Prime Target u-10

by Hugh Miller

  Sabrina was drawn back to the closet. Something there was wrong, the smallest thing perhaps…

  She stood back and looked at the row of clothes, the jackets, skirts and slacks on their hangers, the lower edges aligned, the spacing between hangers just so, a monument to obsessive compulsion. Manically precise, a little masterpiece of symmetry. But yes, something was wrong. A beige jacket, squared and creaseless on its hanger, hung a fraction low on the near side. What was more, when Sabrina bent and peered at it, she saw a clear centimetre of loose thread at the hem of the jacket, just where it hung low.

  She touched the hem and felt something hard. She took out the jacket and fingered the object. It was a key. It had been sewn into the hem.

  Carefully, stitch by stitch, she unpicked the hem enough to fish out the key. It was made of brass with a toughened plastic top, the kind used to open high-security lockers and strongboxes. Sabrina slipped it into her pocket.

  By 2.15 she believed she had made a thorough search of the room. She stood by the door, letting her eyes do a slow pan, left to right, up and down. No area had been missed. She walked slowly round the place again, looked in the closets, drawers, bathroom cabinets and under the bed.

  Still on her knees she paused and looked under the bed again. She saw something, paper, folded and tucked under a canvas strap supporting the mattress near the foot of the bed. Only one folded edge was showing, but she knew she should have seen it first time.

  ‘For that,’ she told herself, reaching for the paper, ‘you get one drink instead of two.’

  It was a sheet of computer printout paper with perforated sides, folded in four. She opened it and spread it flat on the carpet. There was a vertical row of printed names, with an address opposite each. At first sight the names appeared to be all male, and all German. At the bottom were a couple of pencilled lines in tidy handwriting she recognized from the manuscript: Journal note: list completed 2/15/96, passed to ES, 2/24/96.

  Sabrina looked at the names again. They meant nothing to her. She folded the list and put it in her pocket. As an additional act of penance for missing the paper the first time, she made one more trawl of the room, swift but detailed. She found nothing new.

  Finally she put everything back as it was, using the Polaroids to guide her. She put out the light, opened the curtains and left, locking the door behind her.

  Ten minutes later, back in her room with a drink and the list beside her, she called Philpott on her mobile, using the scrambled satellite line. It was after ten o’clock in New York, but he was still at his desk.

  ‘I assumed you’d like a progress bulletin on the Emily Selby case,’ Sabrina said. ‘I got into her room and picked up a couple of things.’

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘A key and a list of names. Men, all German I think.’

  ‘Do you have the list there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Read out a few of the names.’

  They’re not in alphabetical order — looking at the addresses, I’d guess they’re graded in order of their proximity to Berlin. Here goes. Gunther Blascher, Walter Höllerer, Johann Boumann, Andreas Wolff, Friedrich Schadow, Albrecht Schröder, Kurt Ditscher, Karl Schinkel — ’

  ‘That’ll do. Fax it to my secure number.’

  ‘Do the names mean anything?’

  ‘We’ll discuss it when you get back.’ A phone was ringing. ‘I’ll talk to you soon. Just get that list to me.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Sabrina thumbed the red button and put down the phone. She looked at her watch. There was hardly any night left. For a while she stood there, wondering if she should get in the tub or go straight to bed.

  Tub, she decided. And no bed. At a pinch, a long hot soak could do the work of six hours’ sleep. She could get herself dressed and ready for the day at a comfortable pace, take an early breakfast, read the morning paper and still be out on the street by 7.30.

  She ran a hot bath and undressed as it filled. As she climbed in and sank up to her neck, the heat seeped smoothly into her muscles. She closed her eyes and her mind drifted. She thought of home, the reassurance and comfort of her own apartment in New York, her favourite weekend restaurant…

  Abruptly she thought of lunch. Today. Her eyes opened. She had forgotten. Lunch with gooey-eyed Inspector Lowther.

  ‘Merde,’ she groaned, in a perfect replica of her mother’s voice.

