‘I don’t mean to be ungracious. I’m very grateful to you for smuggling me out. I must have weighed a ton!’
‘The fur weighs more than you do.’ Henning’s mouth twitched with amusement.
‘And so expensive. All I meant is that is seems a shame to waste it. I wonder what poor animal it used to belong to . . .’
‘I’m guessing orang-utan. It was the only thing big enough, and I’m sure it will come in useful before this is all over.’
Stevie turned and looked out the back window. The road behind them was empty. ‘So far so good, Henning. No police, no suspicious Russians. I’ll have to use my British passport at the clinic.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry we had to leave your Swiss one behind.’
Stevie shrugged. ‘I’ll get it back. A foreign passport is less suspicious anyway. The Swiss rarely use their own sanatoriums. They’re too healthy to need rest cures. They’ve always been patronised mainly by foreigners, especially the English.’
Stevie flipped down the passenger mirror and examined her face. She felt ghastly. Dark rings had collected under her eyes overnight and her pallor was frightening.
‘What do you think?’ She turned to Henning. ‘A Scottish lass with tubercular tendencies perhaps? I’m certainly pale enough.’
‘You don’t think being poisoned by a taipan is enough?’ Henning’s blue eyes were glued to the icy road.
‘I think it might be too exotic. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.’
‘Could Dragoman recognise us? They may have been watching the Kozkovs, seen us with Vadim.’
Stevie nodded slowly. ‘It’s possible, but it’s a risk we have to take.’
‘Speaking of risk, I still think you’re mad to do this and I wish I could stop you.’ Henning spoke quietly, his face impassive. ‘The only reason I’m helping you is that I guess—I
know
—that you would go ahead and do it without me. And I got you into this mess in the first place. I might even be useful.’ He turned and glanced at Stevie. ‘But you’re still mad.’
Stevie watched a lone
langlaufer
swoosh his way across the frozen lake, half hidden by the snowstorm. She thought of the Russian with the rifle.
‘I’m glad you’re coming with me, Henning.’ She said it softly but she meant it.
Henning looked over at her again and gave her a small smile. ‘Me too, Stevie. Me too.’
Stevie looked away. ‘You don’t like my cover story . . .’
‘I’m just not convinced about the tuberculosis.’
‘But it is so old-world glamorous,’ Stevie protested. ‘The consumptive coughing up blood by the shores of the Swiss lake.’
‘Perhaps if you had recently been to China or Latin America it might make more sense. In wealthy countries, TB remains a disease of the poorest. Perhaps if you had a malnourished housemaid . . . Haven’t you got anything that we can get fixed?’
Stevie thought for a minute. ‘My middle toe is longer than my big toe . . .’
Henning raised an eyebrow. ‘Anything else?’
‘I’m allergic to peppermint, and maraschino cherries.’
‘Right.’
Henning watched Stevie, who was busy drawing her initials with the tip of her finger on the misted window. In the half-dark, the fur around her shoulders edging her jaw, her profile could have belonged to a 1940s movie star.
‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘What do your celebrity clients complain of?’
Stevie frowned. ‘Exhaustion usually, which is code for drug and alcohol abuse.’
‘Ah yes, the old “tired and emotional”. That might do nicely. But won’t Meinetzhagen have put the details of your poisoning in the reference?’
‘For that, I am counting on the borderline obsessive discretion of the Swiss.’
Stevie pulled out the doctor’s reference. She read the three lines quickly.
‘The good doctor has gone with a simple “rest cure recommended, your sincerely”.’
‘So,’ Henning said. ‘Exhaustion it is.’
Stevie nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll be a film starlet on a “cleanse” before the release of her new movie.’
Henning thought for a minute. ‘But won’t the sanatorium staff wonder why they’ve never heard of you? Are you going to assume the identity of some Hollywood gal-about-town?’
‘That would be difficult for two reasons, Henning: one, we don’t have time to rustle up any false documents and the Swiss always need to see a passport; and two, I don’t look remotely like anyone famous.’
‘So . . .’ Henning looked at her questioningly.
‘So, we tell them that I’m big in television and that my new film is about to come out and when it does I am going to be huge.’
‘Huge?’
‘HUGE.’
Henning grinned and touched his GPS screen. A map of Switzerland spun into view.
