7 Steps to Midnight (33 page)

Using the same procedure—five seconds on the sheet, one to glance at Modi—he memorized the second sheet. This time, he
could see—with pleasure he could not deny, despite the tension of the moment—that one sheet led inexorably to the next, the concepts blending, the first equations like parents to the latter ones.

Done
, he thought. He closed his eyes again and brought up the sheet for viewing.
Good.
He flipped the image to the first sheet again, nodding. There it was. Not everything, of course. He still had a way to go. But like a traveler on a new road, he knew where he was going now and that only steps and time separated him from his destination.
7 steps to midnight?
his mind inquired. He scowled away the question.

Now.
He looked at Modi. If the East Indian wasn’t napping, he certainly was giving a precise imitation of it.

He turned very slowly, inching around until his back was half turned away from Modi.

Then, refolding the sheets, he began to tear them in half, tearing the halves in half, the quarters in half. He tore and tore until he had to separate the pieces because they were too thick to tear all at once.

When the two sheets had been reduced to confetti, he began to drizzle pieces of them out the window of the car. If Modi had sat on the aisle to prevent him from trying to bolt, it had worked in Chris’s favor with regard to the papers. He felt a weight slowly rising from his back as more and more pieces fluttered away. He knew that the couple sitting behind them was watching him, probably with disapproval. He didn’t care. In a few minutes, the pieces were all gone and he had eliminated at least one major source of tension.

Once more, he closed his eyes and reviewed a mental playback of the two pages. Perfect. He smiled. Now let anyone try to get what he’d done so far.

Wait
, he thought suddenly. What if someone administered scopolamine to him? Wouldn’t he just blurt out all of it? He made a despairing face. Had he done all this for nothing?

No, he thought irritably. It was still better than—

He jolted, opening his eyes as the car made a rattling sound.
He reacted in surprise, seeing a herd of gray cows thinly spread out on a green, flowered slope, their heads lowered as they grazed. He grunted softly at the sight.

“A scene of great tranquility,” Modi said.

Chris turned quickly to look at him.
Had
the East Indian pretended to be asleep all this time? What would the point of that have been if, in doing so, he’d allowed Chris to get rid of those sheets? He had to assume that Modi really had been napping. “Yes,” he replied.

Modi looked at his pocket watch. “Well, we are almost halfway there.”

Chris nodded, feeling another sense of deep relief that he’d gotten rid of those sheets without Modi knowing.

“Still nervous?” Modi asked.

“I’m getting used to it,” Chris replied.

He looked ahead. There were patches of snow visible now, the green slopes becoming rocky and stark in appearance. He looked up as far as possible. The slope was so steep that he could see only blue sky ahead. He swallowed, pressed back against the seat by the extreme angle of the car. What was waiting for him up there? he wondered.

He glanced at Modi. The East Indian had his eyes shut again.

He stared at the man. Modi was not bad looking; his features were cleanly cut, his skin an interesting, bronzelike shade. Chris looked at the white turban on Modi’s head, then back at his face. He remained confused by the East Indian.

Even asleep, Modi’s expression was benevolent.

***

As the car clanked up the final slope toward the top, Chris wondered if this was the place they’d shot the James Bond film
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
. Fitting, if it were, he thought.

He looked at Modi. The East Indian’s eyes were open again; he smiled at Chris. “See how easy that was?” he said.

“Yes.” Chris hesitated, then said, “Mr. Modi, I don’t know if you’re planning to stay with me up here, but I’ll have to ask you
not to. If anyone is with me, the person I’m supposed to meet won’t approach me.” He had no idea if that was true, but it sounded logical.

“I see.” Modi nodded. “Well. I have no desire to hinder you in any way. I will, of course, remain some distance from you, maintaining the attitude of a stranger. If you don’t mind, however, I do feel it advisable that I keep an eye on you, however distant. I am quite sincere in my wish to see that you remain safe.”

Chris nodded. “Thank you.” There was no point in arguing with the man, he thought. With distance between them, he’d have a better chance of eluding Modi completely.

