The Lucifer Network

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘You see, it is made special so the droplets are right size,’ he explained. From their frowns he wasn’t certain they were following his English properly.

  ‘First you mix serum with water. Fifty-fifty. Understand?’

  ‘Ja. We understand.’ The couple looked at one another and nodded. ‘Alles in Ordnung.’ The man handed him the envelope. When he smiled he revealed a wide gap between his front teeth. ‘Your money. You must to count it.’

  Chursin felt intensely relieved. He slit open the envelope with his thumbnail and pulled out a sheaf of $100 bills. As he concentrated on them, dividing them into tens, he failed to notice the man walk round behind him. The notes were crisp and new. Like the life he envisaged they would buy him.

  Suddenly a bag was pulled over his head. Dark, smelly plastic. He went rigid with shock, tightening his grip on the cash and swearing in Russian. Then his elbows were wrenched behind his back and pinioned. He struggled but was pulled off balance. His wiry assailant had the strength of a bear.

  He breathed in sharply, air that smelled of manure. He felt outraged and foolish, but when he tried to protest again his voice failed, as if some part of him realised there was no point in speaking. He seemed to be standing outside his own body, watching a process as relentless and terminal as when a spider traps a fly. He felt fingers unbutton his shirt in the middle of his chest, then a probing to locate the base of his sternum, followed by an excruciating pain in his heart.

  ‘Aaagh . . .’ He felt he’d been impaled. His pulse faltered like some seized engine. The stench from the sack was choking him. His head began to spin and his legs gave way. He sank backwards into the steadying arms of his attacker. Then his mind went black.

  The woman finished emptying the horse syringe into Igor Chursin’s heart and withdrew the needle, leaving a tiny hole in his white skin from which a thin rivulet of blood trickled. After a few seconds it stopped of its own accord. The man lowered Igor Chursin to the ground. The two of them stood side by side, observing the end of another life, watching the onset of death in the quietly satisfied way that they’d done many times before in the last twenty years. Ending people’s lives was an art they took pride in, using skills their Stasi trainers had inherited from the Gestapo and refined under the tutelage of the KGB.

  In the corner of the barn was a stone sink with a brass tap. The woman took the veterinary syringe over to it, washed it out and replaced it in its container in the workbench drawer. Then from a box on a shelf behind it she retrieved two disposable syringes in sealed plastic packs, opened them and filled them from one of the vaccine bottles. The man bared his upper arm and she plunged in the needle. When she’d done, she rolled up her own shirt sleeve for him to do the same to her. Finally they transferred the bottles of infected serum to a thermo-electric camping coolbox which they placed on the floor at the back of the car, connecting its power cable to the cigar lighter socket.

  The man knelt beside Chursin to check that his pulse was flat. Then the two of them lifted him into the boot of the car, folding down half of the rear seat to make it easier for his legs. They covered the body with a blanket, and dumped two suitcases on top of it.

  The pair nodded at one another. The job was done. Their next mission awaited. They got into the car and reversed from the barn, locking the doors behind them.

  They had a long journey ahead.

  On board an RAF HS125 en route to Vienna

  Unlike the exhausted marines, Sam had forced himself to stay awake during the flight, checking and rechecking the computer files. He’d done a word search on every document, but Schenk’s name hadn’t registered. Nor had rabies. If Schenk was to be nailed, then somehow they were going to have to get him to admit his involvement.

  He kept thinking of what Julie had gone through with Schenk thirty-six hours ago. He felt a strong wish to see her again. Almost as strong as a longing.

  Thirty minutes later the small jet touched down at Vienna’s Schwechat Airport and taxied to the business terminal. Willie Phipps stirred from his slumbers to bid Sam goodbye. He shook his hand warmly and wished him luck. After a brief passport check, Sam was taken to the city by the same cautious British embassy driver who’d been so meticulous about speed limits on the day of Kovalenko’s murder.

  Once beyond the airport perimeter, the driver handed him a phone. ‘Mr Collins thought you might want to get up to date with what’s been happening in London,’ he suggested.

