11 Harrowhouse (38 page)

The contrast in the rectangle began to increase. Chesser knew dawn was about to happen.

Maren was sleeping so nicely against him that he put off waking her, to give her a few more minutes of peace. Now, in the predawn light, he noticed fondly that she had her legs drawn up to get as much as possible of herself in warm touch with him. Her hands were clasped together, fingers interlaced, as though she was wishing very hard. She stirred her cheek against his chest and resumed sleeping, but it was full dawn by then. He whispered her name twice and she opened her eyes. “Good morning,” she greeted softly.

He doubted the first of those two words.

She stood and stretched, arched her back, and extended her arms straight up. It looked a bit strange because she had her gun in her hand. “I don't know how those
clochards
do it every night,” said Maren, referring to those homeless human bags of rags one sees sleeping on the sidewalks of Paris.

Chesser had difficulty rising. He'd remained in one position so long that his hinging parts, especially his lower back and knees, felt crystallized. Painfully, he flexed them back into working condition.

Meanwhile, Maren was checking her gun. She released its clip, examined it, saw the full gray noses of the cartridges it contained. She told Chesser he'd better do the same.

He did. And then they were ready to go for the channel.

Chesser went out first. He took three steps before his eyes caught a movement on the perimeter of the spruce grove, about two hundred feet away. A figure in black. It was the one with the Prussian face.

Chesser retreated into the bunker, silently indicating the situation to Maren. They went to the rifle port on the right wall, looked out and saw there were now two figures in black. Prussian Face and the Gaunt One. The two men were standing on the edge of the grove, surveying the area. They couldn't help but notice the bunker; its concrete structure obviously contrasted with everything around it.

Prussian Face and Gaunt One each had a gun. They spoke quietly to one another, then proceeded warily toward the bunker, taking opposite, flanking approaches.

Maren went to the rifle port on the other wall to take position there.

Chesser saw Toland then, coming down the path to the left. And following Toland was the fourth man, a head taller than Toland and, from Chesser's vantage, the two men created the illusion that Toland had two heads, one atop the other. When Toland stopped to call attention to the bunker, the fourth man came into full view.

Chesser recognized the fourth man immediately, the huge man,
Massey's
man. Hickey.

Hickey and Toland? That meant … that meant Toland was also Massey's man.…

Suddenly Chesser understood, saw it all. Massey's deceit, his treachery and manipulation. The preplanned highway robbery. The phoney film report from the private investigation, which probably never existed in the first place. The way Massey had set him up, duped and used him from the beginning. Chesser felt so much anger he thought he'd explode with it.

At that precise moment a face presented itself on the other side of the rifle port, not more than twenty-four inches from Chesser, as though it were a close-up shoved into place by a slide projector. Prussian Face.

Chesser squeezed and heard the silencer's spitting compression. He saw the nine-mm. hunk of bullet enter Prussian Face just above his upper lip, smashing flesh and teeth roots and bone, tearing through the soft matter inside his skull, and, having spread itself without spending half its velocity, carry flesh and brain and bone with it as it made its larger exit.

In that split second, Chesser noticed the gray blue eyes of Prussian Face petrified, like the incapable eyes of a store-window dummy. He saw Prussian Face's head blown back six feet, the impact so great that it snapped up the rest of the body. Chesser believed Prussian Face had screamed, but not because he'd heard it.

Chesser turned to Maren to see if she knew what he'd done. Just in time, as the Gaunt One jumped down from the thick roof of the bunker and appeared in the entrance opening. Again that same impression of merely a projected image within the linear confines of a rectangle. Chesser wasn't ready for it.

Gaunt One's aim was right, but he hesitated for a fraction of a moment because of the darkness inside the bunker.

Time enough for Maren to shoot him, as she had the dressmaker's dummy in the London cellar, exactly where his heart was, blasting him back from the entrance way and into a tight net of brambles that held him partially upright, not looking as dead as he was.

Now they were equal as before. Maren and Chesser. They both had killed. And now the odds were also even. Two against two.

