Dead Line (31 page)

He moved away and Liz went to stand next to him. Turning towards Fatty he clapped his hands loudly. At first, there was no reaction from the bird. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, it leaned forward and lifted itself up on its two taloned feet. It hesitated, took a small tentative step, then seemed almost to tumble off the edge of the platform.

For a moment Liz thought it would hit the ground, but with one immense sweep of its wings it stayed airborne and began to lumber slowly towards them, staying above the ground by little more than the height of the two platforms. The bird reminded Liz of an immense aeroplane she’d read about in a magazine. Called
The Spruce Goose
, it had been built by Howard Hughes in the 1940s. It flew only once, and that for only about five hundred feet. Those watching its inaugural and final flight had found it hard to believe it would ever get off the ground.

But it had - and so had Fatty. Nearing the target platform, Fatty spread its vast wings and lurched half a foot skywards, then landed with a heavy
whoomf
on the wood, where it immediately scoffed the titbit of grouse and looked round hungrily for more.

McCash laughed. Liz had been there twenty minutes and was beginning to get impatient. She had asked McCash about the programme for the next day, and this demonstration had been the result. Apparently something of the same sort was going to happen, and then the guests would be invited to fly the falcons themselves, if they wanted to. It was difficult to imagine how any real harm could be injected.

She turned to McCash. ‘Did you meet the Israelis when they came to set this up?’ She felt that if she allowed him to pursue his bird obsession much longer, she might as well leave the service and join up as an apprentice falconer. And she still hadn’t got to the gun dogs.

‘Funny people,’ McCash said now. ‘There was a woman, not interested in the birds at all. Don’t know why she bothered coming down here. Then two blokes - one was a little pipsqueak of a man; he was scared. Don’t know why.’

I do, thought Liz, looking at Fatty’s sharp beak and ferocious talons. ‘What about the other man?’

‘Ah, he was interested all right. Though not in the birds, more the technology. He wanted to know how we could be certain the birds would come back when we unhooded them and let them fly off. I told him, we can’t be certain - that’s why we’ve got a transmitter in every bird.’

Liz was listening carefully. ‘Tell me about the transmitters, will you?’

McCash gave her a look. ‘You’re as bad as him. That was all he wanted to know about. It’s simple really. If they don’t come back, we can go and find them - it’s like an old-fashioned tracking device, the sort of thing James Bond sticks on the villain’s car. The closer you get, the louder the beep on our detector. It’s just a chip inserted beneath their skin - doesn’t hurt them. The problem is, they were designed in the States - Utah, I’ve been told.’ He gestured towards the surrounding hills and trees. ‘This isn’t exactly similar terrain. The manufacturers claim the transmitters are good for up to twelve miles. Around here, it’s much less. Thankfully, when the birds don’t come back they’re usually just sitting in the trees over there.’

‘Is there any way it ever works in reverse?’ McCash’s look made her feel stupid. ‘I mean—’ she began to explain, when her mobile rang in her coat pocket. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and walked away a little.

It was Ryerson, the manager. ‘I’ve found him!’ he exclaimed excitedly.

‘Who?’

‘Kollek. I knew I’d seen him before. He was a guest in the hotel a month ago. Only he wasn’t called Kollek then. Glick was the name he signed in as. Samuel Glick. He was in room 411. Would you like to see it? It’s been allocated to an American, but he’s not due until this evening.’

‘I’ll be there in five minutes,’ said Liz. ‘Please don’t go in the room until I arrive.’

She made her excuses to McCash and set off for the hotel ballroom. This time Jamieson paid her prompt attention, and when she emerged from the hotel lift on the fourth floor, she was accompanied by a sniffer dog and his handler, two armed anti-terrorist officers with explosive detection equipment, and a uniformed local bobby.

Waiting outside the door of the room, Ryerson looked taken aback to find Liz arriving with an armed entourage. He held out the key to the room and an armed officer took it and cautiously opened the door. It was a spacious room, with light streaming through from its western window. She stood back and let the men get to work. Turning to Ryerson, she said, ‘Are you sure it was the same man staying in this room?’

‘I’m positive it was the man in the photograph you showed me. He paid with a French credit card - one of the girls behind the desk was new so I had to come out to reception and confirm it was okay. That’s when I saw him.’

‘Well done. Now, do you know which American is meant to be staying in this room?’

