The Scarlatti Inheritance (39 page)

Bending down, eyes in blind fury, was a jowled face Canfield could never forget. It belonged in that hideous foyer of red and black four thousand miles away. It was Hannah, Janet’s housekeeper!

Their eyes met in recognition. The woman’s iron-gray head was covered tightly by a dark green Tyrolean fedora, which set off the bulges of facial flesh. Her immense body was crouched, ugly, ominous. With enormous strength she whipped her hand out of Canfield’s grasp, pushing him as she did so, so that he fell back into the dolly and the bodies surrounding him. She disappeared rapidly into the crowd toward the station.

Canfield rose, clutching the crushed suitcase under his arm. He looked after her, but she could not be seen. He stood there for a moment, people pressing around him, bewildered.

He worked his way back to Elizabeth.

“Take me out of here. Quickly!”

They started down the platform, Elizabeth holding his left arm with more strength than Canfield thought she possessed. She was actually hurting him. They left the excited crowd behind them.

“It has begun.” She looked straight ahead as she spoke.

They reached the interior of the crowded dome. Canfield kept moving his head in every direction, trying to find an irregular break in the human pattern, trying to find a pair of eyes, a still shape, a waiting figure. A fat woman in a Tyrolean hat.

They reached the south entrance on Eisenbahn Platz and found a line of taxis.

Canfield held Elizabeth back from the first cab. She was alarmed. She wanted to keep moving.

“They’ll send our luggage.”

He didn’t reply. Instead he propelled her to the left toward the second car and then, to her mounting concern, signaled the driver of a third vehicle. He pulled the cab door shut and looked at the crushed, expensive Mark Cross suitcase. He pictured Hannah’s wrathful, puffed face. If there was ever a female archangel of darkness, she was it. He gave the driver the name of their hotel.

“Il n’y a plus de bagage, monsieur?”

“No. It will follow,” answered Elizabeth in English.

The old woman had just gone through a horrifying experience, so he decided not to mention Hannah until they reached the hotel. Let her calm down. And yet he wondered whether it was him or Elizabeth who needed the calm. His hands were still shaking. He looked over at Elizabeth. She continued to stare straight ahead, but she was not seeing anything anyone else would see.

“Are you all right?”

She did not answer him for nearly a minute.

“Mr. Canfield, you have a terrible responsibility facing you.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

She turned and looked at him. Gone was the grandeur, gone the haughty superiority.

“Don’t let them kill me, Mr. Canfield. Don’t let them kill me now. Make them wait till Zurich.… After Zurich they can do anything they wish.”

Elizabeth and Canfield spent three days and nights in their rooms at the Hotel D’ Accord. Only once had Canfield gone out—and he had spotted two men following him. They did not try to take him, and it occurred to him that they considered him so secondary to the prime target, Elizabeth, that they dared not risk a call out of the Geneva police, reported to be an alarmingly belligerent force, hostile to those who upset the delicate equilibrium of their neutral city. The experience taught him that the moment they appeared together he could expect an attack no less vicious than the one made on them at the Geneva station. He wished he could send word to Ben Reynolds. But he couldn’t, and he knew it. He had been ordered to stay out of Switzerland. He had withheld every piece of vital information from his reports. Elizabeth had seen to that. Group Twenty knew next to nothing about the immediate situation and the motives of those involved. If he did send an urgent request for assistance, he would have to explain, at least partially, and that explanation would lead to prompt interference by the embassy. Reynolds wouldn’t wait upon legalities. He would have Canfield seized by force and held incommunicado.

The results were predictable. With him finished, Elizabeth wouldn’t have a chance of reaching Zurich. She’d be killed by Scarlett in Geneva. And the secondary target would then be Janet back in London. She couldn’t stay at the Savoy indefinitely. Derek couldn’t continue his security precautions ad infinitum. She would eventually
leave, or Derek would become exasperated and careless. She, too, would be killed. Finally, there was Chancellor Drew, his wife, and seven children. There would be a hundred valid reasons for all to leave the remote Canadian refuge. They’d be massacred. Ulster Stewart Scarlett would win.

At the thought of Scarlett, Canfield was able to summon up what anger was left in him. It was almost enough to match his fear and depression. Almost.

