; soon enough, he would need all his reflexes for the winding climbs ahead.

That was wise. She decided to be wise, too. The effect of the drugs had gone, but there might be some of them still wandering around her bloodstream. She was about to suggest a quick stop for a large cup of black coffee, dropped the idea as she sensed it might only add to his problems. She’d drink coffee by the gallon once they had arrived at Fischer’s house. No delays now. “Where is this house? Is it hard to reach?”

“It’s at Grünau. In daylight, it’s easy enough to find. But when the dusk sets in—we could miss the turn-off to the village. We won’t though. We’ll be there before night arrives.” Thank heaven I resisted the idea of coffee, she thought, beginning to feel the urgency that lay behind his impassive face. There were certain types—Bob Renwick was another of them—who seemed to talk less when they had most to tell. “Frank’s pistol—how did Bob get hold of that?”

“Oh,” Grant said vaguely, “he needed it.” Then more precisely, “He had to use it, too. Three times, actually. Close range—it has to be close with that little pea-shooter. He was right up at the door, waiting for Rupprecht and his Luger.” In retrospect, it wasn’t a comforting picture.

“I heard no shots. Just an explosion—”

“Rupprecht didn’t even have a split second’s time to pull a trigger. The .22 doesn’t make much of a sound when it’s fitted with a silencer.”

“And the explosion?”

“A grenade tossed under the car.”

Bob had been at the door of the house, she remembered. “You threw the grenade?”

He nodded. Then he grinned. “I didn’t count on a fire. It makes me sweat, now, to think what I started. Damn fool. Still—it got results.”

“What about the third man? He left me and went downstairs.” Heavy footsteps, receding slowly, while all she could do was lie and listen and wait for them to return. As they would have.

“Knocked out for ten minutes or so.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice rising in aggravation, “
tell
me what happened. Stop being so cryptic. I feel as if I had lost
hours
of my life. A total blank.
Please
, Colin, tell me. Fill it in for me.”

So he did. “Now, what’s your story?” he asked as he ended.

“It isn’t much. They took me—and you saw that. Then there was a house—somewhere in Vienna—but you know that. Next, a car. They had drugged me some more. I passed out—didn’t know where I was when I half opened my eyes—again. Kept them closed. That’s all.” There was a long pause. “I don’t remember very much that happened after you got me out into the meadow. It was you, wasn’t it?” Another car ride, with now a feeling of safety, or unbelievable safety. With arguments too, about hotels and Traunsee. “What were you and Bob fighting over? I thought you liked each other.”

“He’s heavy competition.” Grant’s eyes left the road and looked at her. Then he went back to driving. The flat dull landscape and its spread of houses had been left behind. The highway was now climbing through woods and rising hills.

Avril’s stillness matched her silence.

“He’s in love with you,” Grant said.

She shook her head. “No. We wouldn’t be working together if we were in love. Bob has strong opinions about that. It makes us too vulnerable. Today, for instance—oh, I don’t have to explain. You saw it for yourself.”

“You’re saying that today was an emergency where Renwick needed a cool, calm head and didn’t go to pieces because you were his girl?” What nonsense, he thought, Renwick was as up-tight as I was about Avril’s danger. We took chances, that was all; we didn’t lose our heads.

She was embarrassed. “Something like that,” she said briefly.

“Would you fall apart, be unable to think and act, if you were in love with him and he was the one who was in extreme danger?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t buy that. You wouldn’t panic.”

“I’d make mistakes.” I made two beauties today, she thought, all because I was worrying about you. I scarcely know you and yet your safety—getting a warning to you in time—no, panic wasn’t my trouble; it was dumb stupidity. I relaxed when I should have kept taut, stayed alert.

“Small ones, surely,” he said to lighten her sudden depression.

“Yes,” she said bitterly, “two small ones, lasting less than a minute each. One was outside Klar’s Auction Rooms; the second in my own apartment. Because of them, I nearly ruined everything.”

“Not everything, surely,” he said. But she wouldn’t be comforted. “We have all got guilt,” he tried. “You about your two small minutes. I, about drawing you into danger when you came to warn me this morning. Renwick, because he recruited you and brought you into this kind of life. Sure, he’s got guilt about that. Must have.”

