Helden was a mile in front of Noel, driving a nondescript but maneuverable Renault; Ben-Gadíz was behind, never more than half a mile, and his car was a Maserati, common among the wealthy of Geneva and capable of very high speeds. Between Yakov and Holcroft was the two-man police car assigned to the American as protection. The police knew nothing.
“They’ll be immobilized en route,” the Israeli had said while the three of them studied maps in Noel’s hotel room. “They won’t be sacrificed; there’d be too many questions. They’re legitimate police. I got the numbers off their helmets and called Litvak. We checked. They’re first-year men from the central headquarters’ barracks. As such, not very experienced.”
“Will they be the same men tomorrow?”
“Yes. Their orders read that they’re to stay with you until the Zurich police take over. Which I think means that they’ll find themselves with a malfunctioning vehicle, call their superiors, and be told to return to Geneva. The order for your protection will evaporate.”
“Then they’re just window dressing.”
“Exactly. Actually, they’ll serve a purpose. As long as you can see them, you’re safe. No one will try anything.”
They were in sight now, thought Noel, glancing at the rearview mirror, applying the brakes of the Rolls-Royce for the long curving descent at the side of the hill. Far below, he could see Helden’s car come out of a turn. In two more minutes she would slow down and wait until they were in plain sight of each other before resuming speed; that, too, was part of the plan. She had done so three minutes ago. Every five minutes they were to be in eye contact. He wished he could speak with her. Just talk … simple talk, quiet talk … having nothing to do with death or the contemplation of death, or the strategies demanded to avoid it.
But that talk could only come after Zurich. There would be death in Zurich, but not like any death Holcroft had ever thought about. Because he would be the killer; no one else. No one. He demanded the right. He would look into the eyes of Johann von Tiebolt and tell him he was about to die.
He was going too fast; his anger had caused him to press too hard on the accelerator. He slowed down; it was no time to do Von Tiebolt’s work for him. It had started to snow, and the downhill road was slippery.
Yakov cursed the light snowfall, not because it made the driving difficult but because it reduced visibility. They relied on sight; radio communication was out of the question, the signals too easily intercepted.
The Israeli’s hand touched several items on the seat beside him; similar items were in Holcroft’s Rolls. They were part of the counterstrategy—the most effective part.
Explosives. Eight in all. Four charges, wrapped in plastic, timed to detonate precisely three seconds after impact; and four antitank grenades. In addition there were two weapons: a U.S. Army Colt automatic and a carbine rifle, each loaded, safeties off, prepared for firing. All had been purchased through Litvak’s contacts in Geneva. Peaceful Geneva, where such arsenals were available in quantities smaller than terrorists believed but greater than the Swiss authorities thought conceivable.
Ben-Gadíz peered through the windshield. If it happened, it would happen shortly. The police car several hundred yards in front would be immobilized, the result, probably, of cleats coated with acid, timed to eat through tires; or a defective radiator filled with a coagulant that would clog the hoses.… There were so many ways. But the police car would suddenly not be there, and Holcroft would be isolated.
Yakov hoped Noel remembered precisely what he was to do if a strange car approached. He was to start zigzagging over the road while Yakov accelerated, braking his Maserati within feet of the unknown automobile, hurling the plastic charges at it, waiting the precious seconds for the explosions to take place as Holcroft got out of firing range. If there were problems—defective charges, no explosives—the grenades were a backup.
It would be enough. Von Tiebolt would not risk more than one execution car. The possibility of stray drivers, unwitting observers, would be considerable; the killers would be few and professional. The leader of the Sonnenkinder was no idiot; if Holcroft’s death did not take place on the road to Köniz, it would take place in Zurich.
That was the Sonnenkinder’s mistake, thought the Israeli, filled with a sense of satisfaction. Von Tiebolt did not know about Yakov Ben-Gadíz. Also no idiot, also professional. The American would get to Zurich, and once in Zurich, Johann von Tiebolt was a dead man, as Erich Kessler was a dead man, killed by a man filled with rage.
