with the customs authorities-in fact, there was a visiting supervisor today. The man could take it up with him.
The pink-faced businessman turned toward the uniformed supervisor and felt the stony eyes of indifference and disdain. He sighed, his protests subsiding into a general air of peevishness. Moments later, the orange barrier angled down and the engine growled as the luxury car went on its way, wounded dignity almost sketched across its grille.
Yet the man's noisy protests had provided Ambler with cover.
Though he could not change the odds to favor him, he could lessen the odds against him. He crept along a path toward the road, until he spied a burly man with an expensive wristwatch, its gold band gleaming as the early-morning sun emerged from a cloud. The Texan in the flesh. The watch was inappropriate garb for such a posting; it suggesting an over-privileged agent with a loosely monitored expense account, someone whose field days were long behind him and who had been conscripted into a last-minute operation because of sheer proximity. Stepping from behind a bank of snow, Ambler sprang toward him, encircled his neck with his right arm, and hooked his hands together on the man's left shoulder. Then he squeezed the man's neck just below the jaw between his bicep and forearm, clamping down the man's carotid arteries and inducing a swift loss of consciousness. The man-doubtless posted as an agent of record-coughed once and went limp. Swiftly, Ambler patted the man down, looking for his communicator.
He found it in the lower pocket of the man's black leather coat-an expensive garment, with its fur lining, but hardly suited to an extended outdoor vigil in an Alpine winter. If the garment was a bad match with the assignment, it was a good match with the gold-banded Audemars Piguet on his wrist. The communicator, on the other hand, had clearly been assigned to him when he was tasked this morning; it was a small model, in a hard black plastic shell, with a limited range but a powerful signal. Ambler placed the tiny ear-buds into his own ears, took a deep breath, and called to mind the way the agent of record had spoken. Then he pressed speak, and, in a plausible Texan drawl, he said, "This is Beta Lambda Epsilon, reporting in-"
A thickly accented voice-the harsh French of the Savoyard province-cut him off. "We told you to cease communications. You jeopardize operational security. We are not dealing with an amateur here! Or if we are, the only amateur is you!'
The voice was not that of the Marseilles assassin. It had to have been another man-a man who seemed to be running the operation.
"Shut the fuck up and listen"
Ambler drawled angrily. The micro-com equipment provided a crisp, tinny rendering of voices, putting a premium on audibility but erasing the differences of timbre between one voice and another. "I seen the bastard. On the other side of the road. Saw him dart across the parking lot like a goddamn red fox. The pisser's taunting us."
There was silence on the other end. Then, cautiously, urgently, the voice returned: "Precisely where is he at this moment?"
What should he say now? Ambler had not thought this through and momentarily drew a blank. "He crawled inside the Jeep," he blurted. "Yanked up the canvas and crawled inside."
"And he's still there?"
"I'd have seen him if he wasn't."
"OK." There was a pause. "Good work."
If Ambler's cheeks weren't numbed with cold, he would have smiled. The members of the killing team were in his trade; they'd think of anything he would think of. Ambler could only outmaneuver them by not thinking-by proceeding on blind instinct, moment-to-moment improvisation.
Nothing ever goes according to plan. Revise and improvise.
The killer from Marseilles strode from the booth toward the lower parking lot, where the canvas-topped personnel carrier was stationed. A powerful-looking, silenced firearm was in his hand. Another howling gust of wind swept down the ravines and roadway, slamming against Ambler's back.
What now? The assassin would be in a state of hyperawareness, of hair-trigger consciousness. Ambler had to take advantage of it, had to trigger an overreaction. He looked around for a rock, for something he could throw hard, something that would arc up and land on the other side of the road. Yet an icy glaze had cemented everything loose to the ground: pebbles, gravel, rocks. Ambler retrieved the Texan's Magnum pistol and removed a heavy lead bullet from the firing chamber. Now he whipped it high into the air.