There was a door inside the control room, communicating with the main house. Quinn took the stairs to the bedroom floor. Six carved-oak doors, all probably to bedrooms. But the lights Quinn had seen at dawn that morning indicated the master bedroom must be at the end. It was.
Horst Lenzlinger awoke to the sensation of something hard and painful being jabbed into his left ear. Then the bedside light went on. He squealed once in outrage, then stared silently at the face above him. His lower lip wobbled. It was the man who had come to his office; he had not liked the look of him then. He liked him now even less, but most of all he disliked the barrel of the pistol stuck half an inch into his earhole.
“Bernhardt,”said the man in the camouflage combat suit. “I want to speak to Werner Bernhardt. Use the phone. Bring him here. Now.”
Lenzlinger scrabbled for the house phone on his night table, dialed an extension, and got a bleary response.
“Werner,” he squeaked, “get your arse up here. Now. Yes, my bedroom. Hurry.”
While they waited, Lenzlinger looked at Quinn with a mixture of fear and malevolence. On the black silk sheets beside him the bought-in-Vietnam child whimpered in her sleep, stick-thin, a tarnished doll. Bernhardt arrived, polo-neck sweater over his pajamas. He took in the scene and stared in amazement.
He was the right age, late forties. A mean, sallow face, sandy hair going gray at the sides, gray-pebble eyes.
“Was ist denn hier, Herr Lenzlinger?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” said Quinn in German. “Tell him to answer them, truthfully and fast. Or you’ll need a spoon to get your brains off the lampshade. No problem, sleazebag. Just tell him.”
Lenzlinger told him. Bernhardt nodded.
“You were in the Fifth Commando under John Peters?”
“Ja.”
“Stayed on for the Stanleyville mutiny, the march to Bukavu, and the siege?”
“Ja.”
“Did you ever know a big Belgian called Paul Marchais? Big Paul, they called him.”
“Yes, I remember him. Came to us from the Twelfth Commando, Schramme’s crowd. So what?”
“Tell me about Marchais.”
“What about him?”
“Everything. What was he like?”
“Big, huge, six feet six or more, good fighter, a former motor mechanic.”
Yeah, thought Quinn, someone had to put that Ford Transit van back in shape, someone who knew motors and welding. So the Belgian was the mechanic.
“Who was his closest buddy, from start to finish?”
Quinn knew that combat soldiers, like policemen on the beat, usually form partnerships; trust and rely on one man more than any other when the going gets really rough. Bernhardt furrowed his brow in concentration.
“Yes, there was one. They were always together. They palled up during Marchais’s time in the Fifth. A South African. They could speak the same language, see? Flemish or Afrikaans.”
“Name?”
“Pretorius-Janni Pretorius.”
Quinn’s heart sank. South Africa was a long way off, and Pretorius a very common name.
“What happened to him? Back in South Africa? Dead?”
“No, the last I heard he had settled in Holland. It’s been a bloody long time. Look, I don’t know where he is now. That’s the truth, Herr Lenzlinger. It’s just something I heard ten years back.”
“He doesn’t know,” protested Lenzlinger. “Now get that thing out of my ear.”
Quinn knew he would get no more from Bernhardt. He grabbed the front of Lenzlinger’s silk nightshirt and swung him off the bed.
“We walk to the front door,” said Quinn. “Slow and easy. Bernhardt, hands on top of the head. You go first. One move and your boss gets a second navel.”
In single file they went down the darkened stairs. At the front door they heard a hammering from outside-the dog handler trying to get back in.
“The back way,” said Quinn. They were halfway through the passage to the control house when Quinn hit an unseen oak chair and stumbled. He lost his grip on Lenzlinger. In a flash the tubby little man was off toward the main hall, screaming his head off for his bodyguards. Quinn flattened Bernhardt with a swipe from the gun and ran on to the control room and its door to the park.
He was halfway across the grass when the screaming Lenzlinger appeared in the door behind him, yelling for the dogs to come around from the front. Quinn turned, drew a bead, squeezed once, turned and ran on. There was a shriek of pain from the arms dealer and he vanished back inside the house.
Quinn jammed his gun in his waistband and made his escape rope just ten yards ahead of the two Dobermans. He swung up the wall as they leaped after him, trod on the sensor wire-triggering a shrill peal of alarm bells from the house-and dropped to the roof of the van. He had discarded the ladder, got the van in gear, and raced off down the lane before a pursuit group could be organized.
Sam was waiting as promised in their car, all packed and checked out, opposite the Graf von Oldenburg. He abandoned the van and climbed in beside her.
“Head west,” he said. “The E.22 for Lier and Holland.”
Lenzlinger’s men were in two cars and radio-linked, with each other and to the manor house. Someone in the house phoned the city’s best hotel, the City Club, but were told Quinn was not registered there. It took the caller another ten minutes, running down the hotel list, to ascertain from the Graf von Oldenburg that Herr and Frau Quinn had checked out. But the caller got an approximate description of their car.
Sam had cleared the Ofener Strasse and reached the 293 ring road when a gray Mercedes appeared behind them. Quinn slid down and curled up until his head was below the sill. Sam turned off the ring road onto the E.22 autobahn; the Mercedes followed.
“It’s coming alongside,” she said.
“Drive normally,” mumbled Quinn from his hiding place. “Give ’em a nice bright smile and a wave.”
The Mercedes pulled up alongside. It was still dark, the interior of the Ford invisible from outside. Sam turned her head. She knew neither of them, the refrigerator-freezer or the dog handler of the previous morning.
Sam flashed a beaming smile and a little wave. The men stared, expressionless. Frightened people on the run do not smile and wave. After several seconds, the Mercedes accelerated ahead, did a U-turn at the next intersection, and went back toward town. After ten minutes Quinn emerged and sat up again.
“Herr Lenzlinger doesn’t seem to like you,” said Sam.
“Apparently not,” said Quinn sadly. “I’ve just shot his pecker off.”
Chapter 14
It is now confirmed that the Saudi jamboree to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of the declaration of the Kingdom will be on April 17th next,” Colonel Easterhouse told the Alamo Group later that morning.
They were seated in the spacious office of Cyrus Miller atop the Pan-Global Tower in downtown Houston.
“The half-billion-dollar stadium, entirely covered with a two-hundred-meter-wide acrylic dome, is complete, ahead of schedule. The other half of this billion-dollar exercise in self-glorification will be spent on food, jewelry, gifts, hospitality, extra hotels and guest mansions for the statesmen of the world, and on the pageant.
“Seven days before the actual pageant, before the expected fifty thousand international guests arrive, there will be a full dress rehearsal. The climax of the entire four-hour pageant will be the storming of a life-size replica model of the old Musmak Fortress, as it stood in 1902. The structure will be completed by Hollywood’s most skilled set designers and builders. The ‘defenders’ will be drawn from the Royal Guard and dressed in the Turkish clothes of those days. The attacking group will be composed of fifty younger princes of the House, all on horseback, and led by a young relative of the King who bears a resemblance to the Sheikh Abdal Aziz of 1902.”