by Colin Forbes
'Take it,' snapped Paula. 'I sense we are in for a very rough ride on this one. Don't you want to save my life when the time comes?'
'You are diabolically persuasive. You should be kept locked up.'
But he accepted the Walther, hip holster and ammo from Marler. Then he checked his watch.
'Paula and I were just going out to make contact with Harry and Pete, staying at the Hotel Renaissance.'
'Then, since I was going there next, I'll give you a thirty seconds start, then stroll after you to guard your rear…'
It was still daylight as Tweed and Paula walked out of the hotel, turned right and strolled like a couple of holidaymakers. The sun, which had glared in at the windows of Tweed's suite, still roasted them even though it was mid-evening.
They had reached the end of the street, crossed over. Paula paused, staring across the street at the wide pedestrian platform of Jungfernstieg. The ferries, far fewer in number than earlier, were still plying their way from the landing stage over the Alster.
'In the early morning and at the end of the day,' Tweed told her, 'commuters who live in houses or apartments near the Alster commute by ferry. Saves them worrying about parking cars.'
'It's heaven,' sighed Paula, looking at the beautiful big buildings on the opposite shore.
'We must keep moving,' Tweed decided. He glanced back the way they had come. Marler was overtaking them. He had just called Harry's mobile on his own. His lips hardly moved as he spoke when passing them.
'I've got Harry's phone number, so now I know his room. Just follow me a bit behind when we reach the Renaissance…'
They were passing department stores in tall massive buildings which looked as though they had stood there for ever. Marler turned right down Grosse Bleichen, a narrower street. Very few people about. They followed Marler, entering the Hotel Renaissance, a quiet comfortable place. Paula glanced into the entrance to the restaurant, turned away quickly.
'What's the matter?' Tweed whispered.
'In the restaurant. You're not going to believe this. Remember Pink Shirt, fat-faced with a large head – on the pavement opposite The Hangman's Noose during the riots?'
'Yes.'
'He's sitting in the restaurant we've just passed. And I think he spotted me…'
'Hurry, Marler is waiting…'
Harry Butler opened the door of his room after Marler tapped in a certain way. He hustled them inside, closed, locked the door.
'What's the rush?' Tweed asked.
'Bad news,' Harry announced. 'Pink Shirt, big man, ugly. Directing the thugs at Reefers Wharf. Staying here.'
'We saw him,' Paula said.
'The news gets worse,' Harry went on. 'Delgado is staying here. Well disguised, hair trimmed short, stoops, carries a rubber-tipped stick. I saw his eyes. Always tell a man by his eyes.'
'How on earth did they get here so quickly?' Paula wondered.
'Easy. Caught a later flight.'
'But how could they know we were coming here?' Paula persisted.
'The frisky little runt who followed us to the departure lounge at Heathrow,' Tweed reminded her. 'There was a board outside with "Hamburg" in big letters. He'd beetle off, call his boss.'
'Oh, I'd just forgotten him. They're horribly well organized.'
'So we'll be better organized,' Tweed replied.
While they were speaking Marler had taken a Walther out of his large hold-all, handed it to Harry. He gave him another one for Nield. More presents followed. Grenades, tear gas canisters, smoke bombs, an Uzi machine pistol. Marler then produced more – for Pete Nield.
'Starting a new Gulf War?' Paula asked mischievously.
'Could be like that,' Harry warned.
'Where is Nield?' Tweed asked.
'In the next room.' Harry jerked a thumb to his right. 'It was lucky. We arrived separately. He's outside somewhere – prowling round to get the feel of the place.'
'I have to tell you something…' Tweed began.
Harry listened, arms folded across his powerful chest, saying not a word. Tweed explained in detail about their visit to Dr Kefler at eleven that night, gave him the address, showed him the area down by the docks on a map of the city he'd acquired from the receptionist at the Four Seasons.