He walked into the sitting room Elizabeth had converted into an office. She was writing on the center table.

“Do you remember the housekeeper at your son’s house?” he said.

Elizabeth put down her pencil. It was momentary courtesy, not concern. “I’ve seen her on the few occasions I’ve visited, yes.”

“Where did she come from?”

“As I recall, Ulster brought her back from Europe. She ran a hunting lodge in … southern Germany.” Elizabeth looked up at the field accountant. “Why do you ask?”

Years later Canfield would reflect that it was because he had been trying to find the words to tell Elizabeth Scarlatti that Hannah was in Geneva that caused him to do what he did. To physically move from one place to another at that particular instant. To cross between Elizabeth and the window. He would carry the remembrance of it as long as he lived.

There was a shattering of glass and a sharp, terrible stinging pain in his left shoulder. Actually the pain seemed to come first. The jolt was so powerful that it spun Canfield around, throwing him across the table, scattering papers, and crashing the lamp to the floor. A second and third shot followed, splintering the thick wood around his body and Canfield, in panic, lurched to one side, toppling Elizabeth off her chair onto the floor. The pain in his shoulder was overpowering, and a huge splotch of blood spread across his shirt.

It was all over in five seconds.

Elizabeth was crouched against the paneling of the wall. She was at once frightened and grateful. She looked at the field accountant lying in front of her trying to hold his shoulder. She was convinced he had thrown himself over her to protect her from the bullets. He never explained otherwise.

“How badly are you hurt?”

“I’m not sure. It hurts like hell.… I’ve never been hit before. Never shot before.…” He was finding it difficult to speak. Elizabeth started to move toward him. “God damn it! Stay where you are!” He looked up and saw that he was out of the sight line of the window. They both were. “Look, can you reach the phone? Go on the floor. Stay down!… I think I need a doctor.… A doctor.” He passed out.

Thirty minutes later Canfield awoke. He was on his own bed with the whole upper left part of his chest encased in an uncomfortable bandage. He could barely move. He could see, blurredly to be sure, a number of figures around him. As his eyes came into focus, he saw Elizabeth at the foot of the bed looking down at him. To her right was a man in an overcoat, behind him a uniformed policeman. Bending over him on his left was a balding, stern-faced man in his shirt sleeves, obviously a doctor. He spoke to Canfield. His accent was French.

“Move your left hand, please.”

Canfield obeyed.

“Your feet, please.”

Again he complied.

“Can you roll your head?”

“What? Where?”

“Move your head back and forth. Don’t try to be amusing.” Elizabeth was possibly the most relieved person within twenty miles of the Hotel D’ Accord. She even smiled.

Canfield swung his head back and forth.

“You are not seriously hurt.” The doctor stood erect.

“You sound disappointed,” answered the field accountant.

“May I ask him questions,
Herr Doktor?
” said the Swiss next to Elizabeth.

The doctor replied in his broken English. “Yes. The bullet passed him through.”

What one had to do with the other perplexed Canfield, but he had no time to think about it. Elizabeth spoke.

“I’ve explained to this gentleman that you’re merely accompanying me while I conduct business affairs. We’re totally bewildered by what’s happened.”

“I would appreciate this man answering for himself, madame.”

“Damned if I can tell you anything, mister.…” And then Canfield stopped. There was no point in being a fool. He was going to need help. “On second thought, maybe I can.” He looked toward the doctor, who was putting on his suit coat. The Swiss understood.

“Very well. We shall wait.”

“Mr. Canfield, what can you possibly add?”

“Passage to Zurich.”

Elizabeth understood.

The doctor left and Canfield found that he could lie on his right side. The Swiss
Geheimpolizist
walked around to be nearer.

“Sit down, sir,” said Canfield as the man drew up a chair. “What I’m going to tell you will seem foolish to someone like you and me who have to work for our livings.” The field accountant winked. “It’s a private matter—no harm to anyone outside the family, family business, but you can help.… Does your man speak English?”

The Swiss looked briefly at the uniformed policeman.

“No, monsieur.”

“Good. As I say, you can help. Both the clean record of your fair city … and yourself.”

