by Colin Forbes
But this girl felt right. It was his last thought before he lay back on the pillow and fell fast asleep.
He woke with a sensation of alarm. It was dark, the air heavy like a blanket pressing down. He wasn't sure where he was – so much had happened in so short a period of time. He was lying on his back on a bed. Then he remembered.
He was just relaxing when he experienced a second tremor. He kept his breathing regular. Someone had taken off his tie, undone the top buttons of his shirt, taken off his shoes. What alerted him was the lack of weight under his left armpit. The shoulder holster was still strapped to him but his Colt had been removed. He turned his head carefully, not making a sound, and reached out with his right hand. The fingers of another hand touched his own, grasped his hand. A girl's voice whispered before the bedside light came on.
`You're all right. You're in St. Gallen at the Hotel Metropol. I'm Claire Hofer. It's four o'clock in the morning so you've only had two hours' sleep…'
`I can get by on that.'
Martel was wide awake now, his throat feeling like sandpaper. He sat up and propped the pillow behind him. Claire Hofer was still wearing her pale grey two-piece suit and like himself, sat propped against a pillow. In the light glow he noticed she had made herself up afresh. No blood-red nail varnish, thank God!
'Your Colt is in your bedside table,' she told him. 'Not very comfortable sleeping with that. The door is double-locked – and as you see I've tipped a chair under the handle…'
'You seem to have thought of everything…'
Martel, who never accepted anyone at face value, set about discovering every facet of Claire Hofer. She was remarkably like the second girl he had encountered in the Zurich apartment, the girl he had rescued – only to let her be kidnapped and… Martel found it hard to push the atrocity to the back of his mind.
'What are you thinking about?' she asked.
'This…'
He extracted from his jacket pocket the silver Delta badge he had ripped from the lapel of a dead would-be assassin in Bahnhofstrasse. Casually, he tossed it on her bed. She moved away from it as though it were alive, staring at him, her eyes wide with fear.
'Where did you get that?'
She was quick and clever. During the few seconds while she was talking her right hand, which was furthest away from him and in shadow, slipped under her pillow and reappeared holding the 9-mm pistol which she aimed point-blank at his stomach.
'The badge frightens you?' he asked.
'You frighten me now. I shan't hesitate to shoot…'
`I believe you.'
He was careful to keep his hands folded in his lap, well away from the bedside table drawer. There was no softness in her voice now, in her expression, in the posture of her well- developed body. If he miscalculated the Swiss girl would pull the trigger.
`I took that badge off the body of a man I shot in Bahnhofstrasse last night. They were waiting for us when we came out of the apartment – Delta. None of your men with stocking masks or Balaclava hoods. Men in business suits! And each wearing a badge in his lapel. There was a lot of blood split – but an hour later the place was nice and tidy for tomorrow's tourists…'
'You said blood was spilt. You said "us"…
'Why didn't you keep our appointment at Centralhof?' he snapped.
'Arnold was going to take me off the Delta investigation after Warner's murder – so I went underground. Lisbeth was supposed to bring you here, to make sure you weren't followed. Unlike you, she knows some of Arnold's trackers…'
'And she knows Ferdy Arnold himself?'
'No, she has never met him. Why?'
'Let me describe Arnold,' he suggested. 'A thin, wiry man in his late thirties. Brown hair brushed back without a parting. Slate-grey eyes…'
'That's not a bit like him…'
'I thought so. Someone impersonating him turned up while we were at the apartment. I was even suspicious of Lisbeth because she had to look up his number in her notebook – she should have known that backwards if she had been you. The fake Arnold must have phoned her before I arrived and made some excuse as to why she should use that number if the need arose. Who is…' He was very careful still with his use of tenses the girl who impersonated you?'
Before she got married we both worked for David Nagel in police Intelligence. We once played a joke on him – we dressed in exactly the same clothes and went into his office separately, one after the other within the space of ten minutes. He didn't grasp there was any difference and was furious when we told him. It's no wonder you were fooled.'
She showed her renewed confidence in him by slipping her pistol back under the pillow. Smiling by way of apology, she leaned forward and asked the question he had been dreading.
