Lang was not on duty and had no intention of going to BND headquarters just to talk with Pearson, a man she suspected of having gone over to the dark side.
‘So where would be convenient for you, Frau Lang?’
‘Where I am now, my apartment.’
‘KollwitzStraße, 88, second floor.’
She hadn’t told him where she lived, but the fact that he knew came as no surprise.
‘You’ve done your homework.’
‘I always do.’
‘I’m sure.’
If Pearson noted a caustic tone he didn’t react to it and arrived within the hour with a high-end laptop in a bag and the offer of lunch, on him, at Pasta Divina on the street below. Lang wasn’t sure that pasta would do her weight any good but offers like this were rare.
‘Perhaps. We’ll see how it goes.’
They sat together at her table, more potted plants in evidence on the counters. Pearson opened his laptop.
‘I’ve tried to interest Klein in this, but no joy, I’m afraid.’
Lang smiled. ‘Klein and joy are strangers to each other, Mr Pearson. The man is increasingly disappearing up his own behind.’
Pearson was tempted to suggest a reason for that, namely, that Klein could find no one to disappear up it for him, but in these politically correct times kept this thought to himself. He showed Lang a spreadsheet in which, he believed, significant connections were becoming evident. Some of these had come out at their previous meeting: Catherine Cooper, Magnus Hjemdahl and Cindy Horváth, for example. Lang had provided some of this information herself. Apart from routine friendship, what connected these people appeared to be a concern for the environment and the range of possible dangers facing the human race. But since that meeting, he’d uncovered two more connections which, in his view, were highly significant.
‘You’ve heard of Eric Wanless, recently in the news?’
‘The name escapes me.’
‘He’s just been flown from London to Switzerland under a European Arrest Warrant in connection with the murder of Xavier Grosjean.’
‘And this fits in how?’
‘Metadata indicates he’s been in contact with all of these people, Cindy Horváth in particular. On the occasion of his arrest on January the fifteenth, the one person he called was Horváth.’
‘But without knowing what was said…’
‘Nothing was said; she didn’t take the call. But I also have metadata from the time of Grosjean’s murder which shows they contacted each other the next day when he was in the Geneva area, and also that Hjemdahl was there shortly after.’
‘Or his phone was.’
Pearson sighed. ‘Well, yes, you have me on a technicality, but neither of us believe it went there by itself.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Media speculation at the time suggested Grosjean’s murder was to do with his turbulent personal life, but I believe the reason was his foundation.’
‘The go forth and multiply thing.’
‘Exactly. When it comes to endangering the planet, overpopulation is considered by many to be one of the most serious issues we face. Logic would suggest that the best way to reduce our carbon footprint is to reduce the number of feet.’
Lang considered this for a moment and sat back in her chair. This unprepossessing man with his balding blond hair might have a point.
‘I can truthfully say I have never contributed to this problem.’
If her age was anything to go by, she never would. ‘And you’ve never regretted it?’
‘Not for a moment.’ She gestured towards her kettle. ‘Coffee?’
Pearson declined. He was on a roll and eager to move on to Cindy Horváth, who had sent an email to Cooper the day before on the subject of viruses.
‘Go on.’
She’d come across a reference to viruses having stages, but her text suggested that even where stages one to four had been suppressed, stage five could still take effect. Horváth had done some research online and didn’t see how this could be.
‘It all depends how the various stages are classified. Scientists seldom agree on such things, but let’s suppose the first is the dormant phase, the second the propagation phase, the third the triggering phase, and so on. The phases are sequential. Horváth can’t understand how a later phase could take effect without the previous phases having occurred first.’
Lang frowned. ‘Neither can I; but I’m no biologist.’
‘Yes, but Ursula,’ in his excitement using her given name, ‘neither is Catherine Cooper. That’s my point. Cooper isn’t a biologist but she knows someone who is.’
‘Gudrun Grönefeld!’
‘You see where I’m going with this? Cooper and Grönefeld have met twice now, once in Berlin and again in Prague. That’s a lot of travel for casual conversations, wouldn’t you say?’
‘So how do you explain it?’
‘Well, when you get right down to it, in their various ways, these people are so motivated to save the planet they’ll contemplate direct action.’
Lang looked doubtful. ‘Apart from bumping off Grosjean, there has been no sign of that.’
‘Not as yet, no. But do you ever have hunches?’
‘Everyone does.’
‘Well, I have one now. And by the way, something else I should mention: Cooper’s cat-sitter, Trudi Kirsch, is a sometime animal rights activist with a criminal conviction to her name.’
Lang knew this already and to her it sounded like special pleading.
‘Oh, come on, Adalbert. That was five years ago. Kirsch is a well-intentioned person, totally harmless. Are you holding something back?’
The answer was yes, but only because the final piece of the jigsaw was still unclear even to him.
‘Okay, but this is strictly between us for now. There’s a woman in Los Angeles. She’s probably Japanese, she’s certainly been in Hokkaido recently. Metadata shows a strong connection between this woman and every single one of the others. Going back a bit, she seems to have acted as a communication clearing house of some sort, though recently it’s mostly been person-to-person, end-to-end encryption.’