The Swiss
Geheimpolizist
drew up his chair closer.

He was delighted.

The afternoon arrived. They had timed the train schedules to the quarter hour and had telephoned ahead for a limousine and chauffeur. Their train tickets had been purchased by the hotel, clearly spelling out the name of Scarlatti for preferred treatment and the finest accommodations available for the short trip to Zurich. Their luggage was sent downstairs an hour beforehand and deposited by the front entrance. The tags were legibly marked, the train compartments specified, and even the limousine service noted for the Zurich porters. Canfield figured that the lowest IQ in Europe could know the immediate itinerary of Elizabeth Scarlatti if he wished to.

The ride from the hotel to the station took about twelve minutes. One-half hour before the train for Zurich departed an old woman, with a heavy black veil, accompanied
by a youngish man in a brand-new fedora, his left arm in a white sling, got into a limousine. They were escorted by two members of the Geneva police, who kept their hands on their holstered pistols.

No incident occurred, and the two travelers rushed into the station and immediately onto the train.

As the train left the Geneva platform, another elderly woman accompanied by. a youngish man, this one in a Brooks Brothers hat, and also with his left arm in a sling but hidden by a topcoat, left the service entrance of the Hotel D’Accord. The elderly woman was dressed in the uniform of a Red Cross colonel, female division, complete with a garrison cap. The man driving was also a member of the International Red Cross. The two people rushed into the back seat, and the young man closed the door. He immediately took the cellophane off a thin cigar and said to the driver, “Let’s go.”

As the car sped out the narrow driveway, the old woman spoke disparagingly. “Really, Mr. Canfield! Must you smoke one of those awful things?”

“Gevena rules, lady. Prisoners are allowed packages from home.”

Twenty-seven miles from Zurich is the town of Menziken. The Geneva train stopped for precisely four minutes, the time allotted for the loading of the railway post, and then proceeded on its inevitable, exact, fated ride up the tracks to its destination.

Five minutes out of Menziken, compartments D4 and D5 on Pullman car six were broken into simultaneously by two men in masks. Because neither compartment contained any passengers, and both toilet doors were locked, the masked men fired their pistols into the thin panels of the commodes, expecting to find the bodies when they opened the doors.

They found no one. Nothing.

As if predetermined, both masked men ran out into the narrow corridor and nearly collided with one another.

“Halt! Stop!” The shouts came from both ends of the Pullman corridor. The men calling were dressed in the uniforms of the Geneva police.

The two masked men did not stop. Instead they fired wildly in both directions.

Their shots were returned and the two men fell.

They were searched; no identifications were found. The Geneva police were pleased about that. They did not wish to get involved.

One of the fallen men, however, had a tattoo on his forearm: an insignia, recently given the term of swastika. And a third man, unseen, unmasked, not fallen, was first off the train at Zurich, and hurried to a telephone.

“Here we are at Aarau. You can rest up here for a while. Your clothes are in a flat on the second floor. I believe your car is parked in the rear and the keys are under the left seat.” Their driver was English and Canfield liked that. The driver hadn’t spoken a word since Geneva. The field accountant withdrew a large bill from his pocket and offered it to the man.

“Hardly necessary, sir,” said the driver as he waved the bill aside without turning.

They waited until eight fifteen. It was a dark night with only half a moon shrouded by low clouds. Canfield had tried the car, driving it up and down a country road to get the feel of it, to get used to driving with only his right hand. The gas gauge registered
rempli
and they were ready.

More precisely, Elizabeth Scarlatti was ready.

She was like a gladiator, prepared to bleed or let blood. She was cold but intense. She was a killer.

And her weapons were paper—infinitely more dangerous than maces or triforks to her adversaries. She was also, as a fine gladiator must be, supremely confident.

It was more than her last
grande geste
, it was the culmination of a lifetime. Hers and Giovanni’s. She would not fail him.

Canfield had studied and restudied the map; he knew the roads he had to take to reach Falke Haus. They would skirt the center of Zurich and head toward Kloten, turning right at the Schlieren fork and follow the central road toward Bulach. One mile to the left on the Winterthurstrasse would be the gates of Falke Haus.