  5

  At 9.10 a.m. on Monday, C.W. Whitlock downloaded the final piece of information to expand the details of the list Philpott had given him on Friday morning. The job had been painstaking, frustrating and exhausting. Worse than that, the expenditure of a whole weekend on the work had put a strain on Whitlock’s private life. Following a hurried and stressful cancellation of a Saturday-night dinner party, his wife was no longer communicating.

  After the fourth attempt to reach her that morning he put down the telephone and saw the final lines of text scroll up on the computer screen. He sat back and yawned. Feeling old, he decided, was a matter of how much hope you abandoned. For twenty-four hours he had felt rundown and sinking, aware of no clear end. Seeing the long job finished did not quite lift his spirits, but there was a measure of relief. Relief, in turn, fired a tiny hope: things between himself and Carmen might work out with a minimum of fighting. ‘And a pig will go flapping over the UN complex any minute,’ he said aloud.

  Whitlock was a man people tended to like on sight, a native Kenyan with skin a girl once called light umber, and gold-brown eyes his mother swore would break many hearts. His skin colour was part of a legacy from his grandfather, a white British Army officer, whose genes had also conferred a strong jaw and a firm mouth, which C.W. softened with a moustache.

  He leaned forward, tapped the PRINT button and checked the clock. He was up against the deadline. Too often, it seemed, he was handed jobs with no slack in the schedule. He picked up the internal telephone and dialled 3 for Security.

  ‘Calvin? Has Mr Philpott arrived yet?’

  ‘He signed in five minutes ago.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sorry to dash your hopes.’

  ‘That’s all right, Calvin. The day he does turn up late, I’ll buy you lunch.’ He put down the phone. ‘This,’ he sighed, ‘is no life for a sensitive boy.’

  He was Oxford-educated, a former soldier with wide experience as an officer in the Kenya Intelligence Corps. He had been recruited into UNACO by Philpott himself, and was now the longest serving member of Task Force Three. On two occasions Philpott had openly acknowledged that Whitlock was the most versatile and well-informed of his active agents — a distinction, Whitlock believed, that invited abuse.

  As the last piece of information came off the printer he signalled Interpol’s National Central Bureau in Berlin and switched momentarily to voice contact. He thanked the duty information controller for his help and expressed the hope that he could return the favour.

  Two minutes later he walked into the washroom with the accumulated data in a manila folder under his arm. Mike Graham was there, standing by the basins, bending to see himself in the mirror as he combed his hair. His reflection nodded at Whitlock, who looked grim.

  ‘Morning, C.W. Nice to see a guy who can start the week with a grin.’

  Whitlock put down his folder and rolled back his shirtsleeves. He washed his hands and face, re-tied his tie and buffed his toecaps at the polisher. He came back to the basins and leaned close to the mirror, pulling up one eyelid, then the other.

  ‘I can’t decide if I’m anaemic, or if clinical depression has crept in.’

  ‘I hear you’ve been on all weekend.’

  ‘The Selby case. I did a workup on a list of German citizens, most of them hard to nail. Not a criminal record among them, so I had to trespass on a lot of legitimate secrecy.’

  ‘Nobody does it better.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Whitlock sighed, ‘patronize me. I thrive on that.’

  Mike put on his jacket as he wen
t to the door. ‘Meeting in five minutes,’ he said. ‘Don’t be late.’

  ‘I’m moving as fast as I can…’

  * * *

  Three sides of UNACO’s briefing room were panelled in dark shiny wood. The fourth was a ceiling-to-floor window looking out on the East River. The centrepiece of the room was a long polished table with three chairs at each side and one at the end near the window. On the table were notepads, pencils, glasses and two water pitchers. A long ebony sideboard against the right-hand wall had a steel tray with coffee, tea and a Thermos jug of chilled Coke.

  Philpott was already there when Mike Graham and C.W. Whitlock walked in. He stood by the window reading a fax. Lucy Dow sat at the end of the table nearest the door. Lucy was a tall, solemn-faced young woman, an authority on Arab affairs with three years experience in Lebanon as a field operative. Sabrina was there too, pouring coffee.

  ‘Welcome home,’ Mike said. ‘How was England?’

  ‘Strenuous.’

  ‘Did you remember my Bath Olivers?’ Whitlock said. ‘Or did they get forgotten in the whirl of events?’