‘Yes, it’s somebody from their embassy in London.’

‘The ambassador?’ Her heart beat slightly faster.

‘No, no,’ he said, as if this was out of the question.
‘He’s
in a suite.’

‘Of course,’ said Liz, suppressing a smile. But she was also remembering how the IRA had operated in Brighton. ‘What about on the floors above this room? Are there suites up there? Is the President or the Prime Minister staying directly above this room?’

He thought about it for a moment, but shook his head. ‘No, they’re just rooms, too.’

Liz peered in. One of the men was moving a machine along the far wall, following the trail of the sniffer dog and its handler. Catching Liz’s eye, the anti-terrorist officer shook his head. In the middle of the room, the bobby was standing with a bewildered frown on his face; the second anti-terrorist officer had disappeared into the bathroom. Suddenly from there she heard a shout. ‘Come in here a minute.’

Liz walked in to find the officer lowering himself down from a hole in the ceiling. He landed lightly on his feet and extended an open hand, palm up. ‘Look at this,’ he said, puffing slightly.

It was a crumpled wad of cardboard, roughly half the size of an egg carton. ‘There’s a crawl space up there,’ he said triumphantly. ‘It’s where the air-conditioning vents run through. Somebody’s left this behind.’

Liz took the cardboard out of his hand and gently squeezed it until it bore a faint resemblance to its original box-like form. There was writing on the box in Hebrew, and numbers.

From behind a hand suddenly reached for the small carton, and Liz turned to find Dave Armstrong. ‘Let me have a look,’ he said. He examined the box carefully. ‘The Hebrew doesn’t mean much to me. But the numbers do.’ He held the box up in the air gingerly. ‘This held rifle shells. 7.62 mm, or .308 to our American friends. They’re weighted, designed for a sniper rifle.’

FIFTY-ONE

After the day’s excitements, Liz went back to the house feeling tired and anxious. It was as though she was stalking Kollek - walking in his footprints. But they were old footprints, made weeks ago, and she had no sense that she was getting anywhere near to the man himself.

She still had no idea where he was or what Kollek was planning to do. The discovery of the shell box in the ceiling of room 411 was alarming. But if the security perimeter remained in place and was effective, Kollek was not going to be able to get close enough to hit anyone with a sniper rifle. And he must know that. Unless he was there already, she thought, before the cordon was put in place… though if he were, he would have been flushed out by now. Dave had gone off to talk to the brigadier again, armed with the shell box.

She found Peggy upstairs in the kitchen, tending an enormous boiling pot and chopping lettuce for a salad. ‘I hope you didn’t want to go out to eat,’ Peggy said.

‘I think I’d fall asleep before I’d even ordered. Thanks for cooking. What is it? It smells good.’ She sniffed.

‘It’s… pasta.’

‘I thought you said you’d never eat pasta again. Don’t tell me you brought Tim’s machine along?’

‘No,’ said Peggy seriously. ‘I got it in the Co-op in Auchterarder.’ Then, looking up, she realised Liz was teasing. ‘I’ve made enough for Dave if he wants to eat here.’

‘What about the others?’ asked Liz. ‘Who else is around?’

‘I don’t know, but I said any of our lot could look in. Some of them are working all night. By the way, I’ve been to see Hannah Gold. She’s installed in the White Hart at Auchterarder. No word from Kollek, but she’ll let us know right away if she hears anything. She’s coming over here tomorrow to join the peace movement people and meet the Israeli delegation. She’s also been invited for drinks before the dinner - though not to the dinner itself.’

‘Is she going to this entertainment I’ve been hearing about?’

‘She didn’t say anything about it. So probably not.’

‘Okay,’ said Liz. She could talk with Hannah tomorrow. Just now all she wanted was to eat supper and look at the newspapers Peggy had bought in the town. She sank into the soft sofa in the living room and had just picked up the
Guardian
when the doorbell rang.

‘It’s probably Dave,’ said Peggy, as Liz started down the stairs. ‘I think he left his key in the hall.’

But when Liz opened the door she found Dougal, not Dave, standing outside.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, looking troubled.

‘Come in, Dougal. It’s no problem.’

They went upstairs, but Dougal refused to sit down, standing uneasily on the carpet in front of the fireplace. ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Carlyle,’ he said again and Liz realised it was not the interruption of her evening he was apologising for, but something else he couldn’t yet bring himself to say.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said bluntly.

