an impossible position.'
`Then we will leave,' Tweed decided.
`May I come with you?' Andover asked. 'I came by taxi – and left it outside the factory, then walked the rest of the way.'
`By all means, Gerald. We have a car – concealed, by the way, Gaston. We have been very discreet..
Delvaux had started to walk away. He nodded to show he had heard, and shuffled out of sight. Tweed shook his head, looked at Andover, and then all four of them walked towards the drive. Tweed was silent: he had still not been able to bring himself to tell Andover about Irene. Best to wait until they were in some comfortable hotel suite.
Newman had slipped his Smith amp; Wesson back into its holster. Paula felt tense, full of foreboding. Again the claustrophobic drive felt creepy. Lifting the flap of her shoulder-bag, she gripped the butt of her Browning.
Near the entrance gates Paula quickened her pace. Ahead of the others, she reached the road, glanced to right and left, ran across it, and waited on the track in the shadows.
Andover was walking on Tweed's right. He began talking as they approached the deserted road. He still moved with a dragging step, but his voice was brisk and vigorous.
`Gaston is a broken man. Can you wonder at it? It's a bloody waste – a genius like that subjected to such a frightful ordeal.'
`You've had a pretty bad time of it yourself,' Tweed remarked. 'You sound better now. Ready to face anything, however grim.'
`Oh, I have braced myself for whatever the future may hold. I've still got a lot of fight left in me…'
Newman was walking a few yards behind them. Like Paula, he was tense. And very alert. The two men ahead of him reached the road. They began to cross it. Newman heard the sudden thunderous roar of the car coming as it accelerated round the bend higher up the hill to his right. Both men in front of him were crossing the road when the black Mercedes descended on them like a tornado. Andover threw up a hand to shield his eyes from the ferocious glare of the headlights.
Newman knew he could only try to save one man. Rushing forward he charged into Tweed's back, hurtling him forward to sprawl on the grass verge by the track. Newman's impetus was so great he was carried across by his own momentum, falling beside Tweed.
Paula alone saw what happened in fractions of a second. The black Mercedes smashed into Andover, lifted him high into the air, sped on as Andover crashed with a terrible thud on to the tarred surface of the road. Paula had whipped up her Browning. She fired off one shot which penetrated the rear window. Then the car was gone, skidding madly round a lower bend.
Winded, Tweed took a deep breath, clambered to his feet with surprising agility, ran to the crumpled form lying in the road. He bent down, felt Andover's neck pulse, and straightened up slowly as Newman reached him.
`Christ!' Tweed hardly ever swore. 'He's dead. At least the poor devil never knew about his daughter.'
`I'm sure the driver was a woman.' It was Paula, holding her Browning. 'The murdering bitch. I put a bullet into her rear window but I'm sure it did no damage.'
`What makes you think it was a woman?' Tweed asked quietly.
`She wore a crash helmet, goggles. It was the way she turned her head. I swear it was a woman,' she repeated.
`Help me carry the body back to the chateau, Bob,' Tweed suggested. 'I want Gaston to see it. He's got to start talking now.'
19
Inside the chateau kitchen there was furious, urgent activity. Paula was perched on a pair of steps taken from a cupboard. In her hand she carried a new instrument like a small torch with a grille over the front – what was known in the surveillance trade as a 'flasher'.
It detected the presence of listening devices and she had been taught how to use it by Butler on a refresher training course at a large isolated house in Sussex surrounded with extensive grounds. She had also learned certain physical skills which had tested her powers of endurance.
Newman stood on a working surface close to her, removing the bugs as she detected them. One was hidden in a corner on top of a tall cupboard; another behind the tall refrigerator. She even detected one concealed on top of a fluorescent tube.
Earlier they had witnessed a tragic scene on the terrace outside the front entrance when Delvaux had opened the door in response to Tweed's insistent ringing. The Belgian stared at Andover's body which Newman was holding. He came forward, his face tortured with anguish.
`They have killed my old friend, Gerald…'
Tweed had briefly told him what had happened beyond the entrance gates. Anguish was replaced by fury as Delvaux had stroked the back of his neck, a mannerism Tweed recalled when the Belgian was worked up.
`Now you have to tell me everything,' Tweed had lashed out in a cold voice. 'But first we must find a room inside where we can talk – after the listening devices have been removed.'
`I agree,' Delvaux had responded. 'They will know the devices have been tampered with – but I am now resigned to the fact that my wife Lucie is dead. I am going to hit back…'
They had laid Andover's body on a couch in the hall – after Paula had insisted on fetching a cushion for the head. The back of the skull was crushed in and bloody. She didn't want a blood-stained couch left to remind Delvaux of the murder on his doorstep every time he was crossing the hall.
Thirty minutes later Paula was satisfied they had traced every bug. Tweed said something about making assurance doubly sure. He switched on a radio which was playing a programme of classical music, then he turned on a tap.
`Even if you've missed one,' he told Paula, 'they will never be able to filter our conversation out of both the music and running water..'
Paula found that no one had eaten for hours. While Tweed talked with Delvaux and Newman perched on stools round the island unit she prepared food and drink. In a larder she found crusty rolls in a crock. Butter and ham were in the fridge. The larder had also contained coffee.
She made coffee in a cafetiere while slicing ham, cutting the rolls, buttering them, slapping ham inside. She passed round a large plate of the rolls, poured coffee into large mugs. Her customers began devouring the rolls and drinking large quantities of coffee. Tweed noticed the nourishment was stimulating Delvaux. He began probing.
`Gaston, your wife had been kidnapped. No ransom was demanded. You were forced to go into retirement. The same thing happened with Andover – but it was his daughter who was kidnapped.' He paused. It might help prepare Delvaux for the worst. 'They sent him her severed arm…'
`I know,' Delvaux nodded. 'Andover told me.'
`What he couldn't tell you – and thankfully I delayed telling him – is that his daughter's body was later dragged out of the sea. Who are these murdering swine?'
`I don't know…'
`But you must know what it is about.'
`I think it's about Stealth…'
Dr Wand sat in his luxury suite on the third floor of the Bellevue Palace Hotel on the equivalent of Park Lane in Brussels – the Avenue Louise. The only other occupant in the spacious room was his dark-haired, uniformed chauffeur, who still work dark glasses and sat behind a desk. He had just poured his employer a good measure of Napoleon brandy. Wand was swirling the liquid in the glass when the phone rang.
`Be so good as to answer that,' Wand requested.
The chauffeur picked up the gold receiver. He asked the caller to identify herself and she gave him a code- name.
`It's her,' the chauffeur reported.
