Snowfall Read online

  ‘No? You’re not a very good liar, Kate. You see, I didn’t mention the CIA to you – it was you who suggested that I must be a communist agent, because I was watching a man from the CIA. You said it, Kate, not me. And how else would you have known, if Danby hadn’t told you?’

  ‘But he didn’t! He never breathed a word. I had no idea until yesterday, when Jon told me, and he only told me because –’

  If I could have bitten off my tongue I would have done so gladly. Not that it would have helped, since I had already betrayed Jon irretrievably. How could I or he possibly convince Sloan that although he had been told of Matt’s rôle, he himself was in no way involved?

  Sloan and I had been so deep in argument that I hardly noticed that we had emerged from the tunnel on the Austrian side, and were now standing in the hallway of a mountain inn. It was after midday, but the place was almost empty and a quick glance at the windows told me why: cloud had blotted out the ski slopes, and the few skiers who had not already left were now waiting for a cable car to take them to a lower altitude. There was no sign of Bruno or his captor.

  Sloan’s unpleasant moustache had gathered droplets of ice on our walk through the frozen mountain, and they glistened under the artificial lighting in the hallway of the inn. His dark eyes were gleaming too, with a triumph that was pitilessly cold.

  ‘Becker would have mentioned it to you,’ said Sloan softly, ‘for the simple reason that he was Danby’s Innsbruck contact. What you’ve just said has confirmed that. I did some checking on Becker last night, and with his Anglo-Austrian background and his university job and his local connections, he’s an ideal CIA link-man. All I need to do now is to let him know that I’ve got you and his son, and he’ll tell me all we need to know about the extent of the CIA’s influence in Innsbruck. At least –’ his hand gripped my arm, ‘you’d better hope that he’ll tell me, Kate. For your own sake and for the boy’s.’

  He had pushed me ahead of him, out of the inn and on to the platform of the cable car station. Lying crumpled in the oil-stained snow just before the concrete platform was a red woollen ski cap.

  I didn’t need to see the polar bear motif. I knew, instinctively, that the cap belonged to Bruno.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sloan must have seen my look of anguish. He shrugged: ‘So the boy’s cap fell off … don’t worry, Ulrich will be keeping him safe – he’s far too valuable for me to lose at the moment. All the same, Kate, don’t get any ideas about appealing to anyone as we go down in the cable car, because I won’t guarantee that Ulrich wouldn‘t hurt the boy if he got suspicious. Not, of course, that anyone would believe you if you did try to appeal for help …’

  In fact the cable car was almost empty. There were just two men, with skis, standing at the front and speaking to each other in German as they peered disconsolately at the cloud that had spoiled their day’s sport. Sloan kept me at the back of the car, as far from them as possible. In the middle, by the doors, stood an official in uniform and peaked cap – a kind of cable car conductor, I imagined. There was a telephone beside the doors, and it rang – presumably with a message from ground level – just before our journey started.

  Even without all the fear and apprehension occasioned by Sloan’s presence, I doubt if I would have enjoyed the journey. Certainly we were less exposed than we had been in the chair lift, but the angle of descent was very much steeper. The car hung suspended by one arm from the cable, jerking and swaying, and whenever the swirling clouds cleared for a few moments I could see alarming glimpses of icy rock a very long way below us. I felt claustrophobic, and rather sick.

  Sloan said nothing. He simply held my arm and smiled at me, and both the grip and the smile were unpleasantly proprietorial. I tried to rehearse in my mind some of the German phrases that I might use to appeal to the conductor, or to the two skiers, but my vocabulary was totally inadequate.

  Then the cable car gave an extra-sickening lurch, and shuddered to a stop. We all swayed, and grabbed at the hand-grips for support, and one of the skiers turned to crack a joke with the conductor. He was a very large young man, with a preposterously bushy beard; I’d seen him somewhere before, I was sure of it …

  His companion turned too, and for a moment we stared disbelievingly at each other from opposite ends of the cable car.

  What an idiot I’d been to tell the man that I never wanted to see him again! He looked, at that moment, wonderful. If it hadn’t been for a tightening of Sloan’s grip, I’d have run across the car and flung my arms round Stephen Marsh’s neck and told him so.

