‘Call them, then.’ The pouting choirboy look. ‘Call them on my telephone.’ He nodded towards the instrument which sat, silent, on a solid table between the windows. ‘Go on, you want me to give you the number? It’s 5207744.’
‘Do it,’ Bond snapped at Praxi. ‘Bruin, go and take a look at our guests in the cellar. Make sure they’re happy. Then start to search this place. We’re looking for the passports, IDs, and weapons. But first, find his plane tickets. He must have tickets.’
Bruin gave Weisen one of his killing looks, and quickly left the room.
Praxi talked into the telephone, listened, then thanked whoever was at the distant end, and replaced the receiver. ‘Yes, he’s telling the truth.’ She looked as disturbed as Bond felt. ‘The bills were paid this morning. All our baggage has gone.’
‘All right, Wolfie. Perhaps you’d like to tell us where you’re supposed to be going tonight.’
‘Find out for yourselves. Why should I tell you anything?’
Gus moved forward, and it was Bond’s turn to stop him this time. ‘Don’t get rattled, Gus; and don’t use violence. We might need him in one piece before the night’s over.’
‘Quite right. Well done, Captain Bond: you’re a man of sound common sense.’ Glee sprang almost tangibly from Weisen’s face.
‘Don’t bank on it.’ He touched Gus on the shoulder and indicated the door. ‘Praxi, stay with him, would you, and just kill the little rat if he even moves a finger.’
‘With pleasure, James.’
As they went out, so Bruin came up the stairs. ‘I’ll tear the place apart,’ he muttered, bunching his shoulders as he went past them.
On the landing, Bond asked Gus Wimper what options he thought they had. ‘I mean how can we get him away? I’ve no doubt he’s telling the truth about having people at the airport and railway station.’
‘We could hire a boat, but he could be a handful. We’d have to get someone to take us to an unauthorised landing point. I agree, he’s probably got a whole army out there; and if he doesn’t show up at the airport I think they will come looking for him.’
‘I want to find out where he’s supposed to be headed. Perhaps, if we can get him there by another route . . .’
‘We might find out what he’s up to, or what his people – as he calls them – are up to. I don’t think he’s bragging. There really is something heavy about to go down. The man’s crazy, certainly, but he’s too sure of himself. I really . . .’ Gus stopped as though suddenly remembering something. ‘James, look. He’s being picked up. Probably a couple of his men with a launch. There’s always Quinto di Treviso.’
‘What’s at Quinto di Treviso?’ Bond began. Then, ‘Of course, the airport at Treviso. Forty miles or so inland, right?’
‘Absolutely. We could hire an aircraft there, I’m pretty certain. They must have charter firms. Executive jets. We could phone ahead.’
‘But how do we get him to bloody Quinto di Treviso?’
‘We could always hire a car.’
‘Hire a car? Here? In Venice?’
‘You can hire cars at those damned great multi-storey parks in the Piazzale Roma. Out towards the railway station.’ His face lit up at the thought. ‘It’s before you even get to the station. I’d guarantee he hasn’t got any thugs hanging around there.’
‘How do we do it? A couple of doctors, a chauffeur and a nurse? A patient covered in bandages? Mercy dash?’
‘It’s about the only way.’
Bruin came onto the landing. ‘Our stuff’s in there. He hadn’t even bothered to hide it: weapons, papers, everything; and look what I’ve found.’ He brandished a handful of papers.
‘Airline tickets.’ Bond grabbed them, flicking open the first folder. ‘Paris!’ For the first time since Easy had died he sounded elated. ‘Charles de Gaulle . . .’
‘And this,’ Bruin passed over another paper.
‘A private charter. He’s going on to Calais. Tonight.’ Memories flooded back into his mind. He heard Weisen speaking to Monika Haardt as she was leaving. ‘Just remember, dear Monika, that, like Mary Tudor, you shall find Calais lying in my heart.’
Weisen and Monika had thought that line was no end of a joke.
Again, just out of reach, on the cusp of memory, he thought of Claude and Michelle in the car in Paris. Once more he half heard something, then it was gone. This time, though, he knew who had said it, this elusive sentence. Claude. Cold Claude Gaspard had said something that alerted him, but he still could not grasp at the words and hold them.
‘How long do you reckon we’ve got?’