'Where is Lisbeth? Did she wait in the station here to catch a train back to Zurich? As you'll have gathered, she does look terribly like me-although we aren't twins. You realise she is my sister?'
In London Tweed was still at his desk studying a file when he received the frightening news. Rubbing his eyes, he glanced wistfully at the camp-bed he had had set up 'for the duration' as he termed it. Miss McNeil, his faithful assistant, brought in the signal.
A handsome, erect, grey-haired woman – men in the street turned their heads when she passed them – no one knew her age or even her first name, except Tweed, who had forgotten. She was just McNeil – who was always on hand when needed at any hour of the day or night. She also possessed a shrewd brain, a caustic tongue and an encyclopaedic memory.
'This just came in from Bayreuth…'
Bayreuth. Alarm bells began ringing. Tweed unlocked the steel-lined drawer containing his code-book. At the moment the signal read like a perfectly normal business enquiry about the despatch of certain goods.
Bayreuth was in Bavaria. Lindau, the last place Charles Warner had set foot in before being murdered, was in Bavaria. Delta, the neo-Nazi Party, had its power base in Bavaria. He busied himself with the decoding, using a piece of thick paper clipped to a metal sheet so there could be no imprint of what he was writing.
'Would you prefer me to leave you alone?' McNeil suggested.
'Of course not! Just let me concentrate, woman…'
It was a conipliment – that she should be asked to stay, because Tweed felt that when the decoding was completed he might welcome company. She sat down, crossed her shapely legs and watched. It was fortunate that – like Martel – she could manage on two or three hours' sleep. As he finished his task Tweed's expression became blank – which told McNeil a great deal.
'Bad news?'
'The worst, the very worst.'
Tou will cope. You always do.
'I'm not the one who has to cope. Manfred has just crossed the border into Bavaria from East Germany. Oh, Christ…'
Manfred!
Tweed was appalled as he re-read the signal. It had travelled to him along a most devious route he could see in his mind's eye. First, his agent planted inside the Ministry for State Security in Leipzig, East Germany, had radioed the message from his mobile transmitter. The message had then been picked up by Tweed's station in Bayreuth.
From Bayreuth a courier had driven at breakneck speed to the British Embassy in Bonn. There the signal would have been handed personally to the security officer. He, in his turn, had radioed it to Park Crescent. The decoded signal was deadly and un-nerving in its implications.
Manfred today Wednesday May 27 crossed East German border near Hof into West Germany. Ultimate destination unknown.
He handed the signal to McNeil without a word, stood up and went to examine the wall-map of Central Europe he had pinned up when Martel had left for the airport. Tweed was quite familiar with the map. In his head he carried a clear picture of the geography of the whole of western Europe. But he wanted to verify which route Manfred might have taken.
From the Hof area an autobahn ran due south via Nuremberg to the Bavarian capital of Munich. That was the most likely route. And Warner had spent a lot of time i
n Munich, paying special attention to the Hauptbahnhof for some unknown reason. He went back to his swivel chair, adjusted his glasses and sagged into his cushion.
'We don't know much about Manfred, do we?' McNeil ventured.
'We know nothing – and we know too much,' Tweed growled. He tapped a file. 'I must be getting psychic in my old age – I was looking at his dossier when you brought that signal.'
'He's a top East German agent, isn't he? Some query about his nationality and origins. A top-flight assassin – and a first-rate planner. An unusual combination `But Carlos is an unusual man,' Tweed said and pushed his spectacles back over his forehead.
'You really think he is Carlos? Nothing has been heard of him for ages…'
`The Americans assume so. But there is something very peculiar going on which I don't understand. Delta is the neoNazis. Manfred is a free-lance Communist expert on major subversive operations. So who is behind Operation Crocodile- whatever that might be? And Crocodile – that reminds me of something I have seen…'
'You look really worried. Shall I make coffee?'
