Tibetan Cross Page 25

  The road nicked a saddle and dove between two black ridges split by a stream. It chased the stream down to a valley where the forest cleared and white-and-black cows grazed on a steep slope above tall, narrow houses. Over the cows, the trees closed in again, spiring toward a high, naked summit.

  Two inns faced each other across a fountain in Neuenweg's trapezoidal square. There was a storefront, closed, and about fifteen other houses, most with barns and fenced livestock. Chickens poked at the street. A pig called, raucous and aggravated.

  He drove for several hours round the mountain, checking slate-roofed villages rimmed by firs. The grassy, rocky peak was rarely visible, and then only distantly. In midafternoon he drove from Schönau to the top, the road slick where trees blocked the sun. At the peak was the hotel, shut, and an empty parking lot. The wind rattled a chairlift, scurrying snow around the corners of the hotel. In all directions swept away a bitter panorama of ice, rock, and evergreens. Water sparkled in the valleys; contrails fractured the frigid sky. On the southern horizon the chrome backbone of the Alps split the earth's crust. It was too much like Nepal; he returned sadly to the car and drove part way down the mountain, below the snow, cut east on a rutted logging road along a forested ridge, hid the Alfa behind a mound of bulldozed stumps, and descended on foot through the firs to Neuenweg.

  A white rooster stood on the lip of the fountain; three brown hens scratched the gravel below it. The store was now open, a smocked woman inspecting him from its window. In one inn he asked for a sandwich, beer, and, haltingly, a telephone book. As he had expected, the number given him by the Hotel des Thermes was not in the village listing. He considered asking about Mort, but concluded it too risky.

  A tank truck stopped at the store. The smocked woman carried out milk cans which the driver siphoned into the truck. A wrinkled man in a wrinkled cap and a pink-faced boy drove lowing cows through the square. A school bus came, flattening the piles of fresh manure. Children flew from the bus chattering and scattering like larks.

  He walked eastward out of town, climbed the spruce-thick slope to a point exposing the valley, and watched until dark, ascended to the Alfa and drove to Freiburg, where he bought binoculars, dinner, and lodging. Tomorrow's Friday. My last try. Then Paris. Our backup at Le Serpent d'Etoiles. Something tells me, Paul, you'll be there.

  Before dawn he returned to the hill above Neuenweg, parked the Alfa behind the stumps, hid the key under the tire, and descended to the point.

  THE VILLAGE sat quietly in its cleft in the hills. A window opened, a flash of hand and shimmering draperies in his binoculars. A dog paused to lift a leg against the concrete border of the fountain. A farmer in yellow coveralls poured grain from a white plastic bucket into a trough behind his barn; brown ducks and white geese came quacking and honking to gobble at the trough. The farmer stood watching, arms akimbo, the bucket by his heel.

  In late afternoon a black Citroen halted before the store. Mort sprang from it and dashed up the stairs, his right arm in a sling. Moments later he emerged with a plastic sack, waved to the smocked lady and swung into the Citroen.

  The Citroen swerved uphill at the edge of town, ascended a pasture road past dappled cattle and over a brook, continued to the topmost switchback under the forest, and stopped at a house commanding the apex of the pasture. Mort entered the house, the car door echo ringing after him into the valley.

  Trembling with excitement and fury, Cohen ran up through the forest until he was above the house. He angled westward and dropped through the spruce until the rear of the house and the black Citroen were a hundred yards below. Next to the Citroen were a silver Mercedes and a yellow Golf.

  Westering sun glared in his eyes and threw prisms into the binoculars. The pasture gleamed in the reddish light, shadowed along its western forest edge and in the grazing paths of the cattle.

  Through binoculars it seemed a normal home: square couches with muted plaid fabrics, off-white walls, a fish-bowl lacking fish, a sword-leafed plant. A shape glanced across the lens – a man's chest and arms, gray suit, hair on the backs of his hands. Cohen retreated into deeper forest and down its eastern edge until he could see into the larger windows facing the valley. The front door squeaked open and the man in the gray suit stepped onto the deck. He was well-tanned and half bald, of medium height. He placed his palms on the banister and watched the valley. Mort joined him, glass of beer in his left hand. The man in the gray suit took it, raising an eyebrow in salute. Mort spoke and the other laughed, pointing his glass toward Neuenweg.

