‘I do not doubt it,’ said Letif. ‘They certainly did not make it easy for him — or for you, otherwise you would have been suspicious. You see, Colonel, they were relying on your man’s expertise. And they have been rewarded.’
‘Who?’ Tamat barked.
‘Ashak, for instance. And His Imperial Highness, of course.’
Tamat sat in uneasy silence. At the back of his arrogant mind, a doubt was beginning to stir.
‘Why did you have Chamaz killed?’ Letif said at last. ‘Or rather, why did you want him killed?’
‘You still doubt that he is dead?’ Tamat growled.
‘I don’t know that he is dead any more than the French police know. I suggest you contact your man in Paris and confirm that he made a positive identification of Chamaz before he bombed the car.’
Colonel Tamat stood up. His eyes had grown tired with trying to read Letif’s expression across the darkening room. ‘I think your inferences are dangerous and without foundation, Minister.’ He spoke with none of his natural authority. ‘It is your privilege to have your own opinions and suspicions. But I must warn you, if you are unwise enough to try and act on them I shall be obliged to report this whole conversation to the full Council of Ministers, and to His Highness himself.’
‘No,’ said Letif. ‘It is you who will not dare to act. You will not dare to, because today you have placed yourself under heavy suspicion. There is an international plot to kill His Highness, and yet this afternoon you attempted to liquidate a vital witness.’
Tamat stood in the middle of the room, jaw muscles working as though trying to dislodge something from between his teeth. ‘You are being naïve, Minister. You should know that when an agent bungles his job he does not get rewarded with a reprimand — or a cosy bed in Dr Hubei’s house in Basel. What my men did this afternoon was standard procedure.’
Letif lifted his hands in a small gesture of resignation. ‘I am not convinced that His Highness will see it that way.’
Tamat, who had turned towards the door, wheeled round and peered angrily at the slight hunched silhouette behind the desk. ‘You dare accuse NAZAK of treason!’
Letif cut him short. ‘Do not waste your breath, Colonel. You have already said enough this evening to merit a slow official death. Just take a little advice. From now on, do not act too hastily. You and I may soon need each other.’
Colonel Tamat swung round and collided with the door, muttering ferociously, and marched out into the neon-white glare of the corridor, slamming the door behind him. Ten yards away a guard came to attention, smacking the butt of his rifle in salute. The colonel’s two plain-clothes bodyguards joined him at the lift. He rode between them and walked through the double security check, out into the dry heat of night, where a black armour-plated car with bulletproof windows and self-sealing tyres awaited him between two motorcycle outriders.
Colonel Tamat sank into the back and listened to the rising howl of the motorcycle sirens as they sliced through the traffic, in the direction of his marble residence in the foothills outside the city.
He rode in sullen silence, irritated by the proximity of the two bodyguards on either side of him. Such routine precautions seemed suddenly irrelevant. It was not those staring crowds outside in the streets that he now had to fear.
CHAPTER 14
The motorcade had disappeared down the road to Klosters; the police had dispersed to their own cars; and the tourists at the foot of the slopes were making their way up to the Kulm Hotel. One of them was a tall figure with lank black hair sprouting from under a powder-blue pixie hat, orange sun goggles, a faded khaki-green jacket and white doeskin boots over his skiing trousers. Round his neck was slung a Polaroid camera, with a telescopic lens.
He climbed to the hotel terrace and sat down at a table where Owen Packer was drinking lemon tea. A small pair of binoculars lay half hidden under his leather mittens. He looked up and nodded. ‘Same time, same place. I made it just two minutes up on his time yesterday. We don’t need a computer to work out a schedule like that.’
Ryderbeit ripped the last exposure out of his Polaroid and pushed it across to Packer. It was still tacky, and showed a blurred silver-haired skier in a red, white and blue anorak coming to a halt among a crowd of men. ‘Family snap,’ he said, smiling. ‘I could pick him off with a peashooter.’
‘Sure. But you wouldn’t get fifty yards.’
Ryderbeit pushed up his goggles and squinted for a moment at the still-deserted slopes above. ‘I grant you, the sod doesn’t stint himself on hired help. It’s just a question of how good they are.’
‘They’re lousy,’ said Packer. ‘They miss the first and most important trick of the game — the art of standing around doing bugger all and looking convincing about it. Those boys look like stand-ins out of central casting for some thirties B-movies. They’re not only lousy, they’re laughable!’
Ryderbeit had turned and snapped his fingers for a waitress. ‘Could try a Magnum .38 with a silencer, plus a diversion. Bit of plastique explosive under one of the tables — then perhaps toss a couple of grenades. Ten, twenty people killed lots more wounded. It might work.’
Packer brought both hands down on the table and slopped tea into his saucer. ‘Listen, Sammy, we’re not organizing a cheap hit-and-run massacre. You’re a big boy now — you’re not playing in the bush anymore. This time it’s serious. Which reminds me —’ he looked more closely at Ryderbeit’s khaki jacket, which was of a distinctly military cut, and of a thin material more
