He was relieved to notice that the German’s hand was quite steady as he poured the champagne.
Marmut bem Letif could not sleep that afternoon. Alone in his villa outside Mamounia, he lay naked in the half dark of his curtained room, waiting. Even with the air-conditioning turned up full, the sheet beneath him bore the wet imprint of his frail body.
At 3.42 the telephone purred by the bed. He sprang up, as though convulsed, lifted the receiver and listened to the few seconds of absolute silence; then the harsh familiar voice, very clear over the top secret line:
‘Minister? The man Chamaz has just left the Boulevard des Capucines. He is being driven to Switzerland — to Basel. That will mean Dr Hubei’s place, will it not?’
Letif felt his hand growing moist round the receiver. Hubei, he thought to himself; and could imagine the colonel’s scowling face the other end. For Colonel Tamat hated the very idea of Dr Hubei — that clever little Swiss brain surgeon who was busy tutoring the Ruler in the most sophisticated techniques of interrogation. To Sham Tamat the man represented more than a threat — he was a personal insult. Only too soon the colonel would see his mediaeval instruments of agony — crudely updated with electronic accessories — made redundant by the clinical use of drugs, auto-suggestion, and other mind-bending mumbo jumbo of medical science.
Letif whispered back into the mouthpiece, ‘You are to keep away from Dr Hubei. That is an order. You understand?’
There was a short silence. Colonel Tamat was not used to taking orders.
‘The car is being followed,’ he said at last. ‘I just hope — for the doctor’s sake — that my men do not lose it. If they do, I regard it as my duty to proceed with the ultimate plan.’ He paused. ‘You will be returning to the Ministry?’ he added.
‘Yes, I shall be returning.’ Letif heard a click and the line went dead.
In the stillness of the darkened room he heard a ringing in his ears. Sweat seeped down his smooth chest and collected in driblets on his thin hairless legs. His nose twitched, like that of an animal scenting danger. For the first time in his life, he felt pangs of real fear.
Several times he wondered if he should lift the phone again and call Switzerland direct. He had had the villa debugged only ten days ago, but there was no guarantee against the insidious workings of NAZAK: his villa was no more immune to them than it was to woodlice and dry rot.
If only I had more time, he thought: time to amass a nice little nest egg in one of those Swiss banks, as all his colleagues did. But he still had time to cut his losses arid run. His diplomatic passport required no exit visa; and there would surely be no lack of interested parties abroad who would pay well for information on the inside workings of the Ruler’s empire.
He sat on the bed and stared at the telephone, and wondered if there would be another summons to Europe. He decided that if there were, before this evening, he would sever all ties with Tamat and confide totally in the Ruler.
CHAPTER 12
At precisely 12.30 p.m. — three hours behind Mamounia time — a silver-grey Citroën CX drove out of the side gate of the Ruler’s Embassy in Paris with its peacock-blue, gold-crested shield above the main entrance.
The car moved through the lunchtime traffic, turning east towards the Péripherique, where it joined the southbound carriageway, pulling out into the fast lane and ignoring the; 60 kmph speed limit. A black Peugeot radio-taxi kept a comfortable hundred metres behind.
The Citroën carried three men, two in the front and one in the back. The car’s one distinctive feature was a tall aerial which bent back in the slipstream like a fishing rod. As the driver approached the Porte Vincennes exit leading to the RN4, the taxi closed in fast. The Citroën passed the third and final sign marking the intersection, and the taxi flashed its headlights twice.
Drawn up on the shoulder of the emergency lane, twenty yards in front of the intersection, was a white BMW 30 SI, its engine idling. There were two men inside. As the taxi passed them, the driver of the BMW drew smoothly out into the traffic, also heading south-west along the Péripherique. The man beside him was talking into a radio microphone.
The driver had moved into the outside lane, using the horn and flashing the cars ahead; but it was not until they were past the junction to the Porte d’Italie that he caught sight of the Citroën. It had slowed down to join the heavy traffic that was heading for the autoroute, south to Lyon and Marseilles.
The driver of the BMW placed himself several cars behind the Citroën. They passed the Orly exit and the junction west to Orléans; then the autoroute spread into six lanes, stretching flat and straight into a dim, rain-soaked horizon. Here the driver of the BMW felt able to draw back until the Citroën was almost out of sight.
There were no turnings for the next twenty kilometres, before the toll gates. When the BMW reached them, the Citroën was already second in the queue for the fast gate, and drove through a full minute before the BMW — enough to put nearly a kilometre between them.
The two men in the BMW snapped on safety belts and were pressed back in their seats as the engine hummed powerfully through the automatic gears, the tyres drumming on the concrete surface. The rain clouds were drawing closer, the sky ahead darkening over
