Phil’s brain fizzed. He wasn’t going to waste time speculating whether Freddie had been killed by accident; the MP had been run down deliberately, probably by the Stasi or the KGB. Possibly to stop Phil talking to him right now. Phil couldn’t think through all the implications of this immediately, but his instinct was that it would be better if the West German authorities didn’t know who he really was.
‘Godfather.’
‘And you were supposed to meet him?’
‘Yes. He contacted me to say he was staying in Berlin for a couple of days and he knew I was here, and could I meet him this evening? So I said yes I would.’
‘I’m very sorry, sir.’
Phil realized he should be looking sad. He also realized he was probably looking as stunned as he felt, which would do fine.
‘We understand that Mr Pelham-Walsh was an important man in Britain? A member of parliament?’
‘Not just that. A government minister. Or he used to be.’
The hotel manager absorbed the information, no doubt ratcheting up the problem a notch.
‘We have been in touch with the British Embassy. Do you have his wife’s contact details, perhaps? Or his home phone number?’
‘Freddie wasn’t married,’ Phil said, with some degree of confidence. ‘And my address book is back at my hotel.’
‘I see. I am sure the police or someone from the embassy will be here shortly. Would you mind waiting until they arrive?’
‘Not at all,’ said Phil.
‘Thank you, sir.’ The manager got to his feet. ‘Oh, forgive me, sir. What is your name?’
‘Oh. Um. Eustace. Eustace Parsons.’
Eustace? His French teacher Eustace? Get a grip, Phil told himself. But the truth was his brain was tumbling. First Kurt, and now Freddie.
Who next?
Phil had an uncomfortable feeling it might be him. Or Emma. Or both of them.
Fear was seeping into his brain, seizing it up, preventing rational thought.
Get a grip.
‘Thank you.’ The manager scribbled the name down on a piece of paper. ‘And where are you staying?’
‘The youth hostel in Bayernallee.’ Better.
The manager’s nose remained unwrinkled as he wrote this down. ‘And your home address?’
Phil spelled out a random address in Marlow, the closest town to Wittingcombe.
The manager floated off, and Phil hung around in the lobby, doing his best to overcome his agitation.
He did mind waiting for the police or a man from the embassy, actually. Once he got himself ensnared with the authorities, it would be impossible for him and Emma to get away to Spain.
So, while the bodies behind the reception desk were conferring, he slipped unnoticed out of the front entrance and hurried down the street towards his own hotel.
Heike was strolling along Tauentzienstrasse when a battered green BMW pulled up beside her. She jumped in. Rozhkov was in the driver’s seat.
‘What happened to the other car?’ she asked. Rozhkov had been driving an equally battered grey Mercedes.
‘I had to get rid of it.’
‘Pelham-Walsh?’
‘Yes. I got him on a side street. Only possible witness was a young woman with two children, and I’m sure she was looking at them, not me.’
‘Dead?’
‘Dead.’
Traffic accidents were better than more blatant liquidations, especially for high-profile targets like Pelham-Walsh. A shooting would have stirred up a hornets’ nest. The problem was, hit-and-runs weren’t always reliable; at least this one had been successful.
‘How did it go with young Phil?’ Rozhkov asked.
‘Well. He confirmed he and Emma saw Kay Ortmann yesterday.’
‘We know that. But the surveillance tapes show she didn’t tell them anything.’
‘That’s true. But Phil said Emma knows where Lothar is.’
‘Did he say how she knows?’
‘No. But he did tell me where. They are planning to track Lothar down tomorrow.’
Heike was glad Phil had spilled the beans about Lothar’s whereabouts. After the debacle in Annecy, the plan had changed, at Rozhkov’s suggestion. The idea now was to let Phil and Emma lead them to Lothar, and then kill him. And them. And the agent buried deep within the British establishment for the last forty years would remain safely buried, as would the couple of others still in place that he had recruited in turn.
