«Attention! Le train de sept heures…»
The final announcement came over the speakers. Simultaneously, a train from Lausanne was arriving on the adjacent track. In moments the platform would be jammed with tourists flocking into Geneva for the weekend, the way Midlanders scrambled into Charing Cross for a brief fling in London, thought the man by the pillar.
The train from Lausanne came to a stop. The passenger cars disgorged; the platform was again packed with bodies.
The figure of the tall American was suddenly in the vestibule of car seven. He was blocked at the doorway by a porter carrying someone’s luggage. It was an irritating moment that might have provoked an argument under normal circumstances. But the circumstances were not normal for Holcroft. He expressed no annoyance; his face was set, unresponsive to the moment, his eyes aware of the physical confusion but not concerned with it. There was an air of detachment about him; he was in the grips of lingering astonishment. This was emphasized by the way he clutched the thick manila envelope between his arm and his chest, his hand curved around the edge, his fingers pressed into the paper with such force they formed a fist.
It was the cause of his consternation, this document prepared a lifetime ago. It was the miracle they had waited for, lived for—the man by the pillar and those who had gone before him. More than thirty years of anticipation. And now it had surfaced at last!
The journey had begun.
Holcroft entered the flow of human traffic toward the ramp that led up to the gate. Although jostled by those around him, he was oblivious of the crowds, his eyes absently directed ahead. At nothing.
Suddenly, the man by the pillar was alarmed. Years of training had taught him to look for the unexpected, the infinitesimal break in a normal pattern. He saw that break now. Two men, their faces unlike any around them, joyless, without curiosity or expectation, filled only with hostile intent.
They were surging through the crowds, one man slightly ahead of the other. Their eyes were on the American; they were after him! The man in front had his right hand in his pocket. The man behind had his left hand concealed across his chest, beneath his unbuttoned overcoat. The hidden hands gripped weapons! The man by the pillar was convinced of that.
He sprang away from the concrete column and crashed his way into the crowd. There were no seconds to be lost. The two men were gaining on Holcroft. They were after the envelope! It was the only possible explanation. And if that were the case, it meant that word of the miracle had leaked out of Geneva! The document inside that envelope was priceless, beyond value. Beside it, the American’s life was of such inconsequence that no thought would be expended taking that life. The men closing in on Holcroft would kill him for the envelope mindlessly, as if removing a disagreeable insect from a bar of gold. And that was mindless! What they did not know was that without the son of Heinrich Clausen the miracle would not happen!
They were within yards of him now! The man with the black-and-white eyebrows lunged forward through the mass of tourists like a possessed animal. He crashed into people and luggage, throwing aside everything and everyone in his path. When he was within feet of the killer whose hand was concealed under his overcoat, he thrust his own hand into his pocket, clutching the gun inside, and screamed directly at the assailant:
«Du suchst Clausens Sohn! Das Genfe Dokument!»
The killer was partially up the ramp, separated from the American by only a few people. He heard the words roared at him by a stranger and spun around, his eyes wide in shock.
The crowd pressed rapidly up the ramp, skirting the two obvious antagonists. Attacker and protector were in their own miniature arena, facing each other. The observer squeezed the trigger of the gun in his pocket, then squeezed it again. The spits could barely be heard as the fabric exploded. Two bullets entered the body of Holcroft’s would-be assailant, one in the lower stomach, the other far above, in the neck. The first caused the man to convulse forward; the second snapped his head back, the throat torn open.
Blood burst from the neck with such force that it splattered surrounding faces, and the clothes and suitcases belonging to those faces. It cascaded downward, forming small pools and rivulets on the ramp. Screams of horror filled the walkway.
The observer-protector felt a hand gripping his shoulder, digging into his flesh. He spun; the second attacker was on him, but there was no gun in his hand. Instead, the blade of a hunting knife came toward him.
The man was an amateur, thought the observer, as his reactions—instincts born of years of training—came instantly into play. He stepped sideways quickly—a bull-fighter avoiding the horns—and clamped his left hand above his assailant’s wrist. He pulled his right hand from his pocket and gripped the fingers wrapped around the knife. He snapped the wrist downward, vising the fingers around the handle, tearing the cartilage of the attacker’s hand, forcing the blade inward. He plunged it into the soft flesh of the stomach and ripped the sharp steel diagonally up into the rib cage, severing the arteries of the heart. The man’s face contorted; a terrible scream was begun, cut off by death.
The pandemonium had escalated into uncontrollable chaos; the screaming increased. The profusion of blood in the center of the rushing, colliding bodies fueled the hysteria. The observer-protector knew precisely what to do. He threw up his hands in frightened consternation, in sudden, total revulsion at the sight of the blood on his own clothes, and joined the hysterical crowd racing away like a herd of terrified cattle from the concrete killing ground.
He rushed up the ramp past the American whose life he had just saved.
Holcroft heard the screaming. It penetrated the numbing mists he felt engulfed in: clouds of vapor that swirled around him, obscuring his vision, inhibiting all thought.
He tried to turn toward the commotion, but the hysterical crowd prevented him from doing so. He was swept farther up the ramp and pummeled into the three-foot-high cement wall that served as a railing. He gripped the stone and looked back, unable to see clearly what had happened; he did see a man below arch backward, blood erupting from his throat. He saw a second man lunging forward, his mouth stretched in agony, and then Noel could see no more, the onslaught of bodies sweeping him once again up the concrete ramp.
A man rushed by, crashing into his shoulder. Holcroft turned in time to see frightened eyes beneath a pair of thick black-and-white brows.
An act of violence had taken place. An attempted robbery had turned into an assault, into a killing, perhaps. Peaceful Geneva was no more immune to violence than were the wild streets of New York at night, or the impoverished alleyways of Marrakesh.
But Noel could not dwell on such things; he could not be involved. He had other things to think about. The mists of numbness returned. Through them he vaguely understood that his life would never again be the same.
He gripped the envelope in his hand and joined the screaming mass racing up the ramp to the gate.
3
The huge aircraft passed over Cape Breton Island and dipped gently to the left, descending into its new altitude and heading. The route was now southwest, toward Halifax and Boston, then into New York.