  Two others came out of the house, carrying beers. They were younger, dressed in slacks and pullovers. One gave Mort a beer. Cohen fine-tuned the focus until the suited man's gray herringbone leaped out at him. From Neuenweg rose the tolling of five bells. The gray-suited man glanced momentarily toward Cohen, turned away, pointing again into the valley, his hand on Mort's shoulder. Mort laughed, his cheeks pouching redly round his small, round mouth. A few minutes later he slouched into the house.

  The others finished their beers. Mort emerged, swinging car keys on the single finger of his left hand, and gave them to one of the younger men, who glanced at his watch and nodded. All four descended the stairs, entered the silver Mercedes, and drove down the mountain into the shadowed valley. The car's taillights blinked as it slowed for the square, then zigzagged over the hills toward Müllheim.

  THE HOUSE lay in shadow. The forest approached it closest on the west; he circled around until he could see in the windows on that side. He thought of returning to the Alfa for the Mannlicher, decided it would take too long. He ran doubled over to crouch by the foundation. When his breath calmed he stood and glanced in a window. Couches extended across the dim room. At the back, a door stood ajar. From a table came the silver sheen of a lampshade. The window was locked. He ducked round the rear past the warm rubber and polish odor of the Citroen. The back door was locked; the window over the sink slid open. He retreated for a last glimpse of the valley now spattered with lights.

  Empty glasses smelling of beer crowded the sink. He slipped through the window; linoleum creaked as he dropped to the floor. A newspaper on the couch. Two bedrooms, a mildewing bathroom. Women's clothes in the dresser, a faint, nagging scent. Beyond the living room window the town twinkled soundlessly. A truck's red taillights chased the twin beams of its headlamps over the Müllheim hill.

  Nothing in the kitchen but cutlery and the faded odors of rust, soap flakes and rat poison under the sink. A gleam steadied on the ceiling, vanished. He ran to the living room. Two points of light flicked up the mountain, glanced into his eyes.

  The back door would not open. He dropped the binoculars on the drain board, twisted the handle, felt up and down for bolts. Light climbed the walls. He clambered over the sink out the window and sprinted into the forest.

  The headlights neared. He swore and ran back to the house, stumbling in sudden brightness as the lights washed over him, leaped the stairs and reached into the window for the binoculars, knocking them from the drain board to the floor. Headlights filled the windows; beer glasses smashed in the sink as he fell to the floor, grabbed the binoculars, wormed back through the window and dashed for the trees.

  Over the pounding in his ears came a gear rattle and the valve knock of an aging engine, moving from left to right along the slope below the house. The lights picked their way over a track that traversed the slope. They flashed unevenly on the forest, giving the trees an affronted, startled look.

  Gears ground disconsolately as the lights hesitated, dipped, and centered on a brown cabin sheltered by the trees. A dog barked. The truck door slammed. The dog quieted. The cabin windows glowed.

  He reentered the window and opened the refrigerator so its brightness filled the kitchen. In a drawer he found matches, closed the refrigerator, struck a match in the living room. The lights clicked on.

  Blinded by the light, he turned. Claire smiled, twitching a stubby shotgun. “You should've stayed away, Sam.”

  19


  SHE FINGERTIPPED the trigger. “You're so undeniably dumb! Where's Paul?”

  “You expect an answer? Whose dick are you sucking now? The fat guy's?”

  “Don't move! It doesn't matter – about Paul. Christ, here they come.”

  “Paul's dead?”

  “They can't find him.”

  Footsteps thundered on the deck. Mort banged through the front door, panting, his forehead glistening. “Saint Augustine of Marseille!” he grinned. “Good!” he nodded to Claire.

  “That truck almost blew it,” she said. “I saw something in his hand – those silly binoculars – but I thought it was a gun and kept waiting for him to put it away so I wouldn't have to kill him, and then the lights came and he was gone out the window in a flash. I thought you'd pick him up outside. So I…”

  “He fell for the window?”

  “Then he came back through it. I waited for him to light the matches – you should have seen his face!”

  One of the younger men entered, panting hard. “This him, Mort?”

  “Yup.”

  The younger man kneed Cohen in the groin. “That's for Dieter.” As Cohen doubled with the searing pain the man kneed him in the chin. “For Willi.”

