“Who will be carrying the stolen device?” I asked.
“This is a particularly big operation for Topcon. Therefore, the head of the organization will convey the stolen property.”
“And who is that?”
Skopje opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His eyes opened wide, and his mouth dropped open even farther. I heard a faint noise behind the swinging doors at Skopje’s back and saw one of them moving. Skopje’s jaw was working soundlessly as he grabbed in vain at a place in the middle of his back. Then he slumped forward on the table.
I reached for Wilhelmina as I rose from my chair. Then I saw the small dart sticking out of Skopje’s back. “Skopje?” I said, lifting his head. But he was already dead.
Just then the waiter turned toward us and saw what had happened. I ignored his shouts and slammed through the swinging doors to a small kitchen and storage area. A door leading to the alley was open.
Moving through the dark doorway, I entered the alley cautiously, Luger in hand. There were heavy shadows, and at first I saw nothing. Then I caught a glimpse of a dark figure emerging in the lighter street beyond.
I ran down the alley, and as I reached the sidewalk, stopped and looked to my right. The man was running down the block, people staring after him.
I holstered the big Luger and started after him. He rounded a corner, and I followed. I was gaining on him. He rounded another corner, and we were on the Rue Bergère. Dazzling neon lights splashed against the darkness. The man was still running up ahead. I kept after him. Tourists and native Parisians stopped and stared. The man disappeared down a narrow side street, and I lost him again.
I ran to the entrance of the street and looked down it into the blackness. He was nowhere in sight. I saw only doorways and a couple of alleys and another intersecting side street. I pulled Wilhelmina out again and proceeded more cautiously. He could be anywhere, and I had the disadvantage of having to flush him out.
I checked each doorway as I passed. They were all empty. It was just possible that he had made it all the way to the intersecting street before I had reached the corner. I passed an alleyway and saw nothing in it. I moved slowly to the next one, sure now that I had lost him.
As I stepped into the entrance of the alley, there was a movement beside me. Something came down hard on my right wrist, and I lost Wilhelmina. Big hands were grabbing me and hurling me off my feet, and I thudded to the cobblestones, bruising my back and shoulder.
When I looked up, I saw that there were two figures standing over me. One was the thin, mustachioed man whom I had been chasing along the Paris streets and beside him was his big, bald hulking comrade, the man who had clobbered me with a piece of board and knocked me to the ground. The thin one held a length of iron pipe, a foot and a half long, in his hand. I wondered if they had lured me here to kill me.
“Who are you?” I asked, hoping to stall them. “Why did you kill Skopje?”
“Ça ne vous regarde pas,” the big man said, telling me it was none of my business.
“Dépechez-vous,” the other one added, urging the big man to get on with it.
He did. He kicked out at my face with a hobnailed shoe. I grabbed at the foot and stopped it from crushing my head in. I twisted hard, rolling so I could keep the pressure on. In a moment there was a crack of bone as his ankle broke. He yelled and hit the pavement.
The wiry one swung the pipe at me, and as I rolled away, it cracked loudly on the paving stones near me. The pipe descended again, but this time I grabbed it and pulled hard. He fell to the ground on top of me, losing the pipe. He then struggled to free himself, but while he was flailing about, I chopped at his neck and heard the snap of bone. He was dead when he hit the pavement.
When I got to my feet, the big man was trying to get back into the act. Just as he struggled to one knee, I kicked him solidly in the head, and he crashed to the pavement. Dead.
I looked for and found Wilhelmina, then went through their pockets. There was no I.D. Because they had spoken French, I figured it was more likely that these were Topcon men from Switzerland rather than Bulgarian agents. Jan Skopje had confided to AXE that he had worked for KGB and Topcon and had helped plan the theft of the monitor device. When Skopje had defected, either Topcon or KGB had to shut him up. It had evidently been Topcon’s job.
I had just about given up on finding anything of value on the bodies when I discovered a small slip of crumpled paper in a pocket of the slim man. It was in French: Klaus Pfaff. A Gasthaus Liucerne, L. Minuit le deuze.
I noticed a tag on the inside of his jacket; it bore the initials H.D. As I slipped the paper into my pocket, I examined the slim man’s physical appearance carefully. Then I hurried into the shadows of the Parisian night.
Three
Early the next morning I checked out some small hotels in the Cite de Trevise, and on the third stop I ran into a little luck. Two men had registered the day before yesterday. One had been slim and the other had been a big man. The slim man had signed in as Henri Depeu, a name that matched the initials in the man’s jacket The big one had been called Navarro.
I could make some guesses by putting my scraps of information together. Depeu was to report to a man called Klaus Pfaff after he had disposed of Skopje and me. The L after gasthaus on the note probably meant Lausanne. At least that was what I had to presume. Depeu was to meet Pfaff at the time designated, midnight, and tell him how things had gone here in Paris. Presumably, Pfaff would then report to the head of Topcon. Unless Pfaff himself were the big man.
My course of action was clear to me. I would go to Lausanne because that was where the stolen monitor would go aboard the Orient Express. And I would meet Pfaff in Depeu’s place. If Pfaff himself was not the Topcon chief who would carry the device on the train, he probably would know the identity of the leader. Maybe I could persuade him to reveal that secret identity.
I could have caught the Orient Express in Paris at the Gare de Lyon, but since I expected to spend quite some time aboard later and since time was of the essence, I hired — a car to drive to Lausanne. I rented a Mercedes-Benz 280SL, a sporty yellow one that still had the new smell inside. By late morning I was out of Paris and on the road to Troyes and Dijon. The weather had warmed up, and the driving was pleasant. The countryside was rolling and green, but it became more hilly as I got closer to Switzerland.
In mid-afternoon I crossed into Switzerland, and the road became narrow and winding for a while. Snowy peaks were appearing in the distance, but they stayed in the background for the rest of the drive. Just outside Lausanne, in the grassy hills of the surrounding countryside, I spotted a car that had broken down on the shoulder of the road. A girl was looking under its hood. I pulled over and stopped, offering to help.
“Anything I can do?” I asked as I walked over to the bright blue Lotus Plus 2.
She looked up and studied me carefully. She was a beautiful, long-limbed blonde in a leather miniskirt and boots. Her hair was not quite shoulder length and had a windblown look about it. After she had focused on me for a moment, her face lit up.
“Nick!” she said. “Nick Carter!”
Now it was my turn to take a second look. “I’m afraid you have the advantage,” I said uncertainly. “I don’t believe...”
“Bonn, last year about this time,” she said in her German accent. “The Groning case. Nick, you don’t remember!”
Then I remembered, too. “Ursula?”
She smiled a wide, sexy smile.