Judicious questioning of the reception clerk established that a woman had just left after confirming Count Tomura and his son would be arriving that evening. She had not volunteered her name.
It was Nadia, of course. It had to be. She was Lemmer’s intermediary for communications with Count Tomura. The pieces were moving on the board. And she was one of them.
Max waited until six o’clock before heading for MacGregor’s hotel. Ideally, he would have waited until later, but he needed to be back at the Grand before the Tomuras arrived. Besides, it was already too late for MacGregor to act immediately on any agreement by Max to cooperate.
As it transpired, it was too late for another reason. MacGregor was out. Max left a note for him proposing he call again at nine the following morning. He couched the suggestion meekly enough to delude MacGregor into supposing he had the better of Max, who would actually be elsewhere at nine the following morning – elsewhere and, with luck, more profitably engaged.
Returning to the Grand, Max caught Gaspard’s eye as he crossed the foyer. A few minutes after he had reached his room, there was a knock at the door.
‘I must ’ave this back by tomorrow morning,’ Gaspard said, slipping the pass-key into Max’s hand.
‘You will,’ said Max.
‘You worry me,
monsieur
.’
‘Just as well I don’t worry myself, then, isn’t it?’
From the balconette of his room, Max had a good if oblique view of the hotel’s main entrance. He kept it under discreet surveillance as the estimated time of the Tomuras’ arrival drew near.
They arrived when expected, transported from the station in the hotel’s limousine. Porters scurried out to receive them. Count Tomura’s party comprised himself, his son and a hulking, wasp-waistcoated factotum. The Count had his left arm in a sling, causing him to wear his overcoat with one sleeve empty. That and his baleful, imperious expression gave him the appearance of a wounded general. Noburo Tomura looked a softer, over-indulged product of the line – and just a little insecure in his show of arrogance towards the porters. Max suspected recent events might have shaken him rather more than they had his father. He had never seen either of them before. Yet with all he knew about them he felt he had their measure.
Max kept up his vigil by the window long after the Tomuras had gone in. He was waiting to see if Nadia would return to confer with them. That would be his chance to learn enough to give him some slender advantage. Whether the chance would amount to anything in reality he could not predict. Action – and reaction – would govern the outcome. When the time came.
THE ONLY FLYING
Max had ever disliked was in fog.
Aside from the danger of misreading the altimeter, it was the opacity of the world the plane moved through that unnerved him. Enemy aircraft were less of a threat than an unanticipated hillock or an avenue of trees. He could see nothing. He could counter nothing. Hard-learnt skills of evasive manoeuvring did not matter a damn. His opponent was invisibility itself.
To Max, stiff-limbed in his seat by the window of his room, Nadia’s eventual arrival felt very much like the sudden lifting of a fog bank. Suddenly, the challenge was clear before him.
A car drew up and Nadia stepped out onto the pavement. Max could see nothing of the driver beyond a coated elbow. It hardly mattered which one of Lemmer’s minions he was. He drove on as Nadia entered the hotel.
Max sprang into action. He checked the pass-key in his pocket and the gun in his shoulder-holster, shrugged on his jacket and headed for the door.
He assumed Nadia had come to brief the Tomuras on Lemmer’s behalf. He further assumed they would communicate in English. The only other possibility was French and he could hope to learn something even from that. But he reckoned English was likelier.
They would probably meet in Count Tomura’s suite. Noburo would walk through from his adjoining room. That would place them some distance from the door of Noburo’s room, which Max proposed to enter by. To what extent he could eavesdrop on their conversation remained to be seen. As did what he would gain from it. But it was an opportunity he was determined to press to the limit.
He descended the stairs to the second floor cautiously, in case Nadia came up by the staircase, although he expected her to use the lift. He heard the whirring of its mechanism as he came to the landing and hung back, shielded by a wall. It seemed he had read her right.
The lift doors rattled open. The attendant said something. The doors closed. There were soft footsteps on carpet, like the padding of a panther; a knock; a faint creak as another door opened. No words were spoken.
Max risked a glance along the wide corridor. The door to the corner suite at the far end was closing. Nadia had entered.
Max waited a few moments, then started along the corridor, taking the pass-key out of his pocket as he went.