Lang agreed this was interesting, but something didn’t square with what he’d said.
‘In that case, I have to wonder why Horváth sent an email to Cooper which anyone could read. Call me simple, but surely if she’d something to hide, she’d have hidden it.’
Pearson was puzzled by that too. He looked round the kitchen and out into the living room. Was Lang’s husband still on the scene? He’d have liked nothing more than a quiet rummage through her wardrobe and bathroom cabinet. Instead, he changed the subject.
‘Nice place you have here; a bit botanic for my taste, but nice. You have a cat yourself?’
‘Used to. She passed on two years ago. Kidney failure. I didn’t replace her when she died. She loved to pounce on my wool.’
23
When Pearson left, his targets hit, lunching together had vanished from the menu. Lang assumed that he’d worked in the past for a US agency, probably the NSA. Her sources indicated that he hailed from the Land of the Free. True, he was a fluent German speaker, but his stage-German accent didn’t place him in a specific area. And then there was his wonderfully Teutonic given name, Adalbert. It all pointed to a man who’d been brought up in a household where one or both parents was a native speaker but which was not situated in Germany or Austria.
Pearson wasn’t ugly, yet he was strangely unprepossessing, just a little short and with a residue of blond hair which reminded her of debris left around the rim of a bath after the dirty water had drained out. But behind this reaction was the feeling that for him everyone was fair game, no further cause being required, a suspicion reinforced by his attempt to investigate her husband.
Who, in his right mind, would want to
investigate a dentist? Was Klaus suspected of supplying lidocaine to vagrants on street corners? Obviously not. Her husband was so upright he ironed his socks. Yes, they lived in separate apartments. So what? As Lang defined it, they lived together apart. It worked, and it wasn’t the business of anyone else. All Pearson had to do was ask, yet he preferred to find out by other means. Why? So that he would know the score and she would be unaware of it. For him, knowledge was power, but only up to a point: real power lay in concealing the extent of it.
Since there was nothing she could do about any of this, she took it as read, but what to make of the case he was putting forward? Was this ragbag of disparate individuals potentially dangerous or not? He’d raised his concerns with Klein, but as Pearson had noticed himself, Klein didn’t want to know about this or anything else. Not anymore. For reasons still unclear, he’d lost interest.
In recent years, Lang had done her best thinking while knitting, a habit discouraged by Klein, who had objected to the noise of her needles and also made uncalled-for remarks about lentils and open-toed sandals. Perhaps he mistook her for an ageing hippie. But here, in her own home, surrounded by potted flowers and herbs, relaxing in the fragrance of rosemary, she could safely indulge her habit. On her needles at the moment was a long rainbow scarf which she hoped to inflict on her husband, a man never knowingly seen in anything other than dark blue, charcoal grey or black. Even in bed. As he’d observed himself, he wouldn’t have a problem dressing for a funeral.
After adding six more rows, she laid her work in progress on the kitchen table, poured herself a water and, with a mild plop like a frog in a pond, added to it a thin slice of lemon. Pearson had said that Klein wouldn’t listen to him any longer but suggested he might listen to her. Since he hadn’t in the past, this didn’t seem likely, but there was no harm in trying. Yank his chain, he’d said, he’ll thank you for it in the end. Since he never thanked her for anything, this was not going to happen, but disillusioned with Klein as she was, she decided to take Pearson’s advice and notify him of their growing concern. Then, if everything went pear-shaped, he couldn’t follow his natural instinct and pin the blame on her.
Under the eye-catching title, Potential Disaster, her message detailed Cindy Horváth’s interest in the operation of viruses, in this case, a virus which killed all known species of grass. Had anyone considered how catastrophic this would be? Given her connection with Catherine Cooper, and Cooper’s connection with Gudrun Grönefeld, her interest in this subject could be significant. Then, in an elaborate flight of fancy, the literal Klein would never see for what it was, she referred to the book Horváth was currently working on. Klein might like to know that the author was writing under a pseudonym. In fact, this was a pronounced habit of a man who published his work under seven different names at least, surely suspicious in itself. The name on the cover may have been John Christopher, but his real name was Youd. This should be followed up. She pressed the send arrow with no expectation of a response, but no one could claim she hadn’t tried to engage her superior’s attention.
The ping of a notification distracted Klein as he watched a training video on notation, open files on his office desk giving the false impression that he was hard at work. The sound was like the buzz of a gnat dive-bombing his ears; all he wanted to do was swat it away. And the easiest way to do that was to go along with the suggestion. To Lang’s surprise, his reply was rapid and to the point. By all means check this out, Frau Lang. To my ear the name “Youd” has a Middle East ring to it. That being the case, there was always the possibility of terrorist involvement, which had to be taken seriously these days. Being asleep on the job was no longer an option.