‘An hour. Maybe less.’ Gus looked at his watch.
‘Right, let’s go and do some telephoning. A car, or a van would be preferable; and then a charter direct to Calais from Quinto di Treviso airport.’ He touched Gus’s arm. ‘This must be a real matter of life or death.’
19
DEATH ON THE ROAD
They came fifty minutes later. A sleek, expensive-looking launch, with a pilot and two big lads in rollnecks, leather bomber jackets, and jeans. The big lads looked as though they would kill their grandmothers for a couple of quid, and inform on their grandfathers for even less.
The time, from the plan’s conception to the arrival of the launch, had been full and active. They took turns at guarding Weisen, who sat, unperturbed, carrying on a one-sided conversation with whoever was looking after him. It was as though he regarded the entire business as an opportunity to hold court. None of them were happy about it. The man’s behaviour was too confident and relaxed. ‘It’s like he already won,’ Bruin said in his slightly fractured English. ‘Like he’s in somehow command of us.’
‘He might be, actually,’ Gus agreed, his brow deeply furrowed.
Praxi came back from the bedroom with a light blue dress which looked suspiciously like a high class Nanny’s uniform. It was a deliciously tight fit, and she could easily pass herself off as a nurse. When Bond commented on the Nanny look Praxi raised her eyebrows. ‘I think that’s what it is. You should see the collection of stuff they have in there. Leather, whips, chains, the whole strict discipline armoury.’
‘We like a bit of the old slap rather than the tickle, do we, Wolfie?’ He looked at Weisen, who did not actually blush, but would not meet his eyes.
Bond went through the bathroom cabinets on all floors bringing a cache of pill bottles to Gus, who had found a stock of gauze and a lot of bandages in a large First Aid kit.
‘Know anything about these?’ He pushed one of the bottles under Gus’s nose.
‘Tranxene. Take one at night.’ Gus read the Italian pharmacist’s label. ‘Yes. If I remember correctly these are valium-based. 15 mgs. I suspect if we feed him three he’ll go out like a light – unless he’s been taking them regularly. You can get hooked on these things. Build up an immunity.’
‘Better give him four, then. Just to be safe.’
Bond went down to the kitchen, very much aware that Easy’s body lay below, in the cellar. As he waited for the kettle to boil he hesitated for a moment, then descended the stairs.
They had found a pair of trestles and a board. Easy lay, covered by a sheet, well away from the cell. Behind the bars, Giorgio called out, saying he would help them if they needed an extra pair of hands. ‘I’m not that desperate,’ Bond told him. Harry Spraker still groaned a lot, but there were no sounds from the others.
Giorgio started again, and Bond ordered him to be silent, walking over to the makeshift bier and uncovering Easy’s face. Praxi had manipulated the features, so that she now seemed composed and peaceful in death. He stood for a few minutes in silent respect, looking at her face for the last time; making a solemn vow that Weisen would pay dearly for what had happened. Slowly he left the cellar.
In the kitchen he found milk and a box full of commercial packets of sugar. The little paper sacks had the Marriott Hotel chain logo stamped on them. Then he made the coffee, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he used a jar of instant gr
anules.
He filled a mug with the black liquid, pulled four of the Tranxene capsules apart – dropping the white powder into the mixture. Then, for good measure, he took a fifth and added that, hoping Weisen used sugar.
Putting the mug, sugar and milk on a small tray he went back up to Weisen, who had been moved into the bedroom while Praxi made telephone calls to the car hire companies in the Piazzale Roma, and to the most likely of the three air charter companies listed, in the commercial directory, under the Quinto di Treviso airport.
Gus had made Weisen lie on the bed. He sat nearby, with the Smith & Wesson, make-my-day .44 Magnum, held across his left thigh.
Weisen was prattling, ‘. . . and as for Beria – head of Uncle Joe’s NKVD, that was what they called KGB in those days. Well, of course, Beria, I called him Uncle Lavrenti, had bizarre sexual proclivities – young girls, you know. His agents from Dzerzhinsky Square used to get them for him. He was very fond of third year students from the Ballet School, I remember. Used to say they were wonderfully supple. Apart from that he was always very kind to me. I recall one Christmas he gave me a beautiful gift. Really my favourite that year. I think one of his people must’ve brought it in from France. A little toy guillotine. There was even an executioner, and a tumbrel with Aristos. And it worked. The heads of the Aristos were fixed on special stalks. You laid them on the block, pulled a string, and the blade came down. Whoosh. Clunk. The heads rolled into a basket – no blood though. You stuck the heads back on again. You could use the little Aristos over and over. Then, another year he got one of his men to make me a toy gallows. Now that was fun. Had a trap, the lever, everything . . .’