Tweed stared at the silent phone on his desk. He spoke half to himself. 'Come in, Martel, for God's sake! I must warn you – before it's too late. You're up against both Nazis and Communists. It's double jeopardy…'
In a darkened apartment in a large building near Munich police headquarters in Ettstrasse a gloved hand lifted a telephone. The man wearing nylon gloves was the sole occupant. The only illumination came from a shaded desk light. He dialled a number. It was 4 am.
'Who the bloody hell is this? Don't you know the time…
Reinhard Dietrich had been woken at the schloss from a deep sleep and his voice reflected his fury. If it was Erwin Vinz again he would blast him to…
'Manfred speaking.' The tone of voice was creepily soft and controlled. 'We hear you have a problem and that we find most disturbing.'
Dietrich woke up very quickly, thrown off balance by the identity of the caller, by his words which suggested he knew something about the Zurich debacle. He sat up in bed and his tone of voice became polite and cooperative.
'Nothing we can't handle, I assure you…'
`But in Zurich, it was mishandled, so what may we expect next in St. Gallen?'
Dietrich, a man accustomed all his life to issuing commands, dreaded the sound of Manfred's sleepy voice. When Manfred had first approached him at his Stuttgart office with his offer to supply arms and uniforms at cut-rate prices he had jumped at the chance. Now he half-regretted the decision – when it was too late.
'You don't have to worry about St. Gallen.' He spoke in a bluff confident tone. 'I have already made arrangements to deal with the situation…'
'We are very pleased to hear it. More arms and uniforms are available for immediate collection at the same warehouse. Where and when will you store this consignment?'
Dietrich told him. There was a click and the industrialist realised Manfred had gone off the line. Arrogant bastard! And he detested his caller's habit of using the plural 'we' – as though Dietrich was taking orders from some all-powerful committee. At least more arms were on the way – God knows they had lost enough. How Erich Stoller of the BND tracked down the locations he had no idea.
In Munich Manfred switched off the desk light. Wherever he was staying in the West he always wore gloves – there would be no fingerprints to trace when he left the apartment. There was a thin smile on his face. Operation Crocodile was proceeding according to plan.
In the bedroom at the Hotel Metropol Claire Hofer was enduring a state of delayed shock after Martel told her of Lisbeth's murder. He omitted reference to the fact that she had been tortured. When she reacted she caught him off guard. .
And you let them take her? Bastard!' She hit him across the side of the face with the flat of her hand. When she raised her hand a second time he grabbed her wrist and pushed her down on the bed, his face inches from hers as she glared up at him. Their position reminded him of when he had pinned his would-be assassin, Gisela Zobel, down on the sofa in the Centralhof apartment and she had attempted to distract him with sexual games.
But this girl was different. Tough as whipcord, but vulnerable, a vulnerability she covered up with an outwardly controlled manner. The deep blue eyes seemed larger than ever in the light from the bedside lamp. He kissed her gently on the forehead and felt her whipcord muscles relax.
'There were at least a dozen armed Delta soldiers in the assault,' he told her softly, still gripping her wrist. 'They piled out of two cars. I shot three men. I saw them hauling Lisbeth inside a large Mercedes which drove straight off. I blew it…'
'A dozen armed men!' Her eyes gazed into his. 'But how could you have saved Lisbeth against such odds? And why did they do this thing-take her away?' Her body had gone limp. He relaxed his grip on her wrist.
'They thought they were taking you…'
`Me?- Why me?'
'Something big is coming up.' He perched on the edge of her bed and lit a cigarette. 'So Delta is eliminating every agent who might get in their way. First Warner, then the attempt on yourself. I'm their next target. Incidentally, why didn't Warner use the train to get from Lindau to Switzerland – why that business of the boat?'
'He was an ex-Navy man and mistrusted confined spaces – a train could be a trap he'd say. There was nowhere to run. Can't we hit back at these people?'
'We're going to. That's why I'm in St. Gallen. There's a rare embroidery museum here, isn't there? The receptionist at the Baur au Lac said so…'
'There is.' She was sitting up now, using a hand-mirror and a brush to tidy her dishevelled hair. 'And that's the place Charles used as a rendezvous to meet his contact inside Delta. How do you know about it?'
