Twenty minutes."
"Let's hope he's still there when we arrive."
"He can't leave again without being seen and stopped."
"Good."
"I think this Gant is not M'sieur Winterborne's big headache, mon ami.
I think he has to decide how he can dispose of an English MP if he is to feel secure.
Don't you agree?"
The shutter was loose and he angrily dragged it open. He squinted into gloom, his breathing hard and dry, the blood still quick in his ears.
Strickland made bombs… He fumbled at his waistband, locating the Smith & Wesson revolver Aubrey had removed from a small wall safe and handed to him as he might have presented a dead rat to a hotel manager.
He could make out the lifeless outlines of furniture. He moved further along the wall, turning the corner to another shuttered window. The shutter resisted his efforts, but its neighbour did not. There were flecks of green paint and dust on his fingers. He looked into the same big room, this time towards the door.
He adjusted the field glasses, focused them against the glass of the window and studied the door frame. Eventually, as his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, he discovered the snail-trail of wire and the small box that had to be the trigger mechanism. Open the door, trigger the device wherever it was hidden, maybe up on one of the exposed beams? and by the time it took a man to walk carefully to the centre of the big room, his head would have been blown off, his torso ripped to shreds. It would need only an ordinary frag grenade with a substituted time-trigger for a pin… Strickland could do that in minutes, with his eyes closed and his hands in mittens.
He studied the window and then broke the small pane nearest the catch.
Pushed it open, then eased it up on the sash, holding his breath.
Waited-exhaled loudly. There could be a dozen devices, a dozen ways to set off one device… Gant climbed slowly over the windowsill and stepped into the room.
He listened to the undisturbed, unalarming silence, then crossed to the door.
Another six inches open and the wire would have parted from its contact and… yes, the tiny box was a transmitter. He looked up, towards the beamed ceiling, low and near his head. Taped to one of the beams was a short tube. Six steps into the room from the door, perhaps a five-second fuse, or even ten to account for any intruder's caution, then the detonation.
He stood for a moment studying the dull metal of the tube, the colourless tape, the grain and knots of the beam to which the device was attached. Strickland might have assumed that no one local, no one innocent, would push open his door but it didn't matter anyway. The message would have remained the same even if French security or anyone else had read the item in a newspaper. Don't come after me, stay out of my back yard.
He looked around the room. The sunlight through the two sets of shutters he had opened revealed an orderliness, a contentment. An old dresser, better than the one in the house in Iowa he had waited years to escape from, was vivid with heavily decorated plates, china cups.
There were paintings on the whitewashed walls that bulged pregnantly with the history of the old building. Sofas covered with bold, stylish cloth, a deeply polished dining table.
He moved warily through to the kitchen… found an animal's bowl, empty of food, the crocks washed and slotted into a plastic drainer, little dust. A neatly folded newspaper in the trash can, no wiring on the rear door. NoIR boxes, no wires that disappeared beneath rugs.
Strickland had left just the one clear message. Where was the animal?
He looked through the window towards the barn, then returned to the big room, out of which a staircase creaked to the first floor. He climbed the worn treads carefully, pausing at each one.
A narrow corridor, two bedrooms, neat in the gloom of shutters, a bathroom.
There was nothing in the bathroom cabinet or the shower cubicle.
He returned downstairs, checked his watch, listened to the continuing silence.
Then he began his search, turning out each of the kitchen drawers, opening all the cupboards. A packet of sugar, coffee the icebox was empty. No calendar, no notepad. He searched the big, gnarled dresser, polished almost to dullness, removing each of the drawers, emptying the cupboards. Strickland evaded him like a wraith, like smoke. Either there had never been anything personal that wasn't on a laptop or it had been methodically cleared from the house before Strickland had left. Check the garbage
A sideboard yielded nothing. He heard the ticking of an old, thick-wasted, big hipped clock that stood against one wall. It became louder and louder, mocking him. Time going, time wasted. Clock—?
He opened the door in its belly and checked the weights. The pendulum flashed dull brass, the lead weights were near the floor. The key, shaped like a pump handle, was inside the door on a string, but there was nothing else. Had Strickland come back here after Oslo?
He opened a small desk using a kitchen knife to break the toy-like lock. It was empty. He opened each drawer and replaced it, his frustration a hot anger. He thrust the last drawer back violently, meeting a small resistance. He pushed again, and something crackled, like stiff card being folded by the thrust of the drawer. He yanked it out and bent to look into the shadowy space. Carefully, he withdrew the small obstruction… a creased snapshot. He smoothed it on the inlaid leather of the desk.
Strickland stared out at him, a severe, hardly permitted smile on his face, his eyes narrowed against the sun. It was some years old, by his appearance. He was the age he had been when the Company still employed him. He was standing with one foot raised on a fence no, it was the railing of some kind of jetty. There were mountains, still snow-tipped, in the distance, and the water of a river or lake rather than the ocean blearily behind the figure.
It was the only tangible indication that Strickland had ever been in the house. Gant put the snapshot in the pocket of his windcheater. The clock ticked, the only other sign of recent habitation.
He looked around the room again. He had been there for almost a half-hour. He listened to the silence that stretched away into the distance, interrupted only by the noises of birds, the occasional lowing of cows. There was nothing else downstairs, except maybe a garbage can in the yard. He'd better check upstairs first.
Fifteen minutes later, he knew that the snapshot was the only thing Strickland had overlooked, except some hair in the drain hole of the shower. He'd either had little there that was personal, or he'd been as thorough in removing all trace of himself as he was when bomb-making. Again, the sensation that the man was lost to him assailed Gant, maddening him as hornets would have done. He crashed a fist against the old plaster of the bedroom wall, hearing its thick hollowness, sensing the blow's force die away in the heavy stones of the house. He'd returned to this room, the larger of the two with the better view over the countryside, after checking the cramped rooms in the roof-space. Dust, dead insects, the rustle of swallows building or feeding young. Nothing else.
He leaned back against the wall, his face raised to the beamed ceiling.
The room smelt of old plaster and abandonment. The bed was neatly made, with the mocking suggestion that Strickland planned to return. He opened the window. Gradually, the scent of grass and flowers and the afternoon heat wafted towards him. Gant's breathing calmed. It was impossible now. Strickland was gone, period… Eventually, his hands pushed him away from the wall and his line of sight fell across the window. The land dropped away from the house towards the Dordogne valley where limestone outcrops were raised like a ragged dyke against the afternoon sky. The specks of cattle, the orderliness of walnut groves, golden houses… For a moment, the dark clothing made Gant believe he was seeing a scarecrow. A figure was walking towards the farmhouse, moving with a caution and slowness that was not entirely caused by the slope of the land. He crouched beside the window. The figure came on, unaware of him, almost bent double at moments, frequently pausing. Then one arm was waved and Gant saw a second figure rise above some sudden contour of the land. As he watched, the two figures began scurrying the last hundred yards or so towards the house. White faces, hands… He made out the shapes of weapons.