Free The November Man by Bill Granger Page B

swing out east of the city in the tangle of tracks. He entered the concourse and looked around. There were the usual crowds of midday travelers. The trains were swift and frequent so that all classes and ages took the trains as a matter of course. Devereaux tried to see if there was anything different he could find in this crowd around him.There had been two men. Perhaps there were more. He was a patient watcher, falling easily back into the habits of a trade he had sought to quit more than once. The habits couldn’t die—they merely became rusty through disuse.
    Outside the station, the sun was still blindingly bright. The passersby were shedding themselves of heavy morning coats and scarves and soaking up the sun and the warm southern breeze. There was a cheerful feeling on the Avenue de la Gare.
    He crossed the street to the abandoned Saab and opened the door. He saw the keys in the ignition. He reached in the glove compartment and took out a rental agreement between a M. Pelletier and a Swiss rental car company at the airport at Geneva. So they had flown into Geneva, picked up a car with Bern registration, and gone directly to Lausanne. They had arrived yesterday.
    They had known exactly where to find him. He had eluded them. But it had been much too easy.
    He felt the vague chill that he had learned to live with in the years in the old trade. He had the feeling of watching and being watched. He looked around. A policeman approached with a sour look and told him to move the car.
    Devereaux started the engine. Devereaux turned left on the east side of the station, went under the viaduct and down the road that parallels the Metro to Ouchy at the bottom of the hill. It would be better to get out of the tangle of Lausanne, to find an open road and see who might be on it.
    A gray Renault pulled from its parking spot in front of the McDonald’s and followed the Saab down the steep hill toward Ouchy and the lakeshore.
    Devereaux drove quickly enough to see if anyone kept up with him.
    The gray Renault leaped ahead of a slow-moving bus and pushed between a dull limousine and a truck turning into a service drive. There was no one between Devereaux and the Renault.
    They wanted him to flee.
    They wanted him to leave Switzerland. They wanted to isolate him, he thought. There had to be a killing field where he could be hunted in the open. Switzerland was never a good place to trap a spy.
    He turned at Ouchy and followed the line of the highway toward Vevey and Chillon. The highway rose into the hills above these coastal towns, suspended on pilings driven deep into the rocky hillside. All along the highways were disguised pillboxes, arms depots and rocks set in such a way as to cause a rockslide across the roadway at a signal. The Swiss perpetually booby-trap their country in preparation for a war that has not come in five centuries.
    Devereaux pushed the Saab now, screaming through the gears, pushing the tachometer to the red line with each gear, shifting down hard, driving the engine to its limits. He was pushing 150 kilometers and the Renault was keeping pace.
    The midday traffic was thin. Travelers were taking their dinner breaks. The countryside was empty and full of peace. The road was rising into the hills above the lake. Down on the lake, the ferry boats plowed through the waters.
    Devereaux thought there might be two men in the Renault but the light was so brilliant that it made a mirror of the windshield behind him.
    The light blinded both drivers. He thought of what he would do then.
    He had no weapon but the car and his own knowledge of the roads around the lake.
    There was a small road that tumbled down the mountain from the main highway toward Chillon. The road was made for slower transport in a slower age. He tried to remember exactly what he knew of the road. And then he remembered.
    If they wanted him to flee, they would expect him to be running as fast as he could.
    The Saab growled and whined as he pulled off the