“God that’s wonderful,” she muttered. “Where are we?” Outside the window, beyond the crash barriers, were wet vineyards and small patchwork fields.
“About forty minutes to Venice,” Quayle answered.
“Then what?” she asked, reaching for a packaged sandwich.
“Sleep for me,” he answered. “Then, tomorrow, I go see a man about a dog. Get some documents done.”
“Passports?” she asked.
“Mmmm.”
“Isn’t that a bit risky?” She leant forward over the seat between the two men. “Don’t they have computers these days? You know, say when one has been stolen?”
“We’ll only use these ones once or twice. We are in Europe remember. EEC Passports. Half the time you could walk through with just the cover. Just hold the things up, look miserable like every other bastard and walk on by.”
“And the other half?” she asked.
“That’s why we’ll get good ones. If they’re looking for us, then it gets more difficult. Then they need to be good. The man I’m going to see will trade these for the real thing. He can provide to order.”
“What? He prints some?” she asked incredulously.
“No. He steals.” He watched her face in the mirror, and laughed softly at her expression. “From people who won’t miss them for a while. Happens all the time…”
Pope sat forward, yawned, and took a sandwich from the dashboard.
“I need to practice,” he said unwrapping it. He had not entered the passport discussion. He had complete faith in Quayle’s ability to manage the logistics of travel and accommodation. He had his own job and, to do it, he needed to exercise his skills every two days for fifteen minutes. Skeet shooting was good for the eye, a game of squash would do between times, but he now needed a range session. Fast reflex precision shooting needed gun time.
“What do you need?”
As Pope told him, Holly sat back and watched the rain on the windows, suddenly remembering the dead man on the veranda, the shattered lolling jaw, and felt the sickening fear again.
At seven that evening, with a man paid to drive the car to Verona on his way, Quayle paid off the water taxi man and they checked into the Gabrielli Hotel, entering through the back garden’s canal gate.
Quayle waited, letting Holly check in with Pope as her father in the next room. He gave her half an hour and then walked round to the front through the deserted laundry area, asking if his wife and father-in-law had arrived yet.
He was shown up to the room by a portly middle-aged man and, twenty minutes later, lay in a hot bath. Stage one was over. They were clear of Greece. A few days lying low, some new papers, and they would move on, throwing the scent of the fox to the wind.
*
It was a girl on chartered yacht who saw the body. It was floating face down in the water, bobbing on the small waves. At first she thought it was rubbish bag that someone had thrown over the side – and, being conservation minded, she was about to suggest that they pulled it aboard. Then the skipper saw it. The boat was a sixty footer and, under Greek law, required a local man in command. He had been making a living at sea for fifteen years and had seen bodies before and recognised it immediately. Dropping the main, he started the engine and swung the boat back round; then, in front of his silent charter party, he hooked a rope around one leg and, using the mizzen boom and a winch, hoisted the body onto the afterdeck. He had just come up from below with a blanket to cover it when one of the young men saw the second body tangled in seaweed floating nearby. The skipper had never seen a gunshot wound, but it was obviously not the fishes feeding that had left a wound like that – and accidental drownings don’t have ropes around their feet – so they headed back into Serifos and the authorities.
*
Sir Martin Callows stood granite-like in the bay window of his office, his leonine head hanging down and brooding as Burmeister ran through his report.
“Get him, John. He knows something now. He was close enough to Morton and now the daughter.”
“Knows something? He could be everything. He knows our systems. He’s linked to the daughter. Black had her name circled. Now the team hasn’t reported in, and they were going to his house…”
“Did you know that?” Callows asked.
Burmeister had been waiting for it. “No Sir, I didn’t.”
“Slack, John. Bloody slack. I don’t pay you what I do for sloppy work. Understand!?”
“Yes.”
The telephone rang, its muted buzz dying as Callows’ secretary answered it. She popped her head round the door and smiled. “It’s for Mr Burmeister. Urgent.”
Callows nodded and Burmeister snatched the grey phone up. Thirty seconds alter, he replaced it and looked at Callows.
“Red one confirmed,” he said. “Two in the sea of Serifos. Pulled out by a charter boat. Athens Station Chief has just done a positive ID. Third still missing. He sent a man up to Quayle’s place. Fresh paint job on the porch, bullet holes underneath. Hair and bone fragments in the garden by the wall.”
“I want him!” Callows seethed. “Concoct some suitable story. Get everyone in on it. The French, the Italians, the Germans, Interpol, Five, everyone! He’s snapped. He’s gone rogue. We don’t need this one getting away on us. Understand?”
“I do.”
Callows had lifted his head, his eyes red and angry. “Take Oberon aside. Have a chat. Metro this one. Get a few freelancers onto it. Slip the leash and let them run…”
Sixteen years before, there had been a Bader Meinhof man who had gone on a rampage, killing not only in the West Germany, but in France and Holland as well. In a six week period nineteen deaths were attributed to his actions. His name was Andre Weber and he was eventually shot to death by Surete officers on the Metro in Paris, who then melted into the