She really must do a better job of dealing with Phil. He was going to die – she knew it, and she should be able to handle it if she was to be the professional agent she aspired to be. She had done a lot for her country; there was a lot more she could do.
She was glad she hadn’t had to sleep with him again that night. Phil had declined her suggestion, saying he had a long drive the following day.
As, therefore, did she and Rozhkov.
‘Well done,’ said Rozhkov. ‘So where are they leading us tomorrow?’
Heike told him.
Chapter 54
Phil’s tiny travelling alarm clock went off at 4 a.m. He was in a deep sleep, and it took all his willpower to drag himself out of bed and stand under a shower for five minutes. He was supposed to be meeting Emma in the hotel lobby at 4.30 a.m.
As soon as he had returned to the Bristol the evening before he had knocked on Emma’s door and forced her out and down to the bar for a drink. He was more inclined than ever to believe that her room was bugged. She had seen from his face that something important was up, and under the murmur of the cocktail-hour crowd, Phil had explained that Freddie had summoned him to his hotel, and that he was now dead, run over on a side street.
A succession of emotions swept across Emma’s face: shock, sadness, fear and then resolution.
‘It was the KGB, wasn’t it?’ Phil said.
‘Must have been. Do you know why Freddie wanted to talk to you?’
‘No idea,’ Phil lied.
‘We need to leave this city,’ Emma said.
Phil heartily agreed. Freddie’s death had badly shaken him; he didn’t want to spend a moment longer than he had to in Berlin. ‘Shall we go right now?’
‘Yes.’ Then Emma hesitated. ‘Maybe not right now. We’re both tired and we have a very long journey ahead of us.’ That’s when she came up with the plan of getting up at four in the morning.
Emma was waiting for him in the lobby, looking as resolute as ever. She had summoned the TR6 to the hotel entrance. It was already light outside, but the Kurfürstendamm was quiet. Out on the street the sun was rising behind the broken spire of the church, painting stripes of rose and gold along the upper floors of the buildings along the street.
The roads were empty. But as they approached the western suburb of Zehlendorf, and the checkpoint from West Berlin back on to the autobahn corridor through East Germany, a number of lorries began to accumulate.
It was here that they were most likely to be stopped, either by the West German authorities if they had realized Phil knew something about Freddie’s death, or by the East German border guards. Phil and Emma had discussed this, and decided that if the East Germans had been happy to follow them to visit Kay without arresting them, they would be likely to allow them out of Berlin.
The reasoning sounded plausible. But it could be wrong. The only way they would know was when they were safely driving along the corridor itself.
Both sets of border guards let them through, the East German taking longer than his western counterpart, but that in itself wasn’t suspicious. And then they were off on the autobahn, heading to Helmstedt, Braunschweig and Hanover.
Emma and Phil were wrapped up in their own thoughts. It was too early to talk. On the open road, with no speed limit, Phil put his foot down, nudging the speedometer past a ton.
He checked his grandmother, who caught his eye and grinned. The sun hung low behind them, urging them on.
It appeared that giving a false name to the manager at the Hotel Zoo had wo
rked, at least for a little bit. Swann would hear of Freddie’s death soon enough. The British Embassy had already been told, and presumably the news would spread around Whitehall to reach him. Phil had considered trying to telephone him, reverse charges, the night before, and telling him that Lothar was in Spain.
But Phil was cautious. The safest choice seemed to be to keep as low a profile as they could until they actually found Lothar. Then he would telephone Swann.
Who was this damn mole anyway? Of course, it could easily be someone Emma had never met, someone who hadn’t been part of her story yet – someone like Denis Healey – or more likely someone of whom Phil hadn’t even heard. In which case there was no point in Phil trying to speculate.
But if it was someone Emma knew from the 1930s, then that would explain Swann’s insistence Phil keep their conversation from her.
If the mole was a friend of Emma’s.
Or if Emma had recruited the mole herself.
