November 7th, Les Avants, Switzerland, No 43

Simple instructions were plainly typed on the unassuming white paper:
Drive alone to the village of Les Avants uphill of Montreux. Stop at the Café Le Relais. Order a tea. Say to the waiter "Un thé chaud, pas de crème. Non, amenez de la crème aussi". After five minutes, go to the back of the cafè and call form the public phone the number 928'55'23. You will receive further instruction then.

Irina was surprised by the curt, spare instruction, and by the “password phrase” that, she thought, was really stupid: "A hot tea, no cream. No, sorry, bring some cream too". Whoever had dreamt up that password, she thought, was an idiot because the phrase could have come out fortuitously from anyone of the cafè clients.

Irina pulled out her maps of the region. It took her a little while to locate the small village, actually an hamlet, not too far from Lausanne. She carefully folded the map, exposing the portion that would trace her route. Tossing the map and a phone into her stylish oversized leather bag, she grabbed a fur-lined coat and her sunglasses. As she entered the Lobby, Giovanni ran fetch the Porsche. He shot out of the underground like a bullet, screeched to a halt in front of the Hotel doors, leapt out and held the car's door for Irina. and kept the door of the Porsche open to let Irina in.
Wearing a rose bouclé Escada jacket and miniskirt, Irina gracefully folded her long legs into the car. Like all good Italians, Giovanni strategically placed himself to take advantage of viewing much as he could of Irina's beautiful legs as she lowered herself into the sports car.
And indeed, he got a good peek, as the flash of white thigh above the silky black stockings nearly caused him to choke. In an instant he raised his eyes, only to meet Irina's steady gaze. By then he knew that she knew, and when she smiled at him, keeping her eyes in his just a little bit longer than normal, he thought he would have a cardiac arrest.

Instantly she slammed the Porsche's door, threw the car into gear and pounded the accelerator, skilfully sending the car out of the property.

Irina enjoyed playing these little games with men around her -a little flirt here, a little there- just to confirm her power and control on them. Sex, however, and a few other games she liked to complement the sexual act, she reserved for the men she loved or at least admired. There were very few of them around.

She drove the Porsche along the lake shore to Lutry, one of the numerous villages named after the Roman patrician who had a villa built there a couple thousand years ago. that have a name derived from the name of the Roman patrician who had a villa built there a couple thousand years ago. Lutry, for example, stemmed from the latin name Lucius, Lucii, Cully, the next village to the east from Cullius, Cullii, and Prilly from Prilius, Prilii.

After Lutry she swung onto the Corniche road which runs all along the lake high up in the vineyards. The stretch of highway east of Lausanne is not only an incredible engineering achievement, but also allows to observe some extraordinary panoramic and beautiful views. The French Alps form the backdrop with their scintillating tops, carved with glistening glaciers and dark rock faces.
Luckily for Irina the cloud cover raised just enough for her to get at least a hint of what the full scenery must be on a clear day. From the highway it was possible to see how centuries of human work have manicured the slopes to take advantage of each single square meter of earth to grow grapes.
At the Montreux exit she started a steep ascent to Les Avants. She enjoyed driving the serpentine road with almost no traffic. Dense deciduous forests displayed their multicoloured autumn blanket of yellow, orange purple and brown leaves dramatically contrasted with the dark green, almost black tone of the coniferous stands.
This rich chromatic range was pleasing to the eye, but Irina was not ready to trade in the climate for the colors.

Another ten minutes and she was right in front of the Café Le Relais. Les Avants, like many other villages uphill of Montreux had a magnificent hotel-sanatorium, legacy from the era when rich British people would come to the "Geneva Lake Riviera" to quietly die of tuberculosis and other pulmonary diseases. These mammoth structures, with their elaborate jagged roof lines spiked with chimneys, were now empty and abandoned.

Visible for miles around, they resembled the dead dinosaurs that they are. The surrounding villages seemed dwarfed by comparison.

Quickly parking the Porsche, she walked back to the café and entered the tiny dark establishment.
The few dozen men inside immediately stopped talking, silently examining her from head to toe. It was like a scene in a western movie. They had never seen such an elegant and insolent beauty in "their café".

A waitress, ugly as a stormy night, approached Irina with a twisted grin.
"Bonjour Madame, qu'est-ce-que vous prenez? Good Morning, Madam, what would you like?"
Irina, trying her best shot at French recited the stilted "password".
It had the effect of a bomb on the lady who took off as a turbojet in the direction of the kitchen.

Irina waited patiently for five minutes, then proceeded towards the telephone. Lifting the receiver, she dialled and immediately, almost before the first ring, she heard a man voice.

"Take the road to the Col de Jaman, and drive uphill, until you hit a switch back at the end of a narrow valley. Stop there two minutes, beep the horn three times, then start again. Keep going straight when you find an intersection that shows a way to Caux. Four kilometres after that intersection you will be out of the forest. Cross a cattle grid. After another fifty meters there is a road maintenance garage. Stop there and wait. Be sure that you are alone. We will be checking". The caller rang off.

Irina generously pay for the her tea she never received, raced to the Porsche and took off in the direction indicated by the caller. Little wonder, the road was absolutely empty -no traffic- and happily so, because its width barely accommodated her car.

By the time she got at the appointed spot, she found herself driving on an open prairie, where it was possible to ascertain from a long distance that she was alone. She also understood the trick of the forced stop and sounding the horn. Given the narrowness of the road and the fact that there was no way out on the other side of the Col de Jaman, even if she had been escorted, it would have been a piece of cake to divert or waylay any secret escort.

She stopped her car and waited. If she guessed correctly, the man who gave her the instructions, or a partner of his, was observing her from a few kilometres away, perhaps from the slopes in front of her, already in the shadow. There, under a thick cover of vegetation, he would be practically invisible. She, on the other hand, was a sitting duck.

Indeed, a few minutes later a ramshackle old Opel station-wagon, the classic car of Swiss farmers, crept towards her at very low speed, on a cattle drive. The driver was a non-descript man, probably sixty-years-old, smoking a cigar, and wearing a slouched hat -the perfect stereotype of the Swiss peasant, delivering the milk produced by his cows.

The man didn't even stop, but gestured to her to follow him. Irina started her engine and followed.
After driving backwards down to the intersection marking Caux, they turned driving in tandem along a stretch of about twenty kilometres that completely confused Irina's sense of direction.
Then, suddenly, the man's car slowed to a crawl. He lowered his window and gestured to Irina to take a narrow dirt road that diverged from the main road and ascended very quickly along an oblique slope.