They, he thought. Sturka. Was Sturka somewhere within a few miles, squirreled away in the pines with Clifford Fairlie?
“Speed it up a little. I can’t see his lights.”
Chad Hill fed gas and the Volvo started to lean on the turns. The headlights swept across thick stands of timber, the forest shadows mysterious in the farther depths.
The road squirmed through three sharp turns; Hill had to use his brakes. They weren’t doing more than thirty kilometers an hour when they came out of the last bend and the headlights stabbed a car standing crosswise in the road.
Line’s hand whipped to the dashboard and gripped its edge. The tires skidded on ice crystals imbedded in the road surface but the treads held and the Volvo slewed to a stop, just nudging the bole of a pine.
Lime dropped his hand and put his bleak stare on the car that stoppered the road.
It was the Porsche that had whipped past them ten kilometers back.
No keys in it; and no papers. “Find out who it’s registered to,” he said to Chad Hill. They were pushing it off the road.
It crunched and bounced down into the trees and Chad Hill was jogging back to the Volvo to call in. Lime got into the driver’s seat. Chad Hill stood outside the open right-hand window with the mike in his hand, talking. Lime said, “Get in,” and turned the starter.
The car rocked with Hill’s weight. The door slammed and Lime backed onto the pavement and put the Volvo in gear and jammed his foot to the floor.
They clipped forward at ninety and a hundred kilometers per hour where the road permitted. But there were no taillights out ahead. “Ask him where those damned vans are.”
Hill into the mike: “Where are the vans?”
“Coming right along,” said the speaker. “We haven’t dropped the ball yet.”
But they had. Fifteen minutes later the signal stopped moving and at half past three they found the Saab on a private road parked at the edge of the trees. Mezetti had got away.
It was a summer cottage. A pencil lake perhaps a mile long, a modern cabin large for its kind, a wooden dock with a gasoline pump. There was ice around the edge of the lake but it hadn’t frozen over yet. Lime stood scowling at the Saab. One of the vans was parked behind it and they had headlamps and spotlights switched on; the place was lit up like an arena. A crew of technicians crawled around the car but what was the point?
The voice crackled on the car radio. “What about footprints in the snow?”
“Plenty of them. Mostly from the driveway down to the dock. Have you got a registration on that Porsche yet?”
“Rental outfit. We’re trying to find out who they rented to. It’s taking a little time—it’s a small outfit, they’re closed Sundays. We’re looking for the manager.”
“He won’t know anything.” Lime let the microphone hang slack in his fist and glared at the Saab.
One of the technicians was talking to Chad Hill down by the dock, making gestures toward the gasoline pump.
From the mike: “Maybe we ought to put out an all-points on him. Throw a blanket net, his picture on TV, the whole thing. What have we got to lose?”
“Forget it.” The manhunt until now had been massive but private. If it went public it might increase Fairlie’s jeopardy.
Chad Hill came loping up from the dock. “Something here, sir. That’s aviation gasoline in that pump.”
Lime growled in his throat and put the mike to his lips. “He may be in a seaplane. There’s a lake here, a pier. An aviation gas pump on the dock.”
“I’ll get coastal radar right on it.”
Headlights swung around the approaching bend and Lime squinted at the advancing car. Nobody would have any business here in wintertime.
The car stopped behind the van and one of the Finnish cops went over to talk to the driver. A moment’s uncertainty and then the wave of an arm—the Finn was beckoning and Lime walked across the drive.
The newcomer was a fat man with a cropped gray head and a roll of flesh at the back of his neck. When he got out of the car Lime recognized the clothes right away—the heavy shoes and the Moscow serge suit.
“You are David Lime.”
“Yes.”
“Viktor Menshikov. An honor.” His little formal bow was anachronistic, it needed a clicking of heels to complete it. “I understand you are attempting to locate Mezetti.”
Menshikov strolled off toward the trees at the fringe of the van’s splash of illumination. The studied casualness was too much; it was something out of a Stalinist movie, heavy-handed and full of melodrama, not the suave cleverness it was intended to provide.
Lime followed him to the trees. They were out of earshot of the others. Lime only stood and waited with a cigarette pasted to his lip.
Menshikov’s face glowed in the chill wind. “It is possible we may be able to help.”
“Is that a fact.”
Menshikov tugged at his earlobe. It was one of Mikhail Yaskov’s gestures and obviously that was where this one had picked it up. Yaskov was the kind of man who inspired imitation by his people. This fat goon with his clumsy efforts at elegance was poor fodder—a fifth-rate agent pretending to be a second-rate one, filled with conspiratorial mannerisms. A bureaucrat; but then everybody had the same problem with personnel these days.
“I am instructed to give you an address and a time.”
Lime waited patiently.
“Riihimäkikatu Seventeen. At sixteen hours and forty-five minutes.”
“All right.”
“Alone of course.”
“Of course.”
Menshikov smiled briefly, trying to look villainous. Bowed his head, inserted his heavy rump into his car and drove off.
The wind rubbed itself against Lime. He took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it into the snow at his feet. Menshikov’s red taillights receded, turned the bend and disappeared. Lime walked over to the Volvo.
He settled wearily into the car, put a cigarette in his mouth, jerked at his tie and opened his collar button and said to Hill, “Yaskov wants a private meet with me at four forty-five.”
That was an hour hence. Chad Hill started the car. “Do you think they’ve got Mezetti?”
“It’s one theory. I’m willing to take an option on it but I’m not buying it yet. I was hoping we wouldn’t get stuck in this kind of flypaper. We haven’t got time. I hope I can sell that to Yaskov—he’s reasonable.”
“He is, maybe. Sometimes his bosses aren’t.”
“Sometimes our bosses aren’t.”
“Uh-huh. You don’t think they’re going to want anything big in trade, do you?”
“They’re careful. That wouldn’t be like them. The price won’t be out of line. It’s all a game, isn’t it.” Lime didn’t care; he was too tired. “At least we haven’t lost him. We thought we had. Better the familiar enemy.…”
He dry-scrubbed his face violently, fighting the red wash of fatigue that kept sliding down across his eyes.
He got out of the car a block up from Number Seventeen. He had a pointilliste view of the street through the slowly drifting mist; moisture gleamed on the pavement like precious gems. He felt the weight of the stubby hammer less .38 that was snugged into the clamshell under his arm. At least Yaskov was a professional. There was a bit of comfort knowing he wasn’t going to get killed accidentally by a trigger-happy amateur.
He turned up his collar and put his hands in his pockets and walked down the black sidewalk, avoiding puddles, his heels echoing on the wet concrete. Lights sparkled along the street and he saw a few blocks away the high lamps that outlined the town’s landmark, the high restaurant built on top of the tall phallic water tower.
The emptiness of the street hardened his gut. He fought down the sour spirals coming up from his stomach and lifted his shoulders defensively.
Just as he went by Number Twenty-one a man came out its door and stood there. It could have been coincidence. The man gave Lime the quick distracted smile of a polite stranger. Threw his head back and drew in a loud breath.