Hickey and Toland stood just beyond range, reappraising the situation. They'd expected some resistance, but not this much, not this violence, and the bunker was an unexpected obstacle. Massey's orders had been explicit. By no means were they to kill both Chesser and Maren. If possible, both were to be taken alive. However, if things got rough, Massey had said, all he needed was one, preferably Maren. To reveal where the twenty million carats were hidden.

Toland glanced at his watch. In another two hours the first public ferry would arrive and the island would be scattered with tourists. Toland studied the bunker a moment and decided, “We'll gas them out.”

Hickey read Toland's lips.

“You hold them in while I get it. I'll be back in less than an hour.” Toland turned and hurried away.

Hickey remained where he was, even more alert now that he was alone, his eyes ready for any movement.

Observing from the bunker, Chesser thought Toland was going for reinforcements. He told Maren that.

“Or a flamethrower,” was her sardonic opinion.

“We could make a run for it.”

“One of us might make it,” she estimated.

Chesser was afraid he would be the one. He glanced at the entrance, had the urge to make the dash alone, confront Hickey. Maren could go for the channel while he kept Hickey busy. He imagined Maren telling some future lover about the somebody named Chesser who'd gone to meet death rather than wait for it to come get him.

A much less quixotic plan prevailed. Maren went to the rifle port in the left wall. She reached through, gripped the outer edge and made her body rigid. Chesser grasped her ankles and lifted so her entire length was on a horizontal plane with the narrow port. He pushed slowly, and, when she was partially through, she was able to help herself the rest of the way. She was just thin enough to clear the dimensions of the port and drop outside on the growth of brambles, which almost made her cry out.

Chesser went to watch from the right port. He saw Hickey was still in the same place, his attention on the bunker's entrance. He appeared gigantic to Chesser, larger than ever.

Soon Chesser noticed a movement of white that was Maren deep in the spruce grove. She was running crouched, travelling swiftly, disregarding noise because Hickey couldn't hear. But if Hickey happened to look even half way around he would see her.

Afraid for her, Chesser had to restrain himself, and, finally, she reached the point that was his starting signal. He shoved his gun into his belt and walked outside, his arms straight up in obvious surrender.

Hickey saw him at once, withdrew his gun from under his jacket.

Chesser took ten steps, counting them aloud, then halted. Hickey, uncertain, waved him forward, but Chesser remained where he was, still out of range. “Move, you fucking dumb giant,” shouted Chesser.

Hickey only motioned Chesser forward with his free hand, his other hand holding the gun ready, leveled.

Chesser had planned to stay there, not get into range, make Hickey come to him. But Chesser dared ten more steps and kept his arms raised and that started Hickey walking slowly forward.

Hickey seemed completely diverted now, as they had hoped. But then, with the instinct sharpened by his handicap, he suddenly turned and saw Maren, in the clear, no more than thirty feet to his left.

He fired twice.

She went to the ground, flat. Almost simultaneously she squeezed off her first shot. It seemed to have missed. It was incredible that she could miss so large and close a target. Hickey loomed there, in position to fire again, his gun aimed at her, but he didn't pull the trigger. There was a spreading splotch of red on his shirtfront covering his stomach.

Maren's second shot was more accurate. Above and slightly to the right of her first, going for the heart.

Hickey's legs crumpled as though they were paper. He toppled over backward in a contorted position.

Maren lay there. She was bleeding. Chesser rushed to her, kneeled beside her.

She moaned, sat up, and examined her legs and arms. “Goddamn brambles.”

They couldn't linger there. Toland might return any moment. They went directly to the shore of the channel and saw three yachts were anchored midway across. Reluctantly, but so as not to appear threatening, they discarded their guns, dropped them in the shallows as they waded out. The salt water wasn't at all kind to Maren's bramble wounds. She grimaced and dove in to swim ahead.