‘We go down all the way to Chur, then along the valley past Bad Ragaz, then Sargans. Hoffenschaffen is in the mountains above it, at the end of a valley.’
‘Meaning no-through traffic.’ Stevie pointed to the spot on the map. ‘Anyone coming in or out of the valley will be noticed. A good spot to choose if you’re security conscious.’
Henning nodded. ‘It’s also right on the border with Liechtenstein, a stone’s throw from Austria. Easy to just slip out of the country if things turn.’ He gave Stevie a look. ‘We’ve got about two hours before we reach Hoffenschaffen. You should try to rest a little. Remember, you are poisoned and a genuine convalescent.’
‘I’m fine. Anyway, it will just make me more authentic. Paul said they do vitals when a patient checks in. I can’t be too healthy.’
Henning shook his head. ‘You’re not. What else did Paul tell you about the clinic?’
‘It’s very exclusive—not many guests. I think they can take a maximum of twenty-five patients/guests at a time. The staff-to-inmate ratio is very high.’
‘If they are that cautious,’ Henning mused, ‘I suppose I’ll need a cover, too.’
Stevie thought about this, scanning her memory for scenarios they might use. She found one.
‘Last year, there was an up-and-coming young music star. She checked into a clinic citing “exhaustion and dehydration” after a horse tranquilliser binge brought on by the pressures of a stalker—who turned out to be her estranged father, by the way. Anyway, the details aren’t important but she had a special “Health and Image” supervisor. He was a sort of manager, drug dealer, fashion stylist and yes-man all at once—’
‘That sounds like a role tailor-made to fit me, Stevie,’ Henning said with considerable scepticism. ‘Especially since I know nothing about show business, have never even worn a pair of jeans, and smoke and drink, possibly excessively.’
‘But that’s the point,’ Stevie gestured emphatically. ‘No one in Hollywood is who they say they are.’
‘But this isn’t Hollywood. This is a very particular Swiss clinic. The staff won’t believe it.’
‘Of course they will,’ Stevie insisted. ‘In my dealings with divas, I have realised anything is possible and the most outrageous demands are rarely questioned.’
With that, she rested her head against the window and fell into a deep sleep.
As they rounded the last
rocky precipice that hid this valley from the one before, the sanatorium came into view.
It had been built towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the railways had opened Switzerland to tourists, most notably the English, coming in search of healthy air. The building was rather imposing, eight stories high, built in grey stone and peppered with windows, their wooden shutters painted forest green. Four small towers rose in each corner, their tops crenellated. A Swiss flag writhed around on a flag pole.
Hoffenschaffen perched on a granite rise, its back to a jagged granite cliff. A thick pine forest circled the rise like a felt skirt. The cliff face was bearded with milky blue icicles several stories high, once-quick rivulets and waterfalls that had frozen to smooth, still fingers of ice.
At the bottom of the precipice, where the sun’s rays would never reach, there flowed an indigo river only a couple of metres wide. It was a forbidding place, even from a distance.
‘Not the sort of place one immediately associates with good health and sparkling vigour, is it?’ Henning lifted a wry eyebrow.
Stevie wanted to say something light in reply but the shadows, the stone, the ice, seemed to have taken away her sunshine.
The sanatorium disappeared as they rounded another bend, then reappeared closer as they circled up in wide loops towards the granite rise. This time it was possible to see several cars—all dark, gleaming, expensive—parked in a gravel lot at the front; a helicopter waited patiently on a helipad, its rotors moving slowly to stop them icing up.
Henning pulled the Jaguar into the lot and stopped in front of the entrance. Stevie was now sitting in the back seat, wearing the fur and a large pair of sunglasses.
A thin man with gingery hair and a neat blue suit scuttled efficiently towards them and introduced himself as Gunnar Gobb, manager.
The place at first glance had little to suggest a modern health clinic. The proportions were vast, a legacy of a more generous time, with heavy wood panels and perfectly polished herringbone floors. The lighting was dim, with wall sconces and floor lamps with soft fabric shades illuminating the vast rooms. A wildly floral carpet in raspberry, turquoise and gold ran the length of the hall.
The reception opened into a vast circular room with triple-height windows that looked out over the woods to one side and the precipice to the other. On the other side of the river, right on the edge of the cliff, Stevie could now see the ruins of a small castle.