The whereabouts of the factotum were unknown to him, of course. He hoped the fellow had been sent up to his attic room for the duration of Nadia’s visit. Count Tomura would probably not want a servant to witness their meeting.
He reached the door of Noburo’s room. There was no sound from within. But the hotel’s doors were solid, its walls thick. Max would learn little by straining his ears out in the corridor. He tentatively inserted the key in the lock and turned it. There was resistance. He grasped the handle and pulled the door towards him. The key turned, with the faintest of clicks. He depressed the handle. The door opened.
He stepped inside and eased the door shut behind him. Nobody called out. There was no reaction to his entry.
He was in a shadowy vestibule, with a half-open door before him. He crept through it into the main part of the room. It was larger and more lavishly decorated than his own. And it was, as he had hoped, empty.
He heard voices then, carrying from rooms beyond, through the open door he could see diagonally opposite him. He could not distinguish any words, but it sounded as if English was being spoken.
He crossed the room as lightly as he could, wary of creaking floorboards. None betrayed him. Two vast gilt-framed mirrors on facing walls constructed a tunnel out of reflected and re-reflected images of Max that he did his best to ignore as he proceeded.
The voices grew steadily louder and more distinct as he neared the door. Beyond it he could see the window of a further room. A shadow moved somewhere within. A man coughed. The shadow moved again.
‘You must excuse me.’ The voice was low and gravelly, the accent well-bred English tinged with Japanese. ‘I do not take instructions readily from a woman.’
There was a drift of cigar smoke in the air. Through the crack of the door, Max saw, beyond the communicating doorway, Count Tomura standing by the window, gazing out, smoking with his right hand, while his left was cradled in the sling.
‘They are not my instructions, but his.’ It was Nadia’s voice. She was as calm and self-possessed as ever. The haughtiness she could never quite suppress was bound to annoy Count Tomura. But perhaps she did not care. ‘And he would want you to regard them as . . . recommendations.’
Tomura laughed mirthlessly. ‘He should remember what I am doing for him.’
‘I am sure he has not forgotten.’
‘And you, Nadia Mikhailovna? What have you not forgotten?’
‘Oh, many things.’
‘Do they include the tasks you performed for the Dragonfly in Keijo?’
‘Many of those tasks I would prefer to forget.’
Another laugh. ‘No doubt you would.’
‘But of course some matters . . . stick in my memory.’
Another voice cut in, younger and sharper, clearly that of Noburo Tomura. ‘Are you threatening us?’
‘We are all threatened by our past,’ his father said, turning round from the window. ‘You will learn that in time,
musuko
.’
‘Nothing that has happened since you arrived in Paris will cause difficulty for us in Tokyo, will it, my lord?’ asked Nadia, her tone unaffected by Noburo’s intervention.
‘No,’ Count Tomura replied emphatically. ‘Saionji has been luckier than he knows. But it is only a postponement of the reckoning. I hold Hara and most of his ministers in the palm of my hand. And what we bring will enable me to close my fingers around them.’ Max saw the fingers of Tomura’s left hand curl inwards as he spoke. ‘So, how many will you be?’
‘Three,’ said Nadia.
‘Who is the third?’
‘His secretary.’
‘Ah, so there is someone closer to him than you?’
‘I am as close to him as he needs me to be.’
‘There is an assurance my father is due,’ Noburo said suddenly. ‘Why do you not give it?’
‘Your father knows it will be done,’ came Nadia’s unflustered reply.
‘Indeed,’ said Count Tomura. ‘But I will require proof that it has been done.’
‘You will—’
Nadia broke off. Someone had entered the suite. Max heard a door close. Words were spoken in Japanese between the newcomer and Noburo.
To Max’s horror, a figure appeared in his restricted view, moving past Count Tomura, bowing slightly as he did so. It was the burly factotum, carrying what looked like a suit or overcoat in a cover, complete with hanger.
He walked through the communicating doorway into Noburo’s room. Max shrank back, concealing himself in the angle between the door and the bed. The factotum padded across to another door, which he opened. Max heard clothes being parted on a wardrobe rail. He wondered if he should make a run for it, but decided against it. There was still a good chance he could slip out without anyone knowing he had ever been there.