That would mean Emma had not been completely open in the stories she had told Phil; she had held things back.
It was possible. In fact, she had always admitted she was holding information back, information that it would be dangerous for Phil to know.
So if Emma knew the mole, who might it be?
Kurt would have been a good guess. He had risen in the ranks of the West German Foreign Ministry. But he was dead; almost certainly killed by the KGB.
What about Roland? Had Emma recruited Roland at some point, maybe after their reconciliation?
But Roland, too, was dead. It sounded as if Swann was looking for a mole that was still burrowing.
There was another obvious possibility.
‘Grams?
‘Yes.’
‘You know you said Freddie spied for the Russians before the war?’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘Do you think he might still have been working for them?’
Even as he was driving, Phil could feel Emma’s sharp brown eyes studying him closely.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I was trying to figure out why he was killed.’
‘You mean, you think it might have been the British? Because he was a Russian spy?’
‘I don’t know, Grams,’ Phil said. ‘I’m just trying to make sense of this.’
‘I suppose he might have been working for the KGB. But I think it unlikely. He did help MI5 track down Burgess and Maclean, and I think Philby.’ She sighed. ‘That’s the problem with this spying business. You never really know. Even when it’s your own brother.’
A tear crept down her cheek. ‘Freddie was exasperating, but I liked him.’
‘I’m sorry, Grams,’ said Phil.
But his mind continued to roam. ‘What about Cyril?’
‘Cyril?’
‘Do you think he has anything to do with Kurt’s death?’ Phil asked.
‘Kurt did know Cyril was a spy, after all.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Emma hesitantly. But it was clear the idea hadn’t occurred to her.
Emma was thinking too.
‘If you’re looking for a spy, I don’t think you need look much further than Heike.’
Phil glanced at Emma and swallowed. ‘I saw her last night, Grams.’
‘You what?’
‘I slipped out to see her for a drink. Just before I went to meet Freddie at the Hotel Zoo.’
‘But I told you to stay clear of her!’
‘I know you did. But I thought you were wrong; I was sure you were wrong.’
‘You fool, Philip!’
‘Until I was with her. Then I realized you were right. She’s not twenty. And if she’s not twenty, she probably isn’t a student at the University of Bonn. And much as it pains me to admit it, she probably doesn’t fancy me. And when she quickly turned the conversation to where we were going today, I knew for sure why she was interested in me.’
‘You didn’t tell her?’
‘I did tell her.’
‘Phil!’
‘I told her Lothar was on a Greek island. Skiathos. It was the destination we planned to head for when we were hitching across Europe. The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide is very complimentary about it.’
Emma grinned. ‘Did she believe you?’
‘I think so.’
‘Maybe you’re not such a fool after all.’
Phil smiled. ‘Maybe I’m not.’
Emma touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry. I know you liked her. It must be awful to know you were being deceived all along.’
There was something in her touch, in the tone of her voice, that made Phil realize this sixty-four-year-old woman did understand. And then he realized that at about his age she too had slept with someone who was deceiving her.
‘All right,’ said Emma. ‘We need a plan.’
‘Don’t we have a plan? We’re driving to Spain.’
‘The KGB will be watching us. Following us. They will be expecting us to head towards Greece. Which we will do. Until we lose them.’
‘How are we going to do that?’
‘I’ll think of something.’ Emma pulled out her road atlas and studied it closely.
They had no problem at the border and stopped for breakfast at a service station on the other side. They sped past Braunschweig, both of them ignoring the signs, and then turned south on an autobahn heading to Munich and Austria, and ultimately Yugoslavia and Greece.
Half an hour south of Nuremberg, in Bavaria, Emma announced it was time for lunch. They pulled off the autobahn and stopped at a garage with a little shop which sold sandwiches and local maps. They bought both.
Phil had been looking out for cars following him, but couldn’t spot any. More accurately, there were dozens of cars following them on the long journey, and there was no way of telling if any of them contained KGB agents.