Yakov cursed again. The snow was heavier and the flakes were larger. The latter meant the snowfall would not last long, but for the time being it was an interruption he did not like.
He could not see the police car! Where was it? The road was filled with sharp curves and offshoots. The police car was nowhere to be seen. He had lost it! How in God’s name could he have?
And then it was there, and he breathed again, pressing his foot on the accelerator to get closer. He could not allow his mind to wander so; he was not in the Symphony Hall in Tel Aviv. The police car was the key; he could not let it out of his sight for a moment.
He was going faster than he thought; the speedometer read seventy-three kilometers, much too fast for this road. Why?
Then he knew why. He was closing the gap between himself and the Geneva police car, but the police car was accelerating. It was going faster than it had before; it was racing into the curves, speeding through the snowfall … closing in on Holcroft!
Was the driver insane?
Ben-Gadíz stared through the windshield, trying to understand. Something bothered him, and he was not sure what it was. What were they doing?
Then he saw it; it had not been there before.
A dent in the trunk of the police car. A dent! There’d been no dent in the trunk of the car he had followed for the past three hours!
It was a different police car!
From one of the offshoots on the maze of curves a radio command had been given ordering the original car off the road. Another had taken its place. Which meant the men in that car now were aware of the Maserati, and, infinitely more dangerous, Holcroft was not aware of them.
The police car swung into a long curve; Yakov could hear continuous blasts of its horn through the snow and the wind. It was signaling Holcroft. It was pulling alongside.
“No! Don’t do it!” screamed Yakov at the glass, holding his thumbs on the horn, gripping the wheel as his tires skidded over the surface of the curve. He hurled the Maserati toward the police car, fifty yards away. “Holcroft! Don’t!”
Suddenly, his windshield shattered. Tiny circles of death appeared everywhere; he could feel glass slice his cheeks, his fingers. He was hit. A submachine gun had fired at him from the smashed rear window of the police car.
There was a billow of smoke from the hood; the radiator exploded. An instant later the tires were pierced, strips of rubber blown off. The Maserati lurched to the right, crashing into an embankment.
Ben-Gadíz roared to the heavens, hammering his shoulder against a door that would not open. Behind him, the gasoline fires started.
Holcroft saw the police car in the rearview mirror. It was suddenly coming closer, its headlights flickering on and off. For some reason the police were signaling him.
There was no place to stop on the curve; there had to be a straightaway several hundred yards down the road. He slowed the Rolls as the police car came alongside, the figure of the young officer blurred by the snow.
He heard the blasts of the horn and saw the continuous rapid flashing of the lights. He rolled down the window.
“I’ll pull over as soon as—”
He saw the face. And the expression on that face. It was not one of the young policemen from Geneva! It was a face he had never seen before. Then the barrel of a rifle was there.
Desperately, he tried to roll up the window. It was too late. He heard the gunfire, saw the blinding flashes of light, could feel a hundred razors slashing his skin
. He saw his own blood splattered against glass and sensed his own screams echoing through a car gone wild.
Metal crunched against metal, groaning under the force of a thousand impacts. The dashboard was upside down; the pedals were where the roof should be; and he was against that roof; and then he was not; now plummeted over the back of the seat, now hurled against glass and away from glass, now impaled on the steering wheel, then lifted in space and thrown into more space.
There was peace in that space. The pain of the razors went away, and he walked through the mists of his mind into a void.
Yakov smashed the glass of the remaining windshield with his pistol. The carbine had been jarred to the floor; the plastic explosives remained strapped in their box; the grenades were nowhere to be seen.
All the weapons were useless save one, because it was available, and in his hand, and he would use it until the ammunition was gone—and until his life was gone.
There were three men in the false police car, the third, the marksman, once again crouched in back. Ben-Gadíz could see his head in the rear window! Now! He took careful aim through the blankets of steam and squeezed the trigger. The face whipped diagonally up and then fell back into the jagged glass of the window.