‘It is a pity you had to leave Paris earlier than expected,’ said Nadia, almost conversationally, stalling, Max assumed, until the factotum had left.
‘I am a soldier,’ said Count Tomura. ‘I adapt to changing circumstances. As does my son.’
‘How wise of you.’
‘It is also wise of me to employ trustworthy servants. You may speak freely in Ishibashi’s presence.’
‘I believe I have said all that needs to be said.’
The factotum – Ishibashi – started padding back across the room. Then he stopped. Something had caught his eye. Max saw at once what it was: the coverlet of the bed was ruckled at one corner. Max must have brushed against it on his way to where he was now hiding.
‘There must be nothing that can connect me – or my son – to this,’ said Tomura. ‘I will not provide the necessary introductions unless I am convinced it has been dealt with in a manner that cannot touch us. Is that clear?’
‘It is,’ said Nadia. ‘And it will be so.’
Ishibashi moved into Max’s sight. His broad, flat-featured face, in which the eyes were barely visible between folds of flesh, wore a faint frown of dissatisfaction. He bent over the end of the bed and smoothed the coverlet.
‘It will be the first and most important test of our alliance,’ said Tomura. ‘I will not tolerate failure.’
‘Nor will he,’ said Nadia. ‘He never does.’
Ishibashi stood upright. In that instant, he saw Max. And Max knew the game was up. He drew his gun, pushed the door away from him and strode forward, expecting Ishibashi to give ground. Instead, the factotum launched himself bodily at Max, with a bellow of aggression.
They fell onto the bed, Ishibashi grappling for a hold that would enable him to pin Max down. But Max dodged free and clubbed him across the head with the gun. The blow stunned him. With a shove from Max, he slid off the bed onto the floor.
Noburo Tomura ran into the room, followed by his father. Noburo had a gun in his hand. Max lunged across the bed, leapt to his feet on the other side and turned to face them. The Count was armed as well, he saw. Nadia had hurried in behind them.
Max trained his gun on Noburo, but spoke for the Count’s benefit. ‘I’m not going to take my eyes off your son until I leave this room, Count. One hostile move and I’ll kill him.’
‘You are outnumbered, Lieutenant Maxted,’ stated Count Tomura calmly, levelling his gun at him.
‘Noburo will be the first to die. That’s certain. For the rest, I’ll take my chances.’
The conviction in Max’s voice seemed to affect Noburo. Max saw the barrel of the young man’s gun trembling.
‘Let him go,’ said Nadia. ‘This should not be settled here.’
‘Very well.’ Count Tomura’s tone was scornful. ‘You may go, Lieutenant Maxted.’
‘Whatever you’re planning, I’ll stop you.’
‘Will you? Will you really?’
‘Where’s Lemmer?’
‘We will tell you nothing, Max,’ said Nadia.
‘Won’t you?’
‘You know we will not.’
And he did. The knowledge angered him. The gun gave him the power to take a life. But it could not help him prise a secret from these people.
No. Not from
these
people. But perhaps from others. An idea had come to him. He said no more, but keeping his gun trained on Noburo he backed slowly out of the room.
He shut the vestibule door behind him, flung open the outer door, holstered his gun and began jogging towards the stairs.
OUT ON THE
street, there was no sign of the car Nadia had arrived in. But Max guessed it was circling and would soon be back. He mingled with a group of people waiting for a taxi, wondering what Nadia and the Tomuras were doing. The situation was riddled with uncertainty. He needed hard information and he needed it now.
A minute or so passed with agonizing slowness. Then the car nosed round the corner from Boulevard Garibaldi, slowing as it approached the hotel’s entrance. Max recognized the driver as Meadows.
The car slowed still further as Meadows checked to see if Nadia was waiting to be collected. That was Max’s cue. He raced round in front of the car while Meadows’ attention was fixed on the hotel entrance, yanked open the rear door and jumped in behind him.
He pressed the barrel of the gun against the back of Meadows’ neck. ‘Drive straight ahead,’ he stated plainly. ‘Or I’ll do to you what I did to Grattan and Hughes.’
Meadows did not argue. They started away.
‘Turn left at the next intersection.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Just do as I say.’ Max applied a little more pressure to Meadows’ neck. ‘And speak only when I ask you a question.’