We ended up back in room 510.
Harvey and Miss Jarman were already there, tucking into the champagne, and with coats off in that heat. The General was still in his fireside chair. Morgan raised his eyebrows at me as he let us in, but left it at that.
Harvey stood up. 'Christ, how did you do it?'
'I just said Please.'
'Well, I'm damned.' Then he suddenly looked at the champagne glass in his hand.
But I wasn't worried – yet. For him, champagne would be about as strong as British beer. Still, it wasn't a bad thing for him to remember that getting Maganhard back meant we were still in action.
I turned back to introduce Maganhard to the General -but it looked as if they'd met. Maganhard was glaring down at the long, shrivelled face with a look as friendly as a welding torch.
The General broke the ice: 'I suppose you're that damn fool Maganhard?'
'Don't mind the old-world courtesy,' I reassured Maganhard. 'He thinks the world's divided into two: himself, and the damn fools.'
Maganhard swung round on me. 'Why did you involvethis man?'
The General snorted. 'Don't like dealing with tradesmen, heh? I've done some good work for you in your short life. You and those damn fools Heiliger and Fiez. Don't you think I give value?'
'The information you supplied us with was valuable enough,' Maganhard snapped. 'Now I am wondering what value you will get from information about me.'
'You could always buy it for yourself,' the General suggested.
I said quietly: 'We did that deal already – remember, General?'
He swivelled his head slowly towards me. 'All right, Cane, I remember. Just thought it worth trying. The damn fool might have paid up. All damn fools, him and Max Heiliger and Fiez. Only sensible thought they had in their lives was that electronics was going to become big business after the war. Then they went off and started playing hole-in-the-corner with Liechtenstein registration and bearer shares and whatnot.'
He picked up one of the pink cards, held up his pince-nez, and started reading: 'Caspar AG. Formed 1950. Issued capital forty thousand Swiss francs.' He turned to look at Maganhard. 'Has to be above twenty-five thousand by law and if you go above fifty thousand you have to have a controller in. Wouldn't like that, would you? Always want to play secrets.' He looked back at the card. 'Controls thirteen companies in France, Germany, Austria…'
Maganhard was giving me the steely glare. 'Have you been talking about my business?'
The General said calmly: 'Most of that information is on file at the Public Registry in Liechtenstein. I know the rest because it's my business to know.'
Maganhard hadn't finished with me. 'Why did you gethim involved? Now he will spread the news of us all over Europe.'
'You mean there's somebody who doesn't know already?'
That stopped him.
The General chuckled. 'Young man's quite right, Maganhard. I couldn't make a wooden centime out of you that way. Well, perhaps there's other ways.' The pale, half-hooded eyes swung at me. T suppose you got him out of jail because the Sûretéhasn't asked for an arrest yet. What happens when they do ask for it?'
I shrugged. It was going to come, all right – just as soon as the real Griflet borrowed a few francs and got on the phone to France. Well, the first thing to happen would be that Inspector Lucan had a heart attack. But the second thing… I shrugged again.
'By then we'll be on our way.'
'You're joining the damn fools, Cane. How d'you plan to do it?'
'I think we'll classify that Secret, General.'
'Now I'm sure you're a damn fool. D'you think I could sell that? Nobody wants to know. They all know you're going to Liechtenstein – and that's enough.' He lifted a glass of flat champagne, tucked it under his moustache, gave a long loudslurp, and put it carefully down again. 'What d'you know about Liechtenstein, Cane? It's a small country. Frontier with Switzerland's only fifteen miles long. And d'you know what that frontier is? The Upper Rhine. And d'you know how many ways there are into Liechtenstein? Just six. Only six. Five bridges, and the south road through Maienfeld to Balzers. All they'll need is eighteen policemen to watch that lot. They won't waste hundreds of men trying to catch you before that. They'll wait for you there.'
There was a long silence.
Then Harvey was on his feet, looking at me curiously from under his pale eyebrows. With his coat off, the gun at his belt looked very obvious.
'I've never been to Liechtenstein,' he said slowly. 'Have you, Cane? Is he right?'
'I've been there,' I said. 'And he's right.'