I'll be there,' Harry said, glancing at the marksman's rifle Marler had given him. 'I've bought a motorbike. Follow the taxi in that. When you get out I'll hoof it. Don't like the sound of what this Kefler said at all. Don't like where he lives. Docks. At night…'
'I feel reassured Harry is coming,' Paula said as they left the Renaissance. She squeezed Tweed's arm, whispered. 'Look who's ahead of us.'
A stooping man plodded along about twenty yards ahead of them. He carried in his right hand a rubber-tipped stick. His hair was trimmed very short. Tweed grabbed Paula's arm and swung her round so that, like himself, she was pretending to gaze into a shop window.
'That's how Harry described the new Delgado -I would never have recognized him.'
'We have things to do,' Tweed warned. 'Get back to the Four Seasons – personally I want a quick shower – have dinner, then we go see Dr Kefler.'
'The shower's for me, too. I'm not very hungry.'
'You will be if you don't eat – hungry in the middle of the night.'
'He's gone!'
She had stolen a glance up the street and it was deserted. Tweed looked, grunted, took her arm, guided her across to the pavement on the other side of the street. A whole line of vehicles, many of them large trucks, were parked for the night.
'He's gone into one of the arcades we passed on our way to see Harry,' Tweed explained. 'Walking up this side of the street we're almost invisible behind these trucks if he reappears…'
They reached the main street running past the platform and landing stage. Tweed was about to turn left when Paula tugged at his arm. She nodded to her right.
A short distance away a tall man in a straw hat was operating a video camera. Mark Wendover. As they watched, with his back to them he swivelled the camera to take pictures of the Alster, of a ferry coming in. Then he quickly swivelled it into a different direction, aiming the lens at a building – the entrance, the ground floor windows, higher up to the first floor. The imposing building was the Zurcher Kredit Bank.
'He's at it again,' Paula protested. 'Doing his own thing. Mavericking.'
'Well, if that's the way he works…'
'Something I've been meaning to tell you,' Paula said as they approached the hotel entrance. 'Kept slipping what passes for my mind. Before we left Park Crescent – you were out of the room – Monica told me that when that awful screaming started on the Internet the phone went dead.'
'It did?' replied Tweed dismissively. 'I thought she was calling various contacts to see if their systems were all right.'
'That was later,' Paula said emphatically. 'She reckons the phone was dead during the whole awful experience. Afterwards, too. For a couple of minutes.'
'A glitch…'
'Listen, do! The Internet is linked to the phone system.'
'Intriguing.'
Annoyed, Paula gave up. When she reached her room she dived into the bathroom to take the shower she would have welcomed hours earlier.
In his room Tweed postponed the shower while he called Cord Dillon at his private number in his apartment.
'What is it, Tweed?' a sleepy voice enquired. 'It's morning here – and I'm not an early riser unless I have to be.'
'Mark Wendover. What kind of a detective agency does he run in New York?'
'Corporate work. Embezzlement. Someone dipping their hand into the till. In a big way. How is Mark?'
'Thriving.'
'Is that all? Good. Thank God
Tweed took out his doodle pad, scribbled Zurcher Kredit, put a large loop round it, joined Rondel's loop to it, then Mark's. He stared at the pad for a few minutes, the non-working end of his pen in his mouth. He grunted, then went into the bathroom for his shower.
Earlier that evening, after shouting
her head off at Tweed, Lisa had stormed back to her room. When she opened the door she saw an envelope had been slipped under it into the room. She took it out of the envelope, saw it was a hotel record of a phone message.
Call me urgently. Go to the main railway station to make the call. Rocco.
She left her room immediately. Leaving the hotel, she walked. Every now and again she paused, fiddled with one of her sandals as though it had picked up a stone. This gave her the chance to glance back, to check she wasn't being followed.
The station wasn't crowded when she arrived. It was Germanic, vast and with a very high roof. She went into an empty phone cubicle, called the number. A familiar voice answered.
'Lisa, would you like to make a hundred thousand marks?'
'What did you say?'
'I think you heard me. I want you to gain all the information you can from Tweed from now on. How many in his team? Where is he going? In Hamburg. Outside Hamburg? And the only person you report this information to is me…'
'Just a minute,' she said. 'Someone is trying to get in here.'
