Tweed watched as Paula, clad in a padded windcheater and ski pants tucked into leather boots with rubber soles, strode confidently on to the bridge. Any watcher was unlikely to suspect her of being anything but a ski- season tourist.
She picked up the heavily furred cat which was coffee-coloured with white 'stockings' and a white chest. She glanced around as it purred at her attentions and saw the swiftly moving figure of Harry Butler disappearing below the looming castle. Cardon had referred to a 'keep' and this was a great round tower rearing up above the rest of the edifice. She nipped one of the ears of the cat which protested, prepared to leap out of her arms. She aimed it over the edge of the parapet on to the snow-covered bank at the edge of the frozen stream.
Cardon, seeing the opportunity she'd provided, lowered himself over the stone wall as though in pursuit of the animal. Agilely, Paula dropped over the wall, followed him under the bridge. The cat perched on a snowbound rock at the far end of the arch, glaring at them. Cardon raised a warning hand.
Paula followed the direction of his pointing finger. An explosives expert, Cardon recognized lethal hardware. Attached by ropes to ancient iron rings in the centre of the arch was suspended a large metal plate supporting a large number of what appeared to Paula to be Roman-candle type fireworks.
'Dynamite sticks,' Cardon commented. 'That collection adds up to one big bomb, powerful enough to blast the stone bridge and any vehicle on it sky-high.'
'It can hardly work by pressure of a vehicle crossing the bridge,' Paula mused. She was scared stiff and kept talking to conceal her reaction. 'Otherwise a farm wagon could have set it off at any time.'
'Correct,' Cardon agreed. 'A bit diabolical this one. See that grey cable running from the bomb to the other end of the arch near where the cat is? Butler, who has a nasty mind, scraped away snow from the base of one of the old buildings near the climb to the castle. He found more of that cable. The snow kept people indoors last night, now it's concealing the cable this morning.'
'Where does the cable end? Can we cut it?'
'My guess is that if we did it would blow us sky-high. It runs to the top of the castle keep – where someone watching can press the button at the right moment.'
Butler took long careful strides through the snow as he reached the heavy wooden door leading into the castle rearing up above him. The snow was a giveaway – other footprints had preceded his to this same doorway.
He turned the iron ring-handle slowly, making not a sound as he pushed the door inwards inch by inch. For a sturdily built man Butler could move with deadly silence. He held the Luger in his right hand as he padded inside, closed the door with the same care behind him.
Waiting while he listened, while his eyes accustomed themselves to the dim light, he heard nothing. Ahead of him a stone staircase climbed alongside the outer wall of the castle. He used a large handkerchief to clean snow off the soles of his shoes. If it came to a showdown he did not want his feet slipping from under him. He began to mount the staircase, following a trail of snow patches which he guessed the man above him had left behind off his own soles when he'd made the same ascent.
Butler came to a point where an archway led off the main staircase to another narrower staircase which curved up constantly. He guessed that this led up round the sides of the looming turret to the high roof where he'd glimpsed a man with a weapon. Again Butler knew he was heading in the right direction – a fresh tell-tale trail of snow patches smeared the well-worn stone steps, steps smoothed down by footfalls over the centuries.
A draught of even colder fresh air warned him he was near the exit at the summit. It was freezing cold on the spiral staircase and the snow patches had frozen solid. He took a firmer grip on the Luger as he edged round a corner and saw an archway framing the clear blue sky beyond. He had to get there in time – he knew Cardon would be investigating what the opposition had planted underneath the bridge.
'You really should get the hell out of here, Paula,' Cardon warned. 'I make one false move deactivating this bomb and we both end up playing harps in the sky.'
'You mean two and a quarter of us,' Paula joked to hide her fear. 'Don't forget Puss. He would take a fancy to me at this moment.'
The cat had come running back to her, had reached up with its forepaws on her right leg. She'd picked it up and tickled it under its ear while Cardon made his preliminary examination with a pencil torch. Philip, she thought, always seemed to carry a complete tool-kit with him.
'Can't I help you in some way?' she pressed.
'Well…'
He was reluctant to agree, but he knew it would be safer if he had an extra pair of hands. No, he decided, scare her well away from this potential tomb before he started experimenting. He gestured with the secateurs he'd taken from a small cloth hold-all.
'Look, Paula, this is the score. I count six sticks of dynamite – probably stolen from a stone quarry. Plenty of them with explosives stores in the Vosges. Now – to neutralize, make them inert sticks of nothing – I have to cut six cables attached to six detonators. It's a crude but effectively improvised bomb. So I cut each of the green cables…'
'Not the red ones?' The cat was still purring as she tickled it under the ear. 'I always thought red was for danger.'
'That is the crude trick they played.' Cardon turned his pink healthy face towards Paula and grinned. 'I've checked this thingumajig carefully. To render it harmless I've got to snip through six green cables. That was their idea of a boobytrap. Assuming, of course, I know what I'm doing. You know what an explosives expert will tell you? That you can never rely on explosives reacting as they're supposed to. Still want to risk hanging about here?'
'What can I do to help?'
'It's your funeral – mine too. See this canvas bag I brought from the bike? As I snip a cable I'll take hold of a stick of dynamite and hand it to you. Then you lay it carefully in the bottom of the bag. Put the next jigger alongside it.'
'What are we waiting for?' Paula enquired as she placed the cat in the snow.
'I don't like it,' Tweed said from his seat in the Espace. 'Philip has found something under that bridge – and Paula is down there with him. I'm going to see what's going on.' Newman grasped him by the arm, forced him down back into his seat.
'You're going nowhere at all. What's the matter with you? Lost your capacity for waiting? You've always been hot on that aspect of our work. How many times have you told members of your team who were getting impatient that they must learn to wait?'
'I suppose you're right.'
'I know I am,' Newman said firmly. 'We may be under observation. Two people under the bridge is enough. Just hope there's no big bang.'
Butler stood three steps below the archway leading out on to the flat roof. He held the Luger gripped in both hands, aimed at the Norman arch. He was waiting to hear something that would tell him where the man – or men – who had climbed the tower before him were located.
The waiting was getting on his nerves. He couldn't forget the cable he'd found by scraping his foot along the base of the stone wall of a house near the castle. He couldn't forget that Cardon was probably now beneath the bridge, fooling around with God knew what devilish device.
The pressure was almost unbearable, the urge to dash out on to the roof, but he resisted the overwhelming temptation. Then, without warning, the back of a heavily built man clad in a windcheater and jeans appeared as he stood close to the edge of the low parapet. Butler realized he was staring at something through binoculars. He spoke to some unseen person. The twang was American.
'Gary, that friggin' Espace is still stuck a distance from the bridge. Looks like they could be staying there all day. Would the bomb reach them? Debris from the bridge? Great hunks of rock. Shall we give it a try?'
'Norton said to wait till it was on the bridge.'
'Gary, Norton is the friggin' Invisible Man. We can see the situation. And that girl who was fooling with that cat has gone to earth under the bridge. What say we give it a try? Hell, Norton is probably filling his belly in some upmarket restaurant in Strasbourg while we freeze.'
'If you say so, Mick. But it was you who…'
Butler jumped on to the platform. Mick, by the parapet, reacted with the speed of a pro, hauled out an automatic from inside his windcheater. He never had a chance to take aim as two bullets from Butler's 9-mm. Luger