He twisted his head at me in a little, quizzical look. 'You sound kind of calm about it. What had you figured to do about that frontier, anyway?'
I shrugged. 'If we hadn't stirred up any fuss, we'd have whistled across. Normally, those bridges aren't even watched.' No customs, no guards – nothing. For customs purposes, Liechtenstein's part of Switzerland, so they just don't bother with that frontier: the real one comes between Austria and Liechtenstein. And we couldn't cross that without first crossing into Austria. I couldn't see any point in doubling our problems.
Harvey said: 'So they can close the bridges. What about the south road? Can we get up close, then get off the road and walk across?'
At the southern end of Liechtenstein, Switzerland stretches across the river, so we could cross the river down there without meeting a frontier post. But then there was only the one road, heading north into Liechtenstein.
I shook my head. 'It's a fortified zone. The road's the only way through.'
Just there, the valley narrows down to about a mile wide, between sheer mountain walls. This is the St Luzisteig Pass, a natural defensive position against an invader driving south up the Rhine. Personally, I can't see why any invader would come up the river: all he'd capture in the end would be the ski resorts at St Moritz and Klosters, and I'd have thought the prices they charged there were defence enough.
But for all that, they've spent nearly two centuries fortifying the St Luzisteig, right up to the Liechtenstein frontier. Most of the old stonework is just grassy humps by now, but some time in the 'thirties they added what looks like a film set for the First World War. Trenches, pillboxes, dragons-teeth tank traps, gun and mortar pits. And barbed wire: hedges of great rusty barbed wire coils. The whole zone a mile wide and several hundred yards deep: a huge cork rammed tight into the bottleneck of the valley.
Harvey was still watching me, still with the curious look on his face. 'You know, Cane – this might have been something worth planning for.'
I nodded. 'I thought about that. The trouble was, I couldn't think of any plans.'
'Christ.' He looked down at his empty champagne glass. 'I could use a drink.' He looked up at Morgan. 'Have you got anything stronger?'
I said: 'Stick to champagne for the moment.'
He said: 'Youstill sound calm about it.'
'Of course. The General's got a plan. He's going to sell it to us.'
After a little while the General said: 'Have I, Cane?'
'Oh yes. You haven't made any money out of us yet, General. And it was you brought this problem up. Yes, you've got a plan.'
'Ah.' He gave a gentle sigh. 'Perhaps I have. But can you afford it, heh?'
I shrugged. 'That's up to Mr Maganhard. Still – he knows Liechtenstein. He knows the problems.'
I looked sideways at Maganhard. He was staring down at the General with a look that suggested he was prepared to bid about two pfennigs – and stick there.
I said quickly: 'I think we need this plan. But you can make most of the payment on results – it may not work, after all.'
He got the iron filings back into his voice and said: 'I agreed to pay you a certain amount to get me to Liechtenstein. Now-'
'And expenses,' I said.
'Yes. The expenses are more expensive than I had estimated,' he said thoughtfully. 'We have crashed one of my cars; my yacht is in custody in Brest, my luggage is somewhere in France, and now you want-'
'Sure,' I said soothingly. 'It's getting to be hardly worth your ten million quids'-worth of Caspar, isn't it? I'd just jack the whole thing in and catch a train down to Como for a few days' holiday.'
He gave me the steely stare. 'Do we need this plan? Have you no ideas of your own?'
I spread my hands. 'I've got a few. And we can try them if you say so. But they won't be as good as the General's.' I was just trying to keep down his price. I wanted his plan, all right.
Maganhard swung round on the old man by the fire. 'All right. How much? I will pay you one-third now.'
The General said: 'Ten thousand francs. And half now.'
Maganhard said: 'Five thousand and I will give you half.'
'Ten thousand. But I'll take one-third.'
'I'll pay you one-third of seven. What plan is it?'
'A damn good plan. I'll take a third of nine.'
I said: 'Give him a third of seven and a half.'
The General said: 'I'll take a half of six.'
Maganhard said quickly: 'Right. Three thousand now and the same if we get through.'
The General's head moved in a fractional nod; he closed his eyes and sighed. 'I'm getting old. All right, Maganhard. Give me a cheque on one of your Swiss banks, and make it cash. Sergeant! I want the file on the Upper Rhine.'
