Snowfall Read online

  Five minutes passed, enlivened by Bruno’s demonstration of his puzzle. He challenged me to have a go. I leaned over the back of my seat and for a few minutes we were both intent on fitting the wooden pieces together. Then I heard the driver’s door open.

  I looked up at once, smiling a welcome, but it wasn’t Jon who opened the door.

  It was Phil Sloan. And in his hand, half-concealed by his glove, was a gun.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was too astounded to do or say anything; I simply gaped. And then the rear door opened. Bruno began a cry of alarm, but it was abruptly muffled. I twisted round to look at him and found another man, a big blue-chinned stranger, sitting next to the child on the back seat, one hand grasping him roughly and the other pressing a pad of cloth to his mouth. Bruno’s heavy eyelids were half-lowered over his green eyes, and the car reeked of ether.

  ‘No –’ I cried, but Sloan was already in the driver’s seat, and switching on the ignition. He pushed his gun inside the pocket of his anorak and accelerated rapidly out of the square. ‘Okay, Ulrich?’ he enquired over his shoulder.

  The big man growled something unintelligible. I twisted round again. The pad had been put away, and Bruno lay in a small silent heap on the back seat. I peered at him anxiously.

  ‘Is he all right?’ I demanded. ‘Oh heavens … he’s not breathing!’ I tried to scramble over to the back to reach the boy, but Ulrich shoved me down into my seat. Sloan chided me.

  ‘Don’t get agitated, Kate, of course the child’s all right – for the moment. But now listen carefully: from now on you must stay with me, and keep quiet. No calling for help, no attempts to get away. Remember, if you don’t do as you’re told it won’t only be you who gets hurt, but Becker’s boy as well. I’ve put Ulrich in charge of him and Ulrich doesn’t like children; he’d as soon push him out of the car as take him along. So if you want the boy to be safe, just make sure that you don’t do anything to upset Ulrich.’

  I turned my head cautiously to look at Bruno. His long fair lashes lay motionless on his pale cheeks, but a sheet of paper on which he had been drawing rested on the seat close to his parted lips, and as I watched his breath stirred the paper. I made a silent thanksgiving for the fact that he was alive, and stretched my hand over the back of the seat to touch him; he looked so small and defenceless that I felt an entirely uncharacteristic longing to take him protectively in my arms. And if I felt like that about a child I didn’t like what would Jon, who loved him, feel when he found that his son had disappeared?

  But Ulrich, sitting huge and surly beside the boy, refused to let me touch him. He struck out at my arm with a contemptuous force that nearly dislocated my elbow. Sloan laughed, and advised me to keep my hands to myself in future, so I turned reluctantly to the front and nursed my arm and tried to see where we were going.

  We had left the town behind, and were travelling north – that much I could be sure of, because the high Alps were pushing up into the clouds ahead of us. But we were not on the motorway, or a main road of any kind. We were now winding up the side of a mountain in a series of tight hairpin bends.

  What would Jon be doing now? Probably he’d have finished his shopping, and would be looking for the car. He would think at first that he had forgotten where he had parked it, and would search several streets before realizing that it had definitely gone. And then what? He’d go to the police, of course. They would almost certainly put out road blocks – but on the main roads, not up here in the mountains …

  We came to a small village, typically Tyrolese from the look of it, but with the bi-lingual signs I had seen in the town below. This was a ski resort. Sloan had to slow the car to walking pace because the main street of the village seemed to form part of a ski run; skiers came gliding past on either side, some of them looking incuriously into the car. I longed to attract their attention, to wind down the window and shout for help, but Sloan had been too clever for me. Making me responsible for Bruno’s safety was just as effective a way of silencing me as sticking a gun in my ribs.

  On the far side of the village, Sloan crunched to a stop on the frozen snow at the foot of a chair lift. He smoothed his ratty moustache and turned to me with a would-be friendly smile on his lips, but his eyes were ice-hard.