  Sam rang Waddell’s number first, but finding him unavailable, dialled Stephanie’s line at the Yard. She sounded unusually harassed.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  ‘Vienna.’

  ‘He calls himself Peter. The mastermind.’

  ‘I know. Waddell told me.’

  ‘Is it Schenk?’

  ‘Everything points that way. There was a biological weapons lab on Palagra and we have found links to Vienna. But I can’t prove it’s Schenk. Tell me about the bloke you’ve arrested.’

  ‘Aged thirty-two. Former securities trader with no previous convictions. Shacked up with a nurse. No known associations with racist organisations, but his computer hard disk was stuffed with downloads from white power websites and he’d failed to erase a whole bunch of e-mails from his leader.’

  ‘Waddell said they gave no clue to his identity.’

  ‘Not so sure about that. There’s been a new missive this morning. Tell me something. How good is Schenk’s English?’

  ‘Pretty fluent. Makes the odd error.’

  ‘Would you recognise one?’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘The e-mail’s full of sympathy about the mistake Petrie made in Golders Green – blowing up a crocodile of schoolkids rather than a restaurant full of Jews. All written in near perfect English until the end when he says I also have must to make such a sacrifice. Ring any bells?’

  Sam pondered for a moment. ‘No. But it does sound sort of German. What was the precise context?’

  ‘He seems to be talking about having to sacrifice partners who don’t support the Lucifer Network’s views on life . . .’

  ‘Lucifer Network?’

  ‘Seems to be the name of the organisation. There was reference to it in one of the other e-mails we found. Want me to read the whole text?’

  ‘No. Fax it to the Embassy in Vienna. For the attention of Pat Collins. I’m on my way there now.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll tell you one other thing, though. It ends with the words chin up. Is Schenk a fan of P.G. Wodehouse?’

  ‘God knows.’ Chin up. He’d heard someone else use the words recently, but couldn’t remember where. ‘Ask Julie.’

  ‘I will. Oh, I saw her last night. She’s keen to talk to you. In fact I get the impression she’s rather keen altogether.’

  He ignored her innuendo. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In the virology lab at St Michael’s Hospital. She told me she’d be working there all weekend.’

  The car turned into Jauresgasse and stopped outside the British Embassy.

  ‘D’you happen to have the phone number?’

  ‘You mean you don’t?’

  ‘Leave it out, Steph.’ She gave it to him. ‘Thanks. And we’ll do that curry soon. Right?’

  ‘Right. If Miss Jackman can spare you . . .’

  He handed the phone back to the driver.

  Chin up.

  He walked into the Embassy still dressed in the crumpled trousers and sweatshirt that he’d worn under his dry suit. And judging by the way the secretary who escorted him upstairs wrinkled her nose, he wasn’t smelling too fresh any more.

  Inside the SIS offices Collins was on the phone and waved him to a seat. The station chief’s ruddy forehead bore a perplexed frown.

  ‘Vielen Dank.’ He rang off, puffing out his cheeks with surprise. ‘Well . . . there’s a turn-up,’ he exhaled. ‘I think you may have had a wasted journey.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened now?’

  ‘Austrian security pulled Schenk in for que
stioning again just before lunchtime today, to confront him with your evidence of the link between the germ warfare lab and Vienna,’ Collins gabbled, spluttering. ‘And, wait for it – Schenk confessed.’

  ‘What?’ Elation swelled inside him like a balloon.

  ‘But not to what we wanted him to confess to.’

  The balloon burst. Sam clasped his scalp with both hands. ‘Explain.’

  ‘He’s admitted doing a deal with Harry Jackman.’

  ‘Fantastic.’

  ‘But not the deal you have in mind. He categorically denies being involved in biological terrorism. And to prove it he’s shown Austrian security what it was he did buy from Jackman.’

  ‘Which was . . .?’

  ‘Medical equipment. Some quite flash stuff. Gear donated to a hospital in Africa by a European aid programme. It had been sitting in some flyblown storeroom for a year and a half because the locals didn’t have anybody who could operate it. Then money changed hands and the equipment quietly disappeared, turning up in Schenk’s clinic at half the price he’d have paid if he’d bought it through the usual channels.’

