“Yes, ma’am.”
“I know your mother. Lovely lady.” Kathleen turned back to her daughter. “Well, get dressed, dear.”
“May I invite Toni along?” Elizabeth asked.
Kathleen’s expression became apologetic. “No, I’m sorry, dear, but I have something…
well, something private to discuss with you. You understand.”
“Yes, mother,” Elizabeth replied, and she did understand. Something was definitely wrong.
Chapter 35
It took Ernst Spranger a full five minutes to work his way in the near-darkness up through the woods from the road to a position where he could see the Design Polytechnic’s main administration building, and beyond it the Picasso Residence Hall. Nothing moved below, but there were lights in most windows; late classes in some of the buildings, and students settling down to their studies in others.
He keyed the burst walkie-talkie. “I’m in position. Everything looks quiet from here.”
He hit the TRANSMIT button.
A moment later Liese came back. “We’re starting up the driveway.”
Spranger wore a black jumpsuit which made him practically invisible. He would guard the west flank of the school property, while Bruno Lessing, who’d taken up position on the other side of the long driveway, would guard the east flank.
“Are you ready, Bruno?” he radioed.
“All set here.” Lessing’s voice came softly from the walkie-talkie speaker.
“Peter?” Spranger radioed.
“ETA at our rendezvous point in about ten minutes,” a third voice answered.
“Stand by,” Spranger acknowledged, and he raised his binoculars as Otto Scherchen and Liese, driving a four-door blue Peugeot sedan, appeared below, passing the administration building and parking at the side of the Picasso Residence Hall. They were posing as Swiss Federal Police Officers. Scherchen would remain in the car as a backup in case of trouble, while Liese went inside to talk to the girl.
Radvonska’s warning in Rome that McGarvey was something special had been very specific.
“If you can trust the man to do anything, trust him always to do the unexpected,” the KGB resident had warned.
“With him it’s not likely you would get a second chance. For instance: It might even be possible that he’s assigned someone to watch his daughter. Be careful that you do not walk into a trap.””
Herr and Frau Schey, posing as the parents of a prospective student, had come to the school and had a long chat with the dean of admissions. Afterwards they’d been taken on a tour of the campus, including the Picasso Residence Hall.
They had actually been inside Elizabeth McGarvey’s room, and they had tramped all over the campus, even having tea with the faculty afterwards. They had returned with detailed sketches of everything.
“The only sign we saw that anyone was paying special attention to the girl was a young man identified for us as one of the staff. An instructor by the name of Armand Armonde.”
“Do you think it’s possible he’s on staff as a cover for a job as bodyguard to the girl?” Spranger had asked.
The Scheys exchanged glances. “I would say no,” Dieter Schey said. “But anything is possible.”
Liese climbed out of the car, straightened the skirt of her conservatively cut blue suit, and entered the building without looking back.
“She’s inside, everybody stay alert,” Spranger radioed.
“Just over seven minutes to rendezvous,” Durenmatt came back. He was at the wheel of a semi tractor- trailer rig, northbound on the Bern-Lausanne highway. The rendezvous point was a turnaround just north of the intersection with the Estavayer-le-lac road.
The timing was tight, but so far everything was going exactly according to schedule.
Spranger tightened his grip on the binoculars as he studied the side and back of the residence hall, and the area between it and the administration building.
If there was to be any trouble it would happen in the next minute or so. If the girl put up a fight, and Liese had to use force to subdue her, and that action was witnessed by someone who decided to interfere the entire operation could fall apart.
“What do you want me to do in that case?” Liese had asked him.
Spranger shrugged. “She will have seen your face,” he said. “If it comes to that you will have no other choice but to kill her and anyone else who could recognize you.”
Liese grinned, the expression feral. “Mr. Endo would not be happy.”
“Perhaps, but it would probably lure McGarvey out of Japan just the same.”
The dormitory corridor smelled of a combination of liquor, cigarette smoke, and a dozen too-strong colognes and aftershave lotions. Liese hesitated in a stairwell, testing the air and listening to the distant but pervasive hum of conversations, radios and stereos and television sets, of clacking typewriters and hair dryers and electric shavers.
Like Dresden, she had the fleeting thought. But not so much like her college days when she’d transferred to Moscow University.
The sounds and smells were normal here. Nothing bad was happening, and no one expected anything bad to happen.
If it came to a kill, she told herself starting upstairs, it would be easy. No one would interfere.
At the third-floor landing she felt in her shoulder bag for her silenced Bernadelli .32 caliber automatic, checking to make sure that the safety catch was in the on position as she looked through the window into the corridor.
A young man, a towel around his neck, was leaning against an open doorway talking to someone in one of the rooms. At the far end of the corridor two girls dressed in shorts and Tshirts, their legs well-tanned, were engaged in conversation. Just across from them, two women, one of them older, both of them dressed for the street, came out of one of the rooms and started up the corridor.
For an instant Liese disregarded them. But then she realized with a start that one of the women was Elizabeth McGarvey, and she stepped back.
They were obviously going out. Dinner perhaps, or a show in town. They definitely were not dressed for campus.
She checked the window again. They were barely five yards away, Elizabeth talking, saying something to the older woman.
Liese turned and hurried halfway down to the second-floor landing, then turned and calmly started back up, as the third-floor door opened and the two women entered the stairwell.
They started down, moving over so that they could pass, when Liese stopped short.
“Are you Elizabeth McGarvey?” she asked, feigning surprise.
Elizabeth and Kathleen stopped, a wary look on Kathleen’s face.
“Yes, I am,” Elizabeth said.
Liese dug in her shoulder bag and brought out her blue leather identification booklet.
She flipped it open and held it up so that both women could see her picture ID and gold shield. “My name is Liese Egk. Federal Police. I’ve been sent from Bern to fetch you.”
Elizabeth was instantly concerned. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“It’s about your father,” Liese said, watching the older woman. There was something familiar about her. Something from a file folder. From photographs. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”
“Oh, my God,” Kathleen said. “Is Kirk here, in Switzerland?”
Suddenly Liese had it, and she could hardly hold back a broad grin. “I’m sorry, madam, but this is a personal matter.”
“You don’t understand,” Elizabeth said. “She’s my mother. Now what has happened?
