The Stone Leopard (25 page)

`We have no time or need for any more research,' Vanek said. `Wohl lives alone. We know he is there every evening. We have checked the immediate surroundings where he lives. We will visit him tonight.'

Inspector Gruber of the Freiburg police took every possible precaution: without knowing what might happen, half- convinced that nothing at all would happen, he mounted a formidable operation. At Lanz's suggestion twenty men, all armed with automatic weapons, had thrown a loose cordon round the vicinity of Dieter Wohl's house—loose because they wanted anyone who approached the house to slip inside the net before they tightened it. So observation had to be from a distance and the nearest policeman was over a hundred metres from the building.

Six men were held back in a special reserve force, hidden inside a truck which had been backed into a field and parked behind trees. Communications were excellent; every man was equipped with a walkie-talkie which linked him with a control truck half a kilometre up the road to Freiburg and inside a field. Inside the truck the BND chief sat with Lennox, Inspector Gruber and the communications technician; a transceiver perched on a flap table linked them with the walkie-talkie sets.

To try and counter the distance problem—the fact that they had to stay well back from Wohl's house—Gruber had issued several men with night-glasses for scanning the house. His orders were specific: they must let anyone who approached reach the house, then close in on command from Gruber personally. Everything really depended on how well the men with the night-glasses were able to operate. And all traffic was to be allowed to pass along the road. Any attempt to set up checkpoints would have been useless: they had no idea who they were waiting for, whether in fact there was anyone to wait for.

`You really think someone is going to come and attack Wohl ?' Gruber asked at one stage.

`I have no idea,' Lanz admitted. 'As I have explained to you, there could be political implications behind this operation.' `An urban guerrilla gang ?' Gruber pressed.

`Something like that. . .'

They waited as night fell, as the naked trees faded into the darkness. And with the coming of night the temperature dropped rapidly. Then they had their first hint of trouble; huge banks of mist drifted in off the Rhine, rolling across the fields in waves like a sea shroud, a white fog which seemed to thicken as it approached the house. Very soon the man nearest the house was in difficulties. It wasn't so much that he couldn't see anything; what he could see was deceptive, hard to identify. Lennox, who was growing restless, said he was going outside to take a look at things. It was at this moment that Lanz handed him a 9-mm Luger. 'If you insist on prowling about outside, you had better carry this.'

Several cars and a petrol wagon had already passed down the road, and each one was checked in and out of the section under surveillance by an observer at either end. In the truck Lanz and Gruber were careful about this as the reports came in—especially since the mist had arrived. 'If one of those cars doesn't come out at the other end we're going to have to move damned fast,' Gruber remarked. 'This mist is something I could have done without. . .'

Worried, Lanz checked his watch.

`I'm almost hoping no one comes,' he said. 'We could have left Wohl inside a trap.'

Gruber shook his head. `Wohl took the decision himself when we consulted him,' he said. 'And remember, he's an old policeman. . .'

Behind the wheel of the black Mercedes he had hired at Kehl, Vanek was driving slowly as they came closer to Freiburg from the south. Ahead of him were two other cars in convoy. He could have passed them several times and Brunner, irritably, had suggested he should overtake. 'I'm staying on their tail,' Vanek told him. 'If there are any patrol-cars about they're less likely to stop three cars travelling together. They're always interested in the car which is on its own. A policeman in Paris once told me that.'

`There's a mist coming down,' Brunner commented. `I like mist. It confuses people.'

`I think we're close now,' Brunner said. 'I remember that old barn we just passed.'

`We are close,' Vanek agreed.

`Three cars coming in,' the policeman with the night-glasses at the southern end of the section reported. 'At least I think there were three. It's so thick I couldn't get any idea of the makes.. . '

`Were there three or not ?' Gruber demanded over the air. 'I have told you before, you must be precise—otherwise the whole operation becomes pointless.'

`Probably two. . .'

`Probably?' Gruber shouted over the transceiver. 'I will ask you again. How many vehicles have just entered the section? Think !'

