The Power (71 page)

He had reached the top of the keep and was crouched
behind the low wall. As several of the men
who had dropped off the bulldozer produced weapons, rubbing
their eyes, he fired a long burst from the Uzi. A 9-mm.
weapon, it fired at the rate of six hundred rounds a
minute. He rammed in a fresh magazine, continued firing.

Butler saw a man perched on the top of the wall,
guessed he had cut the electrified wire. He aimed his
Luger, fired twice. His target shot out both arms as
though about to swim, dived head
first down on to the cobbled courtyard.

Marler's glider continued on course, away from the château
, heading for the ridge as he struggled to maintain
a few more feet of height. He braced himself for a crash
landing. The ridge rushed towards him, the nose of the
glider lifted briefly of its own accord. It was this accident
of luck which saved Marler from the machine upending. It
scraped along the rocky ground, came to a stop.

No more than thirty feet away Marler saw that the Land-Rover was still stationed at the edge of the copse
with its driver behind the wheel. He snatched up the
Armalite as the vehicle began to move, fired at random. Mencken, who had witnessed the debacle, shuddered as his windscreen was shattered, all the glass blown away from the frame, but the bullet had missed him. He drove
off at speed, heading for the vital ambush area on route
D417.

Half a mile away, well clear of the action, Norton sat in
his Renault at a road intersection. He lowered his field-
glasses. This time he was not feeling too philosophical about the next stage of the struggle. What could he tell
President Bradford March? At that moment he had no
idea - and he had lost a lot of trained men.

44

'That is what we have saved you from ...'

Tweed almost thundered the words as he stood in the
snow, still gripping Amberg's arm. They had walked out of the front door and beyond the porch to survey a scene of carnage.

Blood disfigured the white of the snow, the bodies of Mencken's assault group lay in grotesque attitudes. Paula stood on his other side, the Browning still in her hand, ready for use. Gaunt had brought up the rear.

As they stood in the bitter cold Butler, who had medical training, completed checking each body to see if anyone was still alive. He stood up from the last corpse and
shook his head. A station wagon full of Mencken's troops had followed the Citroen into the yard. The occupants, all
armed, had been despatched by Newman with his Uzi as they had emerged.

Butler, Cardon and Nield, with Newman's help, were
now carrying the bodies and laying them inside the station
wagon. Amberg was shivering with fear. Tweed gripped
his arm more tightly.

'All this havoc has been caused by the accursed film and
the tape. I've lost track of how many have died - many of
them innocent of any crime. My patience is exhausted, Amberg. You will produce the real film and tape or I will contact Beck, Chief of the Federal Police at the Tauben
halde in Berne. You will be charged as an accessory to mass murder, so make up your mind now. I repeat,' he continued in the same grim tone, 'I've run out of patience
with you.'

'As a banker I felt I should keep my word to Joel Dyson
who deposited ...'

'Forget Dyson. Your own life is in great danger. Can
you at long last grasp that? Look at those corpses - those
men came to kill you. For the last time, where have you hidden the film, the tape?'

'At my bank in Ouchy on the shores of Lake Geneva,'
Amberg gulped, using his free hand to wipe beads of
sweat off his high forehead. 'It belonged to Julius but it
was registered in a different name. It was the only place
no one could connect with us.'

'So they are still in Switzerland,' Tweed commented
more quietly.

'Yes. After this terrible experience perhaps we should
return at once to my country. To Ouchy, I mean,' he
added quickly.

'You will travel with us.' Tweed made no attempt to reassure the Swiss. 'I must warn you we shall face other
attacks on our way back to Colmar. Whether we arrive
there alive is in the lap of the gods.'

He looked at Paula. 'Where are Jennie and Eve? They are safe, I assume?'

'Safe as houses - safer than this castle was,' Paula
replied. 'When you first came out here I nipped back to
the swimming pool. They were both sitting down at the
table, drinking hot coffee from a
percolator.'

To steady their nerves?'

'In the case of Jennie, yes. Eve is made of sterner stuff.
She had an automatic rifle across her lap - she'd brought
it from somewhere. She made the remark that if any thugs
arrived at the pool she'd take some of them with her.
Tough as old hickory,' Paula ended in an admiring tone.

'She is a very strong-minded woman,' Amberg agreed
in a regretful tone. 'I expect she will want to come with
us. A little business matter which can only be settled in
Ouchy.'

'Why?' Tweed demanded. 'Have you transferred all the assets to the shores of Lake Geneva?'

He was suspicious. Ouchy faced the shore of France
and there was a regular boat service from there to Evian.

'Merely a matter of banking policy,' Amberg replied.
'Is there a safe way down to Colmar?'