She turned round. A man she had never seen was holding a white envelope. He thrust it into her hand, said it was for her, then departed.
'You've got the envelope,' the voice on the phone commented. 'Now count the contents. I'll wait.'
She opened it. A thick sheaf of 1,000 DM banknotes. She checked. 10,000 DM. She checked again. No, 100,000 DM. In English money, roughly?30,000. She slipped the envelope inside her handbag.
'Remember, you report only to me…'
She had never had so much money in her life.
CHAPTER 17
Tweed and Paula were having dinner in the Grill Room. They had the only table occupied on the balcony, which gave them a good view down into the restaurant below. There were just a few guests, even though they were on the edge of July.
'Not so many people as I'd have expected,' Paula commented. 'I think it must be the heat – it has even penetrated up here.'
She was eating scrambled eggs – not on the menu but she'd explained to the waiter she wasn't very hungry owing to the heat.
'Most unusual, Madame, for Hamburg,' the waiter replied. 'A heatwave is something we rarely experience.'
'I see Newman is sitting at a table over by the wall and has Mark with him,' Tweed remarked. 'As we came in I heard Mark asking if he could join him, as he hated eating alone.'
'Keeping up the pretence they don't know each other,' Paula observed.
'And Marler is having sandwiches and a drink in the lounge by himself. From that position he can observe anyone who comes in here. Doesn't miss a trick, our Marler. Don't look now, but you'll never guess in a hundred years who has just sat down at a table by himself. By the wall,' said Tweed.
'Tell me – or I'll have to look.'
'The Brig. Bernard, Lord Barford. Wearing a white dinner jacket.'
'On a sweltering night like this?' Paula exclaimed.
'Oh, typical of him. You dress for dinner whatever the temperature. He'll have done that hundreds of times in the mess when he was in the Army.'
'Heavens.' Tweed's observation had just sunk in on Paula. 'He's the last man on earth I'd have expected to turn up here. What's going on?'
'I haven't any idea.'
'You don't believe in coincidences. And Hamburg wasn't one of the places Aubrey, his drunken son, included when he told me over lunch at Martino's where the Brig often flies to. I wonder why he keeps Hamburg so secret?' Paula said.
'I simply couldn't even guess.'
Tweed was making short work of his Dover sole. He was famished. Both of them had avoided alcohol, were drinking water to ward off dehydration.
'Has he spotted us?' Paula enquired as she finished off the last of her scrambled eggs.
'No. He didn't look up here as he came in. Now he's concentrating on reading some documents.'
'He probably will see us when we leave, go down the steps from this balcony.'
'We'll try and choose a moment when he's surrounded by waiters serving him. They do have plenty of waiters.' Tweed put down his knife and fork, checked his watch below the table cloth.
'What's our next objective – after we've visited Dr Kefler?'
'To locate and identify Rhinoceros. Coffee? Dessert?'
'Not for me,' Paula decided.
'Then now might be a good moment to leave.'
As they descended the stairs into the main restaurant, Paula had a good look at the unexpected arrival. A covey of waiters hovered round him as they served a steak. She thought he looked very alert, his hand movements agile, very much in command of himself, sitting erect as a ramrod.
'He didn't see us,' Paula said as they walked into the lounge.
'Don't kid yourself. He's a spry bird. Doesn't miss much.'
Marler was seated by himself, shielded from other guests by a palm tree. Tweed walked slowly, dropped a crumpled piece of paper into his lap, continued walking.
'What was the note about?' Paula wondered.
'To tell Marler we're going out to see someone. And also that Harry is going to guard our rear.'
Newman, as arranged, caught them up as they entered the hall. He kept his voice down as he spoke.
'Mark handled that cleverly. Anyone near us who knew English would have heard him talking about New York, then asking what my job was. He's astute. Look who's here.'
They were about to walk down the steps into the street when Lisa appeared from nowhere. She was dangling her shoulder bag by its strap and smiling as though all was well with the world.
'Going somewhere?' she asked Paula.