  Sabrina pointed to a Fortnum and Mason’s bag on the sideboard. ‘Six packets. Enough to turn up the flame of nostalgia till it hurts.’

  ‘Bless you.’ Whitlock pecked Sabrina’s cheek. ‘Those biscuits are all I really miss about my student days.’

  ‘You must have really lived it up,’ Mike said. ‘What did you do — crumble them into a chillum and smoke them?’

  ‘Right.’ Philpott looked up from his fax and pointed at the table. ‘Sit down, will you? I’ve a busy day so we must keep this brief.’

  Whitlock and Mike brought coffee to the table and sat opposite each other as they always did. Sabrina sat somewhere different every time. She did that in case anyone imagined there was significance in the way the only permanent female member of the unit sat in relation to the other two operatives and to the chief. Today she sat at the top of the table on the same side as Whitlock, adjacent to Philpott.

  ‘You’re all familiar with the superficial details of the Emily Selby shooting,’ Philpott said, opening a folder in front of him. ‘Lucy is here this morning to add anything that might help in formulating at least the nucleus of a procedure. I can add to what you all know about the case by telling you that early on Saturday, a call was received here at the UN from Colonel Wolrich of Security Liaison, working out of the US Embassy in London. He talked about the case with the Deputy Secretary General of the Security Council. As a result of their discussion, the Selby inquiry has been made our business.’

  ‘So my weekend wasn’t a complete waste,’ Whitlock said.

  ‘Why did they pass it straight to UNACO?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Well, there’s the hard evidence the gunman was a trained assassin, and a high-profile one at that. There’s the fact that he travelled West to kill an American who happened to be a Jew, and who happened to be working for the government, right inside the White House. That bare-bones synopsis alone makes this our kind of case. We have a strong enough indication of international crime, with the attendant danger of escalation, to warrant UNACO intervention.’

  ‘I can vouch for the killer’s prominent profile,’ Lucy said, crossing and uncrossing her long legs as she spoke. ‘They were very proud of Yaqub Hisham in the Lebanon.’

  ‘Ever meet him?’ Sabrina said.

  ‘He wasn’t a social animal, but yes, I was in the same big tent as him one time, along with maybe fifty others, while I was doing a hill-gypsy routine for cover. He was nothing unusual as terrorists go, except he was maybe luckier than most, or more foolhardy. Until he got too hot a target for the Israelis, he was really the main man. Scourge of the Jews, they called him. When things warmed up and Mossad started closing in, it was a top Arab surgeon that volunteered to change Yaqub’s face. A big freebie, carried out in one of the finest hospitals in Egypt.’

  ‘Was it business as usual after the face-change?’ Philpott said.

  Lucy shook her head. ‘Mossad got leaked a picture of him. From Yaqub’s point of view it was a waste of time. He ended up with a face he thought wasn’t nearly as pretty as his real one, and the way things turned out he might as well have hung on to the old face. He had to get back into hiding. That’s why he went to Morocco. Hard for the avenging Israelis to get at him there.’

  Philpott looked at Mike. ‘Fill us in on what you learned.’

  Mike gave them a summary on the Arab’s un-exceptional stay in London, up to the time he killed Emily Selby and then shot himself. ‘Lucy could tell us more, but the things we most need to know are his reason for killing Emily Selby, and the source of the gun he used. So far, those things remain a mystery.’

  ‘Sabrina?’

  Sabrina explained how she got into Emily Selby’s hotel room, and what she found during her search. ‘For a tourist Emily carried a lot of stuff, but the key and the list were the only items out of the ordinary. The key wouldn’t be half so interesting if it hadn’t been stitched into her jacket.’

  ‘What impressions did you get about the woman herself?’ Philpott asked.

  ‘Tidy and well organized, though perhaps to a pathological extent.’ Sabrina explained about the piece of ruler she had found, and about clothes stored by colour, bottles in the bathroom regimented by size. ‘The kind of clothes she wore indicated she had good fashion sense, but she was also reticent, modest probably, because she had what I call an extravagance-shut-off. She had limits and barriers, she showed flair but with enough of a conservative streak to stop herself from being flamboyant.’