The car leveled at the top, entering a covered area beside a circular, three-story structure that Chris took to be the Hotel Pilatus-Kulm. The car jarred to a halt and he followed Modi outside; he’d grabbed the bag before the East Indian could offer to carry it. For all he knew, the man would offer to watch it while Chris searched for the person he was there to meet. He wasn’t going to give Modi an opportunity to do that.

He shivered as they stepped outside into the cold, thin air. “
Wow
,” he muttered.

“Yes, the air is very chill and thin at this altitude,” Modi said. “I will be sitting on that railed balcony in front of the Bellevue Hotel,” he continued without looking at Chris. He strode away as if they were strangers. Chris felt another sensation of relief as the East Indian walked off.
Now
, he thought. He looked around.

Was Alexsandra really here?

He looked at the hotel Modi was walking toward. It was more traditional in design, rectangular, three stories high. Was he supposed to go there to meet whoever he was intended to meet?

He stopped for a few moments to take out the square of film and hold it in his left hand, along with the bag; the cigarette lighter he held in his right hand again. He mustn’t lose caution now. If they hadn’t really brought Alexsandra here, he’d make damn sure they didn’t get the film. They might kill him for doing it, but then they might have every intention of killing him anyway.

He’d try the Hotel Pilatus-Kulm first, he decided. Entering the lobby, he crossed to the desk and asked if there was a message for him. There wasn’t. He sighed heavily. Is anything ever easy? he thought. Now what? Was anyone watching him as he stood there?

He looked around the lobby, braced for someone to approach him. When a portly man in a gray suit quickly got up from a chair and walked toward him, he tensed, prepared to drop the bag and burn the film if necessary.

When the portly man walked past him, cursing in German under his breath, Chris relaxed in spite of his disappointment.

He went and looked inside the bar, then the restaurant, standing in the entrance of each long enough for anyone to catch sight of him if they were looking. Both bar and restaurant were crowded but no one did more than glance at him in disinterest and he was not approached.

Which leaves me where?
he thought. Should he go up to each hotel corridor and search? That made no sense. Why were they being so evasive about this? Did they want the God-damn film or not? He’d come here as requested. Why hadn’t there been someone at the railway platform, waiting to accost him?

“No such luck,” he muttered.

His idea that checking the hotel corridors would be a waste of time proved to be exactly that—a lot of trudging with the heavy bag, resulting in nothing. He took the elevator down from the third floor and stepped into the lobby again. Should he sit there? he wondered, give whoever was supposed to meet him time to—

He brushed aside the thought. If someone had really been on the lookout for him they would certainly have found him by now.

He left the hotel and circled around it to the left. As he did, he saw a red cable-car glide into view. He shuddered at the sight.
You are definitely not going down in one of those
, he told himself.

To the right of the cable-car structure, he saw a railing and gingerly moved there. There was no one around as he approached the railing. “
God
,” he murmured. The view of Lake Lucerne was staggering, its deep blue vastness curving around the craggy headland the boat had passed on its way to Alpnachstad. He lifted
his gaze. White-clad mountains as far as the eye could see. What had he read in that pamphlet?
An unrivalled panorama of the alpine region.
“You can say that again,” he murmured.

He was just turning away from the railing when he saw the body.

At first, he thought it was someone resting. He could not conceive that it could be anything else.

Then he saw the body wasn’t just lying there, it was sprawled. And, as he drew closer, feeling as though some magnetic force was pulling him in, he made a faint sound of revulsion, seeing a puddle of blood around the body. He froze in his tracks, staring at it.

It was the tall, dark-haired man who’d told him last night to come up here.

He twisted around with a gasp, gaping at the man approaching him.

The man was Middle Eastern and Chris recognized him as the one who’d chased him in Montmartre.

He shuddered as the man took something from his pocket. Suddenly, a long, thin knife blade shot out from its handle, glinting in the sunlight.
No
, Chris thought. It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be. To have it end like
this
?

He backed off, nerveless fingers dropping the frame of microfilm. The man paid no attention to it. He isn’t here for the film, Chris thought in unbelieving horror.
He’s here to kill me.

