Midnight Plus One - Lyall Gavin (книги полностью бесплатно .TXT) 📗

The girl's voice was almost breathless with disbelief. 'But – but you said they'd be waiting there, expecting us! ' They aren't expecting a Rolls. And they aren't expecting us to expect them. We've got that much margin.'

'We could still get shot to hell,' Harvey said thoughtfully. Then think of something better.' After a long time, he smiled crookedly. 'Hell, you're just crazy to use that machine-gun of yours again. All right.'

Then, carefully and steadily, he poured himself another brandy.

TWENTY-EIGHT

There was a police Volkswagen parked up on the cliff-top road alongside the Wallensee, but they waved us on past and went on stopping selected other cars. They obviously weren't taking the roads before Liechtenstein very seriously – the real blocks would come at the frontier – but it still told me something.

They didn't know we'd been in Montreux: if they'd known that, they'd have been bound to stop any car theyknew came from Montreux, even the General's. And that meant my friend the Montreux inspector hadn't talked -and if he hadn't talked now, he probably wouldn't later. He had good reason: if he talked, he had to admit both to. arresting Maganhard before there was an official requestand to getting conned into letting him go again.

Those are two big pieces of pride for a cop to swallow whole. I hoped he'd go on chewing a long time: he was the only official who could give a good description of me. I must remember not to drop in and buy him a drink one day.

The last of the sun glittered on the snow of the mountains across the lake, and darkness closed in around us as we came down into the See Tal valley. After that, it got darker fast. Morgan put on the headlights and huge yellow beams spread all over the road and well off it.

Harvey poured himself his fifth cognac and asked: 'Where do we take over?'

'May as well wait until he stops to let us out, near the frontier. You noticed he's got a gun?'

Harvey nodded, sipped, and asked: 'And where d'you think they'll be waiting?'

I opened the photostat map again, lit a cigarette, and started studying.

The fortifications were some of the most careful, well-planned ever built. Three lines of firing trenches – first line, second line, reserve line – neatly laid out with plenty of corners, and connected up by zigzag communication trenches. And pillboxes, blockhouses, dugouts scattered around lavishly. Everything to fight the Perfect War.

And why not? Generals never get things right until it's well out of date, and this lot had been built a good fifteen years after air power and armour had made it useless. Nowadays, you wouldn't attack this sort of thing head-on: you'd isolate it with fighter-bombers, flatten it with carpet-bombing… No. Nowadays you'd just press a button. My own ideas were a war out of date by now.

It makes you feel old. Probably that's the generals' trouble, too.

Harvey said: 'Well?'

'I think they'll be coming in from Liechtenstein itself,' I said. 'They'll have been waiting for us there: they couldn't have banked on catching us anywhere before then, not until they knew where we're crossing. And they'll probably want to hop back into Liechtenstein afterwards. The Swiss side'll be crawling with cops – butonly the Swiss side. Liechtenstein's only got about fifteen cops: they couldn't put two men on every frontier post for any time.'

Harvey nodded. 'So they'll come just across the frontier -but only just?'

'I think so. Most of the fortified zone isn't fortified at all: most of it's just headquarters buildings, artillery platforms -stuff like that. It's only the last couple of hundred yards -the battle zone itself – that's really built up. And that's bang on the frontier.'

'Plenty of cover,' he said thoughtfully, 'and just a short step home to Liechtenstein.' He nodded again. 'And what are the Swiss cops going to do when they hear shooting?'

'Come running. But they'll be half a mile away, up on the road, and they'll be running through trenches. I think they'll miss the big picture.'

Maganhard said sharply: 'They will know I am in Liechtenstein.'

'They'll guess it. But they can't come chasing across that frontier. The Surete'llhave to start all over again, asking Liechtenstein to extradite you. You – or Fiez – should have enough pull to hold that off for a-few days. By then-' I shrugged.

The girl said quietly: 'I think that's Liechtenstein.'

It was the lights of Mais and Balzers, the two little towns – villages – down just inside the frontier. Still miles away, across a river we hadn't yet reached, but somehow very bright and close. All we had to do was be in those towns; by then, our troubles would be behind us.

The Rolls trundled steadily on, angling away, turning its back on the lights as it ran down to cross the river where both banks were Swiss territory.

We crossed at the first bridge, turned back north through Maienfeld, and started the climb up to St Luzisteig. The tank path would begin there.

On our right was the steep mountain wall, turning to snow a couple of thousand feet up: that was the right wing of the St Luzisteig fortifications. Ahead on our left Was the long dark bulk of the Flascherberg, the ridge that was the central anchor of the defences. By now, out there, the defences would be beginning: the old overgrown humps of the hundred-year-old stonework, mixed with the modern first-aid dugouts, artillery locations. But soon the real trenches, pillboxes, wire. Too dark to see. But there.

It wasn't easy to think of cold, waterlogged trenches and rusty barbed wire, not from the back of a Rolls Phantom II. It was too solid, warm, and imperturbable to imagine anybody stopping us. All I had to say was 'Drive on, my man,' and we'd bluff our way through at the frontier easily. Why bother with barbed wire?

I was learning how the rich can get to feel – and why they suddenly wake up in such trouble. Maybe they wrap themselves up warm in Rolls-Royces, in mahogany and dark leather, and say 'Drive on.' It couldn't happen to them. And that was why it did.

Both kings and fieldmice would be showing their passports on the frontier tonight.

We passed a handful of lights, the last village before St Luzisteig itself. Morgan slowed down, searching the roadside carefully. There was a notice saying that stopping and taking photographs was highly Verboten. We were in the right place. The Rolls drifted to a stop.

We were just before the high point of the road; from a couple of hundred yards ahead, it sloped down to Liechtenstein, three kilometres away. The plan would be that tanks could get to here on the road itself, out of sight of the enemy over the crest. Then they'd swing off on to the tank path.

Morgan switched off the lights, climbed down, and opened the left rear door. I had my hand on the Mauser, down in the briefcase, but he was still being the perfect chauffeur. It wasn't his job to swing the axe; he just led us politely up to the chopping block. I climbed stiffly out and looked up at the sky.

Inside the narrow valley the light had seeped away quickly, but the sky was more opaque than really dark. It was a stampede of broken, lumpy cloud hurrying south-westwards, jumping from peak to peak, and letting through flares of thin, nervous moonlight. A cold wind nibbled at me and I buttoned my raincoat. But there was another cold wind nibbling inside.

Harvey came up between me and Morgan, took out his revolver, and checked the load. I'd never seen him do that before: a gunman always knows exactly how many rounds he's got left.

'Congregation will sing three choruses of Wir fahren gegen Liechtenstein and we'll roll,' he said. He turned to Morgan and pointed the gun. 'Don't try for that gun.'

In the quiet, Morgan made a small sucking noise between his teeth. Then he looked past Harvey at me. 'I never did trustyou,' he said.