  ‘Overall impression?’ Philpott said.

  ‘That she was intelligent, gifted and inquisitive, with a tragedy at the centre of her life, supported by the evidence of her compulsive neurosis,’ Sabrina said. ‘Compulsive rituals, notably in the behaviour patterns of intelligent people, indicate that they use rigid and complicated routines to divert their minds from areas of pain.’

  C.W. was nodding. So was Lucy.

  ‘Emily Selby’s history supports that interpretation,’ Sabrina went on. ‘Her employment record, which I read as soon as I got here this morning, shows she was widowed three years ago. She suffered a compound tragedy, because her husband and father died at the same time and in the same place.’

  Philpott tapped the photocopy in front of him. ‘Lake Cayuga, Ithaca, New York State,’ he said. ‘A fishing accident. Verdict of drowning on both men. We will look into the details. Now, Sabrina, did you find anything at all to link Emily Selby with Erika Stramm, the woman with her in the picture?’

  ‘I’m assuming the pencilled initials ES at the bottom of the list stand for Erika Stramm. But that’s all I have. I’m still working on a connection.’

  Philpott looked at Whitlock. ‘Tell us how you fared with the list.’

  Whitlock had his folder open, the sheets of information spread out before him. ‘It’s a list of thirty German names and addresses, and all the names are male,’ he said. ‘I sifted the criminal records first, but there was nothing. Whatever else they are, these are law-abiding citizens. Then I had to go the slow route, with the help of Interpol. Everybody was very helpful, and eventually I got expansion — as much as is known — on every name on the list.’

  ‘What’s their connection?’ Mike said.

  ‘Nothing worthy of the name. They don’t appear to be related by blood or commercial ties. They’re apparently prospering in various quiet ways, but that’s all they seem to have in common. Well, except for one factor. We know that fifteen of the men on the list were adopted. They were war orphans.’

  ‘And the others?’ Philpott said.

  ‘No childhood records extant. Destroyed by enemy action. The bombing of Dresden and Berlin and countless other communities wiped out millions of official histories. It simultaneously provided a blank slate for the creation of others.’ C.W. spread his hands. ‘About two-thirds of the population records collated in Germany during the immediate post-war years are just not reliable, from
an investigative standpoint.’

  ‘What’s the men’s professional range?’ Sabrina asked.

  ‘Everything from bookbinding and carpet-tile manufacture to medicine and law — there are two doctors and two lawyers — the rest are one-offs. Interpol tried a few test searches with the records of marriages but no links showed up.’

  Mike asked if they were all about the same age.

  ‘It’s tight, between fifty-nine and sixty-five years old.’

  ‘I think there might be something in the fact there are so many orphans,’ Sabrina said. She saw Mike shake his head. ‘At least I won’t close my mind to the possibility,’ she added, giving it an edge.

  ‘And in the meantime,’ Philpott said, ‘I won’t make any wild guesses about the significance of this list. However…’ He pushed forward a copy of the list and pointed to a name halfway down the page. ‘I’m concerned that this man’s name appears on it.’

  The others turned their heads to peer at the list.

  ‘His name is Andreas Wolff. He’s an Austrian computer systems engineer and program designer.’

  ‘I can see his face now,’ Mike said.

  The others looked at him.

  ‘Youthful middle-aged, short salt-and-pepper haircut, steel-framed glasses and a great smile.’

  Philpott nodded slowly. ‘What are you trying to tell us, Michael?’

  ‘His picture’s on the boxes of a very expensive series of computer games. They’re on sale all over the place.’

  ‘Mike spends a lot of time in toy shops,’ Sabrina said.

  ‘This guy is a king of contemporary games design. He specializes in hybrids: dungeons and dragons, arcade stuff and straight crime detection rolled into one. It must be a great formula, the games sell fast and they ain’t cheap.’

  ‘Andreas Wolff is certainly well known for his recreational software,’ Philpott said dryly. ‘However, in security and law-enforcement circles, which is to say serious circles, he’s also an eminent individual. He created the software that protects all the data carried by ICON.’