“No. I am afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of all the men. They are mean to us. Mean to Mummy and Daddy.”
“Are you behaving yourself?”
“Yes, Grandpa Donald.”
“That’s a good girl.” Fitzroy looked out the window for a moment. Then he said, “Claire, my dear, I’d like to play a little game. Would you like that?”
“A game?”
“Yes. One of the men here... watching over us. He came with me in the helicopter this morning. I’ve heard his matescall him by the name Leary. An Irishman. Do you know which one I am talking about?”
“With the red hair?”
“That’s my girl.”
“Yes, Grandpa. He sits in a chair down at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Does he now? Well, Claire, I noticed Mr. Leary has a telephone clipped onto the pocket of his big blue jacket. I don’t suppose he wears his jacket in the house. It’s probably in a closet, on a floor, maybe lying on a sofa downstairs. I was thinking that maybe we can have a bit of fun with Mr. Red Hair, and you can sneak around like a little kitty cat and slip the phone out of his jacket. Do you think you can do that?”
“I saw his jacket on the coatrack. I saw the phone. When he goes into the kitchen for tea, maybe I can take it.”
“That’s a good girl. Please try to do that for Grandpa Donald. After you get it, I want you to hide it in your pocket or in your sweater, and then tell the guards you want to come see me.”
“What if they won’t let me?”
“You could tell them you are Kate. Can you pretend to be Kate? Tell them your sister got to come see me, so it’s only fair.”
“I don’t look like Kate, Grandpa.”
“Trust me, my dear, to these men you look exactly alike. Just change your clothes, tell them you’re Kate, and you’d fancy a chat with your dear old grandpa.”
“All right. I will try to steal a phone for you and sneak it back.”
“It’s not stealing. It’s just a game, love.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s not a game. I’m not a little kid. I know what is going on.”
“Yes, of course you do. I thought you might. Please don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
Fitzroy’s pause was short, his countenance unfazed. Sir Donald had been lying to his agents for nearly a half century. He found it no big trick to lie to his kin. “He’s in London, love. You’ll be home soon, as well. Run along now, and go carefully.”
TWENTY-THREE
Court parked the van at the main train station in Geneva, the Gare de Cornavin, located on the seedier north side of the city. Parking at train stations was simple tradecraft. When the vehicle was found, which Court had little doubt would take no time at all, his followers would have to entertain the possibility that he’d just jumped on the first set of wheels rolling out of town, causing them time and manpower to investigate where he might have gone.
It wasn’t much, but parking at the train station at least avoided the obvious “tell” of pulling his stolen vehicle up to the front door of his true objective.
The weather was cold but bright, and the last of the late autumn leaves blew across the wide streets of the city. From the station he walked south, past the afternoon street whores and the sex shops of the red-light district, over the bridge crossing the canal into huge Lake Geneva, passing middle-aged bankers and diplomats heading towards all those street whores and sex shops behind him. Five minutes south of the bridge the wide and modern streets gave way to uneven cobblestone passageways and the chic shopslining the roads morphed suddenly into medieval stone walls as a steep hill rose away from the modernity and towards the ancient, picturesque buildings of the Old Town.
Gentry consulted a tourist map hanging on the wall of a hotel lobby, hid his scraped and swollen left wrist from the Japanese couple next to him, and then returned to the chilly street. Another minute or two of climbing an alley brought him to the square in front of the Cathédrale St-Pierre. There Saturday afternoon tourists stood, heads and eyes and cameras all pointed to the thousand-year-old cathedral’s impressive facade. Court walked behind the two dozen or so sightseers, then melted down a side street that ran along the south side of the church. On his left was a white wall six feet high with a large iron gate in the center. As he walked past the gate, he glanced inside. There was a white house with a small front garden, a large chestnut tree on either side of a narrow walkway to the front door. The trees strained for light in the shadow of the Cathédrale St-Pierre that loomed high in front of them. Court walked on down a cobblestone passage that ran off the little one-lane street, followed the winding footpath through a narrow tunnel that led him down and around to the back of the white house.
Here the wall was two stories high. Modern structures stood alongside it: an apartment building with a nail salon on one side, a nursery school on the other. A few tourists wandered towards a narrow shopping street that ran farther down the hill behind.