  ‘Now, Kate,’ he said, ‘we’re going for a pleasant excursion. Ski-ing is big business, as I’m sure you know, and up on the other side of the mountain are some fine north-facing slopes that can be used all the year round. As it happens, those slopes are in Austria – so a tunnel has been made through the mountain for the benefit of skiers from this side of the frontier. The Italian-Austrian border crosses the tunnel about half-way through, so of course there are customs posts. You could, if you were misguided enough, ask for help from the customs men – just as you could appeal to any of the skiers we meet. But you won’t, will you?’

  Hope flickered in my heart. If we were going to get out of the car and mingle with other people, surely there was a good chance that I might, unobtrusively, attract someone’s attention to our plight? It would certainly be worth a try, because ugly Ulrich wouldn’t dare do anything to harm Bruno in public …

  But Sloan was watching me with a confident smile. He shook his head. ‘No, Kate, you won’t speak to anyone. You see, Ulrich is going to carry the child as though he were asleep, and they’ll go on ahead of us. If Ulrich has any reason to think that you’ve raised an alarm, I won’t answer for the consequences. After all, he only has to drop the boy in a snowdrift and leave him, and Master Becker will die of exposure – no mess, no noise, no problem for us at all. Just bear that in mind, and be co-operative.’

  Sloan meant it, despite his smile; I had no doubt of that. My stomach contracted with fear and my mouth dried. I turned to appeal to Ulrich, without stopping to consider whether or not he understood English: ‘Please don’t harm the boy – please!’

  The man was already out of the car. He began to pull Bruno’s inert body after him. ‘Gently,’ I begged, ‘be careful with him. No, wait, you can’t take him out in this freezing weather with his coat undone – Phil, please, for pity’s sake –’

  Sloan said something to Ulrich, who stopped pulling and waited impatiently while I knelt on my seat and bent over to tie Bruno’s scarf, and fasten his coat and put on his red woollen ski cap with its polar bear motif. His head lolled under my hands, seeming too heavy for his fragile neck; his skin was warm and delicate, almost transparent, so that the blue veins on his temples were clearly visible. His features were so like Jon’s, and yet so innocent. I was overwhelmed by my responsibility for his safety.

  ‘Please, Phil,’ I begged, trying to keep my panic out of my voice as I brushed a lock of blond hair out of Bruno’s eyes and tucked it under his cap, ‘don’t involve the boy in this. I don’t know what you want with me, but whatever it is I’ll co-operate to the best of my ability, if you’ll release Bruno. Let me ring the Italian police and tell them that Bruno’s here in the car – his father will be going out of his mind, and the child’s no use to you. He’s just a liability. If you let me do that, I’ll cross over the border with you immediately and I won’t say a word to anyone, I promise –’

  I might as well have saved my breath. Sloan jerked his head at Ulrich, who pulled Bruno out of the car, bundled him roughly in his arms and clumped off towards the foot of the ski lift. Like Sloan – like me, if it came to that – Ulrich was wearing ski gear. No-one, up in that high winter sports resort, would look twice at any of us; and yet I must get help.

  Sloan sat back, watching them go. ‘We’ll give them a few minutes’ start,’ he said pleasantly, for all the world as though we were playing a children’s game. ‘At each stage, Ulrich will wait with the boy, out of sight, to check that the two of us are following. If we don’t follow on, or if he’s at all suspicious, his instructions are to dump the child. You understand?’

  I understood all right. I was virtually bound and gagged by my responsibility to Jon and his son. For their sakes,
I dare not make a false move; I had to do as Sloan ordered.

  ‘But, Phil,’ I said, trying to make my mingled anger and fear sound like an approximation to humility, ‘you’re making a mistake, you know. I’ve promised to co-operate, but I don’t know how. I can’t imagine what it is you want. If it’s anything to do with Matt Danby, you’ve got to believe that I had no idea at all that he was in the CIA – there’s absolutely nothing I can tell you about him.’

  Sloan laughed. ‘Oh, come off it, Kate, don’t give me that! After all, you shared a flat in Chelsea with the man.’

  I lowered my eyes and pulled at a loose strand of wool in my mitts. I could hardly believe, myself, that I’d once lived with a man I had known so little about.

  Then I lifted my head, belatedly surprised by something Sloan had said. ‘But how did you know we lived in Chelsea?’