When she approached the yacht, a handsome blond man dressed in casual white for sailing looked down at her. She floated on her back, treading. He smiled appreciatively, the water having made her dress almost completely tranparent. She asked if by any chance he was ever going into Cannes. He told her he would take her anywhere. He was obviously American, a West Coast type. He noticed Chesser, but that didn't seem to affect his hospitality.

Maren started for the yacht's boarding platform; however, at that moment a Riva speedboat came full speed down the channel. It cut between Maren and Chesser and abruptly reversed its engine to idle there.

Chesser recognized Lady Bolding at the wheel of the Riva. Lady Bolding alone. She regarded Chesser in the water with a brief, passive glance and turned her attention to Maren, who now disregarded the sanctuary offered by the yacht and climbed up into the Riva's front seat.

Immediately the Riva's engine roared in neutral, and the fear that it would pull away, take Maren away, made Chesser swim hard around its stern, close to the boiling suck of its propellers, to the other side where a rope ladder was hung. He grabbed it and got it just as the Riva went into gear and nosed up with the suddenness of full power.

Chesser was being dragged and the water was slashing at him, trying to rip him from his hold. He had to hang on. The thought of Maren being torn from him gave him the extra strength to pull himself up the slick varnished side of the Riva and tumble down into the rear seat. Then he stood up and the air the boat was cutting through hit him. At the same moment his face was also slapped by the long trailing ends of the orange silk scarf Lady Bolding was wearing to confine her hair.

“Massey's in Cap Ferrat,” she shouted.

They were now clearing the channel. Cap Ferrat was down the coast, east of there. Lady Bolding swung the Riva in the opposite direction, west, around the seaward tip of St. Honorat and steady upon a diagonal course to the mainland.

Maren turned to Chesser and smiled almost smugly.

Chesser sat to avoid the silky orange slaps.

Lady Bolding got them safely to the village of Le Tayas.

Chesser knew the extreme risk that Lady Bolding was taking. He also knew her reason, made amply clear by the long, deep look she gave Maren before she left them on the public landing.

CHAPTER 25

T
HE WATTS
family had been and still were under constant surveillance.

Security Section agents were ready to move at the first sign of elevation in the family's life style. However, the widow Watts and her daughter continued to be very frugal, choosing cheaper cuts at the local butcher's and only the less costly essentials in small quantities at the greengrocer's. They never went beyond their neighborhood, remained home nights to watch the telly. The assigned agents were suffering from acute ennui.

The break in this direction finally came from an informant in Lichtenstein.

Watts had deposited a certified check for one million dollars in the Fritzmeiten Private Bank one week prior to the robbery. The deposit had been made via registered mail along with a letter of instructions from Watts stipulating that precisely one year from the date of deposit the bank was to notify Mrs. Edwina Watts, or her surviving heirs, that the money was available to them.

The informant in Lichtenstein had obtained a facsimile of the check and the letter, and Coglin considered this evidence so important that he ordered it brought to him by hand rather than trust the intercontinental mail.

Coglin expected the signature that he saw on the check. M. J. Mathew. And once again his expertise told him it had been made by the same hand. More pertinent was the fact that the check was drawn on the Upland Bank of London, which, Coglin reasoned, would certainly be able to help identify such a large depositor.

Coglin and two of his best men arrived at the Upland Bank a few minutes before closing. The bank's senior vice-president, a Mr. Franklin, heard Coglin's request and instinctively refused it on the grounds that such information was confidential. However, he obviously recited that code with excessive conviction, and, when Coglin threatened to obtain a subpoena, that was all the pressure needed to obtain Mr. Franklin's cooperation.

Coglin was shown to the bank's records department. A reel of microfilm was brought from the files and projected for his benefit. Coglin watched as the reel whirred and the microfilm blurred on the screen, speeding to the section where M. J. Mathew would be revealed.

The reel stopped.

It showed the details of a Morris J. Mathew of Chelsea, whose balance had never exceeded seventy-two pounds, seventeen shillings and who was now overdrawn one pound six.

The microfilm was run forward and back several times.

Mr. Franklin looked on and Coglin made impatient fists behind his back.