Morgan stumped off into the next room. Maganhard hauled a sheaf of cheque-books out of an inside pocket, and started sorting through them. 'Geneva?' he asked. The General nodded again, and Maganhard started writing the cheque.
Harvey was looking at me curiously. I winked at him, and he turned away and stared out of the window down across the grey windswept lake.
Morgan came back with a green folder, and the General started sorting through it. Finally, he came up with a large sheet folded double. He opened it, stared at it, then carefully tore a corner off it.
Maganhard finished writing the cheque and dropped it on the General's table. The General gave him the paper in exchange.
'Show that to Cane. He may make some sense of it.'
For a moment it seemed unlikely. It was a large photostat of a drawing: a number of wavering, curling lines, overlaid by hard geometric lines: zigzags, rows of little triangles, lines with crosses every half inch. And wandering across the whole thing was one red ink line.
I stared at it. Then it snapped into place: a plan of the modern St Luzisteig defences. The wavery lines were the contours, the geometric ones the trenches, barbed wire, tank traps. And the red line- The General said: 'Well? D'you know what it is?'
'I think so. We follow the red ink and find the end of the rainbow. Just whatis that?'
'Patrol path. To let out the patrols.'
I waggled my head and kept a slightly doubtful look on my face. 'This plan's probably twenty years out of date-'
'Damn fool. They haven't changed those defences in twenty years. Why should they?'
Maganhard was peering over my shoulder. 'Is it worth anything?' he asked suspiciously.
'It's genuine, all right. Why should he keep a faked one lying around? He's probably had this on file since 1940, waiting for somebody to sell it to.'
The General let out his rasping chuckle.
Maganhard fingered the torn corner of the plan. 'What did you tear off here?'
'Name of the man I got it from,' the General said.
I folded the plan up and shoved it in a pocket. 'Okay,' I said briskly. 'So we can get across once we're there. But how do we get to the frontier?'
He leant back in his chair with his eyes closed. 'All in the same price. Morgan drives you there.'
'Yes? And what's so wonderful about that? I could hire a car down the road.'
His eyes stayed closed. 'And tell them exactly what car you're in. They'll check up on that first thing. But they'd never stopmy car. And they all know it.'
Harvey said: 'Must be some car.' He was looking suspicious. So was Maganhard, but with him it was congenital.
The General said calmly: 'It is "some car", as you put it.'
I was ready to believe him. And even if I wasn't, we still stood a better chance in his car than in any one we hired. Switzerland's a small country, and the area you can drive across before the southern passes melt is even smaller. Whatever we did, we were going to have to drive down the central valley which includes almost all the big cities -Fribourg, Bern, Luzern, Zürich – and that gave us a choice of only about three main roads.
Harvey said slowly: 'Look, I'm not sure I like the idea-'
'I'm running the ideas department,' I snapped. 'Shut up and look at the pretty pistols! '
He stopped as if I'd slapped him in the face. Then he turned slowly away, and went back to staring at the guns over the mantelpiece.
Miss Jarman glared at me.
Maganhard said: 'Shouldn't we be starting?'
I looked at my watch: nearly noon. Three hundred kilometres to go. Say five hours' driving.
'We're not in too much of a hurry,' I said. 'We can't cross the frontier until it's dark, after half past eight. And we don't want to spin out the road journey – we're safer sitting here.'
'Then you'll join me for lunch?' the General asked.
Maganhard said: 'We will not be in Liechtenstein until nine o'clock, then? We are cutting it very fine. What if the car breaks down?'
'Sergeant!' the General called. 'When did the car last break down?'
Morgan stiffened and started considering. 'We had the silencer trouble in 1956, sir. But that wasn't a real break-down. I think the last time was the electrical problem in – that would be in '48.'
I grinned. 'All right. Lunch up here?'
'Of course,' the General said.
The lunch arrived on the table at the other end of the room. Morgan took the trays at the door and handed round the food – presumably so that the waiters wouldn't set eyes on Maganhard. My first idea was that this would make them doubly suspicious, but then I remembered the General had been in this hotel over forty years. Forty years isn't enough to stop waiters being suspicious, of course, but it's time enough for them to learn to be forgetful when the police come asking questions.