  ‘Because I’ve been watching you. One of my American colleagues followed Danby after his last trip to Washington, and handed over to me in London. I followed him to your flat, and then next day to Austria. I should have handed over to another colleague in Innsbruck, but unfortunately for me Danby died first. So we never knew who his Austrian contacts were, and I got a black mark for fouling up the operation. I’ve had to watch you ever since his death, in the hope that you would lead me back here. You were clever, I admit, to wait for so long before making this trip. I’d almost given you up. But as soon as you went to a travel agent and booked for Kirchwald, I knew that we were on to something important.’

  ‘We?’ I said bleakly, remembering the expensive Czech binoculars that had made Jon suspicious of him. ‘I suppose you’re a communist agent, then,’ I said slowly. ‘You must be, if you were watching a CIA man …’ And then I had a thought that gave me the sensation of frozen snow sliding all the way down my spine. ‘Are you – did you have anything to do with his death?’

  Sloan smoothed his moustache. ‘Right on both counts,’ he admitted indifferently. ‘Yes, I’m a communist and I work for what I believe in – and that’s not peaceful coexistence with the CIA! Not that I wanted to kill him just then. My orders were to identify Danby to my Austrian colleague, who would have been able to follow up the contacts he made in Innsbruck. But Danby must have realized that I was tailing him, and he turned on me in a back street just after we reached the city. So I had to hit him first.’

  I swallowed, hard. ‘But – but everyone says he was killed on the Nockspitze. How did you lure him up there?’

  ‘I didn’t. If you want the details, I slugged him with the butt of my gun. Unfortunately – because, as I told you, he was no use to us dead – I hit him rather too hard. He died on me a few minutes later. I put the body in my hired car, wondering how I could dispose of it without embarrassment, and then I found that he had climbing gear in his travel bag, and some receipts in his wallet from the Alte Post at Kirchwald. That gave me the idea to drive the body up into the mountains near Kirchwald, and fake a climbing accident. And a very convincing accident it was too,’ he added, coldly complacent. He looked at his watch. ‘But we mustn’t stay chatting here. Let’s go, shall we? And don’t forget, if you want the child safe, stay cool.’

  That wasn’t going to be difficult, physically at least. There was no sun. We were in a world of white and grey and black, and the cold at that altitude was bitter. I trudged numbly after Matt’s murderer, shivering as much with shock as with cold. Sloan was ruthless, I knew that now for sure. Ulrich too – I dreaded to think of the way he might be manhandling poor little Bruno, and what he would do to the boy if I didn’t co-operate with Sloan. Above all, I wondered despairingly what Jon was doing.

  The attendant at the foot of the chair lift spoke German rather than Italian, and he advised us that visibility on the far side of the mountain was poor. Sloan smiled smoothly, and told him that we wouldn’t let it deter us.

  The lift took us up into cold wet cloud. ‘What about Rosemary?’ I asked wretchedly, as I hugged my arms round me to try to keep warm. ‘Is she really your wife?’

  ‘I’m not married,’ he said, and I wasn’t surprised. ‘Rosemary was provided by my organization for this assignment. The “honeymoon couple” cover is corny, I admit, but still very effective. You were obviously so upset by Danby’s death that I didn’t think that an approach from a lone man would appeal to you. And Rosemary did a very good job of befriending you, I thought. We moved from the Alte Post to a hotel in Innsbruck last night, but I’ll be able to get her back to England now that I’ve got what I need.’

  ‘But you’ve got nothing!’ I protested. ‘I know absolutely nothing at all about what Matt was doing or about any contacts he might have had in Innsbruck, and you’re crazy to think that I do.’

  Sloan gave me a frost-bitten smile. ‘But you’ve already led me to Danby’s contact, haven’t you? Becker is the man I want information from. And now I’ve got his son, and you, I have all I need to make him talk.’

  At the top of the ski lift was the entrance to a tunnel. An arrow pointed along it to Austria.

  Sloan took a grip on my arm and hurried me through. Presently the tunnel narrowed, and the smooth concrete walls came to an abrupt end. Ahead, the tunnel had been cut through the rocky peak of the mountain. It stretched upwards, dimly lit by electric lamps fixed at infrequent intervals to the rough-hewn walls, and wherever the light fell, on the uneven floor or the walls or the jagged roof, it caught the glitter of a hundred thousand crystals of ice. The cold was intense. It seeped through to my bones and made them ache.

