But there was no reason for such a thing to have occurred. If the Americans had requested help from anyone it would have been from the Swiss, who still hadn’t discovered the first engineer’s body.
DuVerlie had come as a surprise. And except for the fact that they’d already gotten what they’d needed from ModTec, no one wanted the Swiss or the Americans to suspect they had.
Question was, how much had the Swiss engineer told the CIA, and exactly why was it they were returning to Lausanne?
Puzzles within puzzles. But it was a part of the business that Spranger had one way or the other lived with for all of his life. His father before him had been an agent (though not a particularly good one) for the RSHA-the Nazi intelligence service-before and during the war.
Spranger and his mother had hidden themselves in Switzerland for eight years before returning to West Germany. Within one year she was dead, and he had slipped into East Germany offering his services to the STASI. The Russians, not as squeamish about former Nazis as they led the world to believe, accepted the young man with open arms, and his real training had begun.
He slowed the speedboat as they approached the 243-foot cruiser Grande Dame out of Monaco. Tht sleek, white-hulled pleasure vessel lay still in the water, all her lights ablaze, her portside boarding ladder down. There were no movements, the only sounds from the ship’s generators. Except for the lights the ship could have been abandoned, or everyone aboard dead. It had been the same each time they’d been called for a rendezvous.
Spranger maneuvered the speedboat close, then chopped the engines, so they would drift the last few feet. He tied a line to a cleat on the platform and helped Liese up, scrambling onto the boarding ladder directly behind her.
Reaching the main deck they went aft and entered the spacious, well-furnished main salon. Music was playing softly and champagne had been laid out for them, as usual.
A white coated Italian waiter appeared. “Accogliere cordial-mente, signore e signorina,” he said pleasantly. “Champagne tonight?”
Spranger nodded.
Outside, the speedboat was started and left, and seconds later the Grande Dame’s engines came to life and they began to move.
“Please,” the little waiter motioned for them to take a seat.
The telephone next to Spranger rang once. Putting his champagne down, he lit a cigarette then sat down and picked up the phone. “Yes?” he said English.
“Tell us about the gentleman in the tweed coat at the airport.” the Japanese voice said in clear English.
“I don’t know for certain,” Spranger answered, surprised that they knew about him.
It meant they must have had one of their own people watching the airport. “My guess would be that he is an intelligence officer. British or American.”
“What is being done about him?”
“Nothing. I don’t consider him a threat at this point. Although Boorsch will be identified and probably traced back to us, we can handle the inquiries. And your position with us is very well insulated.”
“What about Switzerland?”
“We have the parts.”
“I see,” the Japanese man said after a brief hesitation. “And why have you not delivered them?”
Spranger had been expecting the question. He’d hoped it would not have come so soon, but he wasn’t going to hedge. “The parts are in a safe place, where they shall remain until we have gathered everything you contracted for. Only then will we make delivery.”
“Why?”
“Insurance,” Spranger said bluntly. He looked over at Liese. She was watching him, a faint smile on her lips.
“Against what?” the man asked.
“You.”
“Do you consider us a threat to your well-being? We are, after all, allies once again.”
“Allies, but not friends,” Spranger said. “Is there anything else?”
“We could replace you, if you refuse to cooperate.”
“No one else could do the job.”
The man laughed. “I believe we could find someone capable. A person such as Miss Egk, for example.”
“She could do the job,” Spranger said, once again surprised. “Unless I killed her first. Then you might never get your little toys.”
Liese’s smile broadened. She was seated on a low couch across the salon from him.
As he watched, she crossed her long, lovely legs.
“Do we still have a contract?” Spranger asked after a moment.
“Yes, of course. But I am worried about the man in the tweed coat, and I believe you should be worried as well. Look into it.”
“If you think it’s important.”
“I do.”
“I will have to divert some resources. It will cost you…?
“Money is no object. I have already made that quite clear.”
“Very well,” Spranger said.
“How soon do you expect to be in a position to fulfill the terms of our agreement?”
“Soon.”
“How soon? Days? Weeks? Months?”
“Soon,” Spranger repeated, and he hung up.
Chapter 16
On Sunday morning Swissair quietly reinstituted its flight 145 to Geneva, and though Orly had reopened almost immediately, passenger traffic on all airlines was sharply down.
McGarvey had spent most of Saturday in the clippings library of Le Figaro, France’s leading daily newspaper, looking for background information on the STASI and what had become of its top officers. But he’d not found much beyond a series of articles published last week in which a French journalist reported that there were still thousands of KGB men and officers operating throughout what had once been East Germany, and that only the East German secret service itself had actually been dismantled by the mobs.
Early this morning he had checked out of the Latin Quarter hotel where he’d holed up out of Tom Lynch’s way, and took a cab out to Orly.
Mati was dead. That irrevocable fact began to settle over him like a dark, malevolent cloud as his taxi came within sight of the airport. In his mind’s eye he could see the big plume of smoke rising into the morning sky. And he could see the Stinger’s contrail. No one aboard the Airbus had so much as one chance in a million of survival.
The destruction had been so complete that authorities were admitting they might never be able to properly identify even half the bodies.
Poor Mati. She could never have envisioned that her life would end that way. Or that her death would be so misused.
“Frankly, the sooner you are out of France the better I will feel,” Marquand had told him bluntly.
“Are you so sure I’m interested?” McGarvey asked.
The French intelligence officer nodded. “Had you continued to Paris after one-four-five was destroyed, I would have not been so certain. But your own actions have betrayed you, as they do all of us in the end.”
Mati had come from Lausanne. The CIA had been sending its people at least as far as Geneva. And Marquand told him that the organization of ex-STASI officers (if such an organization existed) maintained its bank accounts in Bern and Zurich. All roads, it seemed, led to Switzerland.
“Show your face in Lausanne, and if you are spotted by Boorsch’s friends they will assume that you are investigating them. They will come for you, then, no matter where you go or what you do.”
