LV
THEY PARKED IN a semicircular clearing just off the main trail and Jamie felt the electricity in the air the moment he stepped from the car beneath the overhanging canopies of ancient lime and oak trees. The tyre tracks of a mountain bike and the distinctive indent of horseshoes showed that not only walkers travelled the route and he guessed that it was used much more than it had been when his grandfather had passed this way. For if he was certain of one thing, it was that Matthew Sinclair had been here.
‘But how do you know?’ Sarah demanded.
‘I don’t know. But I can feel him all around me. He was exhausted in body and mind by the time he reached here. He just wanted it to be over. When he stepped out of the jeep with those three men they were less than two miles from the Swiss frontier and safety.’
‘So what happened?’ Her voice was almost desperate.
‘Let’s find out.’
The air was cool when they started climbing the path, but they were quickly forced to remove their sweaters as the sun’s heat began to force its way beneath the canopy and the vegetation closed in where the trail narrowed. Jamie studied the ground around them for the few clues his grandfather had left in the diary.
Behind them, ten minutes after they left the car, a Mercedes four by four with darkened windows drew slowly, almost silently, into the car park clearing.
‘Make it quick, but make it certain,’ the driver snapped to his passenger.
The second man took a rucksack from the back seat and walked quickly to the little Volkswagen. It took him less than twenty seconds to break into the car using an electronic key. After a quick search revealed nothing of interest he took a tiny magnetized metal circle shaped like a rivet head from the rucksack and placed it beneath the driver’s seat in a position he knew no one but a mechanic or auto cleaner would ever find it.
Once the combined microphone and tracker was placed, he popped the bonnet of the car and opened the engine compartment. This time the package he took from the rucksack was larger, a heavily wrapped rectangular block, one side of which he sprayed with quick-drying cement and attached to the chassis at the driver’s side wheel arch. It was a little more haphazard than he would have liked, because he had only been told the make of car that morning and didn’t have time to make the kind of precise calculations of thickness of metal and blast potential he would normally do, but he consoled himself that he was using so much explosive that very little would survive of the car. Once he was certain it was firmly attached and the receiver was working properly, he nodded, closed the bonnet and locked the car.
‘Set?’ asked the driver.
The man nodded. ‘Just say the word.’
The driver smiled. ‘Patience. We can’t afford any mistakes this time.’
As Jamie and Sarah climbed, the path became steeper and less well defined, just a scuff of brown dirt winding between the trees, crossed by twisted tree roots and with occasional natural stairways of worn grey rock. Sarah stopped with her hands on her hips and breathed in deeply. ‘You can see why three unfit, middle-aged Nazi war criminals might find this difficult. I almost feel sorry for them.’
‘Don’t. They were bastards, and they probably ended up sunning themselves in Santa Barbara with skins like leather and mojitos in their fists while they watched their pneumatically enhanced mistresses frolic in the pool. I hope I’m that misfortunate.’
‘What?’ She stuck her chest out provocatively. ‘You mean I’m not pneumatic enough for you, Saintclair. You ever even think about a busty blonde mistress, mister, and I’ll replace the olives in my martini with your cojones.’
‘In that case,’ he bowed, ‘let me assure you that it never crossed my mind. Let’s go.’
‘What’s your hurry? We’ve got plenty of time.’
‘I’m not so sure. The clock is ticking and we know we’re not the only people who are looking for the Sun Stone. Just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t out there somewhere.’ He studied the trees crowding the edge of the path. ‘At least when Matthew Sinclair came this way he had a gun and he knew how to use it.’
They climbed on, through the sultry heat of midday, only once having a clear sight of the sun when they reached a broad clearing in the woods which had been planted with some kind of grain crop that was just beginning to ripen. They stopped to eat and through a gap in the trees they had a view of the hills to the north and west and the patchwork of cultivated fields in between.
‘Listen,’ Sarah hissed.
Jamie tensed, and wished, not for the first time, that he had some sort of weapon. Even a kitchen knife would be better than nothing. ‘What is it?’