booted feet, which felt like blocks of ice. Gaunt came striding up as Tweed conferred with Newman, Marler and Cardon.
'I don't like it,' Tweed warned. 'So far there has been no sign of the opposition, no attempt to stop us. Yet! Something pretty nasty has to be waiting for us beyond here.'
'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Gaunt, who had taken no part in the defence of the chateau. 'My bet is they shot their bolt, back up there, whoever they were. Let's press on, regardless. Get back to Colmar and the Brasserie before dark. I can feel a drink comin' on.'
Paula stared at him blankly. Jennie raised her eyebrows to heaven. Tweed ignored him, hauled out his walkie-talkie, called Butler.
The two outriders, Butler and Nield, posted at the front and rear, had stopped their machines without coming to join the conference.
'Butler,' Tweed said, 'keep your eyes skinned for anything unusual. I don't like the peace we have enjoyed so far.'
'Agreed. Neither do I,' Butler responded.
Nield also agreed when Tweed contacted him, made a similar reply to Butler's.
'Let's get moving,' Tweed ordered. 'Proceed with extreme caution…'
Beyond the Col de la Schlucht the road descended at a precipitous angle round a series of hellish hairpin bends. During their brief stop Paula had been struck by the sinister silence which had fallen over the Vosges. A heavy silence which you could almost hear. She sat upright, staring ahead. The mountain began to rise up sheer to their left. To the right the abyss became a white chasm with no sign of where it reached bottom. Beside Newman, in the station wagon, Marler had laid his tear-gas pistol in his lap, was craning his neck to check the heights. It was Butler who issued the early warning.
'Everyone slow to a crawl. Be prepared to stop the moment I tell you. Two men on top of the big cliff ahead.'
'Message received,' Tweed replied, holding the wheel with one hand briefly along a short straight stretch.
He had finished speaking when, thirty seconds later, he heard Nield calling him. An urgent note in his tone.
'We're being followed. Bloody great truck. Nestle. A half-mile behind me and coming like the clappers.'
In the distance, just short of yet another bend, Butler had propped his machine against the rock wall, had begun to climb up a ravine. Marler told Newman to stop, jumped out, Armalite in his left hand, tear-gas pistol in his right. Keeping close to the rock wall, he ran down the icy road like a marathon entrant, reached the ravine and shinned up it close behind Butler.
Paula had focused her binoculars on the rock wall near the bend. She pursed her lips before she spoke.
'That's a huge granite cliff sheering up vertically from the road by the bend. Obviously unstable. I'm sure it's covered with a curtain of steel mesh.'
Tweed nodded as he stopped the Espace. Paula's news was disturbing. They had something possibly very dangerous ahead of them – and coming up fast behind them was this huge Nestle truck Nield had spotted. Tweed didn't think the two incidents were a coincidence. They were caught in a pincer movement of potential destruction. It all had the signature of Norton written across it.
'I'd better go and give them back-up,' Paula suggested.
Tweed swung round in his seat, grasped her arm. He shook his head.
'Stay here. Marler and Butler will be more than a match for two thugs. I just hope they clear the way before that truck coming up behind us arrives. It's going to try and push us all off the road into eternity.'
'If I run back now past the BMW I could probably shoot that truck driver,' Eve suggested.
' Stay put. No one moves,' Tweed ordered.
'Are we just going to sit here?' Amberg demanded.
'We are going to do just that.'
'Surely someone can do something,' Amberg persisted.
Two men are doing something,' Tweed replied in the same flat tone. 'You can do something – keep quiet.'
Tweed had experienced similar reactions before. In a crisis people couldn't just wait. To soothe their nerves they needed action – anything which involved movement. So often it was safest to wait – once counter-measures had been taken. And they had been.
Butler and Marler, using their gloved hands, had hauled themselves up to the top of the ravine. Butler peered over the rim of a rock. Then he crouched down again and looked at Marler below him over his shoulder.
Tricky,' he reported. Two thugs about thirty feet away. Top of the cliff is flat. Boulders scattered in groups across it.'
'I could take them with the Armalite.'
'Not that simple,' Butler objected. 'They have set up explosives to bring down the cliff on the road…'
'How do you know?' Marler whispered impatiently.
'Because I can see another of those old-fashioned plunger devices like the one on top of the tower at Kaysersberg. Hang on, you weren't there. They're both near the handle that only needs pressing to bring down that cliff. I'm sure of it. And on the road they've got the Nestle truck coming after them…' Butler had heard Nield's message just before switching off his walkie-talkie and knew they were desperately short of time before the truck arrived.
'We have to lure those thugs away from that plunger handle,' he told Marler. 'Question is, how the hell do we do that?'
The stocky American driving the truck was grinning wolfishly to himself. He had caught a glimpse of the stalled convoy and was closing the gap rapidly. He wore a woollen cap pulled down over his low forehead and talked to himself for company.
'Won't be long now. I'll ram the lot of you over the edge down into that abyss. You'll end up dead meat. Maybe spring before what's left of you is found. Old bones…'
With two accomplices he had earlier hijacked the big vehicle as the original driver crossed the Vosges. They had cut his throat and thrown the body into one of the crevasses in the ice. But not before the American now driving had pulled off the victim's woollen cap. He felt the cold.
The truck was loaded to the roof with supplies, adding to the enormous weight of the juggernaut. The weight was now helping the driver to keep going, holding the surface of the snow-covered road well.
'Another five minutes,' he said to himself. Then it will be all over for you poor schmucks…'
Marler had eased himself up the ravine alongside Butler. He peered over the rim of the boulder, looked at the side of the ravine where they had pressed away snow during their ascent. With his gloved hand he began digging and clawing at a small piece of protruding rock while Butler held his tear-gas pistol. The rock came loose, Marler tested its weight in his hand and nodded. 'Give me back the pistol,' he said. 'With luck this will get them well clear of the explosive box. You take the one with the sheepskin, I'll sort out the thug with the windcheater, if it works.'
'It has to,' Butler said, glancing at his watch.
Marler hoisted himself higher up, being careful to hide himself behind the boulder. Sheepskin was standing with binoculars pressed to his eyes, obviously wondering why the convoy had stopped moving. Windcheater hovered dangerously close to the plunger handle.
About thirty feet away from where the thugs waited, well inland from the brink of the cliff, was a scatter of very large boulders massed close together. Marler raised his arm, aimed for the centre of the scatter, threw the rock.
'Hey, Don, what the friggin' hell was that?' called out Sheepskin, dropping his binoculars looped round his neck with a strap.
'Came from over there, Jess,' Windcheater replied. He pointed to the scatter of boulders. 'We'd better take a look. They could've sent up someone. Get ready to take him out
Gripping machine-pistols, both Americans advanced alongside each other, their gaze fixed on the boulders. Marler smiled to himself as he half-crouched, half-stood behind the boulder. He used it to rest both arms to steady his aim. Very stupid to walk next to each other. He pressed the trigger.