“This kind of life?” she quoted back to him. She was angry. “What’s so wrong with it? There’s a job to be done, a necessary job. Someone has to do it, we can’t all sit back and watch the totalitarians take over.” She eased her voice. “And Bob didn’t recruit me, not in the way you make it sound. I wanted to help. I had some skill in languages. So why not me? No one forced me into this job. It was my own free choice.”

“You enjoy it?”

“I believe in it. I know it has to be done. Or else we’ll all end up as regimented nonentities, scared to death to step out of line or raise our voices. Everything and everyone in place according to the book of Marx. What kind of life is that?”

He agreed, yet he couldn’t resist asking. “The terrorists you are trying to discourage—they don’t fit into that scheme of everything and everyone in place, do they?”

“They prepare the way. What about human rights, then?”

Yes, first terrorism, disruption, anarchy; next, the totalitarian grab for power. That was the pattern. “Some might say you had done enough.” He glanced at her wrist, bandaged loosely with white gauze. “You’ve done your share, more than most of us. Your whole life can’t be given up to this job. A girl as pretty and intelligent as you—there must have been a lot of men in love with you. How many wanted to marry you? A couple of hundred?”

She laughed, then. “Only eight. I nearly married two of them.”

“Polygamist,” he said, keeping the light mood going.

“Not quite. There was a year between.”

“Why didn’t you marry one of them?” Was it Renwick, he wondered, always there in the background, pulling her unconsciously to him? Grant couldn’t get rid of that thought.

“I found I wasn’t in love. Oh, they were attractive, bright, amusing—great fun to be with—I had some happy times. However—” She shrugged her shoulders. There was the soft smile of sweet memories lingering around her lips.

“However what?” he insisted. He had to know.

Her smile vanished. “I couldn’t make the choice.”

“Choice? Between your job and marriage?” He could feel his heart sink. Goddamned fool, he told himself. Did you ever imagine she’d fall for you?

“Which proved I really wasn’t in love, didn’t it?” You can’t have it both ways. Bob had reminded her today. Only, that’s what we all want when we’re faced with a difficult choice: to have it both ways. Whatever made me even think, feel, imagine, that Colin Grant was attracted to me—in spite of himself? Just because I was attracted to him—in spite of myself? Abruptly, she changed the subject by reaching for the map on his knee. “You need help with this. You can’t drive and check our route and talk to me, all the same time. Where are we?” She bent her head over the map. The scarf had slipped; she removed it impatiently, stuck it back into the shopping bag, added the rest of her presents.

“Keep out a pack of cigarettes. I’ve run short,” Grant said.

“Want one now?”

He nodded, concentrating on the curves of the steadily ascending highway. There were some cars ahead, others behind him, all driving into the country for the week-end. Fortunately, their speed was brisk, no loitering, no delays. As the last of the small towns had given way to far-separated villages, the landscape had changed dramatically from gentle undulations to forested heights pressing closer and closer to the road. The sun had set, but the beginning of dusk had been scarcely perceptible, just a gentle and steady greying of blue skies. He switched on his headlights, and took the cigarette she had ready for him. She was studying the map once more, tracing the red lines they had been following from St Polten. “Where
are
we, Colin?” she asked again, annoyed with herself for having noticed so little about this journey.

“We passed some ski runs about five miles back. At Turnitz, I think.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Okay. Next village is Annaberg. Once we’re through there, we’ll take the first side road—uphill, to the left—it isn’t on the map, we’ll have to be on the alert for it. There should be a signpost marked Grünau.” We’d better not miss it, he warned himself: there might be no safe turning place beyond it, with cars pressing him from behind—he’d had to drive up several hairpin bends to the next village before he could find space to point the Citroën back downhill.

She found Annaberg on the map. Still a little distance to go.

The light was fading, if slowly, certainly steadily, a gradual yet definite diminishing. “We’ll make it. The weather is on our side. No clouds, and the moon will be clear. There’s a change predicted, though. Tomorrow night or Sunday. Rain.” Anything to keep the talk impersonal, less disturbing. “The road is certainly good.”

“Fischer said it was a new highway. Actually, as far as I remember from seven years ago, it’s still the same old road, but much upgraded.” It had been entirely re-surfaced, carefully cambered, and widened as much as the fall of hillside would allow.

“You know, you haven’t told me what happened at Klar’s today.”

