“But how are we going to get there?”
“Leave that to me,” I said, pulling her up beside me on the edge of the highway. The children were still flocking around us. I positioned Elsa in front of me where she could be easily seen by the passing traffic and elevated my thumb in the international hitchhikers’ sign. The first vehicle to come along braked to a stop, and the driver, rattling away in French, swung the door open.
“Monte Carlo,” I said.
“Oui,” he said. Elsa and I, riding up front beside the driver, returned to Monte Carlo in a produce truck filled with aubergine—eggplant. The doorman at the Hotel de Paris did not lift an eyebrow as we, still in our evening attire, alighted from the truck, waved and thanked the truck driver, and swept through the lobby.
I left Elsa at die door of her suite and told her to get some rest. As I entered my rooms, I heard the phone ringing. It was the local AXE agent, a man known to me as Chiclet. He said I was needed at the local AXE office immediately to receive a telephone call from overseas. Hawk was probably calling from the states on a scrambler phone. I changed clothes hurriedly — even in Monaco a dinner jacket in the daytime would call unwanted attention to me-and went to the AXE office, which was in a villa not far from the hotel Chiclet met me at the door and drew me to one side to talk. The place was swarming with die same agents I had seen at the casino, the men assigned to trail Tregor when he left with his winnings.
Before I asked Chiclet about Tregor, I gave him a quick account of what had happened to me and Elsa and asked if we could have the casino director and the croupier picked up immediately.
Chiclet shook his head. Tm afraid that would be difficult,” he said sadly. “Both have vanished— along with Tregor.”
“Vanished?” I asked incredulously. “How could Tregor vanish with all those agents tailing him?”
“We are up against some very crafty intelligence,” Chiclet explained. “Last night when Tregor left the casino, he went back to his hotel. We had men there watching the place at the front and rear. Other agents were in position at the roads leading out of town and along the harbor. But Tregor, the casino director, and the croupier eluded all of them.”
“How did they do it?”
Chiclet shook his head, as if he still disbelieved it. “Tregors room had a balcony facing toward the sea. Sometime in the early hours of the morning a helicopter swooped in over the city.
It lifted Tregor from the balcony and apparently picked up the others somewhere else in town and flew away. An amazing occurrence.”
I agreed.
“We may not turn up anything,” Chiclet went on, “but we’re checking up and down the coast to see if anyone heard the helicopter. If so, they might be able to give us a lead on the direction that it took.”
“And if we don’t turn up anyone who heard the copter, we’re right back where we started,” I added. Then I reminded Chiclet that he had told me I’d be getting a call from overseas.
He nodded. “Hawk wants to talk to you on a scrambled wire. I’ll tell the operator to put the call through.” He led me to an upstairs office, and when Hawk came on the line, he left me alone.
“I hear your quarry slipped away,” Hawk said without preamble. “Any further developments?”
“None,” I told him before I gave him a full report on my own experiences of the previous night.
Hawk snorted. “Sounds like you had a close call.” He paused, and the wires between us hummed briefly. Then he said, “Something happened here that I wanted you to know about. Your hunch about autopsying Z1’s brain paid off. Dr. Tom did find something — a small microscopic disc embedded in the base of the brain. We don’t know what it is or what it means. The lab boys are trying to analyze it now. And Dr. Tom can’t figure out how it got there. There are no marks or signs of an operation on the skull.”
“Still it must mean something,” I said.
“Possibly,” Hawk answered vaguely. “When we find more, if we do, I’ll let you know. What are your plans now?”
“I want to try to pick up the trail of that helicopter and the money,” I told him. “Both are probably still somewhere in the area. The money could lead me to whoever’s at the source of all this. Anyway, it’s the only promising lead I’ve had so far.”
“Yes, well, good hunting,” Hawk said and hung up.
Chiclet was waiting for me in a room downstairs that was filled with men talking on telephones in rapid French and Italian. One wall was covered with a large map showing Monaco and the area surrounding it from the Gulf of Lyon on the French coast on the west to the Gulf of Genoa on the Italian coast on the east. Colored pins were stuck in the map at various points outside of Monaco.
“My agents are making some progress,” Chiclet said, nodding toward the men on the phones. “You see,” he pointed to the map on the wall, “we’ve been contacting authorities in towns along the coast in both directions to question local citizens if they heard a helicopter during the night. Now we’re beginning to get some calls back with the results.”
“Any positive answers?”
“Fortunately, yes,” Chiclet answered, guiding me over to the wall map. He pointed to the pins. “So far, we have had reports from St. Raphael and Frejus that a helicopter was heard. Reports from the east, from Italy, are negative. Apparently, our men headed westward. Now we’re concentrating on the coast beyond Frejus.” He smiled. “Soon we may be able to pinpoint exactly where they went.”
I looked at the map. West of Frejus, along the curving coastline, were St. Tropez, Hyeres, La Seyne, and, farther on, Marseille. But something else caught my eye on the map — a group of islands, lies d’Hyeres, off the coast halfway between Frejus and Marseille. I began to think.
“Look, Chiclet,” I said, “it’s important that I get a helicopter and pilot immediately. Can you arrange it?”
“Certainly. It will take a while, but let me put in a call.”
He used one of the phones and came back, nodding. “There will be a helicopter here within the hour. One of our agents from Nice will be flying it.” He looked at me quizzically. “You have a plan?”
“The way I figure it,” I said, “is that that helicopter didn’t go far — it had never planned to, never really could. My guess is that it landed somewhere near here where it could be hidden and that die money and the men will probably be transferred from it tonight.”
“Transferred?” Chiclet asked, puzzled. “To what?”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. But I would think they would use a fast boat.”
“A fast boat!” Chiclet exclaimed. “Of course. That would be the obvious thing to do.” v? Pointing to the map, I added, “And that makes me think that perhaps the whirlybird we’re looking for might be hidden somewhere around those islands, the lies d’Hyeres, or along the coast. Wherever it is, it’ll be easier to spot from another helicopter that is flying low than from the ground.”
Chiclet agreed with my reasoning. While we waited for the helicopter to arrive, I phoned Elsa at the Hotel de Paris and told her I was going to be tied up for a while on some business but that I wanted her to wait for me there.
“I was going to surprise you,” she said, pouting. “I slipped into your room, but you weren’t there. Are you sure you’re occupied with business?”
“Of course,” I assured her. “You just stay put until I get there. It may be later today, or tonight. Then well have plenty of time for surprises.”
Ten
Since it was inadvisable to attract too much attention in Monaco, Chiclet drove me out of town to a place in the hills where we waited for the helicopter. Before we left the office, more reports had come in that indicated that no helicopter had been heard during the night west of Frejus. It looked like I might have guessed right — that the helicopter had taken cover somewhere nearby.