Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

`Hurry it up,' he told the driver, 'I want to arrive at the earliest possible moment…'

`Hurry? In this fog, Mr Director-General?'

Use the damned siren. Hurry…'

From the top of the craggy bluff behind the barn there was, as Madame Devaud had said, an excellent view down a sheer one-hundred-foot drop to the highway below and to the entrance to the farm beyond. To the right of where Lennox stood, a thread of a path curled down a more gently-sloping section and ended at a tiny summerhouse perched on a rocky platform seventy feet or so above the highway. Immediately below him the rock-face dropped away dizzily. Beyond the derelict barn behind him the Mercedes was parked with its nose pointing towards the track they had come up; Lennox, disturbed to find there was no way out from this eminence except down the track, was on the verge of telling Madame Devaud they were leaving. But first he was checking the highway.

Through the mist he could see a car approaching from the direction of Saverne, its silhouette still too blurred for him to recognize the make of vehicle. He glanced at his watch.

3.15 pm.

Behind him Annette Devaud stood inside the barn, leaning on a window ledge as she tried to see what was happening. The car crawled closer, coming very slowly as though lost, and then he felt sure it was a Renault. Crawling past the concealed entrance to Woodcutter's Farm-now completely invisible because the signboard had been removed-it continued up the highway until it was below where Lennox stood and he was looking down directly on its roof. Pausing for a few seconds, it turned off the highway, vanishing from view as it headed up the mud-track which led to the bluff.

'They're coming up here,' Lennox called out to Madame Devaud. 'Get round here as fast as you can…

She hurried out of the barn and round the back of it and Lennox sent her down the thread of a path to the summerhouse. He waited for a second, watching her move down the path sure-footed as a goat before running round to the front of the barn, then he hid himself inside a clump of undergrowth close to the sheer drop and waited. In his right hand he held the Luger.

Vanek drove slowly up the track and beside him Lansky put on a pair of thin and expensive kid gloves. It seemed likely that he would have to throttle the old woman the barman at the Auberge des Vosges had told them lived alone. One kilometre back down the highway they had again asked for directions at the office of a sawmill. 'One kilometre up the highway from here,' they had been told. 'Up an old mud-track…' Driving past the concealed entrance which led to Woodcutter's Farm they had turned up the next track. Turning a corner, they arrived on top of the bluff.

'Something's wrong-look…' Vanek nodded towards the Mercedes parked on the bluff. cover you…' They exchanged no more words as Lansky opened the car door very quietly and slipped out. Trained to operate as a team there was no need to say any more as both men grasped the situation; somewhere concealed on the bluff was the man Lansky had bumped into in the rue de 1'Epine, the man who less than an hour ago had tried to kill them by driving them off the road. Inside the car Vanek waited, his own Luger in his hand, waited for any sign of movement while outside the car Lansky studied the lie of the land and noted that the open-ended barn was empty. Crouched inside the undergrowth Lennox couldn't see the man behind the wheel because the Renault had stopped on a rise and the car's bulk hid the second man. Lansky's sudden manoeuvre caught him off-balance.

The Czech sprinted the short distance across the open and disappeared inside the barn. Then, for a minute or two nothing happened, or so it seemed to Lennox. Inside the barn Lansky sought elevation, somewhere high up where he could look down on the whole bluff. Very quietly he began climbing up the inner wall of the barn, using the cross-beams along the wall as steps until he reached a hole where he could peer down into the Mercedes. The car was empty. He scanned the bluff carefully until he found the silhouette of a man crouching in the undergrowth. Then he climbed down again.

With the body of the parked Mercedes between himself and Lennox he crept forward, pausing only once to make a gesture to Vanek. The Czech nodded. Lansky had located the target. Reaching the side of the Mercedes, Lansky opened the door- handle a centimetre at a time, then opened the door itself. He slid behind the wheel and reached for the ignition key he had seen dangling from his barn wall perch. To shoot him the Frenchman would have to stand up-and if he exposed himself to view, Vanek would shoot him first.

Crouched a dozen or so metres behind the rear of the Mercedes, Lennox resisted the almost overwhelming impulse to lift his head, to see what the hell was going on. So far he had heard no sound since the second man had vanished inside the barn. Lansky, who carried in his head the precise location of the crouching man, paused as he touched the ignition key. This was going to have to be very fast indeed. And he was going to have to pull up in time or else the Mercedes would go over the sheer drop with the Frenchman. Either way the unknown man was dead: if he stayed where he was the car would topple him over the brink; if he exposed himself Vanek would kill him with a single shot. Then all four people on the bluff heard it- Madame Devaud waiting in the tiny summerhouse with her heart beating like a drum and the three men above her- heard the distant wail of an approaching police car siren. Lansky didn't hesitate. Turning on the ignition, flipping the gear into reverse, he began moving backwards at speed.

Lennox grasped what was happening instantly. Someone had got into his car. They were going to knock him over the edge. He timed it to a split second, standing up and exposing his silhouette at the moment when it was masked from the Renault by the speeding Mercedes heading straight for him. He had a camera-shutter image of the Mercedes's rear window framing the twisted-round head-and-shoulders of the driver. He fired twice through the centre of the frame, angling his gun downwards, then dived sideways, sprawling on the ground. Both bullets hit Lansky in the back and neither was instantaneously fatal. The spasm of reaction drove his right foot hard down on the accelerator. The Mercedes tore over the shrubberies and went on beyond, arcing into nothingness and then plunging down and down until it hit the highway one hundred feet below.

The police patrol-car, with Boisseau inside and a local driver behind the wheel, was turning into the entrance to Woodcutter's Farm when the Mercedes landed. As the patrol-car changed direction the Mercedes burst into flames.

Vanek had heard the police siren and he reacted as he saw the Mercedes with Lansky inside disappear over the edge; he drove the Renault round in a tight circle so it faced back down the track. A few metres away he saw Lennox sprawl on the ground, then start to get back to his feet. Braking, Vanek grabbed the Luger out of his lap, took instinctive aim and fired. The Englishman was aiming his own pistol when the bullet hit him and he went down again.

Vanek drove down the twisting track at reckless speed but he managed to keep the vehicle under control. When he emerged at the bottom the blazing Mercedes blocked the road to his right, blocking off the patrol-car. He turned left and started driving west along the deserted highway, his mind racing as he worked out what he had to do next. The answer could be summed up in one word: vanish. It was the death of his partner he had just witnessed which gave him the idea. Climbing a steep stretch of highway he came to a point where the road curved sharply with a fence to his right and a warning notice. Dangerous corner. Stopping the Renault just beyond the bend he got out and walked back to the recently-erected fence.