`Two vehicles,' the man replied.

`Something just went past,' reported the man at the northern end of the section. 'It's hellishly difficult to see now. More than one. . .'

Gruber looked at Lanz and then cast his eyes to the roof of the truck. 'Sometimes I wonder why I became a policeman. My wife wanted me to buy a grocer's shop.'

`It must be very difficult for them—in this mist,' Lanz said gently. 'I think they are doing very well.'

Gruber turned the switch himself and leaned forward to speak. 'Number Four. You said quite clearly there was more than one vehicle. Can you be sure of that ?'

`Quite sure,' Number Four replied. 'There were two travelling close together. Two cars.'

`He's a good chap,' Gruber said as he returned the switch to `receive'. He rubbed the side of his nose. 'So is the other man, to be fair. It's my own fault—now the mist has come I just wish I'd blocked off the road with checkpoints. We'd better leave it alone now.'

`We'd better leave it alone,' Lanz agreed.

When he left the truck Lennox made his way back to the road and started walking along it towards Dieter Wohl's house. He was worried about the mist but he didn't dare get too close to the building for fear of confusing the watching policemen. When two cars approached him, nose to tail, he saw a blur of headlights and pressed himself close against the hedge. As they went past he walked a short distance further and then stopped on the grass verge. He was now at a point half-way between the northern end of the section and the house.

Under his seat Vanek carried the 9-mm Luger pistol which Borisov had obtained for him. Vanek didn't expect to use a gun but he believed in carrying some protection and he was an expert at concealing a weapon. At the moment the pistol was held to the underside of the seat with strips of medical adhesive tape. He was now driving even more slowly, allowing the two cars ahead to disappear into the fog, but he kept the Mercedes moving until they had just gone past Dieter Wohl's house which was a grey blur in the mist. Then he pulled up. No point in giving the German warning, making him wonder why a vehicle had stopped outside his house on a night like this.

`You wait with the car,' he told Lansky, 'and keep the motor running. I don't think there'll be any trouble but you never can tell.'

`Why are you nervous ?' asked Brunner, who was coming with him. It was unlike Vanek to anticipate trouble—to refer to it openly.

`I'm nervous that Lansky will forget to keep the motor ticking over,' Vanek snapped.

Why was he nervous, Vanek wondered as he got out of the car with Brunner. Some sixth sense kept telling him something was wrong. He stood on the grass verge, looking at the blurred shape of the house, glancing up and down the road and across the fields he couldn't see. Then he walked back to the house and towards the front door. Changing his mind, with Brunner close behind, he went to the side, opened the wire-gate quietly and walked round to the back of the house. The only lights were in two windows on the ground floor at the front; all the other windows were in darkness. With his coat collar pulled up against the chill, Vanek walked back to the front door. Brunner slipped out of sight to the side of the house. Vanek pressed the bell by the side of the door, his right hand inside his pocket where it gripped the Luger he had extracted from under the car seat. It was uncannily quiet in the mist.

He had to wait several moments before he heard a rattle as a chain was removed on the other side of the door, then the door was opened slowly and the huge figure of Dieter Wohl stood in the entrance. He was carrying a walking-stick in his right hand, a heavy farmer's stick without a handle.

`Good evening,' Vanek said in his impeccable German. 'I am Inspector Braun of the Criminal Police.' He showed Wohl the forged Surete card Borisov had supplied and quickly replaced it in his pocket with his left hand. 'A man has been found dead in the road two hundred metres from here in the Freiburg direction. May I come in and have a word with you ?'

`Could I have a closer look at that identity card ?' asked the ex-Abwehr officer. 'The police themselves are always warning us to be careful who we let in. . .

`Certainly. . .'
 
Vanek withdrew his right hand from his coat and pointed the Luger at the German's stomach. 'This is an emergency. I don't even know you really live here. I'm coming inside so please move slowly back down the hall and . .'

The German was backing away as Vanek took a step forward.

