Free XPD by Len Deighton

the bright wallpaper and the old-fashioned cast-iron tables with something of a personal pride. Charles Stein had financed Madame Mauring’s little business venture after tasting the cakes she supplied to a large restaurant on the Rue du Rhône. That was eighteen years ago, and last year he had allowed Madame Mauring to buy him out.
    ‘Next year, or the year after, I am giving the team room to my daughter. Her husband works at a good restaurant in Zurich. They will both come back here to live.’
    ‘That will be nice for you, Madame Mauring. But I can’t imagine this place without you. What about all your regular customers?’
    ‘I will keep my apartment upstairs,’ she said. ‘And your room, too – that will be untouched.’
    ‘Thank you, Madame Mauring. This is where we began, you know.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. She had heard many times the story of how the Americans had started their merchant bank in these rooms above a jewellery shop in the narrow street which wound uphill to the cathedral. Prosperous trading in the immediate post-war period had enabled them to move the bank to more appropriate premises facing the lake on the Quai des Bergues. Every nook and cranny of this place brought back memories to Stein. He had been back and forth across the Atlantic frequently in those days, learning quickly how deals were made in Switzerland, giving the colonel courage enough to fight the competition and calming down irate clients when things went wrong. Madame Mauring had always insisted that one room upstairs was his but Stein had almost forgotten the last time he had used it.
    ‘Take the rest of the almond cake with you,’ she said. ‘I have a box all ready.’ Stein did not resist the idea. He found it very reassuring to have some food with him, even in such a well-organized house as that of Colonel Pitman.
    ‘She’s a good woman,’ he told the driver as he settled back into the leather seat of the Rolls and brushed from his lips the last crumbs.
    ‘The colonel never goes there now,’ said the driver. ‘He says that the cakes and coffee are not good for his digestion. The “nut house” he calls it, did you know that?’
    Stein grunted. The truth was that Colonel Pitman was not interested in food. One look at him would tell you that: thin, finickety and abstemious. Most of the West Point officers seemed to be the same. The colonel was always boasting of how he could still fit into his wartime uniform. It was not an achievement by which Stein set large store.
    ‘There will be a traffic jam downtown. It’s rush hour and with the bottlenecks at the bridges there is just no way to avoid it.’
    The car was halted by traffic when the driver spoke again. ‘I wouldn’t want to step out of line, Mr Stein …’ he began hesitantly.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘I thought you should know that the colonel takes a rest every afternoon. That’s why he didn’t come out to the airport. You may not see him until you go down for drinks.’
    ‘How long has this been?’
    ‘Some three weeks,’ said the driver. ‘The doctor brought a heart specialist from Lausanne and gave him a check-up last month. He told him he’s got to slow down.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘That didn’t go over well with the colonel, you can probably imagine what he said, but he took the advice just the same.’
    ‘He’s quite a man, the colonel,’ said Stein.
    ‘You’ve known him a long time, Mr Stein. It’s just wonderful the way all you men from the same battalion kept up your friendships and put together enough money to finance a business together. It was some idea, Mr Stein! A little private bank, here in Geneva. How did you think of it?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Stein. ‘One of the boys suggested it in fun, and then we considered it seriously.’
    Stein remembered that night when they realized how much gold they had stolen. There were all sort of crackpot ideas about what to do with it. Burying it in the ground was the most popular