She passed through the small town of Avenches a little before eight, and a few miles farther took the Estavayer-le-lac road. Just past the even smaller village of Payerne, a driveway was marked with a sign for the school and she turned off the paved highway, a little thrill of anticipation fluttering in her stomach. It had been months since she’d last seen Elizabeth, and she wanted to hear all the news.
Elizabeth stood at the window of her dormitory room watching the early evening. There’d been no traffic except for the blue Ford Taurus that had come up the driveway about ten minutes ago. It had been too far away to see who’d been driving, but there were visitors every day.
“Instead of moping around here, why didn’t you have dinner with him?” her roommate, Toni Killmer, asked from the open door to the bathroom. She’d been washing nylons and panties.
“I didn’t want to spend the evening fighting him off,” Elizabeth said, turning around.
Toni’s parents were wealthy New Yorkers. Like Elizabeth she was studying design, but unlike Elizabeth she was here because she’d been kicked out of three other schools, and no one else would have her. She and Elizabeth had become fast friends.
“Why fight? The man is an absolute hunk.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Do you want him?”
“Fuckin’A.”
Elizabeth had to laugh again. “Toni, you are definitely crude.”
“Not crude, sweety, just h-o-r-n-y,” Toni said, and someone knocked on the door.
“Him?” she mouthed the word. “Entrez,” she called.
Kathleen came in, her linen traveling suit lightly crumpled, but her makeup and hair perfect. “I’ve had a terrible time finding you.”
“My God, mother. What are you doing here?”
Kathleen smiled tightly and glanced at Toni, who stood in her bra and panties at the bathroom door. “I’ve popped over to take you to dinner. You haven’t eaten yet, have you, dear?”
“No. But I mean, is something wrong?”
“Of course not. Can’t a mother come visit her daughter at school?”
“Yes, but…
“Get dressed now, Elizabeth, and we’ll find a place to eat. I think I passed a nice-looking restaurant a few miles back.”
Elizabeth tried to read something from the expression in her mother’s eyes, and from her voice. Something was wrong, she was reasonably sure of that. But to what extent there was trouble, it was almost impossible to tell.
“Mother, I’d like you to meet my roommate, Toni Killmer.”
“Mrs. McGarvey,” Toni said pleasantly.
“Of the New York Killmers?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I know your mother. Lovely lady.” Kathleen turned back to her daughter. “Well, get dressed, dear.”
“May I invite Toni along?” Elizabeth asked.
Kathleen’s expression became apologetic. “No, I’m sorry, dear, but I have something…
well, something private to discuss with you. You understand.”
“Yes, mother,” Elizabeth replied, and she did understand. Something was definitely wrong.
Chapter 35
It took Ernst Spranger a full five minutes to work his way in the near-darkness up through the woods from the road to a position where he could see the Design Polytechnic’s main administration building, and beyond it the Picasso Residence Hall. Nothing moved below, but there were lights in most windows; late classes in some of the buildings, and students settling down to their studies in others.
He keyed the burst walkie-talkie. “I’m in position. Everything looks quiet from here.”
He hit the TRANSMIT button.
A moment later Liese came back. “We’re starting up the driveway.”
Spranger wore a black jumpsuit which made him practically invisible. He would guard the west flank of the school property, while Bruno Lessing, who’d taken up position on the other side of the long driveway, would guard the east flank.
“Are you ready, Bruno?” he radioed.
“All set here.” Lessing’s voice came softly from the walkie-talkie speaker.
“Peter?” Spranger radioed.
“ETA at our rendezvous point in about ten minutes,” a third voice answered.
“Stand by,” Spranger acknowledged, and he raised his binoculars as Otto Scherchen and Liese, driving a four-door blue Peugeot sedan, appeared below, passing the administration building and parking at the side of the Picasso Residence Hall. They were posing as Swiss Federal Police Officers. Scherchen would remain in the car as a backup in case of trouble, while Liese went inside to talk to the girl.
Radvonska’s warning in Rome that McGarvey was something special had been very specific.
“If you can trust the man to do anything, trust him always to do the unexpected,” the KGB resident had warned.
“With him it’s not likely you would get a second chance. For instance: It might even be possible that he’s assigned someone to watch his daughter. Be careful that you do not walk into a trap.””
Herr and Frau Schey, posing as the parents of a prospective student, had come to the school and had a long chat with the dean of admissions. Afterwards they’d been taken on a tour of the campus, including the Picasso Residence Hall.
They had actually been inside Elizabeth McGarvey’s room, and they had tramped all over the campus, even having tea with the faculty afterwards. They had returned with detailed sketches of everything.
“The only sign we saw that anyone was paying special attention to the girl was a young man identified for us as one of the staff. An instructor by the name of Armand Armonde.”
“Do you think it’s possible he’s on staff as a cover for a job as bodyguard to the girl?” Spranger had asked.
The Scheys exchanged glances. “I would say no,” Dieter Schey said. “But anything is possible.”
Liese climbed out of the car, straightened the skirt of her conservatively cut blue suit, and entered the building without looking back.
“She’s inside, everybody stay alert,” Spranger radioed.
“Just over seven minutes to rendezvous,” Durenmatt came back. He was at the wheel of a semi tractor-trailer rig, northbound on the Bern-Lausanne highway. The rendezvous point was a turnaround just north of the intersection with the Estavayer-le-lac road.
The timing was tight, but so far everything was going exactly according to schedule.
Spranger tightened his grip on the binoculars as he studied the side and back of the residence hall, and the area between it and the administration building.
If there was to be any trouble it would happen in the next minute or so. If the girl put up a fight, and Liese had to use force to subdue her, and that action was witnessed by someone who decided to interfere the entire operation could fall apart.
“What do you want me to do in that case?” Liese had asked him.
Spranger shrugged. “She will have seen your face,” he said. “If it comes to that you will have no other choice but to kill her and anyone else who could recognize you.”
Liese grinned, the expression feral. “Mr. Endo would not be happy.”
“Perhaps, but it would probably lure McGarvey out of Japan just the same.”
The dormitory corridor smelled of a combination of liquor, cigarette smoke, and a dozen too-strong colognes and aftershave lotions. Liese hesitated in a stairwell, testing the air and listening to the distant but pervasive hum of conversations, radios and stereos and television sets, of clacking typewriters and hair dryers and electric shavers.