24
Klein knew that the process of decision-making featured in books ranging from self-help offerings for the indecisive to academic studies of the action/reflection antithesis. Some people couldn’t make them at all, but choosing to do nothing was also a decision, so they made them by default. Others made decisions at the drop of a hat but changed them just as quickly. Klein was aware that these were different but equally effective ways of being indecisive. Then there were those who thought things out, planning their forward moves up to variation 16b and beyond, as if life could be lived by a flesh and blood version of Modern Chess Openings, an approach which seldom ended well. Lastly, there were some who considered such mental activity a waste of time and effort, people who made major life choices as if they were choosing between a tea and a coffee, a cupcake or a blueberry muffin. No one could tell the future, so why bother trying? That was what Klein thought, and that was how Eric Wanless lived without thinking about it.
Impulsive by nature, he was incapable of planning ahead. But now that his actions had caught up with him, he had to consider how best to approach his interrogation by these nice officers of the Federal Intelligence Service. He knew he was in Bern, but they’d brought him from the airport at night in a windowless van, so the city was just a name to him. The handcuffs hadn’t helped much either. For the first time since he’d taken the life of a fellow human being, he felt like a criminal.
Never short of misplaced confidence, he declined the services of a lawyer, the latest in a series of snap decisions he would never live to regret: the officers had him so cold no lawyer, however sharp, could have warmed him up. Realising what they were dealing with, his questioners were unfailingly polite, so much so that Eric began to suspect they were mocking him or, as he put it to himself, taking the piss.
Fingerprints and DNA alike confirmed that he was the killer of Xavier Grosjean; the only decisions facing him were what to admit concerning his motive and whether he’d acted alone or in concert with others. The subject of motive was despatched almost as quickly as the late Monsieur Grosjean.
‘Well, he’s disgusting, isn’t he, shagging anything that moves, filling the world with his offspring and egging others on to do the same.’
‘Through his foundation.’
‘Exactly, got it in one.’
So they had, though it wasn’t difficult.
‘You have referred to his children as the spawn of evil.’
‘I have?’
‘To the guards on your Swissair flight.’
‘Ah, right.’
As he faced his interrogators, Wanless had the strange sensation that they weren’t really there at all. They came across as holograms, altogether lacking the reality of the officers who’d questioned him in London. The fluorescent lighting added to this sensation, as did the airless feeling of the room which, to a sensitive nose, appeared to amplify the odour of stale sweat from numerous interviews gone by. But beneath it all was the fact that the officers were foreign; he saw the signals but couldn’t read them well, which didn’t stop them asking questions.
‘Do you consider that children who do not ask to come into this world are to blame for their presence here?’
‘Of course not, but you have to admit they’re part of the problem.’
‘Overpopulation.’
‘You guys are really quick on the uptake.’
As he said it, Wanless had the strange impression that he was hearing an echo of himself which, even as he spoke, was growing ever fainter. His words were balloons. As they rose into the night sky, they gradually lost their helium to the air and when all of it had escaped there was no meaning left, though some might say there hadn’t been much to start with.
‘So, Herr Wanless, you used a sharpened file.’
‘We sell files where I work.’
‘Good, but the autopsy indicates that the file was flat, not triangular.’
For Wanless, this was taking Swiss precision too far: their trains probably ran on time.
‘Let’s be reasonable here, Officer, we don’t stock Toblerone files.’
‘We’re prepared to accept that, aren’t we, Wolfgang?’
‘Indeed we are.’
The officers believed th
at, unlikely as it seemed, Wanless had based his attack on historical precedent.
‘So you should also know that you stabbed your victim on the wrong promenade.’
Wanless was astonished. ‘What do you mean?’
Wolfgang looked at him inquiringly. ‘You’ve read a book on the subject?’
Wanless, who had yet to realise what the subject was, took this suggestion as an insult: he’d never read a book in his life.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Then you have seen a documentary, perhaps?’
‘About?’
The officers exchanged glances before they answered: how witless was this man?
‘The death of Empress Elisabeth.’
Wanless looked blank so they tried again, in unison.
‘Sisi!’
‘Ah, right, yes: History Channel. Two parts. Caught one, missed the other.’
He’d seen it by mistake following Hitler’s Henchmen, episode seven.
‘Perhaps if you’d watched all of it, you’d have discovered that Sisi was murdered not on the Treille Promenade but on the promenade by Lake Geneva as she approached the paddle ship Genève.’
‘Actually…’
According to Wanless, lying to save his reputation, he’d been aware of that but his target hadn’t helped him by steering clear of the right one. He held up his hands in admission.
‘What can I say? And as for the file, well…’
‘There’s a limit to how far a man can take historical accuracy.’
‘True, my friend, very true.’
Having led him down this byway, the officers abruptly changed tack.
‘About your friend Magnus Ivar Hjemdahl.’
‘Sounds foreign to me.’
‘As you do to us.’
This was his sticking point; he would leave them to figure out his friends in the hope they would fail. Whatever else he was, Wanless wasn’t a grass. But the officers of the FIS were game for the task, no longer the case with Dieter Klein.
The Ears of a Cat Page 10