  ‘The little shit.’ Sam sank back in the chair in disbelief.

  ‘And this was no fantasy on his part. The serial numbers on the gear in his clinic match with those of the equipment sent to Africa.’

  Sam rested his head on the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling. It was too pat. Too well-prepared an excuse for someone who only a few hours earlier had denied ever meeting Harry Jackman.

  ‘What makes you think this is the only deal Schenk did with Jackman?’

  ‘Because we have no evidence of any other. Nothing connecting him with Palagra.’

  Sam stared at the ceiling again. Every fibre of his body told him Schenk was guilty of something far more sinister than receiving stolen property.

  ‘If Schenk is unscrupulous enough to deprive Africans of life-saving equipment, he could easily have been involved in racist murder too.’

  ‘Of course he could,’ Collins concurred. ‘Trouble is, his denials have been very convincing.’

  There was a tap at the door and a secretary handed Collins a sheet of paper.

  ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘A fax.’

  Sam looked over his shoulder. ‘If it’s from Scotland Yard and the text of an e-mail, then it’s for me.’ Collins gave it to him.

  Sam sat down again, rubbing his forehead as he read. The caring tone of ‘Peter’s’ message intrigued him. He was reminded of Hoffmann’s homily about a good general caring for his troops. He lingered over the penultimate paragraph.

  If she cannot support what you and I believe in, then it cannot be right for her to continue to share your life. You must be brave about this. I also have must to make such a sacrifice.

  What sacrifice? Had the maniac killed his own wife?

  Then Chin up. It annoyed him that he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it.

  ‘Mind if I use your phone?’

  ‘Help yourself. Nine for an outside line.’

  He rang the London number Stephanie had given him. It was a male voice that answered. He asked to speak to Julie.

  ‘May I say who’s calling?’

  ‘Sam Packer.’

  There was a teeth-sucking sound at the other end. ‘I’m not sure that . . .’

  ‘Just tell her I’m on the line and that it’s important.’

  He heard a clunk of the handset being laid down and the squish of rubber soles on polished floors. A couple of minutes later Julie’s voice came on.

  ‘Sam? Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine. Look I’ve got some questions about Max.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘How did you two communicate? Was it ever by e-mail?’

  ‘Oh no. Max is a Luddite when it comes to new technology. He can’t even use a keyboard.’

  Sam’s heart sank. ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Totally. I’ve seen the way his eyes glaze over when confronted by a computer.’

  ‘Never mentioned something called “the Lucifer Network” to you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘One other question.’ It was his last hope. ‘Did he ever say chin up?’

  There was hesitation at the other end. For a moment Sam thought he’d struck gold.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ she told him. ‘His English was terribly Germanic. Utterly devoid of phrases like that.’

  ‘Damn . . .’

  ‘You sound so disappointed.’

  ‘I am.’

  She made sympathetic noises. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ve a nasty feeling I’ve done my maths wrong, that’s what. Two and two may not make five after all.’

  ‘Sam, I . . .’

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll ring you again when I’m back in London.’

  ‘Sam!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was something I wanted to tell you.’

  He felt uncomfortable under Collins’s penetrating glare. ‘Yes, but perhaps now isn’t the best . . .’

  ‘I’ve seen him before, Sam.’

  He felt an icy finger down his back. ‘Who?’

  ‘The man in your folder.’

  Sam screwed up his eyes, trying to latch onto what she was talking about.

  ‘What folder, Julie?’

  ‘In your room at the pension,’ Julie explained. ‘There was a folder with a photograph in it.’

  Sam swallowed, not trusting himself to speak. He remembered emerging from the bathroom and seeing her poking around in his suitcase.

  ‘Somebody Hoffmann,’ she went on, breathlessly.

  ‘Hoffmann,’ he croaked. The world was turning upside down.