  ‘Well hallo, Kate –’ He was obviously a little uncertain of the reception I might give him, but partially reassured by my beaming smile. He nodded a cooler greeting to my companion: ‘Is your wife still ill, Sloan?’

  Sloan shifted his grip, communicating to me his unease as he fabricated a story to try to explain our presence together so far from Kirchwald and his alleged bride. I took the opportunity to remove my arm from his grasp and edge away from him; but as he told his story, Sloan pushed his hand inside his pocket and gave me a warning glance. I’d almost forgotten, in my euphoria at the sight of Stephen, that Sloan had a gun.

  If Stephen thought Sloan’s explanations odd, he was obviously prepared to shrug them off. He introduced his student friend, Christoph, and complained about the poor visibility that had spoiled their ski-ing. ‘Are you going back to Kirchwald now?’ he asked, by way of conversation.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sloan quickly.

  ‘No,’ I chipped in. ‘That is, Phil has to go to Kirchwald, of course, because Rosemary is there waiting for him – isn’t she, Phil? But I’m going to Innsbruck.’ I wasn’t sure how far I dared to defy Sloan verbally, but I had to take a chance that as long as I didn’t actually give him away, he wouldn’t risk pulling his gun. ‘As a matter of fact, Stephen, I’m staying at Jon Becker’s to look after his son. Jon’s over the Italian border, in Sterzing or Vipiteno, whichever you like to call it. But Bruno’s with me – or rather he’s just ahead of us, with a friend of Phil’s. Isn’t he, Phil?’

  Sloan muttered something non-committal, and frowned at me. Stephen looked politely puzzled. I swallowed hard, and plunged into words again: ‘Actually, Stephen, I’d be awfully glad if you and Christoph could take Bruno and me back to Innsbruck with you. Could you do that, please? It’ll save Phil the trouble – I know how much he wants to get back to Rosemary at Kirchwald …’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Kate,’ Sloan snapped. ‘It’s no trouble, you know that. Rosemary is going to meet us in Innsbruck this afternoon, remember?’

  Stephen began to look uncomfortable. ‘It’s Christoph’s car, you see,’ he apologized. ‘We’d like to take you to Innsbruck if Sloan couldn’t, of course – but the thing is that we haven’t given up all hope of ski-ing today. We’re going to try some of the lower slopes further down the valley.’

  ‘But if the young lady is anxious to return quickly to Innsbruck,’ Christoph growled kindly, ‘we could go there first.’ He smiled at me through several thicknesses of rich brown moustache and beard. ‘It would be a pleasure.’

  ‘But quite unnecessary,’ Sloan insisted, grasping my arm again with his left hand. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Kate, that we have a car waiting for us down below? Ulrich and little Bruno will be in it already, and we can drive straight to Innsbruck. There’s absolutely no need to involve Stephen and his friend. Much better for you to stick to our original plan.’

  The painful grip of his fingers underlined the warning in his words. I knew that this was the moment for me to speak out, but I didn’t dare; it wasn’t so much the fact that Sloan’s right hand was inside his pocket that deterred me, as the thought of what might happen to Bruno if Ulrich found himself in sole charge. I couldn’t put Jon’s son at risk.

  So I nodded, and said nothing.

  There was a silence in the cable car, which seemed to be hanging stationary in thick dark cloud. Stephen and Christoph stood at their end of the car looking slightly
baffled; they must have sensed – couldn’t help sensing – that something was wrong, but they had no idea what. The tension in the stuffy car was almost palpable. Even the conductor seemed to notice, and was as startled as any of us when his telephone rang.

  He answered it. Sloan glanced at him, listening for a moment to what he was saying. I seized the opportunity, took half a step backwards to be out of Sloan’s vision, looked urgently at Stephen and silently mouthed one word: ‘Help!’

  Stephen blinked, glanced doubtfully at Sloan, then again at me. ‘What?’ he mouthed back in disbelief.

  The cable car re-started, with a jerk that might have sent me sprawling if Sloan had not been holding on to me. He was watching me again. I couldn’t risk any more voiceless appeals to Stephen – all I could hope for was that my basic message had got through.

