Ten minutes later, Quayle had dressed the single entry wound under Pierre’s left armpit. There was no exit wound, and that meant that the bullet fired from a nine millimetre was still inside him. He would have to be moved soon or he would die.
Quayle settled on his knees and pulled up the rope that the last man hung on. As he reached eye level, the Englishman spoke. “Answer my questions or you both go the way your friend did.”
Even Girard nodded through his pain a few times, confirming the answers of the other. When he was finished, Quayle stood back.
“You two are responsible for the deaths of many people.”
“You won’t do anything to us. Not defenceless as we are…” The second man was gaining courage, the tearful babbling over. But Girard’s other hand was now moving now slowly towards his jacket. “You must take us in.”
“So you can pull strings and get off?”
“You represent the law here. You must!”
Girard’s hand still moving imperceptibly.
“I don’t represent the law,” Quayle said. “Just the ghosts of dead men.”
“You won’t let us die here. You can’t!”
Quayle leant forward. “You called me a bastard. You were right.” And as Girard’s hand came up with the gun, Quayle jerked the axe out of his other hand “I am!”
Girard’s numb bloodless fingers slipped on the ice and, as he fell, his weight on the rope pulled the other man screaming backward into nothing.
After they were gone, Quayle assembled the parapente in minutes and, gently taking Lacoste over his shoulder again, he ran ten feet down a sloping rock and, with his heart in his mouth and the feeling of the parachute filling with air behind him, he jumped from the ledge.
With warm air rising from the valley floor, he was a full twenty minutes in the air before landing one hundred yards from the refuge.
One of the Soviets took the old guide and redressed the wounds. An hour later, with a pair of randonee skis and a shovel as a stretcher, they moved onto the ice. It took all day, but they reached Chamonix by eight that evening.
The following night, Quayle broke into a Paris apartment, slid open the ageing locks on an old wall safe and took out the contents: a series of papers, and a set of diskettes.
*
The Fairies at the Milburn back door were young and bored and would not have remembered Titus Quayle from his days at Century anyway. They just looked at the pass he held up and, as he was admitted to the inner secure chamber, the others in back room – watching through the cameras – barely looked at him before the steel inner door clicked open. Still slack, he thought.
Quayle was tired, unshaven and wanted a shower. His iron grey hair seemed greyer somehow, powdered with the dust of the mountains. He still wore the guide jacket, stained brown with dried blood, and he looked like he belonged on a building site. But men like that did come in the back door of Milburn every now and then. It would be the talk of the canteen later.
Upstairs, the pass was waiting for him. It had a bar-code, a magnetic stripe, a hologram, a familiar logo and looked very like a bank card, just like it was intended to. Running his fingers around its edge, he took the last flight of stairs. The card wouldn’t get him past the man at the top. Appointment only up here. He looked at his watch. He was on time.
“Callows,” Quayle said to the Fairy.
“He’s busy. Phone first.”
“He will see me.”
“Fuck off sunshine,” he said, indolently standing up.
Quayle reached out, took the man’s left nostril in his hand and squeezed, his other rising and taking a pressure point on his neck. The man groaned and fell to his knees, the pain making his eyes water.
“I’m tired. Too tired, to deal with this in a mature fashion. So take a seat over there, or you’ll be going down the stairs on a fucking stretcher. Understand?”
Pushing the man backward into the chair, he opened the door.
In Sir Martin Callows’ office, the faces turned to look at him: John Burmeister standing by the window, impeccable as ever in a three piece suit, Callows himself huge and leonine at his desk, Hugh Cockburn and Tansey-Williams in the chairs alongside.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Quayle said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“You’ve got a bloody cheek walking in here,” Burmeister snapped. “Who gave you a pass?”
“A blind man,” Quayle answered. “We spent a few hours last night on his wife’s personal computer.”
He drew from his pocket the diskettes and tossed them onto the desk. As Tansey-Williams reached out, Callows’ hand closed over them.
“Broken Square,” Quayle said. “It’s all there... the file Teddy Morton created and the stuff I took in Paris.”
“Ah,” Burmeister said, a trace of confidence coming into his voice. “This all of it?”
“Adrian Black has a copy, as does Alexi Kirov.”
“What are you saying ?” Burmeister snapped
“They earnt it”
“Why Black?”
“He’s back with Five now. Didn’t you know?”
“Know what?” Burmeister snapped. The others were silent, Callows watching from big brooding eyes.
“He’s onto you. Teddy Morton was as well.” Quayle’s voice was rasping with menace. “Long before he went to Aussie. He knew. He warned me through Gabriella Kreski. Only she didn’t know it…”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You killed him,” Quayle said, his voice so low they had to strain to hear him. “Edward Morton was my friend. You had him burned to death. And the others. Jerry Pope seriously
