CHAPTER TWELVE
As soon as Quayle put in the call, Kurt Eicheman went to work. For this, there was only one man he would trust. In turn, he put in a call to his local network leader, in the south east of France, who dropped everything to run down the man called Girard in Chamonix.
Quayle, Holly and Eicheman, along with Kirov and his team, would be flying in directly while Cockburn had been recalled to London to re-brief Tansey-Williams. The plan was to enter through Frankfurt and then Geneva on four different flights, and soon all but Quayle and Kirov were fast asleep. It seemed days since they had last slept, and all except the pair had taken one of the sedatives offered by the Spetznatz medic.
Quayle stretched back in the aisle seat, Holly next to the window, and took the opportunity to think through the last twenty four hours. Kirov, the tireless wiry little KGB man, sat on the other side of the aisle, headphones on as he watched a movie. It was a period production set before the Great War, young men in baggy flannels watching a cricket match. The next shot showed a slow bowler pacing his run and the cheery youthful grin of the schoolboy batsman, tea and sandwiches being served at the pavilion somewhere behind.
Quayle watched the silent images through a wreath of his own cigarette smoke, his eyes occasionally flickering to look at Holly. Up on the screen, people clapped mutely and the batsman walked back to the pavilion, his disappointment hidden in a mask of good sportsmanship. Jolly good stuff, Quayle thought cynically. It’s not who wins that counts but the game and all that.
Stirring beside him, Holly looked at the screen and smiled. “Play up play up and play the game,” she said sleepily. And Quayle smiled back, thinking how like her father she was at times, quoting Newbolt.
As she snuggled down again, he thought about what she had said, and Henry Newbolt’s words flashed back to his mind.
‘There’s a breathless hush on the close tonight,
ten to make and the match to win,
a bumping pitch and a blinding light,
an hour to play and the last man in,
and it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat
or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
but his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote,
Play up! Play up! and play the game!’
As he repeated the verse to himself, he thought about old Teddy Morton. The poem was a favourite of his and he could conjure vivid images as he read, the rich tones of his voice filling the room with Vitae Lampada. The glory of courage that only poets ever found.
‘ The sand of the desert is sodden red,
red with the wreck of a square that broke,
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s dead,
and the regiment blind with the dust and smoke,
the river of death has brimmed its banks,
and England’s far and honour a name,
but the voice of a schoolboy that rallies the ranks,
Play up! Play up! and play the game.’
Suddenly, there in the half dark, the movie flickering on the small screen and a hostess tucking in a sleeping passenger, his eyes narrowed. The sudden realisation was clear and strong. Teddy, you tricky, clever, wonderful old bugger. The pack was close. You knew where to put it so that only I would know. You knew, sooner or later, I would find it. Red with the wreck of a square that broke. Broken Square. You knew they would come for you. So you named the file as a clue, knowing that I and only I would find it…
The BND ground operator had been busy. By the time the team arrived in Chamonix, he had found a large well-equipped chalet for them to move into and also had news on the Frenchman. As people threw bags into the warm wood-panelled bedrooms, Quayle and Eicheman moved through into the dining area and pulled the concertina door across behind them. The central heating had kicked in, and outside the air had a crisp alpine sharpness. In the window, the massif of Mont Blanc rose above the trees, the slopes crisp and white and smooth like a wedding cake. The beauty was deceptive, the ice cliffs and avalanches, the sub zero temperatures and the sheer hostility muted by distance.
Nearer, and starkly more impressive, stood the Augille du Midi, a towering narrow spire at the crest of a ridge. It reached towards the heavens like the devil’s accusing finger, its last few hundred metres sheer walls of rock and blue ice. Atop the spire stood a cable car station and observation deck. A warm restaurant served coffees and chocolate and light meals, but outside the temperature, even in summer, was below zero, and the air at twelve-and-a-half-thousand feet thin.
Quayle looked up. He had been up the Augille many times, twice the hard way. With crampons and rope, up the great columns of rock and ice chutes with Pierre Lacoste, a respected guide in the valley.
“Your man, Girard,” the BND man began. “Your information was correct. He eats at the Albert three or four times some weeks. I saw him there last night. He leaves there and sometimes calls in at the Shuker bar, or the Blue Note. But he’s rarely alone. Usually he’s with two or three others. Same age. Mid thirties, early forties. He lives in a chalet complex up the road towards Argentierre. Three chalets set together in the trees. Security is very good. Fences. Patrols. I think he is not… how do you say? Top Dog?”
Quayle nodded and he continued.
“I watched him go into one of the smaller chalets. The larger is occupied by others. I spoke to a man in the village at Le Lavancher. He delivers things