We had troutau bleuand a straightforward veal escalope that was as soft as butter: the General obviously didn't belong to the overdone-roast-beef movement that most of Montreux's English guests insisted on. He went on with his glass of swizzled champagne, but the rest of us got a crisp cold Ayler Herrenberg.
It was a quiet meal, except for the General's eating. Maganhard was worried about the time factor, and annoyed that the right thing to do was just wait. Harvey was quiet and morose. He drank a glass of wine – no more – but he took it in three big gulps, and fiddled with his glass a lot, counting the seconds until he could take the next gulp.
Just before half past one, Morgan was pouring coffee. The General asked if we'd like a liqueur and I said No, fast, to pass the hint to Harvey. He gave me a twisted little smile and said No in his own time. No customers for liqueurs.
I tried to think of something to say to spin things out a bit – and to stop Maganhard and the General insulting each other and cocking up the whole deal.
Before I could think of anything, the General looked at Harvey and said: 'Understand you're a bodyguard. What d'you think of me collection?'
Harvey glanced back at the guns over the mantelpiece. 'Pretty expensive, I'd guess.'
'One of the best collections in the world. For its period. But' – and the old face dragged itself into the ghost of a smile – 'I thought perhaps you see another value in 'em.'
Harvey shrugged. 'As pistols, you'd be better off throwing rocks. As art, the trouble is they're pistols. Junk like that stopped gun development dead for two hundred years. And I don't suppose it helped art much, either.'
I said: 'Hold on. You could never get handcrafting like that on a gun these days.'
'Thank Christ for that. Or somebody, anyhow.' He jerked his head at the display. 'Take a real look at them: with all that carving the butts are lousy grips, and I'll bet most of them are muzzle-heavy. Sure, some of the cheaper stuff was better – duelling pistols had real grips and a good balance. But when the top men were doing this sort of stuff, the rest were trying to follow. So they spent two hundred years putting more engraving and gold wire on pistols. If they'd known their jobs they'd have learnt a bit of chemistry and invented percussion caps and cartridge loading two hundred years earlier.
'But they weren't interested: that was too damn practical. They wanted to be artists. Wanted to forget they were making pistols.' He stared across at the General. 'So they ended up making your stuff. It's an expensive sort of wallpaper – but the wall's where they belong.'
I'd been half expecting the General to burst into flames the moment Harvey gave him the chance. But all he did was nod very slowly and rasp: 'A refreshingly new point of view, young man. Why d'you hold it so strongly?'
Harvey shrugged and frowned and said slowly: 'Pistols are for killing people. Nothing else – there's no other point to them. Maybe I just don't like to see that wrapped up in ' fancy dress.'
The General chuckled softly and the damp eyes fixed on Harvey. 'If you get to my age – which I doubt, in your job -you'll know that everybody has to wrap it up somehow. You must have your own way, already.'
Harvey went very still.
I shunted myself to my feet. 'If we rehearse much longer, we'll start overplaying our parts. Let's get started.'
Morgan began helping people into their coats. The General sat where he was, and I stood where I was. The eyes swivelled to me. 'Well, Mr Cane,' he said quietly, 'was I right about Mr Lovell – the way he wraps it up? I saw him with his glass…'
'You were right.'
'Difficult, Mr Cane. Difficult.' The old head trembled on its stalk. 'And how do you do it?'
'Me? I go around believing I'm in the right.'
'Ah. You know – I'd say that was even more difficult. One so easily comes unwrapped.'
I nodded. 'And how do you do it, General?'
He sank carefully back in his seat and his eyes closed slowly. 'As Mr Lovell said: with gold wire and fancy engraving. I find it lasts.'
'I hope so, Brigadier.'
The hoods slid open. 'You noticed my little conceit, did you?'
'One rank up from Colonel is Brigadier-General – in your day. They dropped the "General" from it in the 'twenties some time.'
'True. But the "General" was still there when I got it, so…' the eyes closed again. 'It helps the wrapping.'
'Goodbye, General.'
'He didn't say anything. I nodded and picked up my jacket and raincoat and followed the rest out. Morgan led the way to the back lift. We went straight down to the basement garage.