Yakov crashed his shoulder once more against the door; it loosened. He had to get out fast: The fires behind guaranteed the explosion of the fuel tank. Up ahead, the driver of the police car was slamming it into the Rolls; the second man was on the road, reaching into Holcroft’s window, yanking at the steering wheel. They were trying to send the car over the embankment.
Ben-Gadíz hammered his whole upper body against the door; it swung open. The Israeli lunged out on the snow-covered surface of the road, his wounds producing a hundred red streaks on the white powder. He raised his pistol and fired one shot after another, his eyes blurred, his aim imperfect.
And then two terrible things happened at the same moment.
The Rolls went over the embankment, and a roar of gunfire filled the snow-laden air. A line of bullets kicked up the road and cut across Yakov’s legs. He was beyond pain.
There was no feeling left, but he twisted and turned and rolled wherever he could. His hands touched the slashed rubber of the tires, then steel and more steel, and cold patches of glass and snow.
The explosion came; the fuel tank of the Maserati burst into flames. And Ben-Gadíz heard the words, shouted in the distance. “They’re dead! Turn around! Get out of here!”
The attackers fled.
Helden had slowed the car well over a minute ago. Noel should have been in sight by now. Where was he? She stopped at the side of the road and waited. Another two minutes went by; she could not wait any longer.
She swung the car into a U-turn and started back up the hill. Pushing the accelerator to the floor, she passed the half-mile mark; still there was no sign of him. Her hands began to tremble.
Something had happened. She knew it; she could feel it!
She saw the Maserati! It was demolished! On fire!
Oh, God! Where was Noel’s car? Where was Noel? Yakov?
She slammed on the brakes and ran out, screaming. She fell on the slippery road, unaware that her own wounded leg had caused the fall, and pushed herself up, and screamed again, and ran again.
“Noel! Noel!”
Tears streaked down her face in the cold air; her screams tore the raw nerves of her throat. She could not cope with her own hysteria.
She heard the command out of nowhere.
“Helden! Stop it. Here.…”
A voice. Yakov’s voice! From where? Where was it coming from? She heard it again.
“Helden! Down here!”
The embankment. She raced to the embankment and her world collapsed. Below was the Rolls-Royce—overturned and smoking, crushed metal everywhere. In horror she saw the figure of Yakov Ben-Gadíz on the ground next to the Rolls. And then she saw the streaks of red on the snow that formed a path across the road and down the embankment to where Yakov lay.
Helden lunged over the embankment, rolling in the snow and over the rocks, screaming at the death she knew awaited her. She fell by Ben-Gadíz and stared through the open window at her love. He was sprawled out, immobile, his face drenched with blood.
“No!… No!”
Yakov grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. He could barely speak, but his commands were clear. “Get back to your car. There’s a small village south of Treyvaux, no more than five kilometers from here. Call Litvak. Près-du-Lac’s not so far away … twenty, twenty-two kilometers. He can hire pilots, fast cars. Reach him; tell him.”
Helden could not take her eyes off Noel. “He’s dead.… He’s dead!”
“He may not be. Hurry!”
“I can’t. I can’t leave him!”
Ben-Gadíz raised his pistol. “Unless you do, I’ll kill him now.”
Litvak walked into, the room where Ben-Gadíz lay on the bed, his lower body encased in bandages. Yakov was staring out the window at the snow-covered fields and the mountains beyond; he continued to stare, taking no notice of the doctor’s entrance.
“Do you want the truth?”
The Israeli turned his head slowly. “There’s no point in avoiding it, is there? At any rate, I can see it in your face.”
“I could bring you worse news. You’ll not walk very well ever again; the damage is too extensive. But, in time, you’ll get around. At first with the help of crutches; later, perhaps, with a cane.”
“Not exactly the physical prognosis needed for my work, is it?”