‘I’ve brought you some coffee, Wolfgang.’ Bond cut off the litany of grisly childhood memories.
‘Oh, my. How kind.’
‘We were having some,’ he lied. ‘So I thought of you. You take milk and sugar?’
‘No milk, lots of sugar though. Black and sweet, that’s how I like it. You know, Uncle Joe had servants who tasted everything before he ate or drank. He had a phobia about being poisoned.’
‘Well, we need you alive, so I promise not to poison you.’ He poured several packets of sugar into the coffee and stirred it in. ‘You drink that up, Wolfie. I don’t know when we’re going to eat, but you’ll get food when we do.’
‘You’re too kind, James.’
‘Yes, I am, aren’t I?’
He left the bedroom. Praxi had just put down the telephone. ‘All done.’ She sounded happy. ‘We’ve got one of those Previa vans. They said it would be best if we were bringing a patient.’
Bond remembered the maroon Toyota Previa in Paris. The one Claude and his gang had leaped from in the attempt to take them in the street outside the Hotel Amber, off the Avenue Kléber. In his head he saw Claude Gaspard again, and heard his voice when Michelle had stopped him talking in the car after the snatch in the Faubourg St Honoré.
This was another step forward. Michelle had cut off his words, and the spoken sentence lay, decapitated, in the corner of his mind. He tried to drag it into the light, but whatever Claude had said remained hidden. At the time Bond had felt a twitch of recognition. There one minute and gone the next. Maddeningly it remained in the shadows, and he still could not pull it fully into the open.
‘James? James, are you listening?’ Praxi shook his shoulder. ‘You didn’t hear any of that, did you?’
‘Sorry, I was miles away.’
‘The air charter firm – Aero Tassì – have got something called a Gulfstream I, so I’ve booked it. They’re filing a flight plan now. I said I wasn’t certain when we’d arrive: it depended on the patient. Costs four arms and legs, James, but I suppose a jet . . .’
‘The Gulfstream I isn’t a jet. It’s small and noisy, even though it’s got a couple of Rolls-Royce Dart engines, but it’ll do the job, Praxi.’
‘Oh, well, it cost six arms and legs then. Incidentally, they say the airfield at Calais is quite small, but they can get in easily. What’s that mean, James?’
She batted her eyelids and, for a second, he thought she was either flirting with him, or trying to take his mind off Easy. Whichever, he was grateful. ‘It means, my dear Praxi, that it’s safe to land there. That they can “get in” – land. Presumably by day and night.’
He asked Bruin to keep a lookout along the Grand Canal side of the house, and Praxi to watch the back. ‘I don’t want any surprises. You’ve said he’s a slippery devil, and we can’t afford things to go wrong now.’
It was ten minutes to five in the evening. Already going dark and chilly, but with no mist.
Gus came out of the bedroom. ‘He’s snoring his head off. Time to get the bandages on, I think, actually.’
‘I think, actually as well, Gus.’
Wolfgang Weisen was out and, even though they shook and pummelled him, he showed no signs of waking. ‘Doped to the eyeballs,’ Bond said as they got to work with bandages. Gus stuck a wide piece of plaster across Weisen’s mouth and taped his eyes with gauze pads. They tied his ankles together with more tape, and secured his hands, at the front, with handcuffs Bond had found, together with the other exotic, weird, and erotic gear in the large bedroom closet. Then they wound him tightly in bandages, so that after ten minutes he looked like a small round mummy. ‘King Tut-Tut-Oh-Dear.’ Bond stood back and looked at the parcel.
‘He looks better wrapped, actually.’ Gus grinned, and at that moment Bruin came panting up the stairs to say the launch was pulling up in front of the house.