  ‘The face seemed familiar, but I couldn’t think where I’d seen it. I’ve been puzzling over it ever since and come to the conclusion there’s only one place it could have been.’

  ‘Where, Julie? Where’ve you seen him before?’

  ‘The Intercon bar. I’m 99 per cent certain he was one of the men my father was chatting to when I joined him for a drink that evening a year ago.’

  Yes, thought Sam. Harry Jackman had been right.

  Julie knows.

  22

  THE CLUES HAD been there and he’d missed them.

  Peter’s paternalistic concern for the problems of his foot-soldiers – it bore Hoffmann’s signature. Kovalenko’s murder, done KGB style – Stasi style. The supposed heart attack that had left Hoffmann hale and hearty the next day – a carefully created alibi. And chin up. Sam remembered where he’d heard it now. At Jo Macdonald’s bedside. It had been ‘Johann’ who’d told the Scotswoman to keep her chin up when his father was dying.

  The embassy car hurtled round the Ring, the driver threatened with an unpleasant personal injury if he didn’t push the speed over the limit this time.

  Sam sat alone in the back, reliving his meeting with Günther Hoffmann three days earlier. His brain kept singling out other indicators he’d missed – the man’s envy of the Austrians’ freedom to be anti-Semitic – his blatant homophobia – his dislike of Arabs because of their music – his sympathy with those who wanted to keep Europe free of dusky foreigners. Taken separately, each had been a small thing, the mutterings of an elderly grump. But together they spelled out a man with the mindset of a Nazi.

  And there were other clues. Fischer’s comment that Hoffmann had been more involved with Russian businessmen in Vienna than they’d first thought. And his view that if Hoffmann was making money from Russians, he would have been doing it to fund some cause he believed in.

  And what a cause.

  Sam groaned. Hindsight was a wonderful thing.

  It was another of Fischer’s snippets that was driving him now. The tip that Hoffmann spent most Saturday afternoons ‘researching German history’ in the National Library.

  The car swung through the neo-classical gateway of the Hofburg, the palace of the Habsburgs. To each side of the broad, gravelled road lay Helde
nplatz, the square to the heroes of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Horse-drawn fiacres lined one side of the highway, their bowler-hatted coachmen holding the beasts’ bucking heads while tourists clambered on board. Sam’s embassy driver turned right and stopped beneath a statue of a prince on a prancing horse that was streaked with green. He nodded towards the curved, grey, colonnaded block facing them.

  ‘That’s your Staatsbibliothek. Want me to wait?’

  ‘You bet.’ Sam pushed open the door and slammed it behind him.

  ‘By rights I’d need permission to park here . . .’ The driver’s plaintive moan was lost to the breeze as Sam climbed the steps to the library.

  One half of the barred bronze portal stood open. Beyond it a cavernous, stone-floored hall. At the far end were glazed doors made of carved oak, topped by a coat of arms. He hurried through into the library itself, a light and airy space, with a black-and-white tiled floor, stately marble columns and ficus trees in tubs. He felt the hair twitch on the back of his neck. He was getting close.

  There was a security office on the left. A red-faced, potato-shaped guard leaned on his desk, eyeing all new arrivals with suspicion. Next to his window a display board listed departments. Halfway down was the name of the one Sam had guessed would be here. On the lower ground floor.

  There was a warm, leathery smell about the building. A sign pointed to a spiral staircase. At the bottom was the book collection centre. Readers who’d placed orders were waiting on benches for their tomes to be retrieved from the vaults. Several glanced up, disturbed by Sam’s hasty and breathless arrival. He stopped, looking for some sign pointing to where he wanted to be. Finding none, he asked at the collections counter. The middle-aged woman behind it indicated a corridor to the left. He hurried through a pair of swing doors and found the library’s communications centre. Faxes and photocopy machines lined one wall. There was a desk manned by a grey-suited official, whose fingers clicked at a keyboard. Beyond the desk was the place Sam had guessed would be here, the Internet room from where ‘Peter’ had controlled his small network of activists.

  He stopped in his tracks. About a dozen PCs sat on tables, only one of them in use.