To Catch a King. Jack Higgins

      1

      Just after midnight it started to rain, and the Portuguese policeman brought a cape from his sentry box and placed it around her shoulders without a word.

      It was quite cold now and she walked a few paces along the road to keep warm, pausing to look back across the mouth of the Tagus to where the lights of Lisbon gleamed in the distance.

      A long way; not as far as Berlin or Paris or Madrid, but she was here now, finally, outside the pink stucco villa at Estoril. The final end of things, more tired than she had ever been in her life before and, suddenly, she wanted it to be over.

      She walked back to the policeman at the gate. ‘Please,’ she said in English, ‘how much longer? I’ve been here almost an hour.’ Which was foolish because he didn’t understand her.

      There was the sound of a car coming up the hill, headlights flashed across the mimosa bushes, and a black Mercedes braked to a halt a few yards away.

      The man who got out of the rear was large and powerfully built. He was bare-headed and wore glasses and his hands were pushed into the pockets of a dark mackintosh.

      He said something briefly in Portuguese to the policeman, then turned to the girl. His English was quite excellent.

      ‘Miss Winter, isn’t it? Miss Hannah Winter?’

      ‘Yes, that’s right.’

      ‘Could I see your passport?’

      She got it out quickly, her hands fumbling in the cold so that the cape slipped from her shoulders. He replaced it for her politely, then took the passport.

      ‘So – an American citizen.’

      ‘Please,’ she said, a hand on his sleeve. ‘I must see the Duke. It’s a matter of the gravest urgency.’

      He looked down at her calmly for a moment, then nodded to the policeman who started to open the gate. The car rolled forward. He held the door for her, and she climbed inside. He followed.

      With a sudden burst of power, the Mercedes jumped forward, the driver swinging on the wheel, taking them round in a circle and back down the hill towards Lisbon.

      She had been thrown into the corner and now he pulled her upright roughly and switched on the light. He was still clutching her passport.

      ‘Hannah Winter – American citizen? I think not.’ He tore it apart and flung it into the corner. ‘Now this, I think, would be a much more accurate description.’

      The passport he pushed into her hands was German. She opened it in fascinated horror. The picture that stared out at her was her own.

      ‘Fräulein Hannah Winter,’ he said. ‘Born in Berlin on November the ninth, nineteen-eighteen. Do you deny this?’

      She closed the passport and pushed it back at him, fighting to control her panic. ‘My name is Hannah Winter, but I am an American citizen. The American embassy will confirm this.’

      ‘The Reich does not acknowledge the right of its citizens to change nationalities to suit their inclinations. You were born a German. I confidently predict you will die one.’

      The streets were deserted and they drove very fast so that already they were into the city and moving down towards the river.

      He said, ‘An interesting city, Lisbon. To get into any foreign embassy it’s necessary to pass through a Portuguese police checkpoint. So, if you’d tried to get into either the British or American embassies, we would still have got you.’

      She said, ‘I don’t understand. When I asked to be admitted the man on the gate said he’d have to check with headquarters.’

      ‘It’s simple. The Portuguese police have accepted an extradition warrant to be served on Hannah Winter on a charge of murder – murder three times over.