  And then dark buildings came looming up at us from below, and the journey was over. Sloan ushered me out of the cable car first, interposing himself between me and the other men so that I had no chance to look at, let alone speak covertly to Stephen. Sloan gave them a brusque goodbye, hurried me through the inevitable restaurant complex, and then out into the main street of an Alpine village. A car – a Volkswagen beetle model, with skis strapped to the sloping back – was waiting. Ulrich stood beside it; on the back seat was huddled a fair-haired bundle.

  As soon as he saw us, Ulrich opened the car door for us, slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. This was positively my last chance to communicate with Stephen. I looked over my shoulder. Sloan wrenched at my arm, hurrying me across the road to the car, but not before I had seen Stephen standing on the steps of the restaurant staring after us in bewilderment.

  There was only one action I could think of to reinforce my silent appeal to him: I let my sling bag slide off the shoulder that was furthest from Sloan, held it for a second in my hand and then dropped it, quite deliberately, on the frozen snow.

  Once in the car, which Ulrich drove off immediately, I didn’t look back. For one thing, I was anxious not to draw attention to whatever Stephen might be doing; for another, my chief concern was with Bruno.

  This time I had been pushed on to the back seat with him, and I took him immediately in my arms. He was half-conscious and whimpering, but unharmed as far as I could make out. He seemed to have lost his mitts as well as his cap, and I tried to rub some warmth into his small hands while I whispered to him reassuringly.

  Sloan and Ulrich had been speaking together in German. Now Sloan turned in his seat and looked out of the rear window.

  ‘Your friends aren’t following, Kate,’ he reported with satisfaction. ‘I thought you behaved very sensibly in the cable car, on the whole – which just goes to show how effective it was to separate you from the child.’ He peered at Bruno, whose small whimpers had grown, with increasing consciousness, to moans. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘What do you imagine is the matter with him?’ I snapped angrily. ‘How would you feel if you were an eight-year-old who’d been terrified and anaesthetized and half frozen? Unless you want him to vomit in the car, I suggest we’d better stop until he recovers. Now, stop now!’

  I crouched with Bruno in the snow, supporting and soothing him while Sloan paced impatiently beside the car. We were in a narrow valley. Over to our right I could see traffic cruising along a motorway, and guessed that we must have joined the old main road through the Brenner and were now heading in the direction of Innsbruck.

  There was very little traffic on our road, but I glanced eagerly at each vehicle that passed. Jon would have alerted the Austrian as well as the Italian police to our disappearance, I was sure of that. If Stephen had understood my message, and had contacted the police, giving them the number of this car, there was a good chance that a police patrol might be out looking for us. And the longer we remained by the roadside while poor little Bruno got rid of his breakfast and the rest of the ether fumes, the more chance there was that we would be rescued.

  His retches had turned to sobs. I melted some clean snow in my hands and washed his face as best I could, murmuring words of comfort that I recalled from my own childhood as I tended him: ‘There, my bairn – my poor wee lamb. You’ll feel better now.’

  He sat up in the snow, and tears coursed down his face as he cried for his father. ‘Papa will come soon,’ I reassured him, praying that it was true. I looked over my shoulder. ‘Have you got a clean handkerchief,’ I demanded, ‘so that I can dry his face?’

  ‘What?’ Sloan stopped pacing and fumbled in his pockets. ‘No, not a clean one. You must use your own – I’ll get your bag.’

  ‘No, it’s all right –’ I said quickly, but he was already searching the back of the car.

  ‘Where is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘I – I lost it.’

  His face darkened with anger. ‘Get back in the car,’ he snapped, hauling Bruno to his feet and hustling him inside. ‘Lost your bag, did you? Any woman who accidentally loses her bag makes a fuss about it, doesn’t she? You didn’t lose it, you bitch, you must have dropped it deliberately so that Marsh would follow you to return it! Well, you needn’t think that I’m going to have all my plans ruined at this stage – I’ll rearrange them a little, that’s all.’