'No,' Tweed informed him. 'It will be a journey of pure
terror
...'

Norton had recovered swiftly from the shock of the fiasco
of the assault on the château. Sitting in his Renault, he
used his mobile phone to contact Mencken. It took him
several minutes to establish a link free of atmospherics.

'I'm on route D417,' Mencken said, talking quickly
before he could be questioned. 'I'm sure they will come this way heading back to Colmar. After what they faced on their journey up by the other route. All the roads west
are blocked by snow.'

'You'd goddamn better be right,' Norton rasped. 'What
happened at the château? You only sent in two cars and
you had five.'

'I kept Yellow, Orange and Brown in reserve. They'll be needed to finish the job on route D417 ...'

'You could have overwhelmed them if you'd kept to
your original instructions.'

'I don't think so,' Mencken rapped back in a burst of
fury. 'It was that friggin' glider which took us by
surprise...'

'Crap!' Norton shouted down the phone. 'It should
have been shot down
...'

'That's what I like,' Mencken snapped. 'Armchair
strategists who stay a safe distance from the action. I'm
closing this conversation. The new ambushes have to be
checked. ..'

'Mencken! You talk to me like that just once more ...'

Norton swore foully when he realized no one was
listening at the other end. He sucked in a deep breath of
cold air to calm down. There was an important job
waiting for him - at six in the evening he was due to meet
Growly Voice at the Lac Noir rendezvous. It could be
that inside a few hours he'd have both the film and the
tape. He'd then drive to Strasbourg, catch an Air Inter
flight to Paris where he would board Concorde for
Washington.

'Here is Marler, the man who saved the day,' announced
Newman.'I sent Nield out to find him.'

Tweed was waiting impatiently inside a huge living-
room which led to Amberg's bedroom. Newman had
earlier briefed Tweed on the arrival of the glider. Paula
ran forward and hugged the new arrival.

'Thank you,' Tweed said simply. 'You saved our bacon
-and our skins.'

'Really, it was dead easy,' Marler drawled. He lit a king-size. 'Pure luck I floated in when I did. What's next on the agenda? I see they've tidied up the courtyard.'

The station wagon with the bodies is parked inside the
garage building at the back as you suggested,'
Newman
confirmed. 'What about the French authorities?'

'We'll wait until we get to Basle,' Tweed decided. 'I'll call my old friend Chief Inspector Rene Lasalle in Paris.

Otherwise we could be delayed in France for ages with
red tape, statements, all that hogwash—'

He broke off as he heard Eve's voice calling out to
Amberg in the bedroom. She was helping him to pack.

'Two clean shirts here, Walter. They'll see you through until we reach Ouchy.'

'Shouldn't I have more?' Amberg's voice asked quer
ulously.

'Two are enough,' Eve responded firmly. 'We have to
get a move on. Now, these documents
...'

Tut them in the zip-up folder.' Amberg's tone was decisive. 'Don't alter the sequence. They're important.'

Paula had winked at Tweed when she heard Eve again
running the show as she had done a few minutes earlier.
Tweed, who had glanced at his watch a moment before,
frowned and stared at Paula without seeing her.

Marler had amused himself by asking Jennie to show him the indoor swimming pool. He returned with her, stubbed out his cigarette in a crystal glass ashtray. Jennie was gazing at him with more than normal interest as she played with the string of pearls round her neck. Marler
reached out to touch them.

'Those are quite beautiful. . .'

'Don't touch!'
She coloured as Marler withdrew his
hand, raised an eyebrow. 'Sorry I snapped at you. It's just
that I'm superstitious about anyone else handling them.'

Paula noticed that Tweed, despite his impatience to be
on their way, wasn't missing even the most trivial
incident. He frowned again briefly, glancing at the pearls
and then at her expression. Eve strode out of the bed
room at that moment, carrying a large Louis Vuitton
case. Behind her ambled the banker, looking unhappy.

'I'm not sure I've packed enough.'

'You haven't packed anything. I have,' Eve reminded
him. She slapped her hand against the case she'd
perched
on a table. 'Enough in there to get you to Cape Town. We
are only going to Ouchy. And I can see Tweed is in a
hurry. In case you've forgotten it, Walter, from now on
Tweed is your protector. He may even get us to Colmar and points south alive.'

'Don't joke about things like that,' Amberg protested.
'It's bad luck.'

'Someone else is superstitious,' Jennie remarked. 'I'm
not the only crackpot round here. Am I riding in the same
chariot I was transported up here aboard? Hope so, Bob
and Tweed got me here in one piece. Oh dear. You are
shaking your head, Tweed.'