Be difficult to contrive on the spot, he thought. Easier to come back to.
With this thought in mind, he turned the card over. A message was there to an individual called Robby. ‘One on the board for the blues!’ it read, with a familiar neat signature underneath. There had obviously been a print for each boy and Teddy had signed each. Beneath that, two other signatures had been haphazardly scrawled. Robby obviously hadn’t gotten round to collecting the entire team’s autographs.
Talk to me, Teddy!
It was Holly, looking over the front of the print, who saw the faint oblique slash through the ‘o’ on the word ‘board’. Quayle had missed a clue that was there, plain for the eye to see. The letter ‘o’ was an upside down ‘Q’.
She pointed it out to him and, turning the card over, he saw it himself and grinned. “Right. Let’s start,” he said, standing.
“Start what?” she asked.
“Searching. It must be in here somewhere.”
Quayle took the walk-in book room and Holly started on the shelves along the far wall.
“What am I looking for?” she asked.
“A file. A sheaf of papers, wrapped in something dustproof. Possibly a key to a safe deposit box, possibly another lead. You knew him better than me…”
Pierre Lacoste sat at his kitchen table with Alexi Kirov, going over the list of equipment they were going to need. The foray over the wire into the chalet complex had given them little and nearly compromised their mission. The security, once inside, was formidable – and, although the team could have destroyed the compound with firepower any day of the week, it would not have met the objective, that of taking Girard and the two or three senior men quickly and quietly and having a little chat. A snatch was also out of the question as they had yet to travel together. Time was becoming critical and they could no longer wait for a new option. Kirov had been assured by General Borshin that the Warsaw Pact meeting would be postponed at the last second if necessary, but he would deem that a failure. Perestroika would not be held back by fanatics, and the effective re-unification of Germany was top of the agenda.
Eicheman, meanwhile, had returned to Bonn to re-brief his people and would be back that night. Quayle didn’t really seem to care one way or the other. Something else was driving him.
They were down to four days now and that meant that they would need to take the men up in the snow, up on the Glacier de Leschaux or on the awesome north wall of the Grand Jorrasses itself.
“So you will all have randonee boots, oui?” Pierre asked.
“Yes. They will be ours. We will also have smocks and personal clothing. We’ll need skis, poles and rope, all prepared. The usual stuff for touring. One of my men will come with you to choose extra gear.” He paused. “We’ll need a workshop as well.”
“If the boots are good then it will be easy,” Pierre said.
The boots are good, Alexi thought. American. There would be other gear coming for the Spetznatz team, winter bivouacs and survival kit, but Soviet skis were shit and he wanted them bought here.
“They will be. Titus is due back in tomorrow night. His gear is ready?”
“Of course.” Pierre had spent a whole day on that alone. He had found an excellent pair of K2 205 touring skis and had mounted the race bindings himself. Quayle’s Scott boots would fit like a glove. The rest of the gear was loaded into a new pack and the parapente Quayle had asked for had been unrolled and checked three times. There was a lot of gear, too much for one man to carry in or out. But that was what he had asked for.
“Have you seen the weather report?” Pierre asked.
“Yes,” Alexi replied, looking up from the list.
“It will snow tonight.”
“Didn’t say that…”
The Frenchman shrugged. “It will snow tonight,” he said confidently.
That would be bad, Kirov knew. Without a base to settle on, and some nice cold weather to keep it stable, it would be like marbles on a billiard table.
Kirov left, and soon Lacoste went back down to the basement to finish packing Quayle’s gear. Much had only been collected an hour before from the Patagonia shop in the village. There was expedition thermal underwear and the familiar alpine synchilla snap t-neck sweaters and pants. He had also bought a guide jacket with the American manufacturer’s version of Gore-Tex lining, and a goose down jacket and pants. Even with a sleeping bag it was cold at altitude and, without a tent or cover, the wind chill factor would kill in hours.
But, if the clothing was American, the climbing equipment was as French as could be, all of it made down the valley at the Simond works in Les Houche. It was arguably the finest climbing gear in the world and had supported every major expedition since Hillary had conquered Everest. A small gunny bag was filled with a selection of stoppers, cramming devices, pitons and pegs – in case Quayle’s clean climbing style gave way to safety – ice screws, figure eights, three ice axes and a multi-purpose thigh harness. Lacoste had selected good Chouinard eleven millimetre guide rope. Other Chouinard gear he selected included the skins for the skis, probe poles with self-arresting grips
