There was of course no way for Stuart to know that this inscrutable man had just come into possession of well over two million dollars’ worth of Hoffmann-La-Roche bearer shares, to say nothing of a serviceable Brazilian passport which would, after a little work by a man he knew, be good enough to provide him with a new identity.
‘A little more coffee?’ said Hugo Koch solicitously. ‘I sometimes think I’m getting too old for this sort of work. Do you ever have that feeling?’
‘Almost every day,’ said Boyd Stuart.
43
Although Stein’s injuries from the motor accident seemed no more than superficial, he never fully recovered from the concussion caused by the blow to his head. His eyes saw the continuing world of 1979 but his mind recognized only the memories, fears and dreams of long ago.
He began to regain consciousness just as Koch was leaving. He looked at the burning wreckage of Colonel Pitman’s Jaguar and at the corpse of the colonel, but he saw the blazing jeep under the African sky.
‘ Aram,’ called Stein. ‘Major Carson is dead. Stay where you are, I’m coming, Aram.’ Very slowly he got to his feet. The police were on the scene by now, but they were all busy coning off the wreckage and trying to slow down the traffic. They had no time to attend to Stein.
Concussed and confused, Stein made his way along the autoroute, staring uncomprehendingly at the passing traffic and sometimes calling for his brother. A motorist, having passed the scene of the accident, slowed and backed up for Stein. ‘Airport,’ said Stein, not once but half a dozen times. The Geneva-Lausanne autoroute passes Geneva airport and this good Samaritan took Stein all the way there and up to the departures level. Stein stumbled out of the car mumbling, ‘Thanks, Colonel.’
It was a measure of Stein’s stamina-and of the apathetic indifference with which airlines treat their passengers-that he was able to go through the procedures of buying a first-class ticket to Los Angeles. Perhaps he would have attracted more attention in the economy section of the jumbo, but airline staff have by now become used to encountering dirty and dishevelled travellers at the luxury end of aeroplanes.
That Saturday evening Geneva airport was crowded with tour groups and Stein’s appearance was not remarked upon by the airport staff. But he was noticed by Max Breslow, who was waiting in a line at the bank counter. He immediately telephoned Chicago.
‘Are you Edward Parker?’ Breslow asked the man on the phone. He brushed aside Parker’s question of who was calling. If it was one of Kleiber’s friends or colleagues the less he knew about Breslow the better. ‘My name does not matter but I am telephoning from Geneva, Switzerland, on behalf of a mutual friend named Wilhelm. Do you understand?’
‘I understand,’ said Parker.
‘It has all gone wrong here. It is a catastrophe! I doubt if you will see our friend Wilhelm for a long time, he’s in trouble with the police. I have just seen Mr Stein going through the immigration and security to the transit lounge. He is almost certainly going to board the Los Angeles direct flight. Perhaps he has the documents with him, but I didn’t see him carrying a bag. Do you understand all that, Mr Parker?’
It was Saturday afternoon in Chicago. Parker was sitting at his desk eating what remained of a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich long since gone cold. He guessed immediately that the caller was Breslow and fingered his desk clock as he calculated the flight times between Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as the flying time between California and Switzerland. ‘Yes, I understand,’ he said. ‘Go through and make sure Stein boards, would you? I’ll arrange that someone meets him at the other end. Call me again only if he does not board that flight. Will you do that for me?’ Parker had acquired the North American habit of making his demands sound like polite inquiries.
‘Yes,’ said Breslow reluctantly.
Edward Parker was also uncomfortable. He drank more of his coffee without tasting it, his eyes still on the gold-plated desk clock. He would need help in Los Angeles. The only man he could use there was Rocky Ramon Paz, an overgrown ex-wrestler who had-with some financial aid from Parker-made money in the used-car business. Parker could always find local muscle at short notice. But Rocky Paz was not very bright, and Parker knew that direct flights into LA got the attention of customs and immigration, which inevitably meant the presence of the FBI, and often the CIA too.
Parker finished his coffee and then dialled Paz. Suddenly, before getting through, he hung up. He remembered that his latest reports said that the British were in evidence at Los Angeles International. Damn! It was risky but if Stein was walking about with the Hitler Minutes under his arm, getting hold of him was worth almost any risk. And there was the new safe house in Beverly Hills. That would be a perfect place to hold Stein while Paz and his boys worked him over, Parker looked at the clock for the hundredth time and then dialled Paz again.
In summer Los Angeles becomes as dry and as dusty as the little desert towns further inland. And yet, like an oasis in this grey urban sprawl, Beverly Hills is half hidden under a jungle of greenery-its trees so robust and leafy, its lawns so bright and green, that to go there is like entering the sharp-edged world of the hyper-realist painters.
Bronwyn is a large mansion with a fifteen-foot wall surrounding its half-acre of garden. Its heated pool is bright blue, with springboards, ladders and tiled surround so clean and new that it looks like some piece of surgical equipment. However new the pool and Jacuzzi, Bronwyn was built in the early thirties, which makes it one of the oldest houses in the neighbourhood. Following the anglophilia that was then rife, it was modelled on photos of a timber-framed Elizabethan mansion in Essex. Unfortunately, the architect had not visited England and there were no photographs of the sides or back of the original, so the part of Bronwyn that faced the pool was ‘Hollywood Spanish’. The stucco cloisters had been decorated with bright-red, patterned tiles. Huge chinaware pots overflowed with pink camellias in flower and there was blood-red, double-flowering bougainvillea and golden chrysanthemums.
All of this was reflected in the still water of the pool and there was an uncanny silence until, from the far side of the house, there was the bark of a guard dog and a curse in rapid Spanish as a man tried to quiet the restless creature. Boyd Stuart’s feeling of confidence changed to one of unease. He was watching the back of the house through a thin gap between the wall and the warped wood of the service door, which bore a neatly painted notice stating that deliveries were only accepted between eight and eleven Monday through Friday. Stuart was dressed in the same blue coveralls that the contract gardeners wore, and he had moved along the garden wall of Bronwyn snipping at the already perfectly trimmed hedge with a large pair of shears. Close inspection would have revealed that the pair of shears was not of the type normally used for topiary but was an instrument of heavier weight and finer steel which combat engineers use to dismantle wiring defences. Bending down as if to inspect the roots of the hedge, Boyd Stuart applied the jaws of the tool to the chain-link fence. He cut through it with a satisfying snick. Quickly, he continued the process until he had cut a door in the fence.
There was a shout from inside the house and a girl in a small two-piece swimsuit came out of the kitchen door. She was a short, active girl with black, shiny hair and bronze-coloured skin, for which her yellow swimsuit was a perfect foil. She turned on the controls for the steaming hot Jacuzzi and it began to boil and bubble like a witch’s cauldron. There was another call from the man inside the house, asking about the Jacuzzi. The girl did not answer. The man emerged from the house and stood almost hidden in the flowery cloisters. He was a huge, barrel-chested man; even at this distance it was easy to see that he was well over six feet tall, with hairy arms and chest and oily black hair that was long enough to grow into ringlets. ‘Someone must be upstairs always,’ said Rocky Paz angrily.