Packer was very awake now. ‘Even our old friend, Chamaz, got quite decent coverage. And he wasn’t even dead!’
‘You telling me the Ruler’s not dead?’ Ryderbeit said quietly.
‘It’s the only thing I can think of for the moment. Maybe I’ll come up with something more brilliant later on. But two days ago the Ruler tells Pol that the operation’s off. He also tells Pol to carry on with the original plan — with the difference that I’ve got to knock you off, instead of the Ruler. And the Ruler’s not the kind of man to have scruples about sending up an understudy, just to find out what our reaction would be.’
‘Maybe — if he is alive — he thinks we were killed in the avalanche?’
‘So why did he set up the ambush?’
Ryderbeit pulled a sour face. ‘How the hell could he be so sure? Unless he set up the ambush to find out?’
‘That presupposes that his boys had the Fiat under observation.’ Packer sighed. ‘It’s possible, even probable, with Chamaz still on our tail. Klosters is a small place. Come to think of it, so is St Moritz.’
Ryderbeit’s eye squinted round at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I was just thinking of a girl I used to know.’ Packer leaned against the window and closed his eyes. ‘Wake me when we get to Zürich.’
‘Well, this is it. As the sentimentalists say, I hate goodbyes at railway stations.’ Ryderbeit clapped both hands on to Packer’s shoulders. ‘Do we keep in touch, soldier?’ He grinned. ‘All right, I stopped being sensitive a long time ago. I’m a pariah. People hire me — use me — sometimes even pay me. Then they get shot of me like I’m carrying bubonic plague.’
Packer cut him short. ‘Is there anywhere I can get hold of you?’
‘Ah, there’s a touch of humanity!’ Ryderbeit shook his head. ‘You might try the American Express in Rome — the eyeties are one of the few people I haven’t crossed so far, and they’ve got a lousy secret police. You might also try the Tel Aviv Hilton. And the name’s Spice-Handler, remember — once again the Wandering White African Jew.’
The Zürich station loud-speaker was announcing the imminent departure of the 9.10 express to Geneva. ‘For Christ’s sake, lie low and don’t splash your money around,’ Packer said, picking up his case. ‘And be careful with that toy gun of yours — especially when you go through airport checks.’
‘Always keeping to the right side of the road, eh, soldier? You know, you’re still a miserable bastard — but I guess I’d be the same if I had to foreswear the Demon Drink. Fact is —’ and for a moment Packer had a disconcerting glimpse of Ryderbeit embarrassed — ‘with all we’ve been through, I’ve quite got to like you, soldier. Some day we might work together again.’
‘Yes. And if my theory about the Ruler is correct, that day may be sooner than you think.’
A whistle blew; Packer turned and ran down the platform, just managing to leap aboard the last carriage as the train began to move. When he looked back, Ryderbeit had gone.
The open carriage offered him no cover. It was crowded, mostly with sober-faced men in business suits with despatch cases resting on their laps. Packer noted each one — first those facing him, then, after a visit to the toilet, observing the rest on the way back to his seat.
At each of the three stops — Berne, Fribourg, Lausanne — he changed carriages, leaving the train with his luggage, and only reboarding when the whistle blew. Again, it was more his senses than his eyes that were alert: he was no longer looking out for the square-shouldered, dull-eyed gorilla with his cheap ill-fitting suit bulging in the wrong places and taking half an hour to read one paragraph in the newspaper.
He was looking for someone quiet, typical — a face in the commuter crowd — a face that would reappear just once too often.
Eighty minutes later, when they drew into Geneva Central Station, Packer still felt ‘clean’ — or as clean as he could hope to feel over the coming months. He had spotted only one mild suspect on the train, but he had disappeared at Lausanne while Packer was changing carriages. After the abortive ambush, he was not under-rating the Ruler’s capacity for following through with a ‘grand slam’, even here in Switzerland, and even with him and Ryderbeit now split up. Packer was taking no chances.
In the terminal’s wash-and-brush-up emporium, he changed into a light suit, and at last rid himself of his ski boots, which had begun to weigh him down like a convict’s ball and chain. He also bought all the French papers and the Herald Tribune.
The avalanche was again given wide coverage, but with few fresh facts. One French paper, however, carried a report alleging that the disaster had been started by gunfire. There followed another denial by the Swiss army that any soldiers were responsible, but the report also reminded its readers that the Ruler maintained a staff of 200 highly trained and heavily armed bodyguards at his chalet in Klosters, ending with an implication that an attempt might have been made yesterday on the Ruler’s life.
Le Journal de Genève, like its staid sister, the Neue Züricher Zeitung, gave the avalanche unsensational coverage, but added a brief paragraph quoting the Chief of the Graubunden Canton Police, who had spoken to a member of the Ruler’s household, who in turn had denied that any of His Majesty’s servants were responsible for any alleged shots. Packer wondered how many petrodollars those words had cost
