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hurt,’ he protested. ‘I do not
understand why you want to walk all that way when you could be flown to the
hospital in just a few minutes!’
    ‘Call it pride if you want to. I got up
this mountain, and I want to get back down it under my own steam.’
    ‘You are a very obstinate woman, Madame
Webley,’ he smiled, ‘but I like your spirit. If you are going to stay here, it
is on two conditions. One, that you let me look after you, and two, that if you
are not fit to walk by tomorrow, you let me signal to the helicopter.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she said, with relief. ‘It’s a
deal.’
    ‘Now, If I’m going to get you well enough
to walk off this glacier, you are going to have to eat. I will make you some
hot soup.’
    .
    Down on the yacht off Monaco, Ross had just
surfaced following a very late night. After recovering from the scare David Wiseman
had thrown him, he’d spent the next few hours drinking and playing cards. When
he’d finally gone to bed around dawn, he’d drifted into a restless sleep. The
image of Alice tumbling away from him into the darkness kept being intermingled
with visions of Wiseman asking, ‘Where is she buried… where is she buried?’
    By ten, he’d given up trying to sleep. He
showered, shaved and made his way onto deck, looking, he hoped, very much
better than he felt in his affluent yachtsman outfit; white deck shoes, cream Chinos,
yellow polo shirt, navy blazer, and white peaked cap. He found Bonatti and a
few of the resident guests sitting in deckchairs on the afterdeck under an
awning, some eating their breakfast, others drinking theirs. Bonatti spotted
him and called out, ‘Good morning, Ross! Come and sit here next to me, my
friend.’
    Ross exchanged pleasantries with some of
the other guests, then took his place next to Bonatti and ordered coffee from a
steward. He couldn’t face solid food. When the coffee arrived, he turned to his
host and asked, ‘Ricky, do you remember that chap, Wiseman, you introduced me
to last night?’
    ‘The little New Yorker with the glasses?’
    ‘That’s the fellow,’ Ross said. ‘ What do
you know about him?’
    ‘Not much, he came with Henry White, the US
Ambassador. He told me he was related to your wife, asked to be introduced to
you. Is there something else I should know?’
    Ross suspected some of his friend’s
dealings, especially in the United States, wouldn’t stand up to the briefest
scrutiny from the FBI. He’d decided during the early hours to use that
knowledge to his advantage. ‘Nothing important,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Oh, he
did mention that he works for the FBI… as a financial investigator.’
    Bonatti was visibly shocked, and asked
urgently, ‘Did he ask you anything about me?‘
    ‘No. Well, not directly,’ Ross replied.
‘But he did say he was investigating someone down here for money laundering and
tax evasion, and I got the distinct impression he was rather more interested in
you than he pretended to be.’
    ‘Is he really related to Alice?’ Bonatti
asked.
    ‘No, that’s another thing. He said he was
my first wife’s nephew, but I certainly don’t remember him. You don’t think he
could have just made that up to get on board, do you?’
    Bonatti’s face darkened, the laughing
bonhomie of the genial host replaced by a murderous hardness. ‘I’ll get him
checked out,’ he said. ‘If it is me he’s after, he’ll wish he’d never been
born.’
    ‘Let me know what you find out, would you?
I’d be interested to know what he’s up to.’
    ‘Yes, I’ll do that, Ross,’ Bonatti said,
‘and thanks for tipping me off.’
    Ross smiled with satisfaction as Bonatti
excused himself and hurried away, saying he had a phone call to make.
    If he knew Ricky and his associates,
Wiseman was as good as dead.
    .
    By two that afternoon, the subject of their
deliberations had just crossed to the north side of Lake Lucerne on a car
ferry, following a five-hour drive via Milan from Monaco. After