Turquoise velvet curtains ran from the moulded plaster ceiling to the floor. Groups of three or four heavily upholstered armchairs squatted around hexagonal coffee tables, and a small glittering bar nestled under a raphis palm on one side. Somewhere, a pianist was playing Chopin and, above it all, a huge panelled skylight let in the day.
Henning did all the talking. Stevie had assured him up-and-coming starlets never spoke directly to hotel staff and the arrangement suited her rather well as she was feeling particularly light-headed. This she blamed on nerves rather than toxic after-effects of Australian snake venom.
Gunnar Gobb took Doctor Meinetzhagen’s reference and filed it.
‘A nurse will be sent to Miss Duveen’s room,’ he informed them crisply. ‘A cure programme will then be drawn up for her, including rigorous diet and therapeutic treatments. Medications will also be pre-approved for administration. A psychologist will see her in the morning.’
‘I don’t think a psychologist—’
Grunnar Gob neatly hemmed Henning’s protest, ‘We at Hoffen-schaffen believe in, shall we say, the holistic approach. A psychologist, I think you will find, will be most enlightening.’
Grunnar Gobb’s wide smile repelled all argument.
The rooms in the sanatorium
were palatial, furnished with armchairs in pale velvets, a thick navy carpet, heavy curtains and a large bed covered in a crisp white coverlet. On the door, a small brass plate with the name of the room:
Piz Buin
.
There were several windows with a spectacular view of the trees in the mist, the ruined castle, but no balcony, which really was quite fortunate because straight below the window was a sheer drop to the bottom of the gorge. The indigo river ran invisible between the rocky walls, the sound echoing upwards so you could hear it even with the windows closed.
If you fell, Stevie thought, you would fall forever.
Stevie’s medical check took place
in the west wing of the sanatorium: heated stone floors laid in seamless blocks and lights with ice-blue bulbs. On one side, the rock wall of the mountain was laid bare, the mica flecks in the granite glittering, fools gold.
It was warm and very quiet. A uniformed nurse pushed Stevie, now safely ensconced in a wheelchair, past the sauna and steam rooms. Henning followed close behind. Huge steel buckets of ice water teetered on the end of a rope in a shower area. A mound of snow, also lit with blue light, gathered in a stone basin to one side. On the other side, a wall of water jets waited.
They were shown the swimming pool. Here too the lights were dim and the effect was odd—so different to the bright fluorescence of ordinary indoor pools. Tiled in dark blue ceramic, and with the steam rising off it in tails, it looked more like the entrance to some ancient underworld than a centre for hydrotherapy.
The nurse whisked them on. Stevie’s sunglasses made it difficult to see properly in the half-light and her fur coat overflowed from the wheelchair, dragging along behind like a royal train.
The nurse had not turned a hair at Stevie’s get-up. They obviously got all kinds at Hoffenschaffen. Stevie had thought it best to be prepared for anything, even if she wasn’t quite sure what that anything would be.
They moved on through the dim corridors, past Turkish baths, hydrotherapy pools, shower rooms, massage rooms, meditation caves, treatment suites, and exercise studios filled with pilates balls, wooden frames and mysterious machines. Stevie thought she spotted a gyroniser—Sandy Belle’s awful spinning machine—and was relieved that exercise was forbidden on her programme.
The nurse stopped at a door marked
Prüffenmitte—
testing centre. ‘Please,’ she gestured. ‘This way.’
The room was not overly large, the walls tiled in gleaming white. Various electronic monitoring machines mounted on wheels stood neatly along one wall. A huge treadmill stood in the centre of the room, hoses and suction cups hung off it like some horrid mechanical squid.
The next hour passed—was it really only an hour?—in a jigsaw of tests for Stevie. The nurse’s cold, chalky hands took her pulse, listened to her heart, undressed Stevie completely. She stuck her with needles and drew blood through butterfly tubes, efficiently, without speaking.
Out came a pair of callipers and Stevie’s skin was pinched all over, apparently an effort to measure subcutaneous fat percentages; Stevie was deemed undernourished by an uncompromising wall chart, her reflexes were tested, her pupils, ears and nostrils examined.
The whole process felt surreal. Stevie felt rather helpless in the face of all the technology, the efficiency, the charts, the cream-coloured boxes that housed the gas chromatograph and a mass spectrometer for testing blood. She was glad of Henning’s solid presence just outside the door.