  “We've got time, Tim,” Mort said.

  “He's a pansy,” she said. “Don't break him yet.”

  Tim pushed Cohen against the wall, holding his palm under Cohen's chin, staring up into his face. “I'll break him in pansy little pieces.” Cohen spit in his face and Tim kneed him again, Cohen twisting to take it on his thigh.

  She giggled. “I'm going to cut his prick off and feed it to him.”

  “What'd he do,” Tim laughed, wiping his face. “Make you eat it?”

  The other younger man ran in.

  “All clear – he's alone.”

  “All the way from Aix,” Mort boomed, “following his bread crumbs. What a bore it is to deal with assholes. The cuffs, Tim.”

  Tim wreathed Cohen in sweaty arms, clicked the cuffs behind his back. “Put him in the bedroom, Ruby,” Mort said. “Use your set to hitch him to the bed.”

  She put the shotgun on the couch and took Cohen's arm. “No,” Mort shook his head. “Upstairs. We'll talk more openly.” Tim pulled down a drop stairway in the hall. She pushed Cohen up it and across the attic to a bulb which she lit. They readjusted his handcuffs around a post, cuffing his ankles to it also. With his good arm Mort tucked aside Cohen's shirt to inspect the knife wound. His odor was beery and sweaty. “One of the whores claw you?”

  The Mercedes rumbled to a stop outside. The man in the gray suit, shorter than he had seemed through binoculars, mounted the stairs. “You call yet?” he said.

  “Not yet, Lou,” Mort answered.

  “I'll do it.” Lou went down.

  Mort pulled up a crate before Cohen. “Now,” he said. “Get the machine, Ruby.”

  She returned with a portable tape deck. It had a long cord that Tim draped over a nail in the ridgepole. Mort spoke into the microphone, “Red Dog first interrogation of suspect Samuel C. Cohen, 8:42 p.m., Friday, April 20, Neuenweg, Federal German Republic. Run it back, Tim.”

  Tim played it back. “Up the volume a bit,” Mort said. He smiled at Cohen. “Well, son, where shall we start?”

  Cohen shuddered. Now that it was over he had a fierce urge to cry, to fall into their arms, beg understanding, protection. “If I only understood…”

  Mort nodded sympathetically. “I've been burdened by this, too.” He glanced up. “Sam, let's make a clean breast of things, you and I? You're here with us now, and I'd be less than honest if I didn't tell you there's some very hard feelings against you. But maybe together we can sort things out, huh?”

  Cohen licked his dry lips. “You're American?”

  “I am,” Mort said. “And Tim and Jack here, and Lou downstairs. Ruby, here, you already know.”

  “Then why've you murdered my friends? Other Americans! Innocent people for no reason?”

  “Nothing's ever done without reason. Sometimes mistakes are made, and you've made some beauts, but that doesn't mean it's the end.”

  Cohen laughed. “Sure it's the end, you fat pervert. How dumb do you think I am?”

  Claire laughed too. “Very dumb, Sam.”

  Cohen smirked. Now that it was over he felt weirdly whimsical, capricious, insane. “Make your clean breast,” he said to Mort.

  Mort dragged his crate a little closer. “A long time ago, you and your friends decided to make a little money on the side. Now, now, wait!” He raised his hand. “Hear me through.” He sighed. “I understand who you are – you refused to serve the country that adopted you, you're an expatriate with little love for the land that gave an immigrant like you a home – but why, why, would you get yourself into a scrape like this?”

  “Does it occur to you that if I loved my country less I would have cared less what it does? And I didn't get myself into this scrape, as you put it, you people did.”

  “I see.” Mort rocked back on his crate. “You'd have me believe that you and Paul and Alex accidentally slipped into this, this escapade, of yours? Like the guy caught with ten pounds of heroin at Kennedy who doesn't know how it got into his suitcase?”

  Cohen dropped his head in disgust. “Why am I talking to you, wasting the last hours of my life on shit like you?”

  Mort brayed. “The last hours of your life! Give me a break! We're officers of the U.S. Government – we don't go around murdering people in German attics. Even if you're a killer, we don't have to be like you.”

  Cohen said nothing, staring toward some point invisible beyond the poorly illuminated rafters.

