MacLean poured himself a glass of cold water in the kitchen and gulped it down. He’d come so close to finding out where Von Jonek and Cytogerm were but it had all gone horribly wrong and all he was left with was a name, May Haas. She was the only link he had to go on and he would have to find her on his own. On the other hand the opposition knew that a man named Nielsen was interested in the X14 project. They did not know that Nielsen was really Sean MacLean but to all intents and purposes, it would now be as dangerous to travel under the name Nielsen as it had MacLean.
It didn’t look good but that part of the opposition who knew about Nielsen were currently sitting outside his hotel. They would have gone directly there after leaving Eva’s apartment so there was a chance they hadn’t yet reported back to their employers. If he could get to them first, Keith Nielsen’s identity would be safe and he could continue using the name while he searched for May Haas. It seemed like a good reason to go to war.
He searched the flat for anything that might be useful in the coming conflict. He couldn’t hope to find a gun, which was what he really needed, but kitchen knives were better than nothing. He selected two and started a little pile to which he added scissors, a screwdriver, pepper, matches, a candle and a tube of superglue. A cupboard under the sink yielded two butane gas cylinders for a camping stove and some plastic tubing from a home winemaking kit. A torch and some clothes pegs completed the inventory. He packed the lot into a plastic bag and left the apartment, closing the door quietly behind him. He hailed a cab to take him to a hotel which stood about half a kilometre from his own. Making a show of entering the hotel for the driver’s benefit, he turned as soon as the man had driven off and started out on foot for his own hotel. He used the shadows intelligently, flitting in and out of doorways, circling, criss-crossing and approaching in turn from both sides to see what he could see. He did not know how many men he was looking for and he didn’t know whether they would be waiting for him inside the hotel or outside.
MacLean’s attention came to rest on a black Mercedes estate car. It was parked in a narrow lane opposite the hotel in the perfect position to observe comings and goings. He could see two men sitting in the front of the car but his view of the back was obscured. He would have to circle round behind the car to see if there were more in the back. He back-tracked and entered the lane from the far end, moving swiftly and quietly from doorway to doorway until he could see that the Mercedes, which was parked with its nearside wheels up on the pavement, held three men. There was a third man sitting in the middle of the back seat. All three were watching the hotel entrance. Two were smoking.
MacLean felt sure he was looking at the opposition but how best to tackle them? They would be armed and he couldn’t hope to take on three armed men with a couple of kitchen knives. He decided that the car was their weak point. All three were sitting down and close together; they were vulnerable and unawares. But first he had to make sure they were the killers. He decided to offer himself as bait. He moved away from the car and retreated back down the lane. He ran down the neighbouring street until he neared his hotel and stopped, knowing that when he moved on a few steps, he would become visible from the lane. The men in the car would be bound to see him.
MacLean gambled that they would not rush him. There would be no point in creating a commotion in the street when they could deal with him quietly in his room in the hotel. He steeled himself to take the next step and prayed that the men in the car saw it that way too.
He walked on, making sure that they got a good view of him by pausing under a street light to pretend to check something in his plastic shopping bag. He walked up the steps of the hotel to the entrance and into the hall to collect his key from Reception. He got into an elevator but got out again on the first floor and ran quickly back down the stairs to keep watch on the hotel entrance through the glass panel of the door leading to the stairs.
He did not have long to wait before the three men from the car came casually through the front door and asked the Reception clerk something. They walked over to the elevators and got into one which had just been vacated by four people who were laughing and joking as they crossed the hall to the exit.
The elevator doors slid shut and MacLean ran quickly across the hall, using the four laughing people as a shield between himself and Reception. He did not want the desk clerk to see him leave. Once outside, he sprinted across to the Mercedes in the lane and prayed that it had been left unlocked. It had.
The question now was, did he have enough time to booby trap the car with what little resources he had at his disposal? The men would get no answer at his room and find the door locked. They would check with Reception that they had the right number and try again before finally forcing the door. MacLean reckoned that he had five minutes max.
He got into the back of the Mercedes and emptied the contents of his plastic bag on to the seat beside him. The butane cylinders were going to play a starring role in this production. He forced the length of plastic tubing from the wine kit over the nozzle of one of the cylinders and then cut off half to fit on to the other one. He then used a kitchen knife to cut an opening into the base of each of the front seats.
The cuts were just large enough to permit the insertion of the ends of the tubing. The cylinders themselves he pushed out of sight underneath the front seats. He wanted a reservoir of gas to build up in the car but it would have to be contained in some way so that it was not flushed away when the doors were opened. The seat squabs would prevent this.
Next, MacLean needed to find the car’s flexible fuel line. It was an estate car so there was a chance he could reach it from inside the car providing he could pry off the side panels in the rear luggage space. He pulled one of the rear seats forward so that he could climb through the gap into the back. Unfortunately the backspace wasn’t empty and he had difficulty finding enough room to kneel down and turn round. There was something under a tarpaulin, which was awkward to push to one side. He struggled to get both his arms under the bundle and froze suddenly when it made a sound. Sweat broke out on MacLean’s brow; he recognised the sound. It was the sound a corpse made when trapped air was expelled from its lungs.
With his heart thumping in his chest, MacLean withdrew his arms slowly from beneath the tarpaulin and pulled it back. The bloody face and staring eyes of Jean Paul Rives looked up at him. MacLean swallowed and replaced the tarpaulin. He steeled himself to carry on.
Time was running out but any lingering doubt about the identity of the three men as the killers had just been removed. He wrenched back the side panel in the luggage space and found the flexible fuel line. He cut through the underside in a place where fuel would start to leak out through a drainage hole on to the road and form a puddle in the gutter. The car had its wheels up on the pavement: the gutter was practically under its middle.
MacLean got out of the car not a moment too soon. He had just made it to the shadows on the other side of the lane when he saw the three men emerge from the hotel. Their voices were loud: they were arguing about something. He watched as they approached the car and knew that the next few seconds would be critical. Would they simply get in or would they stand around arguing? The gas cylinders must be about fully discharged, he reckoned. Any delay and the concentration in the seat squabs would start to fall. At last the three men stopped talking and got into the car.
MacLean readied himself with matches and lighter fuel but was not convinced that there would be enough petrol vapour in the gutter to trigger off the gas inside. He would wait as long as possible. The men had started to argue again and there was an air of despondency about them. He saw the driver take out a pack of cigarettes and put it to his mouth to draw out one with his lips. MacLean froze in anticipation.
The driver held up a lighter to the end of his cigarette and flicked it open. MacLean saw a flicker of yellow flame lick out from it before the car erupted in a butane flash fire. This in turn ignited the heavy petrol vapour outside and a violent explosion rocked the car. There was no question of anyone surviving the conflagration. Jean- Paul Rives was cremated along with his murderers.
MacLean walked away: he walked for two blocks then took a cab to the far side of the city and did not return until late. The night porter at the hotel told him all about the excitement he had missed, obliging him to spend a few minutes asking the questions he could be reasonably expected to ask. He then went to his room and drank whisky until whether he was asleep or unconscious was a matter of medical opinion.
MacLean plied his hangover with black coffee and faced the fact that last night had not been a nightmare; it had all happened. His friends were dead and he had murdered three men out there in the street. The burnt-out shell of the Mercedes had been removed by the police — this was Switzerland after all — but there were scorch marks on the walls of the lane nearby. He was all alone with only the name May Haas to cling to. Who was she? What was she? Presumably she worked for Lehman Steiner but as what? Doctor? Nurse? Scientist? Personnel would know but would they tell him?
At eleven o’ clock MacLean phoned Lehman Steiner and asked to speak to the chief personnel officer. There
