'What is it?'
'The safety catch was still on when we took the Luger away from Litov.'
They were now well inside the Ardennes forest. The full moon oscillated like a giant torch between the palisade of pines lining the road. They hadn't met another vehicle in twenty kilometres. Ahead, at a bend, the headlights shone on stone pillars, huge wrought-iron gates were thrown open. The scrolled lettering on a metal plaque attached to the left hand pillar read Chateau Wardin.
The Chateau Wardin this was where it had all started, Beaurain reflected, as he drove up the winding drive. The formation of Telescope. For three days after the burial of his wife he had remained inside his Brussels apartment, refusing to answer the doorbell or the phone, eating nothing, drinking only mineral water. At the end of the three days he had emerged, handed in his resignation as chief of the anti-terrorist squad and asked the owner of the Chateau Wardin for financial backing.
The Baron de Graer, president of the Banque du Nord and one of the richest men in Europe, had provided Beaurain with the equivalent of one million pounds. His late wife's father, a London merchant banker, supplied the second million. But it was de Graer's gift of the Chateau Wardin as well, which had provided the training ground for the gunners whom Henderson trained as Europe's deadliest fighters.
Recruitment had been carried out with far greater care than by most so-called professional secret services seeking personnel. The motive had to be there: men and women who had suffered loss in the same way as Beaurain. Wives who had lost husbands in the twentieth-century carnage laughingly known as peacetime. Henderson had brought with him several Special Air Service men taking care the motive was never money. The Scot despised mercenaries.
Telescope had been involved in three major operations. At Rome airport it had shot four terrorists who had hijacked an Air France plane. No one had spotted Henderson's snipers who escaped dressed as hospital orderlies in an ambulance. And Dusseldorf: a bank siege involving hostages. No one ever worked out how unidentified men wearing Balaclava-type helmets reached the first floor and then descended one flight to destroy the heavily-armed robbers with shin-grenades and machine-pistols. Vienna: a hijack with Armenian terrorists unidentified snipers operating at night had killed every Armenian and then disappeared like ghosts. But in each episode and many others the local police had found the same object left as a trademark. A telescope.
Most West European governments were hostile to this private organisation which achieved what they were unable to. But rather than risk the general public knowing of Telescope's existence, they compromised allowing their own security forces to take responsibility for the events in Rome, Dusseldorf and Vienna.
'It would make the politicians look so stupid, Jules,' Rene Latour, head of French counterespionage, had explained when he was dining with his old friend Beaurain during a visit to Brussels.
'Do you remember that remark I once made to you about three years ago,' he continued.
'That the President regards me as his telescope because I take the long view?'
'No, I don't remember,' Beaurain had lied.
'It came back to me when all our security services were holding a meeting about Telescope and wondering who could be the boss of such an outfit,' 'Really,' Beaurain had replied, ignoring Latour's searching glance and changing the subject.
Information. The Belgian had foreseen from the very beginning that the transmission of swift and secret information to his organisation was essential if it was to be able to act with the necessary speed and ruthlessness And in this direction only, money was used; large fees were paid to an elaborate network of spies in all branches of the media, in many branches of government, in many countries. And always they operated through two watertight cut-outs, phoning a telephone number where someone else called another number.
But it was the Chateau Wardin with its seclusion, its variety of terrain, its hidden airstrip and helipad, which was the key to Telescope. This was Beaurain's main base.
As soon as the van drove in, the gates of Chateau Wardin were closed behind it. Litov was still awake. He was concentrating furiously, trying to make out what was happening, why there had been a slowing down in speed. Before the sudden almost right-angled swing at a sedate pace they had been travelling fairly fast along a road which had many bends. They had to be somewhere out in the country because he had not heard the sound of one other vehicle for a long time.
Also there were other indications that they might be nearing their destination a restless stirring among the guards; one of them came over to check his handcuffs and the strap; the doctor was putting his equipment away in a bag. The van was moving very slowly, turning round curves all the time, first this way and then that. Litov began to worry about the English doctor's remark.
'You have a flight ahead of you, a trip by air…'
The directive given to Litov by Dr. Berlin personally had been clear and straightforward.
'You will be taken prisoner by the Telescope organisation who will then take you to their base for interrogation. It is the precise location of the base I need to know. Once you have discovered it, you use your many talents to escape. It does not matter how many of their people are killed. And when you are taken in Brussels they will definitely not kill you or injure you more than necessary…'
It was this last prediction which had not ceased to puzzle Litov, which had almost caused him to ask Berlin how he could possibly know that for sure; except that you did not ask Dr. Berlin questions. How could Berlin have known they would take trouble to preserve his life?
The van negotiated the bends of the sweeping drive lined with trees and dense shrubberies. Half a mile from the gates it swung round another bend, the drive straightened and the moon illuminated a large Burgundian- style chateau with a grey slate roof. The windows were long and crescent-shaped at the top and a flight of stone steps led up to a vast terrace.
The driver swung onto a track round the side of the chateau and continued through dense woodland. Well out of sight of the chateau, he pulled up in a huge clearing.
Litov tensed. The rear doors were thrown open and a hellish sound beat against his ear-drums, the sound of the starting-up of a helicopter's rotors.
Litov had the powerful scent of pine wood in his nostrils. The guards, taking one end of his stretcher each, lifted him out. Litov, out in the open, saw above him a half-circle of dense pine trees, the halo of a moon behind cloud.
He had guessed right: he was somewhere in the Ardennes. As they carried him away from the van he saw Beaurain standing by a ladder leading into a chopper. What type he couldn't identify.
Knowing this would be his last chance, Litov opened his eyes wide before they carried him up the ramp. The chopper, throbbing like some huge insect eager to fly away, stood in the centre of a pine-encircled clearing. No sign of a road or house anywhere. It would be impossible to pinpoint it later, even from the air. A long straight main road, a winding smaller one, presumably a house, probably a big one, and a clearing among pines nearby. There must be scores of such places in the Ardennes.
They carried him up a ramp into the rear of the machine and laid his stretcher on another leather couch with an iron rail running alongside it. Litov couldn't hear the purr of the ramp closing above the roar of the rotors, but he was aware of sudden total darkness. One of the guards produced handcuffs and linked the stretcher with the iron rail. They were very thorough, these bastards. As if on cue, the machine began its climb into the night.
In the front cabin, which was isolated from the flying crew and from the cargo hold where Litov and his guards were, Beaurain and Henderson sat drinking the coffee made for them by Louise Hamilton, Beau-rain's personal assistant. A dark-haired English girl of twenty-seven, dressed in slacks and a blouse which did not entirely conceal her excellent figure. The strong bone structure of her face showed character. The tools of her trade were not those of what the business world knows as a personal assistant. She carried a 9mm. pistol made at Herstal in her handbag and she faced Beaurain across the table. For the whole of the journey, while he was forced to be in one place, she would brief him on what had happened through the day and take his dictation. She began by reporting, 'Alex says it's a straightforward fracture. It will hurt for several days, but it will mend as good as new if he doesn't mess about with it.' Beaurain was momentarily too tired to answer her. Henderson said nothing.
'I've read his file, Jules,' Louise persisted.
'He's got a record that makes me shudder. You think he'll break?'
Beaurain studied her across the table before replying. They had now climbed to two thousand feet and were flying smoothly. The pilot had his instructions and would carry them out to the letter. Through the window on his