‘I just forgot,’ he said, looking anguished. ‘I don’t know how it slipped my mind.’

‘Dougal,’ Liz said sharply, ‘what is it?’

He looked at her in surprise; Liz realised he had been so consumed by guilt that he had assumed she must know its cause. ‘The man Kollek, of course. I saw him, that evening after I’d shown them around. He was by the equestrian centre. With Jana.’ He put his hand to his forehead. ‘How could I have forgotten?’

‘Steady on,’ said Liz. ‘Now sit down, Dougal, and tell me everything you saw.’ Behind him, she could see Peggy tactfully busying herself with supper. ‘Who’s Jana?’

‘She’s a waitress in one of the hotel restaurants. She’s Czech,’ he said, with a sudden softness to his voice that made Liz think that he must admire her from afar.

‘What did you see exactly? What were they doing?’

‘They weren’t
doing
anything - that’s not the point. I could tell from the way they were talking to each other that they
knew each other.’

‘Are you sure about that? You couldn’t be…’

‘Imagining it? No way. I know Jana. There was something between them. I’m sure.’

Liz realised there was no point in grilling young Dougal. He’d made up his mind, formed some impression that couldn’t be verified, but which was quite likely correct -he seemed very certain. After a moment’s thought she asked, ‘Where is Jana now?’

‘At this minute, you mean? She’s in the trattoria,’ Dougal said. ‘She’ll be serving dinner there at least until eleven.’

Liz looked at her watch; it was eight fifteen. She wondered whether to wait until the dinner service was over, or get the girl pulled off her shift straight away so she could talk to her. There was a risk in waiting.

‘Dougal,’ she said, ‘is Mr Ryerson around?’

‘Yes. He’ll be in his office. He’s always there in the evening, in case there’s a problem.’

‘Tell me,’ she asked. ‘Is he in charge of the whole hotel? I mean, I know the restaurant will have a maître d’, but is Mr Ryerson in charge of him? If something goes wrong is it Mr Ryerson who gets called in?’

‘Oh yes. Once a guest came in drunk and Tony refused to let us serve him. When the guest cut up, Tony had to call in Mr Ryerson. He’s in charge of everything when there’s a real problem. It could be the golf course or the falconry centre - doesn’t matter. Mr Ryerson’s the one who decides. He likes to say “the buck stops here”.’

‘All right, Dougal. I’m going to go and find him now. And thank you very much for remembering this. It could be important.’

Dougal left, looking happier than he had when he arrived.

She looked at Peggy, who pre-empted her before she could say anything. ‘I’ll cook you some more pasta when you get back.’

Unless you were really ill - you couldn’t be sick over a customer - you never left your shift. Even in the rough informality of the Moravian tavern, her mother had taught

Jana a professionalism she had always stuck to. If you show up for work, you work.

So she had resisted at first when Tony, the maître d’, had asked her to leave her tables and go to Mr Ryerson’s office right away. He’d been insistent, and he cut her off when she’d started to object. ‘I’ll wait on your tables myself. Now go.’

She felt nervous as she approached the office, and part of her wanted to walk right past the door and head off… where? Back to Moravia, to a mother who would say
I told you so
for the next three, or even thirty-three years? No, she couldn’t do that, but she sensed trouble lay ahead behind the closed door.

When she knocked, Ryerson called out ‘Enter’ in a grim voice that didn’t bode well. She opened the door hesitantly, and felt more nervous still when she saw that Ryerson had someone with him. A woman, probably ten years or so older than her, but trim, attractive - and watching her closely with cool, green eyes.

‘Sit down please, Jana,’ said Ryerson, and she did, facing the two of them. ‘This is Miss Falconer. She’d like to ask you a few questions.’

Jana steeled herself. I have done nothing wrong, she thought to herself, hoping this simple mantra would help - and that it was true. Oh Sammy, she voiced silently to herself, not even sure if that was his real name, why aren’t you here? He had been so confident and knowing. Please God, let this not be about him, prayed Jana.

But it was. Jana knew as soon as the woman named Falconer began to speak. ‘We’re looking for a man,’ she said quickly. ‘We believe he stayed here at the hotel, and we have reason to believe you may have been in contact with him.’