Len Deighton - XPD

It was a good run Pitman gave him and he almost enjoyed it. The rented Mini was surprisingly fast and the burst of speed improved its performance. Too much town driving had coked up the valves and dirtied the plugs. Now, with his foot well down, Koch was keeping pace with the Jaguar while leaving plenty of space between them.

When Colonel John Elroy Pitman suffered his heart attack his hands loosened from the steering wheel and the car mounted the kerb of the central divide, jolting both men in the Jaguar up against its roof. The car hit the fence and tore its way through the white stakes like a band-saw through matchsticks, tossing them high into the air and sprinkling them across the oncoming traffic.

The Jaguar lurched further across the grassy median until, still travelling at over seventy miles an hour, it hit the steel girders which are the standard safety fitting on all Swiss autoroutes. There was a deafening crash as the Jaguar struck a shower of white-hot sparks from the barrier and bounced back on to the highway again. The glass began to break as the car’s frame distorted. As it crashed back on to the highway, the jolt of the high kerb was enough to demolish the front nearside tyre and the car tipped down a second time to begin a roll. Askew in the centre of the highway, still travelling very fast, it went over on to its side and then, with another spray of sparks and a terrible scream, it slid along on its roof, scattering door handles, wipers and hub caps in its wake. Like some huge missile, the wrecked Jaguar hit the verge. Still it kept going, throwing into the air a cannonade of ploughed turf and chopped grass until it came to a final halt in a cloud of steam as the radiator boiled and the horn jammed screaming like a tortured baboon.

Behind the Jaguar, Hugo Koch was fighting the wheel as pieces of debris came flying towards him. A hub cap clanged down on to the front of the car and hit the windscreen with a resonant clang. Koch threw an arm across his face but by a miracle the glass did not break and the silver hub cap flashed in the light and skidded off over his roof with a noise like a pealing of church bells.

Ahead of him, the Jaguar came careering back across the highway only inches ahead of his front wheels. As its windscreen shattered, a shower of broken glass rattled over him like a snow flurry. The cars banged together. He hit the brake.

Koch glanced in his mirror to see the chaos of the littered highway. As he watched, an articulated truck hit a Ford Cortina. It went sliding across the road out of control, its tyres exploding. As the metal wheels engaged the road surface it began a violent spin. The articulated truck began to jack-knife.

Koch almost stood up as he applied his whole weight to the brake pedal. With a scream of brakes and a smell of scorched rubber he brought his Mini to a halt at the roadside. Behind him, the articulated truck hit the barrier with a clang that deafened him and then came past him out of control like some huge building roaring down the highway as loud as a low-flying jet.

Koch ran to the Jaguar. Pitman was strapped in but his legs and arms were twisted and lifeless and his face was bloodied. Stein’s weight and bulk had jammed him down against the floor. This saved him from anything worse than a blow to the head which had caused him to lose consciousness. Koch opened the doors and dragged the two limp figures on to the roadway. He looked at Pitman; the old fellow was dead, but Stein’s pulse was firm enough and although his respiration was quick and shallow it was regular. Stein groaned; he seemed to be regaining consciousness. Koch turned him on his side so there was no danger of him swallowing his tongue and choking on it, then he went back to the wreckage of the Jaguar to see what was inside it. He had only a few moments with the car before it caught fire.

On that evening of Saturday, August 4, the Geneva to Lausanne side of the autoroute was closed for four hours while the police cleared up the mess. Hugo Koch helped as much as he could. He recognized two of the policemen and contributed an excellent eye-witness description of the collision, although he omitted to mention that he was in any way connected with the occupants of the wrecked car. Neither did he mention the brown canvas bag or the packet he had taken from Pitman’s Jaguar before it caught fire.

Hugo Koch opened the packets he’d taken from the Pitman car and then telephoned London from a call-box. He had been told that was the best way in an emergency. The SIS exchange called Boyd Stuart’s home and connected the caller to him. Koch explained briefly what he had seen.

‘My orders concerned only Colonel Pitman,’ said Koch. ‘Well, he is dead. His white Jaguar is a complete wreck. It burst into flames, but I managed to get Pitman out before that happened. There was a passenger with him, a fat man-it sounds like Charles Stein from your description.’

‘What happened to Stein?’

Koch shed a little of his stolid Swiss composure. ‘I’ve just been in a bad traffic pile-up, mister. There were bodies everywhere-I saw a whole family laid out by the roadside-I didn’t go round doing a body count, and there was not much time for careful detective work… I don’t know what happened to Stein. He’d gone when I went back to search him.’

‘OK. OK. But you searched Pitman?’

‘Credit cards, some money, passports. Nothing unusual. I put it all back.’

‘You did a great job, Hugo. Go home and get some sleep… ’

‘Very well,’ said Koch unenthusiastically. ‘And I have a packet here. The car was on fire and the boot was locked, so I didn’t get inside that, you understand.’

‘Packet?’

‘It was under Colonel Pitman’s seat in the white Jaguar. I thought it might be something you were interested in. A sealed plastic bag containing an old wartime dossier. There are US Army inventory tags on it. One label reads, “Typewritten documents, German language, approx. 300 pages. Box 4001.” It’s very old. The car burnt afterwards so no one is going to miss it. I hope I did right.’

‘You got it out of Pitman’s white Jaguar?’

‘You get an instinct about the things that are worthwhile. It was within reach but out of sight-that’s usually a sign of something people value. If it had been on the rear shelf I wouldn’t have burnt my arm getting to it.’ Koch yawned. ‘Do you want me to send it? I haven’t opened it.’

‘Leave it sealed, and don’t let it out of your sight, Koch. I’ll get the first flight tomorrow and come straight to your home. Meanwhile don’t go out, not even to get cigarettes, you understand?’

‘I don’t smoke,’ said Koch.

Boyd Stuart timed the call, reported the message in somewhat cryptic terms to the duty officer and told him to alert the SIS section in Los Angeles to the fact that the department had lost contact with Stein. There was always the chance that he’d sooner or later go through Los Angeles International Airport. He also asked the duty officer to arrange a seat on the early flight to Geneva. After that he reset the alarm and climbed back into bed with Kitty King.

‘Who was it?’ she asked. She reached for him sleepily.

‘Wrong number.’

‘You rotten liar,’ she said.

‘It was the girl upstairs needing help with her zipper.’

‘You bastard,’ she giggled as they embraced. ‘Stop it! Your hands are too cold!’

Even travelling by the first morning flight out of London, it was almost mid-morning on Sunday, August 5, by the time Stuart got to Hugo Koch’s apartment in Geneva. It was on the second floor of a block which mostly housed dentists and lawyers. They were large apartments, designed so that the occupants could live and work from the same premises. The street was empty apart from a few churchgoers.