Tom Cain - No survivors

In her ears she could hear Wong's voice, "Oh, shit…"

The beeping stopped.

There were no more words in her headphones.

She lay stock-still, unmoving, unable to breathe in the absolute silence of the loft.

From somewhere inside the case there came the noise of a feeble detonation, no louder or more powerful than a Christmas cracker. Then silence once again.

Kady scrambled back onto the floor, trying to get her breath back. Then she noticed the electric plug, sitting at the end of the cable that led from the case. It had been jerked from its socket by the impact of her fall. The flashing and beeping were simply a warning to the bomb's users that its power had been cut. There was no booby trap.

But there were Soviet suitcase nukes loose in the world. And neither Kady nor anyone else in America had any idea where they were.

The staff of the bierkeller weren't too anxious to let Carver and Larsson in. A waitress tried to tell them the place was about to close. Carver took out a hundred bucks.

"We'll only be a few minutes," he said.

The waitress took the banknote and nodded toward the empty tables. "Help yourself."

They ordered a couple of wheat beers, an authentic taste of Germany, right in the heart of French Switzerland. Carver looked around. There was only one other customer in the place, a bland-looking man in his thirties or forties, sitting in a corner of the room, nursing a glass of whiskey. He was thinning on top, wearing a mass-produced gray suit, just one more lonely salesmen on another solitary night.

Carver turned his attention to the phony Bavarian decor and the two waitresses in their wigs and costumes, both tired and short-tempered at the end of a long shift. He felt ashamed to think of Alix working in this dump, into the early hours every night. She'd always been at the hospital first thing in the morning-she must have been exhausted. Maybe that's why she'd run away. She needed a decent night's sleep.

He finished his drink and went up to the bar.

"How much for two beers?"

"Ten francs," said the barman.

Carver paid with a fifty and told him to keep the change.

The barman thanked him, then regarded Carver, an eyebrow raised, lips pursed, as if to say, "There has to be a catch."

Carver caught the look. "You're right," he said, slipping into French without a second thought. "I do want something."

He slipped his photo of Alix across the table.

"Do you know this woman? Her name is Alexandra Petrova. She used to work here."

The barman said nothing.

"Look," said Carver, "I'm not a cop. I'm just a friend of hers. She's disappeared and I'm trying to find out what happened to her, that's all."

Finally the barman spoke. "You English?"

"Uh-huh."

"Been in the hospital lately?"

Carver unfolded the photograph and showed him the other half.

"Okay," said the barman. "I heard about you. But I don't know where Alix went. One night she was here, the next… poof!"

He shrugged and lifted up his hands to emphasize his bafflement, then pulled out a cloth from behind the bar and started wiping the countertop in front of Carver.

"But maybe Trudi can help you. She was a friend of Alix's."

The barman gestured at one of the waitresses-the one Carver had met at the door.

"Hey, Trudi! He wants to buy you a drink."

The waitress made a show of looking Carver up and down.

"Do I get another hundred dollars?" she asked and sauntered over.

The balding man in the corner, attracted by the sound of conversation, watched her as she walked toward the bar. Carver saw him and just for a second thought he caught something in the man's eye, a way of looking that suggested intense concentration, a kind of professional curiosity. But then Trudi was standing next to him, cheerful, busty, the classic barmaid-her costume laced extra-tight to make her cleavage all the deeper-and the thought vanished.

"So, are you going to get me that drink?" she said.

"Sure," said Carver. "What are you having?"

"Double vodka and tonic."

The drink appeared. Trudi downed half of it in one gulp and gave a contented sigh.

"I needed that. So, what can I do for you?"

"It's Alix. I'm trying to find her."

Trudi looked at him for a moment, then a sly smile crossed her face.

"So you're her mystery man, huh? She talked about you a few times. Not often, though-it upset her to say too much. I thought you were sick in the hospital."

"I was. Now I'm not. What happened to Alix?"

"I don't know-she just… well, she just vanished."

"When? The last time she came to visit me was around the middle of February."

Trudi considered for a moment. "Yes, that sounds right. She walked out just before our big Valentine's Day party. I was cross with her, leaving the rest of us to fill in. It never occurred to me she wasn't coming back."

"Had she been worried about anything?"

"Sure," said Trudi. "Paying your hospital bills. She really loved you."

"Tell me about the bills. What did she say about them?"

"Just that she didn't know where she was going to find twenty thousand francs. It was really on her mind."

"And the last time you saw her, the night you say she walked out: Do you remember what happened?"

Trudi took another sip of her drink.

"Okay, I remember. I'd been working a couple of hours before Alix arrived, and I was waiting for her to start work, so that I could take a break. I saw her come out from the dressing room, just over there…"

Trudi pointed toward a door set into the wall not far from where they were talking. There was a sign on it forbidding entry to customers.

"Then what happened?" asked Carver. "How did Alix seem to you?"

Trudi gave a quizzical little pout. "I don't know, normal, I suppose-at first, anyway. But then suddenly she stopped completely still, right in the middle of the floor. She was staring at one of the tables, like she'd seen a ghost, you know? Then she turned and walked really fast, right out of the bar, toward our dressing room. I thought it was kind of odd, but I didn't have time to think about it because I was serving customers. There was a problem because two men got up and left without paying and Pierre, the barman, was giving me shit for letting them do that, but in the end it didn't matter because a woman paid their bill. Weird, huh?"

"Yeah, maybe," said Carver impatiently. "But concentrate on Alix. When did you know she'd left the building?"

"About ten minutes later. She hadn't come back and I still hadn't had my break and I just thought she was being a selfish cow, so I went to look for her. But when I got to the dressing room, she wasn't there, and her bag and coat were both gone. And that was the last time I saw her."

"Go back to when you last saw Alix. She came out of the door. She saw something. What did she see?"

Trudi thought for a moment. Then she got up and said, "Come with me."

She led Carver across the room till they were standing in front of the door from which Alix had emerged. Behind them, the man in the cheap suit had come to the bar and was settling his account with Pierre. From time to time, he glanced up to check out the pantomime being acted out by Trudi.

"Right," she said. "Alix was looking over… there!"

She pointed across the room. Directly in her sight line there was a single small table.

"Who was sitting there?" asked Carver.

Trudi puffed her cheeks. "Oh, monsieur, it was many weeks ago-how can I remember one customer?"

"Start with the basics: Was it a man or a woman?"

"I don't know!"

Carver could feel frustration rising inside him. He was close to losing his temper, but that would serve no purpose at all. As much to calm himself as Trudi, he spoke as gently as possible, coaxing her like a stage hypnotist.