Colin Forbes - Terminal

Tommy Mason had finished writing his report for Tweed which included details of his brief trips to Zurich by train. He was stiff from sitting in one position in his bedroom for so long and he wanted to think. Mason thought best while he was walking and wanted to ease the stiffness out of his limbs before he went to bed.

He walked out of the main entrance to the Bellevue Palace. At that time of night the huge hall and the reception area beyond – the area which within days would be used for the Medical Congress reception – were empty. The night concierge looked up from behind his counter, nodded to Mason and went back to checking his schedule for early morning calls.

Mason, protected against the freezing cold of the night with his British warm, woollen scarf and a slouch hat, made his way down to the river. He had taken the same walk the night before. It crossed his mind he was breaking a cardinal rule. Never keep to a routine. Vary your habits – daily. Worse still, he had left the Bellevue about the same time the night before. He had become so absorbed by his report he had not realized what he was doing.

Still, it was only the second night. He damned well had to get some exercise or he wouldn't sleep. His mind was active. Mason guessed that he was close to promotion. The fact that Tweed had pulled him out of Vienna and stationed him temporarily in Berne indicated that.

The wind caught him as he reached the Aarstrasse. He stepped it out, heading for the Dalmazibrucke, a much lower bridge than the Kirchenfeldbrucke he would eventually use to cross back over the river to reach the Bellevue.

Absorbed as he was by his thoughts- the report for Tweed, his coming promotion – Mason continued to look round for any sign of life. No traffic. No other pedestrians. To his left, in the dark his eyes were now accustomed to, the ancient escarpment on which Berne is built rose sheer in the night. He continued walking.

He reached the Dalmazi bridge, and still the whole city seemed to have gone to bed. The Swiss started their day early so they were rarely up late. Below him the dark, swollen flow of the water headed for the curious canal-like stretch below the Munster. At this point the Aare empties itself through a number of sluices to a lower level before continuing its curve round the medieval capital. He heard the car driving slowly behind him. It stopped. He turned round.

At the same moment the driver switched his headlights on full power. Mason was temporarily blinded. Bloody nincompoop. The headlights dipped and the car remained stationary. A courting couple, Mason guessed, oblivious to the cold of the night inside their heated love nest. The driver had probably intended to turn them off and had operated the switch the wrong way, his mind on more enticing prospects.

He was in the middle of the bridge when he resumed his walk. The lead-weighted walking stick – the most innocuous of weapons – struck him with tremendous force on the back of his skull. He was sagging to the pavement when powerful arms grasped him, hoisted him and in one swift, final movement propelled him over the rail of the bridge.

Unconscious, Mason hit the ice-cold water with a dull splash. Less than half a minute later a car's engine fired at the entrance to the bridge and was driven away. In that half- minute Mason's body had been carried close to the Kirchenfeldbrucke. Passing under the high, vaulted arch supporting the bridge, the body was suddenly swept to the right as the flow of the Aare increased in power and speed.

Caught up in a frothing whirlpool, Mason's skull hammered with brutal force against the sluice where it lay trapped. Time and again the river hurled the body into the sluice with the action of a sledgehammer. The slouch hat had gone its own way, bobbing along the surface until it, too, was swept sideways through a more distant sluice. It passed through effortlessly, soggy now with water. Somewhere before the next bend in the Aare it sank out of sight. Bernard `Tommy' Mason would never see his cherished promotion.

Gisela, assistant to Arthur Beck, looked up from her desk as her chief came into the office, took off his overcoat and hung it by the loop. He sat down behind his own desk, unlocked a drawer and took out the file on Julius Nagy.

`It's terribly late,' Gisela chided. 'I thought you'd gone home. Where have you been?'

`Walking the arcades, trying to make some sort of sense out of this apparently disconnected series of events. One stolen mortar, one stolen rifle with its ammunition, the disappearance of Lee Foley. No news about him yet, I suppose?'

`None at all. Would you like some coffee?'

`That would be nice. Then, talking about going home, you push off to your apartment. As you said, it's very late…'

When she had left the room Beck pushed the file away. Sitting gazing blankly into the distance, he began drumming the fingers of his right hand on the desk.

Behind the wheel of the Porsche Lee Foley was careful to keep inside the speed limit as he drove along N6, even though the motorway from Berne to Thun was deserted. He had divested himself of his English outfit and now wore jeans and a windcheater. Pulled well down over his thick thatch of white hair he wore a peaked sailor-style cap of the type favoured by Germans.

He would spend the night at a small gasthof outside Thun. By the time the registration form reached the local police in the morning – or maybe even twenty-four hours later as he would be registering so late – he planned to be away from Thun.

When he got up in the morning he would use a public booth to make the agreed phone call at the agreed hour. This, Foley was convinced, could be the first decisive day. And very shortly he would surface, come out into the open again. It was all a question of getting the timing right. Foley was very good at sensing timing: he had established the right contacts.

He drove on, his profile like that of a man carved in stone. Taken all round, it had been a strange day. He dismissed it from his mind. Always tomorrow – the next move – was what counted.

In Basle it was well past midnight as Seidler paced back and forth across the sitting room. On a sofa Erika Stahel stifled a yawn. She made one more effort.

`Manfred, let's go to bed. I have been working all day…'

`That bastard Newman!' Seidler burst out. 'He's playing me like a fish. People don't do that to me. If he knew what I've got in that suitcase he'd have seen me when I first called him in Geneva…'

`That locked suitcase. Why won't you let me see what you have got inside it?'

`It's a sample, a specimen…'

`A sample of what?'

`Something horrific. Best you don't know about it. And it's the key to Terminal. It's worth a fortune,' he ranted on, 'and I'll end up giving it to Newman for a pittance, if I'm not dead before then. A pittance,' he repeated, 'just to gain his protection…'

`I've banked a fortune for you in that safety deposit,' she reminded him. 'Surely you don't need any more. And when you talk about it being horrific you frighten me. What have you got yourself involved in?'

`It will soon be over. Newman said he'd meet me. The rendezvous will have to be a remote spot. I think I know just the place…'

Erika realized he could go on like this for hours. He was nervy, strung up, maybe even close to a breakdown. She stood up, walked into the kitchen and came back with a glass of water and a bottle of tablets.

`A sleeping tablet for you tonight. You'll need to be fresh for your meeting, all your wits about you. We're going to bed now. To sleep…'

Ten minutes later Seidler was sprawled beside her in a deep sleep. It was Erika who stared at the ceiling where the neon advertising sign perched on the building opposite flashed on and off despite the drawn curtains Horrific. Dear God – what could the suitcase contain?