Chapter 41
The weather in Paris was overcast and rainy when the Japan Airlines 747 touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was a little before three in the afternoon but the day was dark and chilly, which served to deepen McGarvey’s already bleak mood. He’d had little else to do during the long flight from Tokyo via Calcutta but worry.
Carrara had not suggested he drop everything in Japan, but his not-so-subtle between the lines message had been quite clear. Spranger had taken Kathleen and Elizabeth to lure McGarvey to Europe where they meant to kill him. Everyone wanted him to take the challenge.
In the old days, the field officer’s family was inviolate. That wasn’t the case any longer. What few restraints men like Spranger had worked under were no longer in place. Nothing was sacred. The stakes in the Cold War had been high, but they were even higher now in the invisible war. Ten years ago the fight had been over ideologies.
These days it was over money. What little honor there’d been was totally gone.
It was their game. They had made the rules. And if that’s the way they wanted it, he would play it out this time … no holds barred.
A tall, lanky man with thick eyebrows over a hawkish nose was waiting for him at the arrivals gate. “Name’s Robert Littel. You got any other baggage?” He spoke with a Texas twang.
“Who told you I’d be on this flight?” McGarvey asked. This wasn’t beyond Spranger.
“Nobody. Phil Carrara just said you were coming and we were supposed to watch for you. Now, if you’ll shake a leg we’ll get you out of here and down to the chopper.”
“Have you got something?”
“Yeah, but I’ll tell you all about it on the run. We don’t have much time if we’re going to make the show.”
McGarvey fell in step beside the taller man as they walked past the passport control booths without challenge and then through customs and downstairs.
“Is Marquand here?” McGarvey asked.
“He’s in charge down in Grenoble. But he sent Rene Belleau, his number two. A little prick, but I think he’d be one tough sonofabitch backed into a corner.”
On the ground level, before they went through the steel door, McGarvey grabbed Littel by the arm and stopped him. “What’s going on in Grenoble?”
Littel started to challenge McGarvey but then thought better of it. “How much did Carrara tell you?”
“That someone kidnapped my ex-wife and daughter, and that the French had a lead.”
“Apparently they were taken from the school and loaded aboard a white truck. A semi.
It was seen crossing the frontier at Jougne, above Lausanne. This morning it was located in a barn at the end of a road that leads up to a mountain chalet about six miles north of Grenoble.”
“Any sign of them or the kidnappers?”
“At last word, no. The Action Service has got the place surrounded, but they’re waiting until nightfall to move in.”
“Who owns the chalet?”
“It belongs to a property management company in Grenoble. Three days ago it was leased to a couple by the name of Schey. Two days ago the same couple visited the Design Poly outside Bern, evidently to look the place over.”
It was too pat. If this was Stranger’s doing, he’d left too many clues on the trail.
He’d practically advertised his whereabouts. Why?
The clues were lures, of course, meant for McGarvey. But they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be cornered so easily. Something else was happening. Something…
“The chopper is waiting, Mr. McGarvey,” Littel prompted after a few moments.
“Right,” McGarvey said looking up out of his thoughts. But he was troubled.
Belleau was waiting impatiently for them aboard the idling Dassault SF-17 transport helicopter, and even before they had strapped in, the sleek machine was lifting off the pad and accelerating south as it climbed at a sickening rate.
The chopper was a stripped-down version of the transport helicopter, with larger engines for greater speed and extra fuel capacity for greater range. The noise level in the main cabin was so great that any sort of a normal conversation was difficult.
The compactly built, deadly looking Frenchman motioned for McGarvey to don one of the headsets and plug it in.
“What were you doing in Tokyo, Monsieur McGarvey?” Belleau’s voice came through the earphones.
“I was on vacation. Can we establish communications with Colonel Marquand from here?”
“I asked you a question,” the Action Service officer said, his eyes narrow.
“I answered it.”
“You are on French soil now, you salopard, and you’ll do as you’re told.”
“Don’tfuck with me you little cocksucker, or I’ll throw you out of this helicopter at altitude,” McGarvey said in his best gutter French.
Belleau’s eyes widened in surprise, and a faint flush came to his cheeks. “Phillipe told me that you were quite the specimen.” He smiled ruefully. “For now I will simply assume that you were seeking a connection between the Japanese and these East German bastards.”
“There is a connection,” McGarvey said, relenting a little. “But to this point that’s the only thing I’m certain of.”
Belleau nodded, and he glanced at Littel, who was listening on another headset. “Do you believe that your wife and daughter were kidnapped to force an end to your investigation in Tokyo?”
“It’s possible.”
“Then you must have been getting close to something or someone.”
McGarvey took off his headset and leaned closer to the Frenchman who did the same, effectively blocking Littel out of their conversation for just a moment.
“If you help me in this matter, if you do not interfere, I promise to share with you whatever information I come up with later.”
Belleau looked into his eyes for a long moment, but then nodded, and they both sat back and put on the headsets. Littel was clearly upset.
“What was that all about?” he demanded.
McGarvey ignored him. “Can we make contact with Colonel Marquand from here?”
“Yes, but it is inadvisable. It’s possible that the kidnappers are monitoring our frequencies.”
“You’re probably right,” McGarvey said. “Did you bring a map of the area? I’d like to see what we’re facing.”
“Yes,” Belleau said. He took a large-scale map from his briefcase 201
and spread it out on a small fold-down table and switched on a gooseneck spot lamp.
McGarvey leaned forward so he could see better. The map’s area of detail included the town of Grenoble and about five or ten miles in each direction.
Belleau pointed with a pencil to a spot north of the city, along highway D912, which was indicated as a secondary road and scenic route through the mountains.
“The base of the driveway is at slightly more than sixteen hundred meters,” Belleau said. “Here, just below the Col de Porte pass at eighteen hundred sixty-seven meters.”
“The barn is where?”
“Just off the highway, and the chalet is one kilometer farther up the driveway, at an elevation of one hundred-fifty meters above the barn.”
“It’s a very steep driveway,” Littel said.