'We'll come back to that. Do you know how far Warner had gone with his attempt to infiltrate Delta?'
'He had, this contact I've just mentioned. I've no idea what he looks like. Charles went to great lengths to protect his identity, but his code-name is Stahl. Incidentally, you've seen the latest news about Delta?'
She reached for a newspaper and handed it to him. It was dated the previous day. The headline jumped out at him and beneath it was the main article.
New Cache of neo-Nazi Arms and Uniforms Found in Allgau.
The text was padded out but the message was simple. Acting on information received the Bavarian police had raided an isolated farmhouse just before dawn and found. the arms dump. The farmhouse had shown traces of recent occupation but was deserted at the time of the raid…
'That's the seventh Delta arms dump they've found in the past four weeks,' Claire remarked. 'They don't seem to be all that efficient …'
'Odd, isn't it?'
'What are you thinking about?' she asked. 'You've got that look again…'
He was staring at the wall, recalling his conversation with Tweed. Fragments of that conversation kept beavering away at the back of his mind.
The badge was found under Warner's body. The killer must have dropped it without realising… And they completed the job by carving their trademark on his naked back – the Delta symbol…
'I think there's something we're missing – it's just too damned obvious.' He checked his watch. 0430 hours. 'But we can trap the bastards. In the Embroidery Museum here in St. Gallen. In less than eight hours from now.'
CHAPTER 8
Thursday May 28
'This is what we're talking about – I hope…'
They were sitting at a secluded breakfast table in the hotel dining-room. Martel produced from his wallet an orange- coloured ticket and handed it to Claire. The ticket bore a number, several words printed in German and no indication of a town. Industrie and Gewerbemuseum Eintritt: Fr. 2.50.
'Warner had that in his own wallet when he was killed,' Martel continued. have my fingers crossed…'
'You can uncross them,' she said cheerfully. 'It is an entrance ticket to the St. Gallen Embroidery Museum. The building is in Vadianstrasse – near the Old Town. Not ten m
inutes' walk away…'
'Look at the back.'
Claire turned over the ticket and saw words written in a script she recognised. Charles Warner's. She was probably looking at the last words he wrote before he had embarked on his fatal boat trip from Lindau.
St. 11.50. May 28.
She looked at Martel and he detected a hint of excitement in her expression as he drank his eighth cup of coffee. He had already consumed seven croissants, three slices of ham and a large piece of cheese. He was beginning to feel better.
'May 28 – that's today,' she said and checked her watch. 'Nine o'clock. St. must stand for Stahl. In less than three hours we shall be talking to him…'
I shall be talking to him,' Martel corrected her.
'I thought I was part of the team…'
`You told me Warner never let you attend these meetings. And if whoever turns up sees you he may take fright…'
`He won't recognise you,' she persisted stubbornly.
Martel quietly blew up. 'Now listen to me, Claire Hofer. You're not going to like this but there's no nice way to get the message across. I work alone – because then the only person I have to worry about is me. And me is all I've got – so I worry about me quite a lot.'
`I don't have to come inside the museum…'
'I haven't finished yet, so kindly shut up! Ever since I landed in Zurich nothing has been what it seemed. At the Centralhof apartment Delta had put in a girl to take me out. I find another girl in a cupboard – sorry about this, but it's necessary – and I'm led to think she's Claire Hofer…'
'I told you why we arranged it like that, damn it!'
Her face flushed with rage and her eyes blazed. He admired her spirit- he might even be able to use it – but he had to get his point across.
`Next thing,' he went on patiently, 'is a holocaust in Bahnhofstrasse – and within one hour all signs of it disappear…' `Ferdy Arnold's wash-and-brush-up squad,' she said shortly. `Come again?'
'You said yourself earlier you thought they had cleaned up the carnage to keep it quiet-to avoid worrying tourists. Arnold has this special team of engineers, glaziers, builders – you name it – standing by in case of a riot or terrorist outrage. They seal off the area temporarily and their motto is "as good as new within thirty minutes". They even have experts who fob off the press with some phoney story if necessary…'