“That will keep until we’ve got a fire going in Fischer’s living-room. Too long a story to start now. How far to Annaberg?”

“About five minutes. I’d guess, at this speed. We’ve lost some of our company.” The two cars ahead had turned off into a side road; behind them, only one was now in sight.

“So I see.” Grant studied the Mercedes to his rear. Much too close, he thought. It can’t be tailing us. It must be someone eager to get up to his cottage on the mountainside before night sets in. He slowed gradually. The Mercedes hesitated briefly, swept past him. He relaxed again, saw Avril’s amused eyes watching him but she said nothing. He put on speed once more; in three minutes they were at Annaberg.

“Now!” he said. They kept their eyes on the darkening hillsides to their left. And there was the road to Grünau. “It will be rough but short,” he told her. “Uphill all the way on to a broad green valley.”

It was as he said. Except the colours were now lost as dusk ended and the valley was a darkling grey with distant mountain peaks serrated black against the sky. Just ahead, she saw a church spire, a cluster of houses, a swift-flowing stream that ran to meet them. Then—at the end of the little street—a low bridge with a solitary house on its far side. Nothing stirred, no one was to be seen; except for the perpetual rush of water and the Citroën’s engine purring along at reduced speed, there was nothing but silence.

“Is this the Fischer place?” Avril asked as they came over the bridge. She looked doubtfully at the house they were approaching. It’s too close to the village, she thought worriedly, too unprotected; a sprawl of buildings dumped down on an open field.

“No, that’s a farm. Owned by a man called—” Dammit, he couldn’t remember the name. “He keeps an eye on Fischer’s place—it’s just a short way up this hill, can’t see it until we pass the trees. A big family. It looks as if they are all in bed.”

“At five past eight?”

“If you rise at four in the morning, you—” Suddenly a dog barked savagely. Grant’s grip stiffened on the wheel. Avril started. The door of the farmhouse was thrown wide, and a man stood there, silhouetted against the meagre light behind him. He stepped out to intercept them, silencing the dog that followed at his heels, and Grant brought the car to a quick halt. “Goddammit,” he said under his breath. “This is all we need: explanations, excuses—” Would the man recognise him again after all these years, believe he was a friend of Fischer’s?

The man’s stride brought him quickly to the car. He was a large and lumbering shape, purposeful. And what was his name? Grant switched on the interior light, lowered the windows. “
Grüss Gott
,” he tried. Thankfully, the name came to him as he looked at the rugged weathered face under its thatch of grizzled hair, Ernst? Yes, Ernst. But Ernst who?

“
Grüss Gott
.” Ernst, a rough jacket thrown over his shirtsleeves, put two massive hands on the door, stared first at Avril, then studied Grant. His doubts gave way to a nod as he looked more closely. “Herr Grant?”

“Ernst?” They shook hands across Avril. This is my friend, Miss Hoffman.” A smile from Avril, a brief bow from Ernst, and Grant could switch off the light “I sent the wife and Willi up to the house as soon as Herr Fischer telephoned. They have the fire lit and the bed ready.”

“He telephoned?”

“Aye.”

“Hope it didn’t make him late for the opera.”

“He was in a bit of a hurry,” Ernst admitted, a small smile glimmering. It vanished. Pointedly, he added, “Didn’t say there would be anyone with you.” His face, like his voice, was now expressionless. The wife only prepared one bed. I’ll send her back.”

“No need. It’s late. I’m tired enough myself to sleep on the floor. Don’t trouble your wife. Very kind of you. Much obliged.” With a parting wave, Grant rolled up the windows and started the car. “Just around this curve, past the trees,” he told Avril, “and we’ll see the entrance of the driveway to our right.”

The driveway was short, narrow, and rough, ending in a clearing of grass dominated by Fischer’s chalet. There, he drew up on the far side of the clearing. It was best to leave the car as hidden as possible, out of sight from the trail: too obvious to have it standing in front of the house. Had he forgotten anything else? He might have asked Ernst to keep their arrival secret; only that would have aroused curiosity, even suspicion. As for the villagers—they couldn’t all have been in bed, but no one had bothered to glance out; windows had remained tightly curtained. It was possible the sound of a car driving through on a Friday night meant only one thing: Herr Fischer arriving for his usual week-end. He hoped so. The less attention drawn to his visit, the better.