Kalkhoven sat at the purser’s desk at the rear of the big Boeing transport. The cabin ahead of him was dark, except for the dim red safety bulbs and a crack of yellow light round the crew-compartment door at the very front. He had a small reading light by which to read the documentation. His assistant came back from checking that Kleiber was still unconscious. They had administered an anaesthetic that would have to be renewed before they got to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
‘What will they do with this guy, Melvin?’
‘Looks like there’ll be enough evidence to hang that California murder on him.’
‘Don’t kid me, Melvin. We didn’t snatch this guy in order to deliver him to the Justice Department. And if he goes into court on a murder rap, he’s going to complain mightily about the travel arrangements we made for him. The agency would end up with a lot of egg on its face, Melvin, so why not level with me?’
‘I don’t run the company,’ said Kalkhoven. ‘I just work for it. This operation has become very high powered. I have to get written permission from Langley every time I defecate.’
‘You think they’re going to turn him round?’
‘Give him a job with us, you mean? I sure as hell hope not, Todd. I don’t want to be working next to a murderous bastard like that guy out there.’
‘New policies mean new allies, new allies mean new friends. That’s the name of the game, Melvin, you only have to read your newspapers to see that.’ Todd looked round to see Melvin Kalkhoven’s face. It was underlit by the low-voltage desk light; hunched over the sloping desk, he looked more than ever like some nineteenth-century Bible-puncher, thought Wynn.
‘ “Forsake not an old friend for the new is not comparable to him; a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.” ’
Todd Wynn smiled nervously and wondered if Melvin Kalkhoven knew that people called him ‘the Bible-basher’. Probably he did; he always seemed to know more than he revealed.
42
London ’s man in Geneva was a desiccated-looking ex-policeman named Hugo Koch. He had made a name for himself in the Zurich police force until, in 1965, a scandal involved him with the seventeen-year-old daughter of a senior police official. Koch resigned from the force. Now, aged forty-nine, he lived and worked in a small apartment in suburban Geneva, collecting debts, serving legal papers on reluctant defendants and following errant wives. It was not work that Hugo Koch enjoyed very much, but then he had never enjoyed any work very much; Koch was by nature gloomy. He did not drink, he did not smoke and, since that ignominious affair in Zurich, his relationships with women had been dispassionate.
Koch had been pleased when, in 1969, a man describing himself as an agent of the CIA offered him a retainer. Koch agreed and served his masters well. They had never called upon him to do more than collect or deliver packets, observe and report on selected individuals, or provide postal addresses. No task had given him the slightest moral qualm or compromised his allegiance to Switzerland, which he loved with a constancy that many of the women in his life had yearned for and failed to get. Sometimes he wondered whether he earned his keep for his foreign masters, but payments went regularly into his bank account and there were no complaints. Over the years, Koch had come to realize that he was employed not by the Americans but by the British Secret Intelligence Service; but that was the sort of discretion that Koch’s Swiss soul found easy to understand.
Once told to follow and report the movements of Colonel Pitman, Hugo Koch was worth every penny of his payments from London. Whatever shortcoming he might have shown in scientific criminal investigation were more than compensated for by his skill on the streets. He was an instinctive cop who could shake a stolen purse out of a football crowd, or guess his way to a confession by looking at the suspects. But he had never enjoyed being a police driver and the Mini he had rented for this surveillance was not to his liking. Koch saw Colonel Pitman indicate a right turn and moved his own car into the filter lane. The two cars turned the corner at the Rue de Monthoux in close succession, and turned again at the quay to follow the lake.
It was a good run Pitman gave him and he almost enjoyed it. The rented Mini was surprisingly fast and the burst of speed improved its performance. Too much town driving had coked up the valves and dirtied the plugs. Now, with his foot well down, Koch was keeping pace with the Jaguar while leaving plenty of space between them.
When Colonel John Elroy Pitman suffered his heart attack his hands loosened from the steering wheel and the car mounted the kerb of the central divide, jolting both men in the Jaguar up against its roof. The car hit the fence and tore its way through the white stakes like a band-saw through matchsticks, tossing them high into the air and sprinkling them across the oncoming traffic.
The Jaguar lurched further across the grassy median until, still travelling at over seventy miles an hour, it hit the steel girders which are the standard safety fitting on all Swiss autoroutes. There was a deafening crash as the Jaguar struck a shower of white-hot sparks from the barrier and bounced back on to the highway again. The glass began to break as the car’s frame distorted. As it crashed back on to the highway, the jolt of the high kerb was enough to demolish the front nearside tyre and the car tipped down a second time to begin a roll. Askew in the centre of the highway, still travelling very fast, it went over on to its side and then, with another spray of sparks and a terrible scream, it slid along on its roof, scattering door handles, wipers and hub caps in its wake. Like some huge missile, the wrecked Jaguar hit the verge. Still it kept going, throwing into the air a cannonade of ploughed turf and chopped grass until it came to a final halt in a cloud of steam as the radiator boiled and the horn jammed screaming like a tortured baboon.
Behind the Jaguar, Hugo Koch was fighting the wheel as pieces of debris came flying towards him. A hub cap clanged down on to the front of the car and hit the windscreen with a resonant clang. Koch threw an arm across his face but by a miracle the glass did not break and the silver hub cap flashed in the light and skidded off over his roof with a noise like a pealing of church bells.
Ahead of him, the Jaguar came careering back across the highway only inches ahead of his front wheels. As its windscreen shattered, a shower of broken glass rattled over him like a snow flurry. The cars banged together. He hit the brake.
Koch glanced in his mirror to see the chaos of the littered highway. As he watched, an articulated truck hit a Ford Cortina. It went sliding across the road out of control, its tyres exploding. As the metal wheels engaged the road surface it began a violent spin. The articulated truck began to jack-knife.
Koch almost stood up as he applied his whole weight to the brake pedal. With a scream of brakes and a smell of scorched rubber he brought his Mini to a halt at the roadside. Behind him, the articulated truck hit the barrier with a clang that deafened him and then came past him out of control like some huge building roaring down the highway as loud as a low-flying jet.
Koch ran to the Jaguar. Pitman was strapped in but his legs and arms were twisted and lifeless and his face was bloodied. Stein’s weight and bulk had jammed him down against the floor. This saved him from anything worse than a blow to the head which had caused him to lose consciousness. Koch opened the doors and dragged the two limp figures on to the roadway. He looked at Pitman; the old fellow was dead, but Stein’s pulse was firm enough and although his respiration was quick and shallow it was regular. Stein groaned; he seemed to be regaining consciousness. Koch turned him on his side so there was no danger of him swallowing his tongue and choking on it, then he went back to the wreckage of the Jaguar to see what was inside it. He had only a few moments with the car before it caught fire.