The wind came in through the open window. It came right down from Lapland, picking up chill moisture over the frozen Finnish lakes. The sun was a low thin rime in the south, weak pink through haze; it had risen late and would set within three hours.
“I say,” the Englishman muttered. Lime jerked awake.
Across the way there was movement. He snapped the glasses to his eyes and made the rapid search until he found Mezetti’s window. Locked onto it and watched.
Mezetti had put the newspaper down and was at the wardrobe, shouldering into a coat, reaching for a hat.
Lime handed the glasses to the Englishman and wheeled to the telephone. “He’s moving. Coat and hat.”
“Right.”
He got into the Mercedes. Chad Hill at the wheel craned his head around inquiringly.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Lime told him wearily. “He’s probably headed for a drugstore to buy a toothbrush.”
They watched the face of the hotel. Lime plucked the two-way’s mike from its dashboard hook. “Just checking the communications.”
“Loud and clear.”
After two or three minutes Mezetti appeared on the step. He looked around the square with a great deal of care before he walked the half-block distance to the Saab he’d hired in Helsinki yesterday.
Lime had planted a bleeper under the Saab’s bumper. It gave off an intermittent radio pulse. Two vans were equipped to receive the signals and follow by radio triangulation but Lime still preferred line-of-sight tailing; you never knew when the car might trade drivers and then just keep moving with your radio eavesdroppers none the wiser.
Mezetti was having a little trouble getting the car started. Probably the damp cold in the carburetor. Lime flicked the microphone switch. “I’m on him but we’ll want two other cars.”
“All set.”
Finally smoke puffed from the Saab’s pipe and it moved away from the curb.
“Here we go.… Heading into the middle of town.”
“Two vans and three cars on him.”
Lime latched the microphone and spoke to Chad Hill. “Hang back. Don’t tailgate him.”
The Mercedes threaded the narrow streets. Mezetti had turned on his foglights and the red taillights were easy to follow.
A sharp turn into a narrow passage. “Don’t follow him in there,” Lime said. “We’ll go around the block.” And into the mike: “He’s turned into an alley. Maybe checking his tail—I’m letting him go. You’re on the parallel streets?”
“Alcorn’s picked him up. Going west on Alpgatan.”
Lime looked at his map. It was the next boulevard over, running parallel. He spoke terse directions and Chad Hill took the Mercedes around a corner. Lime said, “Slow down. We’ll let the others ride him for a while.”
From the radio: “He appears to be driving around a block now.”
“Not looking for a parking place?”
“No. Trying to make sure he hasn’t got a tail. It’s all right, we’re swapping relays every other corner. He won’t spot us.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“North on the main drag.”
Lime pointed and Hill turned the Mercedes into the main street.
The radio: “He’s going around another block.”
“Sure?”
“It looks that way—okay, he’s made the third turn. One more and he’s gone around the block. Where are you?”
“Near the north edge of town.”
“Keep going. He’ll probably catch up—right, he’s behind you.”
Lime said to Chad Hill, “Can you see him in the mirror?”
Hill had presence of mind enough to move his eyes to the mirror without moving his head. “Not yet.”
“Keep going.”
Things were thinning out; the Finnish pines crowded down toward the road, the paving got narrower, there was ice on the shoulders and snow under the trees.
“There he comes.”
“Keep it down. Let him pass us if he wants to.”
“I don’t think he—oh shit.” And Hill was standing on his brakes.
Lime screwed around in the seat to look back.
Nothing.
“What happened?”
“He turned off back there. Side road.”
“All right. Take it easy, don’t fly apart.”
Hill jockeyed the Mercedes back and forth across the narrow paving, scared to risk the ice shoulders. Finally they made the U-turn and Hill put his foot to the floor.
The acceleration jammed Lime back in his seat. “Slow down damn it.”
The sun flickered through the pines like a moving signal lamp. A car was coming toward them from Lahti; Lime squinted into the sun haze. He made it out to be a green Volvo, the old model two-door. Probably Alcorn.
Hill made the turnoff sedately enough. Lime looked over his shoulder and Alcorn was right behind them.
Ahead the road one-laned into the timber, snow banked close along both sides. The trees shut out the sun. Lime spoke into the microphone, reporting the turn. Afterward he consulted the map.
The road on the map ended at a T-junction with a secondary road that went northwest from Lahti to a string of villages farther north. There were no turnings between here and the T-junction.
“Step it up a little. Let’s see if we can get him in sight.”
An S-curve that made the Mercedes sway on its springs, and then the Saab was there, its taillights just disappearing around a farther bend. “All right, let’s stick to his pace.”
At the T-junction the Saab turned left and Chad Hill spoke a sour oath.
Lime reported: “He’s headed back into town.”
“Son of a bitch. He’s still shaking shadows.”
“He’ll recognize this Mercedes if he sees it again. Tell Alcorn to pull past us. Get me a fresh car at this end of town. You’ve got about fifteen minutes.”
Mezetti drove straight through Lahti without going around any blocks. Alcorn relayed the Saab over to another shadow at the near side of town and at the far edge, going south on the main highway to Helsinki, a new tail picked him up. Lime swapped his Mercedes for a waiting Volvo and went on through along Mezetti’s track. By the time they were out in the pine country Lime had caught up to the other tail; there was some radio chatter and then Lime took over the tail’s position while the tail overtook the Saab and went on ahead, bracketing Mezetti.
They rode him fifteen or twenty kilometers that way. It was getting on for two o’clock—close to sunset in these latitudes. Scandinavians kept their roads cleared in weather far worse than this but there wasn’t much traffic. Pines hugged the road, endless forests of them. Here and there the pavement skirted the edge of a lake and passed a cabin snug with its lights glowing through frost-framed windows: half the residents of Helsinki and Lahti had vacation places on the lakes.
Mezetti seemed oblivious to his company. After dark it would be harder because he would be more acutely aware of headlights if they rode constantly in his mirror.
A Porsche closed from behind, rode a few curves on the Volvo’s bumper and then pulled out to go by. Lime tried to get a glimpse of the driver’s face but the side curtain was steamed up. The Porsche pulled ahead and they were glad to have it between them and Mezetti for a while. Mezetti was doing a fair clip but the Porsche got impatient after a mile or two, put on a burst of speed and slithered past.
Time to switch on the lights. The road hit a quick series of sharp bends, slithering along the shores of linked lakes; occasionally the Saab’s lights winked through the trees.
Mezetti’s performance was amateurish. He’d obviously been coached on blowing a single tail but his maneuverings weren’t the kind that would disclose a multiple shadow, or shake it.
If his people were listening in on the shadowers’ radio chatter they would know he was bracketed but Lime’s organization was not using the standard police-car band; Mezetti’s people would have to know what frequency to monitor and that was unlikely. At any rate they had no way of knowing about the sneak bleeper affixed to Mezetti’s car. It hadn’t been mentioned on the air and it wouldn’t be.