‘You’re not taking orders from the Ruler. You’re arranging things for Charles Pol.’ She stood up and fetched her grip-bag. ‘And as Pol agrees, if the Ruler wants us all killed, I suggest we get on with the job as quickly as possible. Oh bloody hell!’ She had opened her case, and now rounded on him, her face taut with fury. ‘Did you pack this?’
He shook his head. ‘Sammy did. He’s a mercenary, not a valet.’
She paused, then began quickly undressing. ‘Goodnight, Captain Packer. I always knew you were an officer and a gentleman.’
CHAPTER 21
It was 3.32 by Sarah’s watch, which was two minutes ahead of the clock in the Gotschnagrat restaurant. They had stopped serving lunch half an hour earlier than usual, and the waiters were discreetly making out bills before they had been demanded. On the terrace the tables were empty, except for a few lizard-skinned sun-addicts sitting with their oiled faces tilted west, sopping up the last of the ultraviolet before the sun slid behind the peak of the Weissfluh.
Sarah was sitting on a bench about 200 yards above the restaurant building. The sky was clear and it was very cold. She wore a smart white windcheater above her black stretch-pants, a fur hat with earflaps turned down, and a pair of the largest dark glasses she had been able to find in town that morning. She realized, with some irony, that it was probably the first time in her life that she had ever wished to conceal her attractions.
She was also carrying her own Instamatic camera, which she occasionally pretended to use; and beside her on the bench was her Gucci handbag, containing her make-up, pill case, purse, a packet of Gitanes, a headscarf, and the Hitachi R/T set.
There had been only one awkward moment since she had arrived on the mountain half an hour ago. She had sat out on the terrace and ordered a salad and a vodka martini, when a stout young man with yellow hair, whom she had taken to be a German, had tried to talk to her. He had been unusually persistent, while her practised technique of defence and counterattack had not been wholly successful, and she had had to change tables.
At 3.40 the cable car rumbled into the shed just below the restaurant. But no skiers appeared: instead, a column of bulkily dressed men dispersed among the terrace tables and were ignored by the waiters.
Two minutes later the cable car started down again. Sarah glanced around her. The slopes were very bright and bare, with hollows of dark shadow. She noticed that one of the men on the terrace was looking up at her, lifting a pair of binoculars as though inspecting the view.
She stretched back on the bench and pretended to doze.
Packer had a light lunch in Davos, bought yesterday’s English newspapers, and a dozen postcards with stamps for abroad, then took the funicular railway, the Parsennbahn, up to the Weissfluhjoch, the last station below the Weissfluhgipfel, the highest peak in the area.
The morning rush of skiers had cleared, and the sloping car was half empty. He was able to lay the ‘Top-Ski’ bag on the seat beside him without attracting attention. He kept a constant but unobtrusive lookout for Chamaz, or his companion from the Chesa bar the night before, but he noticed neither of them.
By the time he reached the Weissfluhjoch he was fairly certain he was ‘clean’. If his reckoning had so far been reasonably correct, the Ruler had set two traps for today and would be content to wait and see which sprang first: either Packer acted on Pol’s instructions and shot Ryderbeit, or Packer and the Rhodesian blew themselves to pieces with the Hartmann sticks. (But both sets of skis, with the deadly sticks, were now safely deposited in the left-luggage office at the railway station, and the ticket had been burned.)
Packer’s nerves were calm; and it was more in a mood of resigned anticipation, rather than anxiety, that he stepped into the diamond-white glare outside the Weissfluhjoch station.
There was a hut with a bar and cafeteria, and a few benches out in the sun. It was perfect skiing weather, and the slopes were sprinkled with streaking zigzagging figures. Packer was leaving himself plenty of time. He was already more than thirty minutes ahead of schedule. He drank a couple of cups of black coffee, then went out and began to write postcards on one of the benches.
The day had so far been uneventful, except for an orchestrated tantrum by Sarah on discovering the condition of the rest of her clothes — an offence which she prepared to attribute to him rather than to Ryderbeit. Her fury had lasted the whole journey back to Klosters, where they had dropped her at the Hotel Vereina, a safe distance from the Chesa.
It was only after they had left her that Packer remembered to check that the radios, still in their pristine packings, had batteries. But however scared Pol might have been the night before, he was not a man to neglect details.
With fifteen minutes still to spare, Packer had a last coffee, fitted the ‘Top-Ski’ bag to the straps under his rucksack, which contained his binoculars, chocolate, and an extra sweater; clipped on his real skis and set off at a careful pace down the two miles of fairly gentle run to the Parsenn Hut.
Here he had eight minutes in hand. As usual, the hut was crowded with boisterous groups of skiers taking a late lunch and drinking on the terrace. Without unstrapping the Top-Skis’, he sauntered between the tables, giving himself plenty of time to pick out any of the Ruler’s henchmen. Again he saw no
