sounded like. an impatient master of the house rapping for a servant.
Which is exactly what it was.
“I can manage this one, you take the other two. Let the redcaps handle the
rest.”
Dutifully Canfield instructed the porter, gathered up the two bags, and
followed EUabeth off the train.
Because he had to juggle the two suitcases in the small exit area, he was
several feet behind Elizabeth as they stepped off the metal stairway and
started down the concrete platform to the center of the station. Because of
those two suitcases they were alive one minute later.
At first it was only a speck of dark movement in the comer of his eye. Then
it was the gasps of several travelers behind him. Then the screams. And
then he saw it.
Bearing down from the right was a massive freight doily with a huge steel
slab across the front used to scoop up heavy crates. The metal plate was
about four feet off the ground and had the appearance of a giant, ugly
blade.
Canfield jumped forward as the rushing monster came directly at them. He
threw his right arm around her waist and pushed-pulled her out of the way
of the mammoth steel plate. It crashed into the side of the train less than
a foot from both their bodies.
Many in the crowd were hysterical. No one could be sure whether anyone had
been injured or killed. Porters came running. The shouts and screams echoed
throughout the platform.
Elizabeth, breathless, spoke into Canfield’s ear. “The suitcases! Do you
have the suitcases?”
Canfield found to his amazement that he still held one in his left hand. It
was pressed between Elizabeth’s back and the train. He had dropped the
suitcase in his right hand.
“I’ve got one. I let the other go.”
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“Find itl”
“For Christ’s sakel”
“Find it, you fooll”
Canfield pushed at the crowd gathering in front of them. He scanned his
eyes downward and saw the leather case. It had been ran over by the heavy
front wheels of the dolly, cnished but still intact. He shouldered his way
against a dozen undriffs and reached down. Simul taneously another arm.
with a fat, uncommonly large hand thrust itself toward the crumpled piece
of leather. The arm was clothed in a tweed JackaL A woman!s jacket Canfield
pushed harder and touched the case with his fingers and began pulling it
forward. Instinctively, amid the panorama of trousers and overcoats, be
grabbed the wrist of the fat, hand and looked up.
Bending down, eyes in blind fury, was a Jowled face Canfield could never
forget It belonged in that hideous foyer of red and black four thousand
miles away. It was Hannah. Janet!shousekeeperl
Their eyes met in recognition. The woman’s iron-gray head was covered
tightly by a dark green Tyrolean fedora, which set off the bulges of facial
flesh. Her immense body was crouched, ugly, ominous. With enormous strength
she whipped her band out of Canfield’s grasp, pushing him as she did so, so
that he fell back into the dolly and the bodies surrounding him. She
disappeared rapidly into the crowd toward the station.
Canfield rose, clutching the crushed suitcase under his arm. He looked
after her, but she could not be seen. He stood there for a mornen4 people
pressing around him, bewildered.
He worked his way back to Elizabeth.
“rake me out of here. Quicklyl”
They started down the platform, Elizabeth holding his left arm with more
strength than Canfield thought she possessed. She was actually hurting him.
They left the excited crowd behind them.
“It has begun.” She looked straight ahead as she spoke. .
They reached the interior of the crowded dome. Canfield kept moving his
head in every direction, trying to find an irregular break in the human
pattern, trying to find a pair of eyes, a still shape, a waiting figure. A
fat woman in a Tyrolean hat.
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They reached the south entrance on Eisenbahn Platz and found a fine of
taxis.
Canfield held Elizabeth back from the first cab. She was alarmed. She
wanted to keep moving.
‘They’ll send our luggage.”
He didn’t reply. Instead he propelled her to the left toward the second car
and then, to her mounting concern, signaled the driver of a third vehicle.
He pulled the cab door shut and looked at the crushed, expensive Mark Cross
suitcase. He pictured Hannah’s wrathful, puffed face. If there was ever a
female archangel of darkness, she was it. He gave the driver the name of
their hotel.
“Il ny a plus de bagage, monsieur?”
“No. It will follow,” answered Elizabeth in English.
The old woman had just gone through a horrifying experience, so he decided
not to mention Hannah until they reached the hotel. Let her calm down. And
yet he wondered whether it was him or Elizabeth who needed the calm. His
hands were still shaking. He looked over at Elizabeth. She continued to
stare straight ahead, but she was not seeing anything anyone else would
see.
11.4
Are you all rightr’
She did not answer him for nearly a minute.
“Mr. Canfield, you have a terrible responsibility facing
YOU.,.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She turned and looked at him. Gone was the grandeur, gone the haughty
superiority.
“Don’t ‘let them kill me, Mr. Canfield. Don’t let them kill me now. Make
them wait till Zurich…. After Zurich they can do anything they wish.”
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CHAPTER 42
Elizabeth and Canfield spent three days and nights in their rooms at the
Hotel D’ Accord. Only once had Canfield gone out-and he had spotted two men
following him. They did not try to take him, and it occurred to him that
they considered him so secondary to the prime target, Elizabeth, that they
dared not risk a call out of the Geneva police, reported to be an alarmingly
belligerent force, hostile to those who upset the delicate equilibrium of
their neutral city. The experience taught him that the moment they appeared
together he could expect an attack no less vicious than the one made on them
at the Geneva station. He wished he could send word to Ben Reynolds. But he
couldn’t, and he knew it He had been ordered to stay out of Switzerland. He
had withheld every piece of vital information from his reports. Elizabeth
had seen to that. Group Twenty knew next to nothing about the immediate
situation and the motives of those involved. ff he did send an urgent
request for assistance, he would have to explain, at least partially, and
that explanation would lead to prompt interference by the embassy. Reynolds
wouldn’t wait upon legalities. He would have Canfield seized by force and
held incommunicado.
The results were predictable. With him finished, Elizabeth wouldn’t have a
chance of. reaching Zurich. She’d be killed by Scarlett in Geneva. And the
secondary target would then be Janet back in London. She couldn’t stay at
the Savoy indefinitely. Derek couldn’t continue his security precautions ad
infinitum. She would eventually
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leave, or Derek would become exasperated and careless. She, -too, would be
killed. Finally, there was Chancellor Drew, his wife, and- seven children.
There would be a hundred valid reasons for all to leave the remote Canadian
refuge. They’d be massacred. Ulster Stewart Scarlett would win.
At the thought of Scarlett, Canfield was -able to summon up what anger was
left in him. It was almost enough to match his fear and depression. Almost.
He walked into the sitting room Elizabeth had converted into an office. She
was writing on the center table.
“Do you remember the housekeeper at your son’s house?” he said.
Elizabeth put down her pencil. It was momentary courtesy, not concern. “rve
seen her on the few occasions rve visited, yes.”
“Where did she come from?”
“As I -recall, Ulster brought her back from Europe. She ran a hunting lodge
in . . . southern Germany.” Elizabeth looked up at the field accountant.
“Why do you ask?”
Years later Canfield would reflect that it was because he had been trying
to find the words to tell Elizabeth Scarlatti that Hannah was in Geneva
that caused him to do what he did. To physically move from one place to
another at that particular instant. To cross between Elizabeth and the
window. He would carry the remembrance of it as long as he lived.
There was a shattering of glass and a sharp, terrible stinging pain in his
left shoulder. Actually the pain seemed to come first. The jolt was so
powerful that it spun Canfield around, throwing him across the table,
scattering papers, and crashing the lamp to the floor A second and third
shot followed, splintering the thick wood around his body and Canfield, in
panic, lurched to one side, toppling Elizabeth off her chair onto the floof
The pain in his shoulder was overpowering, and a huge splotch of blood
spread across his shirt.
It was allover in five seconds.