Five minutes passed. Ten. Then words began reappearing on the screen again.
France. Will give you time and place four hours from now.
They bypassed Milan and headed west, soon crossing the Ticino River into the flat landscape of the rice fields that dominated the terrain from Novara to beyond Vercelli. The highway was straight and unremarkable. A low half-moon illumined the cloudless night and the highway, its monotony interrupted only occasionally by the dark clumps of villages or solitary farmhouses.
At Santhia the highway turned northward slightly and began a slow ascent out of the plain. The foothills of the Alps began to punch up out of the landscape, and in the near distance he caught the dim silhouette of the Alps themselves, dark and hulking, blacker than the half-moon night.
At Aosta they stopped for gasoline and two cups of strong coffee and pushed on. The air had grown cool and crisp. In half an hour they entered the Mont Blanc tunnel at Entreves, and when they emerged eleven and a half kilometers later they were in France. Strand turned away from the ski resort of Chamonix and started toward Geneva, half an hour away.
“It’s almost time to check in with Obando,” Strand said. “We might as well stop for the night.”
At the first small road sign advertising lodging, Strand pulled off the main highway and followed a narrow alpine road for a few kilometers into the foothills. They came to a collection of kitschy little “Swiss chalets.” Strand roused the concierge, paid an outrageous price, and got the keys to one of the cottages near the edge of the compound.
Mara insisted on bathing, and while she did Strand tapped into the telephone wires again and logged on to one of the French service providers. Within twenty minutes he had an answer from Obando:
Paris. The day after tomorrow. Cafe Martineau, Blvd. des Capucines. 4:00 P.M.
It was not until they were ready to collapse in bed and Mara threw back the curtains in the bedroom that they understood why they had paid so much for the room. The little cottage was perched on a small promontory above a shallow valley. In the wan light they could see the downward-sloping hillside falling toward a broad alpine meadow and a valley that ran to the left and right. On the opposite side of the valley the land rose up quickly, then fell back and rose again. A mountain range emerged, and almost immediately the gargantuan dark mass of Mont Blanc towered above them in the night sky like another planet that had drifted too close and was rising toward them over the edge of the earth.
“My God,” Mara said. “Look at that.” She stood at the window a moment and then came back and crawled onto the bed. She sat there, embracing her knees, staring at the mountain, a dark behemoth anchored against the cobalt night. At the top, the frail light of the half-moon reflected off the legendary snowy crown.
As Strand lay on the bed beside Mara, looking at her naked silhouette highlighted by the moon glow between her and the mountain, it was not the mountain’s beauty that he saw, but its menace. In the light of day the massive landmark’s brooding gray body was a stunning foil for its majestic, snowy cap. But now, by the beguiling light of the half-moon, Strand sensed something altogether different. Now he felt an ominous pull, something like a beckoning, and the mountain became the physical presence of the Father of Darkness.
He reached out and touched Mara’s bare skin. She turned and looked at him, but he could not see her eyes. Then, without speaking, she lay down beside him, her face turned toward the mountain.
CHAPTER 31
BERLIN, SCHWANENWERDER
The villa sat on the island like a stone outcropping emerging from the deep emerald of the German woods. A nineteenth-century residence in the neoclassical style, it was made of gray limestone. From its high elevation it commanded a panoramic view that took in the exclusive villa district of Nikolassee on the opposite shore as well as the broad waist of the Havel River. In the distance the river narrowed as it neared Pichelsdorf, the densely wooded banks closing in and gradually swallowing the water in a throat of green.
A Mercedes motored slowly across the bridge from the mainland and proceeded to make its way along the narrow drive to the gates below the villa. Here the Mercedes stopped while Bill Howard presented his identification at the gatehouse, then continued up a serpentine lane to a motor court in front of the villa.
The view from here was stunning in the summer sunshine, but Howard did not bother to stop and look at it. He was welcomed by a young man dressed in a business suit and carrying a clipboard who led him into the villa and up several flights of wide stone stairways whose steps were so shallow that the climb was hardly noticeable at all. At every turn Howard caught sight of the Havel from windows that perfectly framed different views and brought him to the top of the stairs and an anteroom.
If he had known what he was looking at, which he did not, he would have found himself surrounded by works of art by some of the finest French, German, and Flemish artists of the late Gothic period: van Eyck, da Fabriano, Bosch, Fouquet, and Wiertz. Careful thought had gone into the manner in which the works were displayed, their sequence, their visual impact, their dominant color schemes, subtleties completely lost on Bill Howard. In fact, he had mused privately that the overall effect of this curious collection of paintings was rather grim and severe. He also assumed that the art in the anteroom had cost a fortune. This time he was closer to the mark.
Though several doorways exited off this anteroom, he was ushered toward the one straight in front of him. The room he entered was perhaps four times as long as its width and terminated at the far end with a huge window that once again provided a spectacular view of the heavily bowered Havel. More paintings and drawings hung along the high walls of the room, and down the center of its entire length was a series of waist-high lime wood cabinets with narrow horizontal shelves that contained scores of leather-bound portfolio boxes. Each box had gilt stamping on its face and spine, identifying a specific collection of drawings. One portfolio lay open on the slanted top of each cabinet, its contents ready for perusal. Farther toward the windows was a sitting area, and beyond that, just in front of the window itself, was a massive antique desk at which sat Wolfram Schrade.
Howard had been here many times before, and he knew the routine. Schrade was busy at his desk, so Howard did not speak to him but took a seat in one of the armchairs in the sitting area. Schrade ignored him. Howard let his eyes wander around the room. The place was a goddamn museum. It gave him the creeps.
After about ten minutes Howard heard some shuffling at the desk. He looked around to see Schrade standing, taking off his reading glasses as he came round the side of his desk. He was buttoning a double-breasted navy blue suit, which he wore over a tailor-made white shirt with medium-width crimson stripes. No tie. He was tall and lean, his face angular with a straight nose. His hair was thick, the color of sun-bleached flax.
“What about the woman?” Schrade asked, as if they were picking up a conversation of a few minutes earlier. His accent was not subtle, but neither was it distracting. His voice was unconcerned, his manner relaxed. Howard had never seen him otherwise.
Howard explained that the hunch he had had about her from the beginning was proving to be right. He thought she had become sympathetic with Strand. He no longer considered her reliable.
“Have you told this to Payton?”
“No.”
“I see. Well, I am finished fucking with them, then,” Schrade said. “I want her put away.”
There it was, Schrade’s peculiar phrase that Howard always found so jarring. In his own experience the phrase was veterinary, and he wondered how Schrade had come by it in English. Howard, who did not consider himself squeamish, found it a particularly brutal expression.
He whistled softly under his breath. “You’re talking about an FIS agent now. That’s going to get a response…”
“They are not going to respond to anything,” Schrade said with indifferent disdain. “Strand knows the thing is finished. Besides that, she obviously means something to him. Where are they?”
“Bellagio. My tech people said this morning the signal hadn’t moved…”
“Oh, your ‘tech people.’” Despite his languid manner, Schrade was expert at conveying frigid sarcasm. He was standing in front of Howard in his distinctive manner, erect posture, though not rigid, with his unoccupied arms hanging straight down by his sides. He appeared to be very comfortable that way, feeling no need to cross his arms or put his hands in his pockets or otherwise engage himself in some type of self-conscious body language that most