'Just a long stroll,' Tweed replied quickly. 'We have something we want to talk over in confidence.'
'Can I come with you?'
'You look really tired,' said Paula, having a go at her. 'I'd suggest you go to bed and get some sleep…'
They reached the street and started walking along the pavement towards the landing stage. Lisa ran after them, caught up with Tweed.
'I really am sorry I blew my top. I didn't mean-'
'Lisa,' Paula snapped, 'go back and get some sleep. Didn't you hear Tweed say we had something confidential to talk over?'
Lisa blinked, turned on her heel, went back and climbed the first few steps. She stayed there, waited a short time, then peered after them.
'That wasn't very nice of either of you,' Newman protested. 'I could have shooed her off much more politely.' He frowned. 'I sense good relations with Lisa have broken down. Had a row?'
'She was very rude to Tweed in his room,' Paula told him.
'It isn't that,' Tweed said, glancing over his shoulder. 'I want to see how much of an effort she'll make to get back into our good graces. And here's a taxi coming…'
With the aid of a map he explained to the driver exactly where they wanted to be dropped. The driver looked at them as though surprised, then nodded.
'Don't think he thought it was a good idea,' Paula whispered.
They stopped talking and Paula gazed out of the window as the cab drove at speed deep into Hamburg. Huge solid buildings loomed above them and there was no one else about. At long intervals the streets were lit by tall lamps and then they again plunged into shadows. Paula slipped her right hand inside her shoulder bag to make sure she could grab her automatic quickly. Tweed was following their route, studying his street plan.
'They go to bed early,' Newman commented. 'Not a soul about.'
'They work hard, get up early,' Paula replied, to say something to keep her nerves in check.
The cab stopped in the middle of nowhere. Weird modern buildings hemmed them in. The driver looked back uncertainly, kept his engine running.
'Is this where you want to get off?' he asked in German.
'It is,' Tweed assured him.
'You're certain?'
His manner was uneasy. Paula noticed he had kept the doors locked. He peered at her, frowning.
'This is exactly the point,' said Tweed, handing him t
he fare plus a generous tip.
'Thanks very much,' the driver said. 'You are coming back?'
He scribbled his name, Eugen, on a card giving the firm's name and phone number. Tweed slipped it into his wallet. The cab disappeared quickly.
'I heard a motorcyclist behind us,' Newman remarked. 'Now he's stopped somewhere.'
'That's Harry,' Paula told him. 'I'm glad he's come,'
They started walking past the weird buildings that reminded Paula of gigantic modern sculptures. It was very quiet, very humid. She thought she smelt a whiff of oil.
'How far to the Elbe?' she asked.
'Not far,' Tweed told her, having put his map away.
It was disturbingly quiet as they walked downhill. Not a soul in sight anywhere. She looked back, hoping for a comforting sight of Harry. Nothing. But when Harry followed you he was the Invisible Man. It was unnervingly silent, then she heard the faint swish of water as they reached the bottom of the hill. They had reached the docks, the Elbe. Tweed led them to his right. She saw a street sign. Elbstr.
To her left as they walked slowly in the heat she had her first sight of the river. About as wide as the Thames in London. Above them loomed immensely tall cranes. Halfway up the huge structures she saw control cabins. There seemed to be dozens of the cranes. All motionless. She thought they looked like Martians which had just landed. She saw one vast structure, squatter, resting on railway lines so its position could be moved when barges arrived. Lights high up gave spasmodic illumination, emphasizing the black shadows. There was no moon to see – the sky had a heavy overcast which must have drifted in recently.
She felt tiny, and a little nervous, walking below these monsters.
'When the Germans build they build big,' she commented.
'Hence the enormous Panther tanks they used in the Second World War that I've read about,' said Tweed. 'I've seen pictures of them. They fought like tigers and caused us a lot of trouble during the Normandy landings.'
'Just so long as we don't see one coming down the street,' she retorted.
'Rather unlikely,' Newman assured her.
Across the far side of the river Paula saw another army of cranes deployed. More lights glowed from a great height. Two freighters were moored for the night with several large barges.