  Ulrich drove off with his foot hard down. Since there was no reason now for me to pretend, I gave myself a crick in the neck gazing at intervals out of the rear window; but no one appeared to be following. I dried Bruno’s face with his scarf. He was now sitting up and taking notice, and I parried all his questions with reassurances that we were going home to Innsbruck. When, presently, hiccuping slightly from tearful exhaustion, he leaned against me and began to doze, I found it surprisingly comforting to put one arm round his small shoulders. It made Jon seem nearer. I had no doubt that – whatever he might or might not feel for me – Jon would move heaven and earth to find his son.

  Sloan and Ulrich had been arguing in rapid German, and when the car turned left and crunched up a steep minor road it was obvious that Ulrich was driving under protest. Sloan, however, looked satisfied. He turned to speak to me.

  ‘If you hadn’t played that stupid trick with your bag,’ he said, ‘I would have taken you to Innsbruck and hidden you in comfortable quarters. But I imagine that Marsh will have noticed the number of this car, so thanks to you we can’t enter the city. That means that you and the boy will have to spend a very uncomfortable time up in the mountains, until his father talks.’

  I tried again to convince him that Jon knew nothing, but Sloan shrugged aside my protests. Bruno stirred and muttered in his sleep, and I did my best to soothe him. Then the car hit a snowdrift and stalled.

  Ulrich swore, and tried to restart the engine. It refused. We were suddenly blanketed by silence.

  The two men began to argue fiercely, and then Sloan ordered me out. Bruno had woken; I took his hand in mine and he stumbled out of the car after me. We stood shivering in deep snow while the argument continued.

  ‘Where are we, Kate?’ asked Bruno through chattering teeth. It had been stuffy in the car, and out here on the bare mountainside the ice-fanged wind bit through our clothing. I gave him my woollen ski cap and pulled up the hood of my own anorak.

  ‘I think we’re going in the direction of Innsbruck still,’ I said. ‘We’re high above the old main road, but we seem to be keeping parallel with it. You know this part of the country better than I do, Bruno – that is the valley that leads from the Brenner to Innsbruck, isn’t it?’

  We both peered down the thousand feet of snowsteep mountainside. There was certainly a valley below us, but most of its features were obscured by low cloud. As we looked, though, the clouds parted for a few moments to reveal a glimpse of the twin dark ribbons of a motorway.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Bruno confirmed. ‘That’s the Europabrücke down there – didn’t you see the big pillars it stands on?’ He looked round critically. There was no doubt he was feeling better. ‘Why didn’t we keep to the autobahn, then?’ h
e demanded. ‘It’s not far to Innsbruck, and I’m hungry. What are we doing up here? Who are these men? And where’s Papa?’

  Sloan interrupted my cautious explanations. ‘We have to abandon the car,’ he said abruptly. ‘You and the boy will stay here with Ulrich, while I ski on to Kirchwald.’

  ‘To Kirchwald?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Yes – this road leads to the foot of the ski lift. Since I can’t risk taking you into Innsbruck now, I intend to persuade old Otto Hammerl to lock you both up in the hut near the mountain inn. You remember it, of course? The people at the inn will provide you with blankets and food, and they’ll also keep everyone else away for as long as I need to establish contact with Becker and get the information I want.’

  ‘But what makes you think that any of them will cooperate with you?’ I challenged him.

  ‘They’re engaged in an illegal activity,’ said Sloan flatly. ‘If I tell them that I know they’ve been concealing explosives in their hut, probably for the purpose of supplying terrorists in the Alto Adige, they’ll co-operate all right. They’ll be too frightened that I’ll give them away to the police to do anything else.’

  Bruno had been listening to our conversation open-mouthed. ‘I want to go home!’ he protested indignantly. ‘I don’t want to be locked up – I’m tired of this game. Let’s go home, Kate.’

  I protested that Sloan could not keep us in an unheated mountain hut, but he merely shrugged and pointed out that it was my own fault that we were not being hidden in the city. He unhooked his skis from the back of the car, and clipped them on. I made to open the car door, so that Bruno and I could take advantage of its warmth while we waited to be taken to the hut, but Ulrich pulled me away. He growled something and pointed instead to what looked like nothing more inviting than a large and dilapidated dog kennel, half-buried in snow on a steep bank just above the road and some yards ahead of the car. He pushed me in that direction and Bruno, like King Wenceslas’ page, trod disconsolately in our steps through the snow. Sloan, on his skis, brought up the rear.