`If it's as serious as that then please do come in, but I would be glad if you would put away . .' Wohl was still talking when he wielded the heavy stick with extraordinary speed and strength. It cracked down on Vanek's wrist as he was still moving and the shock and pain of the blow made him drop the weapon. In acute pain, Vanek kept his nerve; whipping up his left hand, the palm and fingers stiffened, he thrust it upwards under Wohl's heavy jaw. Had the ex-Abwehr man stiffened, his neck would have snapped, but he let himself go over backwards and crashed down on the polished floor, rolling sideways to take the impact on his shoulder. Vanek suddenly realized that this was going to be a more dangerous opponent than Jouvel or Robert Philip. And Brunner couldn't get into the narrow hall to lend assistance because Vanek was in the way.

The Luger, sliding along the polished floor, had vanished. It turned into a dogfight. Vanek had age on his side; Wohl was enormously strong. The German, still gripping the stick, was clambering to his feet when Vanek crashed into him again to bring him down. Caught off-balance, Wohl toppled, half-recovered, then fell; clutching at a table to save himself; his hand caught a cloth, dragging it off with several porcelain vases which crashed to the floor. Falling backwards a second time, Wohl rolled again, taking the fall on his other shoulder. Vanek's legs loomed above him and he struck out with the stick he still grasped, catching the Czech a heavy blow on the shin. Vanek yelped, brought his fist down into Wohl's face, but the face moved and the blow was only glancing, sliding down the German's jaw. Behind them, Brunner still couldn't do anything in the narrow hall. The two men grappled on the floor, rolling over, smashing into furniture, each trying to kill the other.

`I don't like it,' said Lanz.

`Those two cars—which might have been three ?' Gruber queried. 'I'm moving in,' he decided. He was on the verge of issuing the order to the truckload of six men waiting in reserve behind the copse of trees when another report came in: a bus and a petrol tanker had moved into the section from the south, travelling one behind the other. Cursing, Gruber delayed giving the order. 'That's something we can do without,' he rasped. 'A bloody collision in the fog. . .'

`They always do it in a fog,' Lanz commented. 'One vehicle comes up behind another and hugs its tail. It gives them comfort so they ignore the risk. . .'

`I'm getting worried,' said Gruber.

They waited until the policeman at the northern end of the section reported traffic moving past—he couldn't identify the vehicles—and then Gruber told the reserve truck to drive to Wohl's house. Twenty seconds later—too late to stop it— another report came in from the southern end of the section. A second petrol tanker had appeared and was now moving slowly into the section.

Wohl's hallway, normally so neat and tidy and cared for—the ex-Abwehr officer was a methodical soul—was a total shambles. Furniture was wrecked, pictures had come off the walls, the floor was littered with the debris of smashed porcelain, and there was a certain amount of smeared blood. Wohl's stick lay on the floor beside its dead owner; the German's skull had been cracked by his own weapon.

Vanek, still panting, left Brunner by the front door and went inside the living-room where a light was burning. The Czech had expected to spend some time searching for the war diary and manuscript but he found them waiting for him on the German's desk; Wohl had been working on his memoirs when the door-bell rang. Vanek read only a few words of the neat, hand-written diary.
In 1944 the Leopard went everywhere accompanied by a vicious wolf-hound called Cesar. . . .

Stuffing the diary and the few pages of manuscript into his pocket, he returned to the hall to look for the missing Luger; on his way out of the living-room he toppled a bookcase so it crashed to the floor, scattering its contents. There was no question of making this death look like an accident but it could still look like an attempted burglary which had gone wrong. He found the Luger hidden under a low chest and went to the front door where Brunner was waiting for him. 'Something's coming,' Brunner warned. As Vanek moved through the doorway a police truck appeared, stopping just beyond the house. A second later something large loomed out of the mist, corning very slowly. A petrol tanker. It began crawling past the stationary police vehicle as men emerged from it. Vanek raised the Luger, took deliberate aim, fired three times.