  ‘Get out your passport,’ said Sloan quietly, and I felt a warming surge of hope. If we were going to cross the frontier, then of course we’d need to show our passports; Bruno would be on Jon’s passport, and so the customs men would never allow Ulrich to carry him through. Ulrich would have been stopped and questioned. Probably Bruno was there now, at the frontier post, being looked after by some kindly official who had already telephoned the police …

  I quickened my pace, but my hope died as I saw what the Italian customs post actually consisted of: a kind of sentry-box built in an alcove in the rock, with a sliding glass window in the front. Presumably the sentry-box was heated – the window was firmly closed and it was clear that the official had no intention of letting in the cold by opening it to inspect and stamp our passports. He merely looked up as we passed, saw the passports in our hands, and jerked his head to tell us to go on.

  The Austrian customs post, a few yards further on, was slightly larger; there were two men inside, so busy talking over mugs of coffee that the one nearer the window simply waved us on with no more than a glance.

  So much for my hopes. Sloan gave me a sly sidelong grin.

  ‘You didn’t imagine we’d get through as easily as that, did you? A very useful route, this, for anyone who wants to cross the frontier unobtrusively.’

  We went on up the tunnel, hurrying to keep out the cold. ‘Look, you’re quite wrong about Jon Becker,’ I said breathlessly. ‘He didn’t know Matt, and he certainly wasn’t involved in what Matt was doing.’ I rummaged frantically through my mind, trying to come up with some fact that would convince Sloan of Jon’s innocence, or at least divert his attention from the man I knew I loved. ‘Otto Hammerl knew Matt, though,’ I gabbled; not that I wished any real harm to Otto, but if the choice was him or Jon I had no scruples. ‘And Otto is up to something, I’m sure of that –’

  ‘Old Otto, with his stockpile of explosives?’ said Sloan tolerantly. ‘Oh, I know what he’s up to. My local colleagues uncovered that particular operation months ago – I thought they’d put an end to it, but these old mountain men are stubborn and Otto and his friends are probably trying to go it alone.’

  ‘You mean supplying explosives to the terrorists in the Alto Adige?’

  ‘No no. Well, perhaps they do that too, but it’s no concern of mine, or of the CIA. No, Danby and his CIA gang were trying to thwart the inevitable growth of communist influence in this part of Europe. With communist Czechoslovakia on her
Eastern frontier, and an increasingly strong communist party in Italy, to the South, Austria is ripe for a peaceful invasion.’

  ‘A peaceful invasion?’ I said scornfully.

  ‘Certainly. The Austrian army is far too small to be effective against Czech or Russian tanks. Happily for us, the Austrians have built an excellent network of motorways across their country to encourage tourism, so an invasion would be ridiculously easy – and the people would soon settle down contentedly under a communist government, just as the Czechs have done. But my colleagues discovered, soon after Danby’s death, that the CIA had organized some of the misguided Austrian patriots to prepare special defences. I’m sure that you know that here in the Alps the motorways have to be protected against landslides by massive barriers; apparently the CIA plan, if a peaceful invasion seemed imminent, was to encourage the local hot-heads to blow up the barricades and block the motorways.’

  ‘But if that was Matt’s connection with Otto Hammerl, and your people know about it, what more can you possibly want to know?’ I demanded.

  Sloan shrugged. ‘Oh, that was merely a side-issue. I told you why I followed you – I want to know Danby’s contacts in Innsbruck.’

  ‘But I don’t know them! Look, the only reason I came to Kirchwald was to see Matt’s grave –’

  ‘Which you did on the first evening you arrived. I followed you, when you got off the mini-bus that took us up from Innsbruck to the hotel. You pretended that you were going to the chemist’s – remember? But you were lying. Instead, you went to the cemetery and stood by his grave long enough for his contacts to identify you.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s rubbish!’ I said angrily. ‘Good heavens, I had no idea that Matt was in the CIA at all, let alone –’