Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

'All right,' I said. 'We'll stop and pick one up.'

Miss Jarman said: 'Must you, Harvey?'

Harvey twisted and held a hand out to her. She looked at the dancing fingers, then reached and held them for a moment. Then she opened the mahogany glove-box set into the wall beside her, and took out the biggest silver flask I've ever seen.

'I found it earlier,' she said simply.

He took it and unscrewed the big cap and poured himself a shot. Whatever it was, there must have been well over half a bottle of it. He sniffed and sipped.

'Four-star, too,' he said.

'Cognac?'

He nodded, lifted the cap, and toasted me. 'It could be a good day yet.'

I wasn't sure about that.

We passed Wolhusen and ran into Luzern. We lost time there by mixing in with the rush-hour traffic, but I'd have been far more worried to reach the frontier in daylight and dawdle around waiting for darkness.

After that we were into a series of long switchbacks: winding along the level by a lake, then hauling up over a small range of mountains, and down to the next lake. Nobody said much. Harvey took occasional sips at the cognac: 'twice he filled the cap up again. But he wasn't rushing it.

I looked at my watch. An hour and a half to dark. Five hours to midnight Maganhard asked: 'Have you worked out where we shall cross, Mr Cane?'

I grabbed to make sure the partition window was wound up tight – and found Harvey's hand on it already. He smiled easily. By now, he was just about at his brightest and best. Three cognacs had killed the shakes without clouding his reactions.

But from now, the only way he couldgo was downhill.

I pulled out the photostat map aria spread it across my knees. The fortifications run crossways over a small ridge -the Fläscherberg. The tank path stays on the road side, runs almost parallel with it, a few hundred yards away. So if we cross over the ridge, alongside the river, we can walk through there and nobody'll hear us.'

'In all, how long will it take?'

'If we can get started soon after eight-thirty – well, we may have to get through a bit of barbed wire at the front itself--Let's say we'll be at a phone on the other side by ten o'clock at the latest. We get your pal Fiez to come and collect us, and we'll be in Vaduz by half past.'

'We are not going to Vaduz.'

I turned and peered into the gloom. 'Maybe I should have asked this before: I'd been worrying just about the frontier. Right – whereare we going in Liechtenstein?'

'Company meetings are held at Herr Flez's house in Steg.'

'Steg?' At first the name didn't mean anything to me. Then I remembered it: a little village way up on the only road that ran up into the mountains. The road itself faded out a couple of kilometres farther on, at a ski hotel right under the peaks that were the Austrian border.

'Christ,' I said slowly. 'It's a pretty lonely place up there.' All I could remember of it was a few woodcutters' huts and a handful of chalets. 'Fiez must be an honest man.'

'We have not had dealings with gunmen before this,' Maganhard said. 'And I do not think it would be wise for Herr Fiez to come and fetch us. You forget: he will have this Galleron with him by then. If Calieron knows we have escaped his ambush, he may…' He tried to think of things this Galleron might do.

I could think of them for myself. I started to ask if Merlin would be there by then, but didn't: even if he was, the same snag applied. We'd still tip off Calieron and lose the element of surprise.

Maganhard said calmly: 'So you must find us a car on the other side of the frontier.'

That was all – just find a car. And a driver to get a good look at our faces – even if he agreed to go up the steep, stony road to Steg that was probably snowed-in at the top. And we wouldn't even find that nearer than Vaduz, ten kilometres beyond the frontier.

Maganhard knew Liechtenstein – and the problem. 'You may have to steal one," he added just as calmly.

'That always sounds the easy way,' I said gloomily. 'Look – there won't be many cars in those little villages just across the frontier. And they won't be parked in the street. And even if they are, they won't have the keys in them. And I can't start opening one up and rewiring it in the middle of the village.'

Then you will have to think of something else,' Maganhard said. 'I hired you to get me to Steg by-'

'I know. I'm thinking.' But I didn't like what I was thinking. And the more I thought, the less I liked it. But I couldn't think of anything else.

I said slowly: 'We're already in a car.'

Harvey jerked his head round, then slanted his eyebrows at me. Miss Jarman said: 'What d'y ou mean?'

'The tank path. If it'll take a tank, it'll take a Rolls-Royce. We kick out Morgan – and drive across. Then we've got a car on the other side.'

The girl's voice was almost breathless with disbelief. 'But – but you said they'd be waiting there, expecting us! ' They aren't expecting a Rolls. And they aren't expecting us to expect them. We've got that much margin.'

'We could still get shot to hell,' Harvey said thoughtfully. Then think of something better.' After a long time, he smiled crookedly. 'Hell, you're just crazy to use that machine-gun of yours again. All right.'

Then, carefully and steadily, he poured himself another brandy.

There was a police Volkswagen parked up on the cliff-top road alongside the Wallensee, but they waved us on past and went on stopping selected other cars. They obviously weren't taking the roads before Liechtenstein very seriously – the real blocks would come at the frontier – but it still told me something.

They didn't know we'd been in Montreux: if they'd known that, they'd have been bound to stop any car theyknew came from Montreux, even the General's. And that meant my friend the Montreux inspector hadn't talked -and if he hadn't talked now, he probably wouldn't later. He had good reason: if he talked, he had to admit both to. arresting Maganhard before there was an official requestand to getting conned into letting him go again.

Those are two big pieces of pride for a cop to swallow whole. I hoped he'd go on chewing a long time: he was the only official who could give a good description of me. I must remember not to drop in and buy him a drink one day.

The last of the sun glittered on the snow of the mountains across the lake, and darkness closed in around us as we came down into the See Tal valley. After that, it got darker fast. Morgan put on the headlights and huge yellow beams spread all over the road and well off it.

Harvey poured himself his fifth cognac and asked: 'Where do we take over?'

'May as well wait until he stops to let us out, near the frontier. You noticed he's got a gun?'

Harvey nodded, sipped, and asked: 'And where d'you think they'll be waiting?'

I opened the photostat map again, lit a cigarette, and started studying.

The fortifications were some of the most careful, well-planned ever built. Three lines of firing trenches – first line, second line, reserve line – neatly laid out with plenty of corners, and connected up by zigzag communication trenches. And pillboxes, blockhouses, dugouts scattered around lavishly. Everything to fight the Perfect War.

And why not? Generals never get things right until it's well out of date, and this lot had been built a good fifteen years after air power and armour had made it useless. Nowadays, you wouldn't attack this sort of thing head-on: you'd isolate it with fighter-bombers, flatten it with carpet-bombing… No. Nowadays you'd just press a button. My own ideas were a war out of date by now.

It makes you feel old. Probably that's the generals' trouble, too.

Harvey said: 'Well?'

'I think they'll be coming in from Liechtenstein itself,' I said. 'They'll have been waiting for us there: they couldn't have banked on catching us anywhere before then, not until they knew where we're crossing. And they'll probably want to hop back into Liechtenstein afterwards. The Swiss side'll be crawling with cops – butonly the Swiss side. Liechtenstein's only got about fifteen cops: they couldn't put two men on every frontier post for any time.'