They had arranged that Gus would be the one-man reception committee: he was to go out and instruct any arriving bodyguards that Weisen wanted them inside before they left. It was a slight risk, but Weisen, Gus said, was tight-lipped about all operations, particularly when he suspected anybody. ‘I’ve seen these fellows around. They know me.’ He peered out of the half-open door. ‘They might even have been told to look for me at the airport, but I doubt if they know I’m in purdah, actually. Good old Wolfie learned a great deal from his Uncle Stalin. Like speaking softly and carrying a bloody great gun.’ He checked the Smith & Wesson, now regarded as his personal weapon, rammed it into his waistband against the small of his back, and went out of the front door.
From where they stood, inside against the wall, Bond and Bruin were able to hear the conversation clearly.
‘Hi, Gus,’ one of the lads called out. ‘We were told to look for you at the airport today. You give us the slip? The Chief wanted you brought over here like a crate of eggs.’ He spoke German.
‘Yes, sure. I know he had you out there. I came in by train early this morning.’
Another voice said, ‘He’s got the whole place boxed in tight. Our people’re at the airport waiting for him, and he’s got a team over at the railway station as well. What’s going on?’
‘Don’t ask me.’ Gus sounded almost conspiratorial. ‘I’m only the hired help like you guys, but something’s up, that’s for sure. You know what he’s like.’
‘Ja, Big Mama and Big Michelle left this morning.’
Gus made a crude remark about Big Michelle, and they all laughed.
‘You’re right,’ one of the lads chuckled. ‘Like riot helmets.’
Then Gus told the launch pilot to stay where he was. ‘He wants you guys inside for a minute. He’s nearly ready to go, but he has last minute instructions for you. Maybe we’re all going to find out what he’s up to.’
Gus came into the house behind them, drawing the Smith & Wesson just as Bond stuck the ASP into the back of one neck, and Bruno jabbed the other man with an Uzi.
‘Don’t become heroes,’ Gus said. ‘You’ll only end up dead heroes.’
The two hoodlums were lightly armed, for people in their kind of work. Gus did the searches, and only removed two Browning automatics, a knife and a set of knuckledusters from the now cursing men.
All three of them were marched away by Bruin and Gus, while Bond went through the front door and called for the launch pilot to c
ome up for a minute. ‘Leave the engine running. He wants to see you as well.’
The pilot was not armed at all, but he was angry, and became vocally obscene as he was marched to the kitchen, and down the stairs to the cellar, the ASP against his ribs.
‘We’ll send the police to get you out. In a couple of days, actually.’ Gus waved cheerily to the assorted bunch of prisoners now herded behind the bars of the cell from where they shouted curses and profanities. ‘Sounds like a soccer crowd.’ Bond went back up the stairs.
‘And don’t make too many noise!’ Bruin ordered.
In spite of the stream of abuse, they could hardly hear a thing once the heavy vault door was closed in the kitchen.
Bond did not like the idea of Easy’s body being down there with Weisen’s trapped hoodlums, but he consoled himself that it would not be for long. When he turned the key and spun the wheel on the door he also wondered if it had all been just a little too simple. None of them had even tried to put up a fight. He said as much to Gus as they climbed the stairs to get the drugged Weisen.
‘You’d try to fight?’ Gus shrugged. ‘Uzis and pistols everywhere? You think that scum has courage? I tell you, I wouldn’t have fought, actually.’
Bond decided he was probably right.
They had improvised a stretcher from a mattress and heavy brass curtain rods. When Weisen was laid out and covered with blankets, it looked quite professional, and they found it was surprisingly easy to carry, even down the steep stairs and out to the launch.
They hid one of the Uzis under the blankets on the makeshift stretcher, and all of them carried handguns. Bond still had his ASP, Gus, the make-my-day gun, Bruin took the Browning dropped by Harry Spraker, and Praxi, showing no embarrassment, lifted her skirt, to reveal lacy blue underwear, including a suspender belt. ‘It was Monika’s.’ She gave them a smug look as she tucked Gus’s Baby Beretta into a stocking top. ‘Truly, it was Monika’s. Take a good look all of you. You think I’d wear tarty stuff like this?’
‘You’d miss an awful lot if you didn’t,’ Bond drawled, and she blushed, hastily dropping her skirt. Then, once more she gave him a lingering look which seemed to say she could show him a thing or two if he had the time and inclination.