Much easier on a straight stretch of country road. Which, by examining her newly purchased map closely, Emma found.
They pulled over on the verge of a straight on a back road a couple of kilometres west of the garage. A blue van, a silver Opel, and a green BMW with a single male driver passed them and disappeared around a corner a kilometre away. They munched their sandwiches, checking each passing vehicle carefully. On one side cows grazed a low hill; on the other, tidy Bavarian farmland stretched into the distance.
‘Ready?’ Emma asked, once they had finished their sandwiches.
‘Ready.’
‘Let’s go.’
Phil drove as fast as he could along the country roads, Emma giving him a bewildering series of directions. He called out the type and colour of any vehicle that appeared in his rear-view mirror; Emma suggested this as an aide to spot a particular car reappearing. None did. They spent a frustrating two minutes trapped behind a slow-moving tractor before Phil accelerated past it on a blind corner. In ten minutes they were back at the entrance to the autobahn, which headed south to Munich.
‘That way,’ said Emma, pointing to a sign.
North.
Chapter 55
Heike and Rozhkov stood beside their BMW on the low hill overlooking the distinctive green British sports car, Rozhkov training his powerful binoculars down on them.
‘They know they’re being followed,’ he said in his Slavic-accented German.
‘They can’t have spotted us,’ said Heike.
Rozhkov had planted a radio tracker in the TR6 in the hotel’s garage, and Heike had followed Phil and his grandmother on a heavy portable display plugged into the BMW’s cigarette lighter. Rozhkov had kept at least a couple of kilometres behind the British sports car the whole way. The only time they had got close was when they had driven past the stationary TR6 on the lane down there, and Heike had slipped down low in the passenger seat out of sight.
‘It’s all very well stopping for a picnic somewhere,’ Rozhkov said. ‘But they have just pulled over on to a verge. It’s not a natural stopping place. They want to lose us.’
‘They are not doing a bad job of it,’ said
Heike. ‘But they don’t know we know they are heading to Greece.’
‘Phil knows,’ Rozhkov said.
‘Phil knows I know,’ Heike said. ‘He doesn’t know you do. He doesn’t suspect me, I’m sure of it.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Rozhkov said. ‘In which case they will be on the autobahn heading south in half an hour or so.’
Rozhkov stiffened. ‘They’re off. And they’re not going back the way they came. That means they are trying to lose us.’
Rozhkov and Heike jumped in the car. Heike put the bulky display on her lap and tried to read it. The display showed bearing and approximate range, which was fine on a straight autobahn, but was very difficult on winding country roads, especially without a detailed map.
They spent a frustrating fifteen minutes doing their best to keep up, Rozhkov letting his impatience show. Heike had had no training on the system. She suggested that they switch and she drive, but Rozhkov wasn’t having any of that. He was the man, so he had to drive.
Turned out Rozhkov was just as much a jerk as the hapless Marko, just in his own special way.
It was with relief that they crested a low hill and saw both the autobahn, and a green sports car moving towards it.
‘That’s them!’ Heike said, and put the display to one side.
A ‘well done’ would have been appreciated.
Rozhkov drove steadily to the junction and joined the highway heading south.
‘OK. How far ahead of us are they? I want to get the separation right.’
This was easier. Heike checked the display. It didn’t make sense. The dot was at the bottom of the concentric circles.
‘Hold on. They’re behind us!’
‘They can’t be.’
‘Look.’
Rozhkov leaned over and looked.
‘Damn it!’ he said. ‘They’re heading north! We’ll have to double back at the next junction.’
He glared at Heike and muttered something in Russian.
Russian was compulsory in East German schools and Heike had been good at it.
He had just called her a stupid female dog.
At the next junction, they veered off the autobahn and rejoined it heading north. After a frantic twenty minutes of seriously fast driving, a blip appeared on Heike’s screen, this time where it should be. At the top. Ahead of them.
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