  “So what're you saying, Sam?” Mort prompted. He tugged at his trousers crease where it flattened over his huge bent knee. “Do you want to tell us your story? Isn't that what Lekbir El Khebib wanted, in Oran? To hear it?” Mort grinned. “Remember him – the Algerian colonel?”

  Cohen turned back from the darkness. “What did you do to him?” I am the Plague. Everyone I come near dies.

  “Do to him? Nothing. We had a little conversation, like the one we had with Captain Andrev, who at first was quite hostile. But he came round.”

  “Did you kill him too?” To Cohen, his own voice was like the narrator's in some movie out of childhood – a voice with no person attached.

  A mincing grin. “You've been reading too many novels. We've killed no one. Though I understand Andrev was so distressed when he found out who you really were that he killed himself. You've done quite a bit of damage to innocent people, haven't you?”

  “You murdering bastard!” Cohen screamed, writhing against his cuffs. He fell silent in a twisted clump at the foot of the post. “God what have I done?”

  In the attic all was quiet; Mort watched him with a quizzical air, reached left-handed for his handkerchief and wiped his neck. Lou came up the stairs. “Der Kapellmeister says Bravo!”

  “And Dr. Schwarz?” Mort asked.

  “They got him.”

  “Where?”

  “I didn't ask, Mort. He's at the Chapel.”

  Mort put away his handkerchief. “Okay, fella,” he said to Cohen, “you can get up now. It's a good act, but I've got work to do. What I want from you, right now, are the reasons why you were running guns into Tibet. I want your contacts in Nepal, your source for the guns, and the names of everyone in your team. Right now!”

  Cohen stared. “You're insane.”

  An empathetic smile. “It was insane to do it, that's for sure. Did you need the money?”

  “I did nothing! Stihl hired us to guide him to Mustang – I waited till I saw his permits – he had them! So we took him up the Kali Gandaki. The three of us, for twelve grand, and…”

  “That's a lot of money, Sam. Nobody'd pay anybody twelve grand for a trip up the Kali Gandaki.”

  “We thought he was crazy! But we were delighted to have the money. Up in the Kali Gandaki we joined a Tibetan caravan – because Stihl insisted on it – a
nd the same day, four of their horses…”

  “You never saw these Tibetans before?”

  “No. And the same day…”

  “That's funny. Several of them, including their chief, say you came to them offering to sell arms. Or trade arms, rather, for hashish.”

  “That was later.”

  “That was later? So you were trying to sell arms! To run drugs back to the States.”

  “No – I was making that up! To find out about Stihl's operation.”

  “And what did you find out?”

  “Nothing. The Tibetans said they didn't know about the bomb.”

  “What bomb?”

  Cohen sighed. “The one Stihl and Eliott were sending to Tibet.”

  Mort shook his head. “You're leading me down the garden path, Sam. Here's the scenario: You and your friends were caught running guns into Tibet; you killed an American government employee, Roger Eliott, as he and Clem Stihl were trying to apprehend you on the Kali Gandaki. In the process, one of your partners, Alex Vlasic, was killed, also a Nepali whose name's in the file somewhere. But…”

  “Goteen. His name was Goteen. Stihl or one of your Tibetans shot him.”

  “Goteen – whatever! But you and Paul Stinson got away. You then killed Clem Stihl in Katmandu, in front of the American Embassy, no less, but not before he told us what happened on the Kali Gandaki.

  “Then,” Mort continued, pursing his lips, “you murdered everyone in Katmandu who might help us find you – an American girl, Kim Davidoff, and four Nepalis related to that dead Nepali, Gowloon or what's his name. In escaping from Nepal, it appears you also murdered a British zoologist solely to acquire his motorcycle, which was later found at New Delhi Airport. We traced you, with Ruby here's help, to Athens, closed in on you in Crete, but you got away – you're a smart one – and by the time we'd found you in Algeria you'd gone to Marseille. Through French sources we tracked you to the whorehouse on Boulevard d'Athènes, but you made a break for it, taking one of the whores with you. Two of our people closed in on you in the mountains; you shot the girl, a Spanish girl – so now Franco's agents are after you, too – and then you doubled back in the middle of the night and beat a German agent's head to a pulp and cut another's throat. That sound pretty accurate?”