Where are all the people?!
a voice cried out in his mind. How could something like this happen when there were so many people around? He drew up the bag in front of him as though to block the knife thrust. He knew it wouldn’t help, but did it anyway.
I’m going to die
, he thought incredulously. Why was he unable to believe it when it was so obvious now, so close?

Well, not without a fight, he thought, muscles tensing. Goddamn it, not without a fight. He dropped the cigarette lighter and grabbed onto the bag handle with both hands, preparing to swing it at the man when he attacked.

Abruptly, someone ran around the circular building, headed
for the Middle Easterner. Chris glanced aside; he saw that it was Modi. Incredibly, he looked unarmed.

A flurry of activity took place in front of him: the Middle Easterner whirled to face Modi, lunging at him with the knife blade; Modi agilely sidestepped, then, with a movement so rapid that Chris could barely follow it, chopped at the Middle Easterner’s neck with the edge of his right hand, fingers stiff and rigid; the attacking man made a hollow sound of shock and, stumbling forward, collapsed onto the deck.

Modi looked at Chris, his expression hard. “Go! Leave!” he snapped, pointing. “Take that ramp! The cable cars are just below!”

Without a word, Chris broke into a run in that direction; immediately, the thinness of the air made him labor. Glancing back, he saw the Middle Easterner trying to get up; then Modi chopped the man behind the neck, and he dropped, face first, onto the concrete.

Chris wasn’t conscious of racing down the ramp, or his sprinting entrance into the cable-car waiting room. Panting, he rushed to the ticket booth and quickly bought a ticket, leaving his change behind. A car was just about to leave and he rushed across the platform, heaving in the bag, then diving in himself, wheezing with breath.

He cried out, recoiling as someone leaped into the car with him. He fell back across a seat, then, gasping, looked at her as though she truly were a ghost.

“Alexsandra,” he said, his voice barely audible.

Then she was in his arms and they were clinging tightly to each other as the cable car swung out across the deepest void Chris had ever seen in his life. Hastily, he pressed his face into her hair; one visual shock at a time, he thought. He had her back, that was all that mattered now.

“Thank God you’re safe,” she said.

He tightened his grip on her, deeply breathing in the perfumed smell of her hair. “I thought they’d lied to me.”

“No,” she said; she sounded breathless too. “We were waiting
to meet you when a Middle Eastern man came up behind us with a gun and took us to the other side of the hotel. Harris jumped him and told me to go after you.”

“Harris?” he asked. “The dark-haired man?”

She nodded. “Did you see him?” she asked.

“Yes.” He grimaced. “He’s dead.”

“
Dead.
” She looked at him in shock.

“The Middle Easterner must have stabbed him, he went after me with a knife. He’s the one who chased me in Paris.”

“My God,” she said, looking at him with dread. “How did you get away from him? I saw you come running into the cable-car station and was just able to catch up with you.”

“I didn’t get away from him, I was helped,” he said.

“Helped?” She looked startled.

Quickly, he told her about Modi. “You know who he is?” he asked.

“No, I don’t,” she said quietly. “I don’t like it either.”

“But he saved my life.” Chris looked at her in disbelief.

“
Why
, Chris?” she asked him. “Why is he involved in this?”

He stared at her in confusion. “He told me to go, to leave. Told me where the cable cars were.”

She tensed and looked back at the car far behind them. “You’ve been followed, then,” she said.

“
Alexsandra
,” he said, protesting.

“Do you think he’d just let you go, after everything he’s done?” she said, turning back to him. “He followed you here all the way from London; how, I have no idea. You think he doesn’t
want
something from you?”

He had no answer; he knew she was right. Whoever Modi worked for wanted access to his work. How could he have forgotten that?

“We’ve got to get you out of Lucerne,” she said.

He groaned softly. “To where?” he asked.

He wasn’t sure he’d heard her answer correctly. “
Where?
”

“Venice,” she repeated.

Chris opened his eyes to find himself looking toward a large open window about six feet away. He felt a damp pillowcase against his cheek and he made a face. Sitting up, he dropped his legs over the edge of the bed.