“No, but your mind’s intact and your hands will heal. It won’t affect your music.”
Yakov smiled sadly. “I was never that good. My mind wandered too frequently. I was not as fine a professional as I was in my other life.”
“That mind can be put to other uses.”
The Israeli frowned, looking again out the window. “We’ll see when we know what’s left out there.”
“It’s changing out there, Yakov. It’s happening quickly,” said the doctor.
“What about Holcroft?”
“I don’t know what to say. He should have died. But he’s still alive. Not that it makes much difference in terms of his life. He can’t go back to who he was. He’s wanted in half a dozen countries for murder. The death penalty’s been restored everywhere, for all manner of crimes, the laws of defense a travesty. Everywhere. He’d be shot on sight.”
“They’ve won,” said Yakov, his eyes filling with tears. “The Sonnenkinder have won.”
“We’ll see,” said Litvak, “when we know what’s left out there.”
Epilogue
Images. Shapeless, unfocused, without meaning or definition. Outlines etched in vapor. There was only awareness. Not thought, nor any memory of experience, just awareness. Then the shapeless images began to take form; the mists cleared, turning awareness into recognition. Thought would come later; it was enough to be able to see and to remember.
Noel saw her face above him, framed by the cascading blond hair that touched his face. There were tears in her eyes; they ran down her cheeks. He tried to wipe away the tears, but he could not reach the lovely, tired face above. His hand fell, and she took it in hers.
“My darling.…”
He heard her. He was able to hear. Sight and sound had meaning. He closed his eyes, knowing that somehow thought would come soon, too.
Litvak stood in the doorway, watching Helden sponge Noel’s chest and neck. There was a newspaper under his arm. He examined Holcroft’s face, the face that had taken such punishment from the fusillade of bullets. There were scars on his left cheek and across his forehead and all over his neck. But the healing process had begun. From somewhere inside the house came the sounds of a violin being played by a very professional musician.
“I’d like to recommend a raise for your nurse,” said Noel weakly.
“For which duties?” Litvak laughed.
“Physician, heal thyself.” Helden joined the laughter. r />
“I wish I could. I wish I could heal a lot of things,” replied the doctor, dropping the newspaper at Holcroft’s side. It was the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune. “I picked this up for you in Neuchâtel. I’m not sure you want to read it.”
“What’s the lesson for today?”
“ ‘The Consequences of Dissent’ would be a fair title, I imagine. The editorial staff of the New York Times have been enjoined by your Supreme Court from any further coverage of the Pentagon. The issue, of course, is national security. Said Supreme Court also upheld the legality of the multiple executions in your state of Michigan. The Court’s opinion expresses the profound thought that when minorities threaten the well-being of the general public, swift and visible examples are to be made in the cause of deterrence.”
“Today John Smith is a minority,” said Noel weakly, his head resting back on the pillow. “Boom, he’s dead.”
This is the world news, reported by BBC of London. Since the wave of assassinations that took the lives of political figures across the globe, security measures of unparalleled severity have been mounted in the nations’ capitals. It is to the military and police authorities everywhere that the greatest responsibility falls, and so that international cooperation at the highest levels may be achieved, an agency has been formed in Zurich, Switzerland. This agency, to be called Anvil, will facilitate the swift, accurate, and confidential exchange of information between member military and police forces.…
Yakov Ben-Gadíz was halfway through the scherzo of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto when he found his mind wandering again. Noel Holcroft was stretched out on the couch across the room, Helden sitting on the floor beside him.
The plastic surgeon who had flown from Los Angeles to operate on his unidentified patient had done a remarkable job. The face was still Holcroft’s, yet not entirely. The scars that had resulted from the facial wounds were gone, in their place slight indentations that lent a chiseled look to the features. The lines on his forehead were deeper, the wrinkles about his eyes more pronounced. There was no innocence in the slightly altered, restored face; instead there was a touch of cruelty. Perhaps more than a touch.