It was his seventh day in the cell. Suffering from the steady pain of his arm and a diet of orange juice and water Litov felt it was more like seven months since his capture in Brussels. Carder arrived precisely at 3.30 and began with the irritating ritual of lighting his pipe. When he had it going nicely he looked at Litov without speaking for a minute, which again was what he had done each day.
'Changed your mind?' he asked at last.
'About what?' Litov glanced at the guard, wondering whether he could knee him in the groin and snatch the machine-pistol. But they had it all worked out. The guard stood well back, his weapon held across him so he could point the muzzle in half a second.
Carder, as always, had placed his chair six feet from the bed, so Litov could not snatch him as hostage and threaten to break his neck. The Telescope people seemed to know their business. Then they made their first mistake.
'About your name,' Carder said.
'John Smith.'
'Ah yes, of course. It's a good job we have all the time in the world,' Carder mused and peered into the bowl of his pipe.
'Can't make out what's wrong with this thing today. It's been playing up ever since I first…'
The cell door swung open and another masked guard stood in the entrance.
'Telephone for you, Doctor. Sorry for the interruption, but they said it can't wait.'
Carder got slowly to his feet.
'Well, if you'll excuse us just for a minute, Mr. Smith,' he said, and left the cell, followed by the guards. The door was slammed shut and locked from the outside. Litov sat very still, expecting someone to come back at any moment, but they didn't. The chair was still there. They had forgotten the chair.
He checked his watch. 3.47. The bus was due in three minutes. He waited for two everlasting minutes. He stared at the square of glass brick above his bed. If anyone was watching they would be back soon enough, but it was a risk he had to take. He wanted his first look at the outside world in seven long days.
He needed to see the bus. He moved swiftly, marked in his mind where the chair stood and then lifted it to the window and climbed onto it.
As he had guessed, it was a country road, a narrow tarred road with a grass verge and trees. The bus came round the corner almost at once, a red single-decker. It stopped, the doors opened automatically and three people got off, two women carrying shopping baskets and a man with a labrador on a leash. The bus was there only a few seconds, and then was driving off out of sight. But Litov had seen its destination in the window at the front above the driver.
Fascinated, he watched the passengers walk away off down the road.
Another vehicle came round the corner, and pulled up almost underneath the window. Leaving the engine running, the uniformed driver attended to the emptying of the pillar-box while Litov studied the legend embossed on the side of the van which was also painted bright red. E II R. Her Majesty's mail-van was collecting the post. He watched the van until it too had disappeared, got down off the chair and put it back in exactly the position Carder had left it. Then he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.
Guildford. That had been the destination on the front of the bus.
Telescope's base was in Surrey, England. And now he came to recall his earlier calculations of time spent aboard the chopper, everything fitted. He was being held at some house out in the country on a bus route to Guildford.
'He certainly took his first opportunity,' Henderson observed, clearly pleased.
'Not a man to underestimate,' Beaurain agreed.
'And the dossier says…' Carder was reading from a folder. '…Litov was attached to the Russian Embassy in London between July 1975 and December 1977 when he was returned to etc, etc.'
'Which suggests he is reasonably familiar with southern England,' Henderson pointed out. 'He was followed by Special Branch to Woking, which is just north of Guildford, several times. They lost him every time, of course, the stupid buggers.'
Beaurain, Henderson and the doctor were finishing their cold drinks. It was another ferociously hot day.
'We'll keep him here a few more days,' Beaurain said.
'Let him have a few more sessions with the doctor. Then he can go.' He stared hard at Henderson.
'You had better start making arrangements at once to organise the biggest underground dragnet you possibly can. Litov will head back for the Syndicate's base, but he will expect to be followed.'
'He's an expert at losing tails,' Henderson said.
'Exactly. So you'll need to use the leapfrog technique. Whatever happens he mustn't succeed in shaking loose from that dragnet.'
I'm on my way, sir.'
'And I,' suggested Carder, 'had better get back to Litov. You'll be about, sir?'
'Not for the rest of the day. I have a meeting in the city and won't be back until late.'
Beaurain made his way to the front of the house, nodded as a guard opened the door for him and ran down the steps from the terrace to his Mercedes. Louise was waiting in the passenger seat. From a track into the woods walked a man wearing an English bus driver's uniform.
Beaurain acknowledged his salute and drove away. At the bottom of the drive he turned right and speeded up as he passed a signpost. Bruxelles 240 km.
'Well, Louise, we've won the second round. I think we may have shared round one, but round two is ours.'
The imposing double doors of the Banque du Nord on the Boulevard Waterloo in Brussels were closed. Beaurain left Louise in the car and pressed the bell, giving the pre-arranged signal. The left-hand door was opened a few inches. The uniformed guard recognised Beaurain and then swiftly closed the door again when he was inside.
'Monsieur le Baron is expecting you,' the guard said, and escorted him to a small, gilt-framed door. He unhooked a phone and spoke into it while the lift descended. Beaurain approved of all this security: the people upstairs were being informed he was on his way.
'You will be met at the top,' the guard said, and stood aside to let him step into the lift. The lift stopped on the second floor and a second uniformed guard waited for him, a man Beaurain did not know. The guard checked a photograph after a searching glance at Beaurain's face, then led him along a marble-floored corridor to a heavy panelled wooden door at the end. The guard ushered Beaurain in; it was one of those locks you could open by turning the handle from the inside but not from the outside. The door was closed behind him.
'My dear Jules, it is good to see you. And again my apologies for phoning you at the chateau and asking you to travel all this way at this hour.' The Baron shook his hand and gestured towards the telephone.
'You know I do not trust that instrument for important conversations.'
Something was amiss. Beaurain sensed the atmosphere as the Baron de Graer, president of the Banque du Nord, ushered him to a leather armchair and then mixed two double Scotches and soda without saying anything. The Baron was small and slim, his hair still dark, his eyes had the sparkle of a man of forty though he was a good deal older than that, his nose like the beak of an owl. Then his guest spotted what had alerted him to the tension. The Baron's usually smiling mouth was compressed tight, like that of a man struggling for self-control or of one who was terrified. The latter was surely out of the question.
'Cheers! As the English say!'
The Baron managed the pleasantry with an effort and sat down next to Beaurain in another armchair. Beaurain studied him closely, remaining silent.
'I am so sorry for dragging you all this way at such short notice..'
He was finding excuses to delay saying what he had called Beaurain to tell him. Extraordinary: de Graer was a man of immense character.
'It made no difference,' Beaurain replied, watching his host very carefully.
'I had to come in anyway for a meeting with Voisin.'
'The Police Commissioner?'
What the devil was going on? The Baron's tone was sharp and anxious.
Beaurain had the strange sensation that his world was being shaken all round him, a feeling of instability
